CHAPTER XI

THE OLD SHORE ROAD AND THE PILGRIM SPIRIT

The breaking waves dashed high
On a stern and rock bound coast,
And the woods against the stormy sky
Their giant branches tossed.


"Thus sang Felicia Hemans in the early years of the last
century, and anyone who has sailed in by White Horse beach and
'Hither Manomet' when one of those fierce gales that winter
brings to this section of the coast sends great billows
thundering up against the cliff and churns all the sea into
froth and foam, will readily see how truthful this singer has
portrayed the scene he has beheld. True, you will not find
granite ledges, which follow the coast almost continuously
farther north, as at Scituate, Nahant, Rockport, and farther on;
but it is rock-bound, nevertheless, with great heaps of
boulders, thickly sown, of various shapes and sizes, with a
sombre gray color that makes them appear inexpressibly stern
even on a bland summer day."

The most picturesque of all the highways leading from Boston to
Plymouth is the South Shore road, passing through Milton,
Quincy, Hingham, Scituate, Cohasset, Marshfield, and Duxbury,
for one of the chief delights of this route is the frequent
glimpses of the sea, whose jagged, rocky coast Nature has