south side it is bordered by Nantucket sound and on the north by Massachusetts bay. Has excellent summer hotels and good bathing and fishing.

Yarmouth—A town with quiet and shady streets, sloping shores and many old residences. One of the historic towns of the regions and presents a variety of attractions.

Barnstable—The county seat and largest town on the Cape. Attractions exceedingly varied. Noted for the excellence of its clams.

Hyannis—Known as the Metropolis of the Cape. It is a center for summer business. Here are to be found excellent hotels, good stores and attractive tea rooms. Its main street is lined with summer stores which are branches of New York and Boston's exclusive shops. Adjacent to it are Hyannisport, a summer colony of fine residences. Centerville, Craigville, said to have the finest beach in New England, Osterville (called the little Newport), and Cotuit, one of the prettiest spots along the shores of Vineyard Sound. This region is growing more and more popular every year as the summer home of people of wealth and refinement and presents all the attractions of resorts which cater to the diversion of vacationists.

Falmouth—Falmouth is one of the larger villages on the Cape that draws a fine class of summer residents who populate its fine hotels and summer homes. It has varied scenery as it lies between Buzzards Bay and Vineyard Sound. Its hotels are among the best and for attractiveness cannot be rivalled anywhere. At Woods Hole, a part of Falmouth, is found another settlement of exclusive character. Falmouth has several other villages, all with fine hotels, golf links and boat harbors.

Sandwich—This town on the North side of the Cape is one of the old and original settlements and is on the banks of the Cape Cod canal. It has extensive woodlands dotted with well stocked ponds and is very attractive to campers.

Bourne—Sagamore Beach, within the confines of the town of Bourne, is on the north shore and is a pretentious cottage colony with two excellent hotels. Golf links are adjacent and it has its own water system, community house and tennis courts. Cataumet and Pocasset are parts of Bourne which border on Buzzards Bay as well as Monument Beach and the village of Buzzards Bay, itself. These are typical bayside resorts where boating, bathing, fishing and golf are extensively indulged in. The town is intersected by the Cape Cod canal and the traffic that flows through it passes in front of the summer colonies.

Martha's Vineyard—This is an off-shore island reached by a half-hour's boat ride from Woods Hole. A poet has said of it, "a little bit of Heaven dropped from out the sky one day" which aptly describes it. Oak Bluffs, Edgartown. Vineyard Haven, Tisbury, Chilmark and Gay Head are its principal villages. The island presents all the best features of an ideal summer vacation spot away from the mainland, yet possessing all the essential features which go to make life comfortable. Its hotels are many and excellent.

Nantucket—Further at sea, a two and a half hours' steamboat ride from Woods Hole. Unique is a word that inadequately describes it. All over the United States there are people who assert that there is no place like Nantucket on the face of the globe. It has a large summer population and tourists are adequately cared for. It has the most regular climate of any place along the New England coast, the temperature averaging 76 degrees during the summer months. It is cooled by the Atlantic breezes.

Onset—This is a busy and thriving summer resort located in a beautiful spot on upper Buzzards Bay. It attracts many thousands of people during the summer months, who come to spend a few weeks, days, or the season there. It is a cottage colony supplemented by hotels and boarding houses that fit the purses of all classes.

At some of these places, either on Cape Cod itself or the islands, every person can find conditions suited to his or her individual taste.

Edward L. Smith

Cape Cod has many fine distinctions that make it stand out from a commonplace world and Wellfleet, as a town name, marks the Cape with a place-name known all over the globe, but in no other locality than on the coast of Barnstable Bay. It is true that a misguided, homesick, and ill-advised denizen of the Cape, roaming the arid, inland sand wastes of Nebraska, foisted the name of "Wellfleet" on his townsite. But as it has to date remained "unwept, unhonored and unsung," so is it quite unknown to sailors or to the sea, being about fifteen hundred miles from salt water and an immeasurable distance from being appropriately named.

The origin of the name "Wellfleet" has always been a source of lively interest to those who delight to delve to the roots of things historical. So many of our early towns in Massachusetts were named by the Englishmen who settled them for English towns familiar to them before they came oversea, that England is the natural source from whence such a Saxon-English name as Wellfleet might come.

After forty years of desultory search by the writer, the problem is yet unsolved, though a good Yankee guess may not come very far out of the way.

When that part of old Nawsett now Wellfleet was first settled it was noted for the abundance of shell fish in the harbor and creeks, or cricks as then called, and oysters were both especially plentiful and choice.

In England, on the coast of Essex, and not far from the Thames, was a stretch of oyster beds noted in the sixteenth century for their production of oyster different from all other locations and revered by epicures of those far-away times to be the luscious complement necessary to their royal as well as more common plebeian feasts. But we had best let old John Norden, who in 1594 published the results of his life-long investigations into the history of Essex, tell the story, which here is given verbatim as it appears in his work, "SPECTLI BRITTANNIE PARS."

"Some part of the sea shore of Essex yealdeth the beste oysters in England, which are called Walflete oysters: so called of a place in the sea; but of which place in the sea it is, hath been some disputation. And by the circumstances that I have observed thereof in my travail, I take it to be the shore which lieth betwene St. Peter's chappell and Crowch the bredthe onlie of Denge hundred, through which upon the verie shore, was erected a wall for the preservation of the lande. And thereof St. Peter's on the wall. And all the sea shore which beateth on the wall is called Walfleet. And upon that shore on, and not elswher, but up in Crouche creeke, at the ende of the wall, wher also is an ilande called commonlie and corruptlie Walled (but I take it more trulie Wallflete) Island, wher and about which ilande thys kinde of oyster abonndeth. Ther is greate difference betwene theis oysters and others which lie ypon other shores, for this oyster, that in London and els wher carieth the name of Walflete is a little full oyster with a verie greene finn. And like vnto theis in quantetie and qualitie are none in this lande, thowgh farr bigger, and for some mens diettes better."

From the above we may understand that Wellfleet oysters, which have been celebrated in the English markets for between three and four hundred years, might easily have led the settlers of Nawsett to believe that at Billinsgate, they had a new Wallfleet Oyster bed. The fact that Wallfleet oysters were marketed at Billinsgate, always the big fish market of the Londoners, and that our Wellfleet was at first known as Billingsgate, seems more than a mere coincidence.

The difference in spelling between the names "Wallfleet" and "Wellfleet" is not material.