invested in salt-works in Barnstable County, and that the annual production amounted to a hundred thousand bushels, besides a considerable quantity of Glauber's salts. In Dennis, the original home of the process then in use, the vats covered an area of more than 650,000 square feet. The product was of excellent quality, superior in strength, it was said, to the best imported salt by one-fifth.1

Thoreau found the salt-works a picturesque feature of the landscape when he made his tour of the Cape in 1849. "The wind-mills on the hills, large weather-stained octagonal structures, and the salt-works scattered all along the shore, with their long rows of vats resting on poles driven into the marsh, their low, turtle-like roofs, and their slighter wind-mills, were novel and interesting objects to an inlander."2 All this has vanished. The salt springs of Onondaga proved a formidable rival. The removal of the duty on foreign salt, with the increase in the cost of lumber and the rise in wages, made the business unprofitable, and the mills and vats were suffered to go to wreck, or removed and their materials utilized for the cheaper kinds of building.

Many will remember the large boards, fantastically marked with the stains of spreading rust and marine chemicals, but rendered almost proof against decay by their long contact with "lingering pickle," which twenty-five years ago were so plentifully worked up into sheds and barns, and even houses, in all parts of Cape Cod. President Dwight's prophetic vision of an Atlantic coast lined with salt-works was not destined to be fulfilled. In Barnstable, for instance, where in 1808 there were half-a-million square

1 E. A. Kendall, Travels through the Northern Parts of the United States, New York, 1809, II, 131 ff.

2 Cape Cod, Stage-Coach Views, ed. 1877, pp. 19-20.

* See Benj. De Witt, Memoir on the Onondaga Salt Springs, Albany, 1798; cf. S. P. Hildreth, Pioneer History, Cincinnati, 1848, pp. 409, 475-7.

feet of vats, there is nothing to mark the site of the manufacture but a few indentations in the marsh, once reservoirs, and a single gallows-like structure, fallen into ruin, and scarcely recognizable as the timber frame of an old windmill.

Τ

THE FLYING STATIONER

HE last page of the Almanac for 1797, in the course of a long advertisement of Mr. Thomas's book and stationery business at Sterling,1 makes particular mention of "Small Histories, Chapmen's Book[s], &c." and goes on to enumerate "Female Policy Detected, French Convert, Royal do., History of the Holy Bible, Seven Wise Masters, Robinson Crusoe, Tom Thumb's Exhibition, New Year's Gift, Little King Pippin, Mountain Piper - with a great number of other small, entertaining histories." This entry is of some importance to the bibliographer, who finds in such "small entertaining histories" at once his delight and his despair. The chapmen in question were, of course, book-peddlers, or what used to be called in Scotland "flying stationers." They are best known to literary historians and collectors of rare volumes, as well as to students of folk-lore, by the cheap little pamphlets of a popular character called "chapbooks," that is, books designed to be sold by chapmen or travelling traders. These were of every sort, as Mr. Thomas's advertisement indicates. Some were moral or prudential, but many aimed simply at entertainment. Jest books and garlands (or song-books) abounded. Many an old romance -like Guy of Warwick or Bevis of Hampton - found its last redaction in a condensed prose version meant to be hawked about the country. One of the most singular transformations of this kind is seen in the fate of the old tale of Barlaam and Joasaph. This was originally a col1 See pp. 318 ff., below.

lection of Buddhistic parables, but it gradually came to be understood as a Christian legend, and its popularity in this guise led to the admission of a supposed St. Josaphat into the Calendar of the Greek Church, a saint in whom modern investigators have somewhat gleefully recognized the Buddha himself, the founder of the rival religion which has of late sent various learned and picturesque missionaries to our shores. Finally the tale of Barlaam and Joasaph turns up in chapbook form as the History of King Jehoshaphat!

The Seven Wise Masters, which appears in Mr. Thomas's list, is also of Oriental origin and has an equally long and complicated history. It gets its name from the Seven Sages to whom the education of the hero, a very accomplished prince, has been entrusted. The prince is falsely accused by his stepmother and condemned to death. He cannot defend himself, for he has learned by inspecting the stars that he must speak no word for a week on pain of instant destruction. As he is being led to the scaffold, the first of his tutors stops the king and warns him that in putting his son to death he is acting as foolishly as the knight did when he killed his hound. Of course the king asks for the story, and the Sage agrees to tell it if he will give the prince a respite for one day. That night the queen convinces her husband, by a counter-story, that he is being tricked by his advisers, and he resolves to have his son executed next morning. This time the second Sage intervenes, and secures a postponement for another day. Thus the narrative proceeds, until the week is past and the prince is at liberty to speak. The queen is punished and the Seven Sages meet with wellmerited honor. The reader will recognize the same kind of device for stringing stories together that is familiar to all in the Arabian Nights. The Seven Sages was vastly popular throughout Europe from the middle ages to

modern times and it deserved its popularity. It warms one's heart to meet with this old favorite, in its abbreviated chapbook form, on the shelves of the early New England booksellers. Michael Perry, of Boston, had three copies in stock when his inventory was taken in 1700, and they were valued in the lump at two shillings. The same document shows five copies of the History of Fortunatus, valued at three shillings and fourpence, and one copy of Godfrey of Bulloigne, valued at sixpence. Perry had also nine packs of playing cards on hand, as well as a good supply of sermons and theological works.1

A good many chapbooks were reprinted in this country in the eighteenth and the early nineteenth century, and there were also not a few of American origin. Mr. Thomas

was no doubt well furnished with both kinds.

The Almanac itself was largely circulated by the itinerant booksellers, and in the Farmer's Calendar for January, 1821, there is a lively sketch of the arrival of such a chapman at a farmer's house and of the conversation. between him and the daughter of an old customer. Twilight" is the felicitous name assigned to the merry itinerant:

"Bless my heart, mother, here comes old Tim Twilight the pedler again to wish us happy new year. Well, uncle Tim, it is just a year to a day since you was here before and sold me The life and adventures of Betty Buttermilk, dairywoman to the Duchess of Dumhiedikes. Come, let's see, what have ye now, old daddy?" "Why, my pretty damsel, here's the works of Sir John Sinclair, the great Scotch farmer. Here's another book called The Guide to Health. Shewing how a diligent hand. maketh rich. Here's another, called The Great Quiltrey at farmer Cleverly's. Hah! what say ye to reading the life of My Lady Lummucks? But here's the best of all, my Farmer's

1 See the inventory as printed by Whitmore in his edition of John Dunton's Letters from New England, pp. 315, 316, 317.