Excerpt from History of Cape Cod, Vol. 2: The Annals of the Thirteen Towns of Barnstable County Dr. Johnson, the great lexicographer, has de fined one of his vocation, a writer of diction aries a harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original and detailing the significa tion of words: we sympathize with him in the feeling that prompted the self-pitying and self humiliating soliloquy. We do not expect either the present or coming generations to appro hend fully the pains which our undertaking costs. The work accomplished, future explorers will profit by our toils. They will have at least some faint landmarks by which to direct their own course, and possibly may detect some omis sions and supply deficiencies, some errors and correct them; the initiate toil they will happily have avoided, and can, therefore, never know the perplexities that attended it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.