It does not rain.

June 30.

A. M. — To Ball's Hill.

June 30, 2017

Yesterday afternoon it was remarkably cool, with wind, it being easterly, and I anticipated a sea-turn. There was a little, a blue mistiness, ere long. 

The coolness continues, and this morning the sky is full of clouds, but they look to me like dog-day clouds and not rain-threatening. 

It does not rain.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 30, 1857

Remarkably cool, with wind, it being easterly, and I anticipated a sea-turn. See June 30, 1859 ("Cooler, with a northerly wind."); June 30,1855 ("2 P. M. -- Thermometer north side of house, 95°") See also April 28, 1856(" ...on our return the wind changed to easterly, and I felt the cool, fresh sea-breeze."); April 30, 1856 ("at one o’clock there was the usual fresh easterly wind and sea-turn . . .and a fresh cool wind from the sea produces a mist in the air.")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Sea-turn

A phoebe's nest under the shelter rock at Lee's Cliff

June 29.


A. M. — Up Assabet with Blake. 

Allium Canadense in house and probably in field.

The river is now whitened with the down of the black willow, and I am surprised to see a minute plant abundantly springing from its midst and greening it, — where it has collected in denser beds against some obstacle as a branch on the surface, — like grass growing in cotton in a tumbler. 

P. M. — Walk to Lee's Cliff. 

Small rough sunflower, the common, at Bittern Cliff. 

Where I took shelter under the rock at Lee's Cliff, a phoebe has built her nest, and it now has five eggs in it, nearly fresh.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 29, 1857

Surprised to see a minute plant abundantly springing from its midst and greening it, like grass growing in cotton in a tumbler. See June 26, 1860 ("Young black willows have sprouted and put forth their two minute round leafets where the cottony seeds have lodged in a scum against the alder.")

Small rough sunflower, the common, at Bittern Cliff. See August 1, 1852 ("The small rough sunflower (Helianthus divaricatus) tells of August heats; also Helianthus annuus, common sunflower.")

Where I took shelter under the rock at Lee's Cliff . . . See May 29, 1857 ("The drops fall thicker, and I seek a shelter ...under a large projecting portion of the Cliff, where there is ample space above and around, and I can move about as perfectly protected as under a shed.")

At Lee's Cliff a phoebe has built her nest. . .five eggs in it, nearly fresh. . .See May 5, 1860 ("At Lee's a pewee (phoebe) building. . . .Think how many pewees must have built under the eaves of this cliff since pewees were created and this cliff itself built!!"); June 20, 1856  ("Five young phoebes in a nest . . .just ready to fly."); June 25, 1855 ("A phoebe’s nest, with two birds ready to fly."). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Phoebe

Three yellow wasps' nests: Mrs. Brown, Mr. Smith and HDT

June 28. 

Geum Virginianum [cream-colored avens]some time, apparently, past its prime by red cohosh. It was not nearly out June 7th; say, then, the 18th. 

I hear on all hands these days, from the elms and other trees, the twittering peep of young gold robins, which have recently left their nests, and apparently indicate their locality to their parents by thus incessantly peeping all day long. 

Observe to-night a yellow wasps' (?) nest, made of the same kind of paper with the hornets', in horizontal strips, some brownish, some white. It is broad cone-shape, some two inches in its smallest diameter, with a hole at the apex beneath about one half inch diameter, and is suspended to the sheathing overhead within the recess at Mrs. Brown's front door. She is afraid of the wasps, and so I brush it off for her. 

It contains only one comb about one and one eighth inches in diameter suspended from above, and this is surrounded by about two thin coverings of paper an eighth of an inch or more apart. The wasps looked at first like bees, with yellow rings on the abdomen. The cells contain what look and move like white grubs. 

It is apparently the same kind of nest that I observed first a few days since, of the same size, under the peak of our roof, just over my chamber windows. 


(July 7th, The last is now five inches in diameter. Watching the nest over my window, I see that the wasps are longer than honey-bees and have a white place between the abdomen and breast. There are commonly three or four visible at once about the nest, and they are continually bringing down new layers of paper from the top about a sixth of an inch distant from the last, building downward on all sides at once evenly and beginning, or starting, a new one before they have finished the first.* 

They have turned the entrance a little outward; i.e., have built the successive layers a little over its inner side, i. e. that to ward the house, so that it partly faces outward. They are continually arriving and departing, and one or two commonly are at work at once on the edge of the new curtain or layer. 

What becomes of the first layers surrounding the comb within? Do they steadily cut them away and use them on the outside, and build new and larger combs beneath ? Some that come forth appear to have something white like the paper in their mouths, at any rate.) 

There is one in Mr. Smith's bank, one side open and flat against the ground. One of his men thinks they will not sting him if he holds his breath.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 28, 1857

*July 14, these new layers are coming down like new leaves, investing it.

I hear on all hands these days, from the elms and other trees, the twittering peep of young gold robins. See June 28, 1855 ("Hear and see young golden robins which have left the nest, now peeping with a peculiar tone."); July 1, 1859 ("The peculiar peep of young tailless golden robins for a day or more"); July 2, 1860 ("Nowadays hear from my window the constant tittering of young golden robins, ")

Three bits of white cotton string.

June 27.

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

June 27, 2014

See apparently a young bobolink fluttering over the meadow. 

The garlic not even yet quite. 

In the Wheeler meadow, the bushy one southwest of Egg Rock, the coarse sedge [wool-grass] — I think the same with that in the Great Meadows — evidently grows in patches with a rounded outline; i.e., its edge is a succession of blunt, rounded capes, with a very distinct outline amid the other kinds of grass and weeds. 

I cannot find one of the three bits of white cotton string which I tied to willows in that neighborhood in the spring, and I have no doubt that the birds, perhaps crow blackbirds, have got every one for their nests. I must drive down a stake for a mark next time.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 27, 1857

A young bobolink fluttering over the meadow. See July 2, 1855 (". Young bobolinks are now fluttering over the meadow, but I have not been able to find a nest, so concealed in the meadow-grass."); and note to July 12, 1857 ("I hear the occasional link note from the earliest bobolinks of the season").See also .A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Bobolink

The garlic not even yet quite. See June 25, 1854 ("Garlic open, eighteen inches high or more"); see also June 26, 1857 ("I must be near bobolinks' nests many times these days, — in E. Hosmer's meadow by the garlic.")

A pack of partridges as big as robins

June 26. 

Friday. 

Stand over a bream's nest close to the shore at Hubbard's rear wood. At length she ventures back into it, after many approaches. The apparent young bream, hardly half an inch long, are hovering over it all the while in a little school, never offering to swim away from over that yellow spot; such is their instinct. The old one at length returns and takes up her watch beneath, but I notice no recognition of each other. 

The largest tupelo I remember in Concord is on the northerly edge of Staples's clearing. 

See a pack of partridges as big as robins at least. 

I must be near bobolinks' nests many times these days, — in E. Hosmer's meadow by the garlic and here in Charles Hubbard's, — but the birds are so overanxious, though you may be pretty far off, and so shy about visiting their nests while you are there, that you watch them in vain. The female flies close past and perches near you on a rock or stump and chirps whit tit, whit tit, whit it tit tit te incessantly. 

Some of the Salix Torreyana by railroad is cordate and some not. The sterile one there is not, nor those near it. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 26, 1857

A bream's nest close to the shore . . .See note to July 10, 1853 ("The bream poised over its sandy nest on waving fin - how aboriginal! So it has poised here and watched its ova before this New World was known to the Old.")


See a pack of partridges as big as robins at least. See June 23, 1854 ("Disturb three different broods of partridges in my walk this afternoon in different places. . . ."); June 27,1852 ("I meet the partridge with her brood in the woods, a perfect little hen. . . .”); June 27, 1860 ("See on the open grassy bank and shore, just this side the Hemlocks, a partridge with her little brood.”); July 1, 1860 (I see young partridges not bigger than robins fly three or four rods. . .”); July 5, 1856 ("Young partridges (with the old bird), as big as robins, make haste into the woods from off the railroad.")

I must be near bobolinks' nests . . . See July 2, 1855 ("Young bobolinks are now fluttering over the meadow, but I have not been able to find a nest ..")

The Salix Torreyana by railroad. See May 12, 1857  (" . . .how many species of willow have been planted along the railroad causeway within ten years, of which no one knows the history . . ")

Two Mountain-ash.

June 25.

 

June 25, 2017

Most of the mountain-ash trees on the street are the European, as Prichard's, Whiting's, etc. (Pyrus Aucuparia is the European). The American ones in Cheney's (from Winchendon) row have only opened within a day or two; that American one in Mrs. Hoar's yard, apparently a week. The fruit of the European one is as large as small peas already.

P. M. — To Gowing's Swamp.

 

June 25, 2017 

White pine effete.

Gaylussacia dumosa apparently in a day or two.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 25, 1857

The mountain-ash trees. See June 12, 1857 ("The American mountain-ash not yet out . . . Nuttall says its leaves are at last very smooth. I have hitherto observed the Pyrus aucuparia, or European, at Prichard's, Whiting's, etc.”)

White pine effete. See June 25, 1852 (“I am too late for the white pine flowers. The cones are half an inch long and greenish, and the male flowers effete.");  June 25, 1858 ("The ground under the white pines is now strewn with the effete flowers, like an excrement.”) and note to June 21, 1856 (“Much pine pollen is washed up on the northwest side of the pond.”)

July 25. See A Book of the Seasons,, by Henry Thoreau, June 25

A Book of the Seasons,by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021

An owl’s nest and a huckleberry-bird

June 24. 

Wednesday. P. M. — To Farmer's Owl-Nest Swamp.

Melvin thinks there cannot be many black ducks' nests in the town, else his dog would find them, for he will follow their trail as well as another bird's, or a fox. The dog once caught five black ducks here but partly grown. 

Farmer was hoeing corn with his Irishmen.

The crows had got much of it, and when he came to a vacant hill he took a few beans from his pocket — for each hoer had a pocketful — and dropped them there, so making his rows complete. 

Melvin was there with his dog, which had just caught a woodchuck. M. said that he once saw a fox jump over a wall with some thing in his mouth, and, going up, the fox dropped a woodchuck and a mouse, which he had caught and was carrying home to his young. He had eaten the head of the woodchuck. When M. looked there the next morning they were gone. 

Went to Farmer's Swamp to look for the owl's nest Farmer had found. 

You go about forty-five rods on the first path to the left in the woods and then turn to the left a few rods. I found the nest at last near the top of a middling-sized white pine, about thirty feet from the ground. As I stood by the tree, the old bird dashed by within a couple of rods, uttering a peculiar mewing sound, which she kept up amid the bushes, a blackbird in close pursuit of her. 

I found the nest empty, on one side of the main stem but close to it, resting on some limbs. It was made of twigs rather less than an eighth of an inch thick and was almost flat above, only an inch lower in the middle than at the edge, about sixteen inches in diameter and six or eight inches thick, with the twigs in the midst, and beneath was mixed sphagnum and sedge from the swamp be neath, and the lining or flooring was coarse strips of grape-vine bark; the whole pretty firmly matted together. 

How common and important a material is grape-vine bark for birds' nests! Nature wastes nothing. 

There were white droppings of the young on the nest and one large pellet of fur and small bones two and a half inches long. In the meanwhile, the old bird was uttering that hoarse worried note from time to time, some what like a partridge's, flying past from side to side and alighting amid the trees or bushes. 

When I had descended, I detected one young one two thirds grown perched on a branch of the next tree, about fifteen feet from the ground, which was all the while staring at me with its great yellow eyes. It was gray with gray horns and a dark beak. As I walked past near it, it turned its head steadily, always facing me, without moving its body, till it looked directly the opposite way over its back, but never offered to fly.

Just then I thought surely that I heard a puppy faintly barking at me four or five rods distant amid the bushes, having tracked me into the swamp, — what what, what what what. It was exactly such a noise as the barking of a very small dog or perhaps a fox. But it was the old owl, for I presently saw her making it.

She repeated perched quite near. She was generally reddish-brown or partridge-colored, the breast mottled with dark brown and fawn-color in downward strings, and had plain fawn-colored thighs. 

Found there the Calla palustris, out of bloom, and the naumbergia, now in prime, which was hardly begun on the 9th at Bateman Pond Swamp. This was about four or five rods southerly of the owl tree. 

The large hastate tear-thumb is very common there; and what is that large, coarse, flag-like sedge, with two ridges to its blade? Just out of bloom. In dense fields in water, like the flag. 

I think that this is a cold swamp, i. e. it is springy and shady, and the water feels more than usually cold to my feet. 

(Fringilla juncorum)

Returning, heard a fine, clear note from a bird on a white birch near me, — whit whit, whit whit, whit whit, (very fast) ter phe phe phe, — sounding perfectly novel. Looking round, I saw it was the huckleberry-bird, for it was near and plain to be seen. 

Looked over Farmer's eggs and list of names. He has several which I have not. Is not his "chicklisee," after all, the Maryland yellow-throat? The eggs were numbered with a pen, — 1, 2, 3, etc., — and corresponding numbers written against the names on the cover of the pasteboard box in which were the eggs. 

Among the rest I read, "Fire never redder." That must be the tanager. He laughed and said that this was the way he came to call it by that name: Many years ago, one election-day, when he and other boys, or young men, were out gunning to see how many birds they could kill, Jonathan Hildreth, who lived near by, saw one of these birds on the top of a tree before him in the woods, but he did not see a deep ditch that crossed his course between him and it. As he raised his gun, he exclaimed, "Fire never redder!" and, taking a step or two forward, with his eye fixed on the bird, fell headlong into the ditch, and so the name became a byword among his fellows.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 24, 1857

Heard a fine, clear note from a bird on a white birch near me, — whit whit, whit whit, whit whit, (very fast) ter phe phe phe, — sounding perfectly novel. Looking round, I saw it was the huckleberry-bird . . . . See April 27, 1852 ("Heard the field or rush sparrow this morning (Fringilla juncorum), George Minott's "huckleberry-bird." It sits on a birch and sings at short intervals, apparently answered from a distance. It is clear and sonorous heard afar; but I found it quite impossible to tell from which side it came; sounding like phe, phe, phe, pher-pher-tw-tw-tw-t-t-t-t, — the first three slow and loud, the next two syllables quicker, and the last part quicker and quicker, becoming a clear, sonorous trill or rattle, like a spoon in a saucer.”)

Looked for the black duck's nest.

June 23. 

June 23, 2017

Skinner, the harness-maker, tells me that he found a black duck's nest Sunday before the last, i. e. the 14th, with perhaps a dozen eggs in it, a mere hollow on the top of a tussock, four or five feet within a clump of bushes forming an islet (in the spring) in Hubbard's great meadow. He scared up the duck when within a few feet. 

Pratt says he knows of a black walnut at Hunt's on Ponkawtasset. 

P. M. — Looked for the black duck's nest, but could find no trace of it. Probably the duck led her young to the river as soon as hatched. What with gunners, dogs, pickerel, bullfrogs, hawks, etc., it is a wonder if any of them escape. 

Small rudbeckia, i. e. hirta, at Hubbard's Bath.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 23, 1857

Small rudbeckia, i. e. hirta . . . See June 20, 1856 ("Rudbeckia hirta budded.”); July 31, 1856 (“Measured a Rudbeckia hirta flower; more than three inches and three eighths in diameter.”)

A black duck's nest a mere hollow on the top of a tussock, four or five feet within a clump of bushes forming an islet . See June 24, 1857 ("Melvin thinks there cannot be many black ducks' nests in the town, else his dog would find them"); June 4, 1856 (“found, on a hummock in the open swamp, in the midst of bushes, at the foot of a pitch pine, a nest about ten inches over, made of dry sedge and moss. I think it must have been a duck’s nest.”);

By steamer Acorn from Provincetown to Boston, in the fog.

June 22. 

the Acorn
(Courtesy Sandwich Glass Museum)

Monday. Took the steamer Acorn [?] about 9 a. m. for Boston, in the fog. 




The captain said that the mate to the whale taken on the 17th had been about the steamer all night. 

It was a thick fog with some rain, and we saw no land nor a single sail, till near Minot's Ledge. The boat stopped and whistled once or twice. 

The monotony was only relieved by the numerous petrels, those black sea-swallows, incessantly skimming over the undulating [surface], a few inches above and parallel with it, and occasionally picking some food from it. Now they dashed past our stern and now across our bows, as if we were stationary, though going at the rate of a dozen knots an hour. 

It is remarkable what great solitudes there may be on this bay, notwithstanding all its commerce, and going from Boston to Provincetown you might be wrecked in clear weather, without being seen by any passing vessel. 

Once, when the fog lifted a little and the boat was stopped, and the engine whistled, I thought that I saw an open sea without an object for three or four miles at least. We held on, and it suddenly thickened up again, and yet in three minutes, notwithstanding the fog, we saw the light-boat right ahead. This shows how deceptive and dangerous fogs are. I should have said we might have run half an hour without danger of striking any object. 

The greatest depth in the Bay between Long Point, Provincetown, and Manomet, Plymouth, according to Coast Survey charts, is about twenty-five fathoms. 

Get home at 5 p. m. 

It seems that Sophia found an Attacus Cecropia out in my chamber last Monday, or the 15th. It soon went to laying eggs on the window-sill, sash, books, etc., of which vide a specimen. Though the window was open (blinds closed), it did not escape. Another was seen at the window outside the house on the south side (mother's chamber) on the 21st, which S. took in, supposing it the first which had got out, but she found the first still in the chamber. This, too, she says, went right to laying eggs. I am not sure whether this, too, came from the other cocoon.

Neither was quite so large as the one I had. The second had broken off the better part of its wings. Their bodies were quite small, perhaps because they were empty of eggs. I let them go. The eggs are large, pretty close together, glued to the wood or paper.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 22, 1857

Attacus Cecropia . . . neither quite so large as the one I had. See June 18, 1857 ("They brought me an Attacus Cecropia . . . Its body was large like the one I have preserved, while the two I found to have come out in my chamber meanwhile, and to have laid their eggs, had comparatively small bodies. "); June 2, 1855 ("I gave it ether and so saved it in a perfect state. As it lies, not spread to the utmost, it is five and nine tenths inches by two and a quarter.")

It is plain for miles without a tree . . . That solitude was sweet to me as a flower.

June 21. 

Sunday. 

June 21, 2020

About noon it cleared up, and after dinner I set out for Provincetown, straight across the country to the Bay where the new road strikes it, directly through the pine plantation about one mile from the lighthouse. The pines have apparently not done so well here as in some other places on the Cape. 

I observed a tuft of crow-berry, together with poverty-grass, about one mile west of the light. This part of Truro affords singularly interesting and cheering walks for me, with regular hollows or dimples shutting out the sea as completely as if in the midst of the continent, though when you stand on the plain you commonly see the sails of vessels standing up or down the coast on each side of you, though you may not see the water. At first you may take them for the roofs of barns or houses. 

It is plain for miles without a tree, where the new telegraph-wires are a godsend to the birds, affording them something to perch upon. That solitude was sweet to me as a flower. I sat down on the boundless level and enjoyed the solitude, drank it in, the medicine for which I had pined, worth more than the bear-berry so common on the Cape. 

As I was approaching the Bay through a sandy hollow a mile east of High Head, I found two or three arrow-points and a rude axe or hammer, a flattish stone from the beach with a deep groove chipped around it. 

The beach on the Bay Side was completely strewn with seaweed (the grassy kind), which does not grow on the Atlantic side, as if the Bay were a meadow compared with the Atlantic. The beach was harder than the Back Side, the hardest part being on the weed at high-water line. The skulls and backbones of black-fish, their vertebrae and spinal processes, and disk-shaped bones, five inches in diameter, from the spine were strewn all along. These looked like rough crackers. 

Also the ribs of whale (probably humpbacked), — they get humpback and finback and right whales, I heard, — six feet long, lay under the bank, hardly to be distinguished from their gray rails. Some of those whale ribs, ten inches wide, were from time to time set up in the sand, like mile stones (or bones); they seemed to answer that purpose along the new road. 

They had taken a whale in Provincetown Harbor on the previous 17th, and stripped off the blubber at one of the wharves. I saw many dogfish whose livers had been extracted. 

At East Harbor River, as I sat on the Truro end of the bridge, I saw a great flock of mackerel gulls, one hundred at least, on a sandy point, whitening the shore there like so many white stones on the shore and in the water, uttering all together their vibrating shrill note. They had black heads, light bluish-slate wings, and light rump and tail and beneath. From time to time all or most would rise and circle about with a clamor, then settle again on the same spot close together. 

Soon after crossing the bridge, I turned off and ascended Mt. Ararat. It exhibited a remarkable landscape: on the one side the desert, of smooth and spotless palest fawn-colored sand, slightly undulating, and beyond, the Atlantic; on the other, the west, side, a few valleys and hills, densely clothed with a short, almost moss-like (to look down at) growth of huckleberry, blueberry, bear-berry, josh-pear (which is so abundant in Provincetown), bayberry, rose, checkerberry, and other bushes, and beyond, the Bay. All these bushes formed an even and dense covering to the sand-hills, much as bear-berry alone might. It was a very strange scenery. You would think you might be in Labrador, or some other place you have imagined. The shrubbery at the very summit was swarming with mosquitoes, which troubled me when I sat down, but they did not rise above the level of the bushes. 

At the Pilgrim House, though it was not crowded, they put me into a small attic chamber which had two double beds in it, and only one window, high in a corner, twenty and a half inches by twenty-five and a half, in the alcove when it was swung open, and it required a chair to look out conveniently. Fortunately it was not  a cold night and the window could be kept open, though at the risk of being visited by the cats, which appear to swarm on the roofs of Provincetown like the mosquitoes on the summits of its hills. 

I have spent four memorable nights there in as many different years, and have added considerable thereby to my knowledge of the natural history of the cat and the bedbug. Sleep was out of the question. A night in one of the attics of Provincetown! to say nothing of what is to be learned in entomology. It would be worth the while to send a professor there, one who was also skilled in entomology. Such is your Pilgerruhe or Pilgrims'-Rest. Every now and then one of these animals on its travels leaped from a neighboring roof on to mine, with such a noise as if a six-pounder had fallen within two feet of my head, — the discharge of a catapult, — a twelve-pounder discharged by a catapult, — and then followed such a scrambling as banished sleep for a long season, while I watched lest they came in at the open window. A kind of foretaste, methought, of the infernal regions. I didn't wonder they gave quit claim deeds of their land here. My experience is that you fare best at private houses. The barroom may be defined a place to spit. 

"Soon as the evening shades prevail,

The cats take up the wondrous tale."

At still midnight, when, half awake, half asleep, you seem to be weltering in your own blood on a battle field, you hear the stealthy tread of padded feet belonging to some animal of the cat tribe, perambulating the roof within a few inches of your head. 

I had already this evening called on Mr. Atwood, the Representative of the town and one of the commissioners appointed by the legislature to superintend the experiments in the artificial breeding of fishes. He said that he knew (I think) eighty-two kinds of fishes there. 

When Mr. Pool, the Doorkeeper of the House of Representatives, — if that is his name and title, — who makes out a list of the Representatives and their professions, asked him his business, he answered, "Fisherman." At which Pool was disturbed and said that no representative had ever called himself a fisherman before. It would not do to print it so. And so Atwood is put down as "Master Mariner"! ! So much for American democracy. I reminded him that Fisherman had been a title of honor with a large party ever since the Christian Era at least. When next we have occasion to speak of the apostles I suppose we should call them "Master Mariners"! 

Atwood said that his brother here took the bone shark recently which I read was thirty feet long. 

Fog again at night.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 21, 1857

I have now visited the Cape four times in as many different years . . . and about one third the days were foggy

June 20.

Saturday. Fog still.

June 20, 2017

A man working on the lighthouse, who lives at the Pond Village, says that he raised potatoes and pumpkins there where a vessel once anchored. That was when they let the salt water into the pond. Says the flags there now are barrel flags; that the chair flag is smaller, partly three-sided, and has no bur; perhaps now all gone. 

Speaking of the effect of oil on the water, this man said that a boat's crew came ashore safely from their vessel on the Bay Side of Truro some time ago in a storm, when the wind blowed square on to the land, only by heaving over oil. The spectators did not think they would reach the shore without being upset. 


When I expressed some doubt of the efficacy of this, he observed in the presence of Small and others, "We always take a bottle of oil when looking for sea clams, and, pouring out a few drops, can look down six or seven feet." 

We dined on halibut caught on the ledges some three miles off the Back Side. 

There was a carpenter who worked on the lighthouse boarding at Small's, who had lived sixteen years on the extremity of Cape Ann. When I asked him about Salvages, he said it was a large bare rock, perhaps fifty yards long and a dozen feet high, about two miles from the shore at Sandy Bay, outside Avery's Rock. That he and all the inhabitants of the Cape always called it " Selvaygias." Did not know but it had some thing to do with salvage for wrecks. 

This man, who is familiar with the shore of New England north of Cape Cod, thought that there was no beach equal to this for grandeur. He thought August the most foggy month. 

Small thought that the shore at the mouth of Pamet River about held its own. 

I saw an extract in a Cape (Yarmouth Register) paper from a promised History of the Cape by Dr. Dix, an Englishman, who was owing Small for board, etc. (page 136 of it). There was also advertised "The Annals of Barnstable County and its several Towns," etc., by Frederick Freeman, to be in two volumes, 8vo, $4.00. This will probably be out first. 

A child asked concerning a bobolink, "What makes he sing so sweet, Mother? Do he eat flowers? " 

Talked with an old lady who thought that the beach plums were better than cherries. 

Visited the telegraph station, tended by one Hall, just north of the light. He has a small volume called the "Boston Harbor Signal Book," containing the names of some three thousand vessels, their owners, etc., and a code of signals. There were also the private signals of more than a hundred merchants on a large sheet on the wall. There was also a large volume called "The Universal Code of Signals," Marryat (Richardson, London), 1854, containing the names of some twenty thousand vessels of all nations, but chiefly English, and an extensive system of signalling, by which he could [carry on] a long conversation with a vessel on almost any subject. He said that he could make out the name seven miles off and the signal sometimes twenty miles. [The man at Hull July 24, 1851, said they could tell the kind of vessel thirty miles off, the number at masthead ten or twelve miles, name on hull six or seven miles.]

Thought there would be a fog as long as the wind was southwest. "How is it in Boston ?" I asked. "I will ask," said he. Tick tick tick — "Wind northeast and cloudy." (Here it was southwest and thick fog.) 

He thought that there [were] more vessels to be seen passing this point than any other in the United States. One day when telegraphing the passing vessels he put in "a fox passing," for there was one running between the station and the edge of the bank. 

I observed the name of the brig Leader displayed on  a flag for me. The report was, "Brig Leader in." It may be a month before the vessel reaches Boston. 

The operator said that last winter the wind between his station and the bank blew him three rods through the air, and he was considerably hurt when he fell. A boy was blown head over heels. The fences were blown up, post and rail. There was no wind just this side the edge of the bank, but if you lay down there and extended your hand over the edge of the bank it would be blown suddenly upward, or if you cast off a large piece of wood it would be blown up thirty or forty feet high. Both boys and men often amuse them selves by running and trying to jump off the bank with their jackets spread, and being blown back. (Small confirmed this.) 

Hall said that he could not possibly jump off. Sometimes and in some places, pebbles as big as chestnuts are blown far over the bank. 

Hall said that he saw very large flocks of geese; had counted as many as six hundred go by at once, reaching three miles; and sometimes alight on the water. 

Talked with Uncle Sam, who was picking goose berries on the bank, — for the sun shone a short time. He showed me some fossil shells imbedded in stone which he had picked up on the high bank, just south of the light, and laid on his pile of driftwood. He wanted to know something about them. Said that a lecturer down at Pamet River had said, as he was told, that the Norwegians who formerly came to this country cemented them together. He had come down to watch a piece of driftwood, perhaps a stump, which had been lodged on a bar for a day or two. He was trying to make out what it was. There is something picked up on the shore of the Cape and advertised in every paper. 

This was the third foggy day. It cleared up the next day noon, but the night after and the next day was foggy again. It is a serious objection to visiting or living on the Cape that you lose so many days by fog.

Small said that a week of fog at this season would be nothing remarkable. You can see that the fog is local and of no great thickness. From time to time the sun almost or quite shines, and you can see half a mile, or to Provincetown even, and then, against all your rules, it thickens up again. An inlander would think [it] was going to clear up twenty times when it may last a week. Small said that they were very common with southerly winds, being blown up from Nantucket Shoals; that they were good for almost everything but corn, yet there was probably less rain there at this season than on the mainland. 

I have now visited the Cape four times in as many different years, once in October, twice in June, and once in July, having spent in all about one month there, and about one third the days were foggy, with or without rain. According to Alden (in Massachusetts Historical Collections, vol. v, First Series, page 57), Nantucket was discovered by a famous old Indian giant named Maushop, who waded the sea to it, and there filling his pipe with "poke," his smoke made fog. Whence that island is so much in the fog, and the aborigines on the opposite portion of the Cape, seeing a fog over the water at a distance, would say, "There comes old Maushop's smoke." The Gloucester carpenter thought August the worst month for fog on the coast. 

The fog lasted this time, with the exception of one afternoon and one or two slight breakings away, five days, or from Thursday morning till I reached Minot's Ledge, Monday noon. How much longer it continued on the Cape I do not know. The Cape people with whom I talked very generally denied that it [was] a phenomenon in any degree peculiar to the Cape. They said that it was just such weather at Boston. Indeed, some denied that it was fog at all. They said with some asperity that it was rain. Yet more rain would have fallen in a smart shower in the country in twenty minutes than in these five days on the Cape. When I got home I found that there had been an abundance [of] cloudy weather and rain within a week, but not one foggy day in Concord. 

Small thought that Lieutenant Davis might have misunderstood him. He meant to say that the offshore current (three miles off) set down the Cape, and wrecks in it went down the coast, the inshore one sets up. 

I noticed several lengths of fence hereabouts made chiefly of oars, very long ones.

A Cape Cod house is low, unpainted, shingled on the sides. They have many windows, even under the roofs to light the closets there, and as the chambers can only be lighted at one end, there are commonly two windows there. Once I saw a triangular blind under the peak, though there was no window beneath it. The windows commonly afford a view of the bay or ocean, though the house may be sheltered by some hill, or they are very snugly placed in a hollow, apparently as secluded as among the New Hampshire hills.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 20, 1857

When I asked him about Salvages, he said it was a large bare rock....:  The Dry Salvages are located about two miles north-east of Rockport, on Cape Ann, Massachusetts. They are “dry” even at high tide, in contrast to an adjacent, lower reef, the Little Salvages, which are submerged at high tide. ~ The Dry Salvages by Vladimir Brezina

June 20. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 20

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021

A walk on the beach.

June 19. 

Piping Plover

Friday. Fog still, but I walk about a mile north onward on the beach. 

The sea is still running considerably. It is surprising how rapidly the water soaks into the sand, and is even dried up between each undulation. 

The sand has many holes in it, about an eighth of an inch over, which seem to have been made by the beach-flea. These have a firm and as if artificial rim or curb, and it is remarkable that the waves flow two or three feet over them with force without obliterating them. They help soak up the water. 

As I walk along close to the edge of the water, the sea oscillating like a pendulum before me and each billow flowing with a flat white foaming edge and a rounded outline up the sand, it reminds me of the white toes of blue-stockinged feet thrust forward from under the garments in an endless dance. 

It is a contra-dance to the shore. Some waves flow unexpectedly high and fill my shoes with water before I am aware of it. It is very exciting for a while to walk where half the floor before you is thus incessantly fluctuating. 

There is frequently, if not for the most part, a bar just off the shore on which the waves first break and spend more or less of their violence, and I see that the way to land in a boat at such a time would be to row along outside this bar and its breakers, till you came to an opening in it, then enter and row up or down within the bar to a comparatively safe place to land. 

I turn up the first hollow. A piping plover peeps around me there, and feigns lameness, — though I at first think that she is dusting herself on the sand, — to attract me away from her nest evidently. 

Return inland. The poverty-grass is fully out, in bright-yellow mounds or hillocks, more like painted clods than flowers, or, on the bare sandy hills and plains of the Cape, they look like tufts of yellow lichens on a roof. They indicate such soil as the cladonia lichen with us. If the soil were better they would not be found there. 

These hillocks are about as big as a large ant-hill — some have spread to eight or ten feet in diameter, but are flat and broken more or less — and commonly dead in the middle or perhaps one side, but I see many perfect dense hemispheres of yellow flowers.  As the sand gathers around them, they rise above it, and they seem to bloom and flourish better when thus nearly buried in sand. A hemisphere eighteen inches in diameter would rest flat on the surface for six inches in width on the outside and be rather loosely rooted in the middle, for you could easily lift it all up. 

The Hudsonia ericoides is the most common, and the tomentosa appears  to be less in hillocks, i. e. more broken and dead. 

The poverty-grass emits a common sweetish scent as you walk over the fields. It blossoms on the edges first. You meet with it in Plymouth as you approach the peculiar soil of the Cape.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 19, 1857

A piping plover peeps around me there, and feigns lameness . . . See  July 11, 1857  ("The piping plover, as it runs half invisible on the sand before you, utters a shrill peep on an elevated key (different birds on different keys) . . ."); July 11, 1855 ("See young piping plover running in a troop on the beach . . .."); July 7, 1855 ("The piping plover running and standing on the beach.")

To Small’s in Truro

June 18. 

 June 18.

Thursday. From Traveller's Home to Small's in Truro. 

A mizzling and rainy day with thick driving fog; a drizzling rain, or "drisk," as one called it. 

I struck across into the stage-road, a quarter of a mile east, and followed that a mile or more into an extensive bare plain tract called Silver Springs, in the southwest part of Wellfleet, — according to Pratt, one third of Wellfleet was covered mostly with pines in 1844, — then turned off northeast through the bushes, to the Back Side, three quarters of a mile distant. 

The desert was about one hundred and fifteen rods wide on the bank where I struck it. You might safely say it was from thirty to one hundred rods or more in width. But the bank was apparently not so high as in Truro. This was on that long Table-Land in Wellfleet. Where the bank was covered with coarse pebbles, however high, I judged that it could not have been formed by the wind, but rather the small sand-hills on the west edge of the desert were formed of its finer particles and remains, leaving the coarser parts here. However, I afterwards saw where, in the hollows more or less deep, the sand blown up from the beach had covered the dark stratum of the original surface ten feet deep with fine sand, which was now densely covered with bushes. 

As I walked on the top of the bank for a mile or two before I came to a hollow by which to descend, though it rained but little, the strong wind there drove that and the mist against my unprotected legs so as to wet me through and plaster over the legs of my pants with sand. The wind was southeasterly.

I observed, in a few stiller places behind a bar, a yellowish scum on the water close to the shore, which I suspect was the pollen of the pine, lately in full bloom, which had been wafted on to the ocean. Small thought at first that I referred to a scum like that which collects on salt-vats. 

Stopped to dry me about 11 a. m. at a house near John Newcomb's, who they told me died last winter, ninety-five years old (or would have been now had he lived?). I had shortly before picked up a Mother- Carey's-chicken, which was just washed up dead on the beach. This I carried tied to the tip of my umbrella, dangling outside. When the inhabitants saw me come up from the beach this stormy day, with this emblem dangling from my umbrella, and saw me set it up in a corner carefully to be out of the way of cats, they may have taken me for a crazy man. It is remarkable how wet the grass will be there in a misty day alone; more so than after a rain with us.

The Mother-Carey's-chicken was apparently about thirteen inches in alar extent, black-brown, with seven primaries, the second a little longer than the third; rump and vent white, making a sort of ring of white, breast ashy-brown, legs black with yellowish webs, bill black with a protuberance above. 

I think there were more boat-houses in the hollows along the Back Side than when I first walked there. These are the simplest and cheapest little low, narrow, and long sheds, just enough to cover a boat, within the line of the bank at some hollow. But in my three walks there I never chanced to see a man about one of them, or any boating there. 

Soon after leaving Newcomb's Hollow, I passed a hulk of a vessel about a hundred feet long, which the sea had cast up in the sand. She lay at high-water mark high up the beach, the ribs at her bows rising higher than my head above the sand; then for sixty or seventy feet there was nothing to be seen of her, and at last only the outline of her stern ribs projecting slightly above the sand for a short distance. Small suggested that this might be the hulk of the Franklin, lost there seven or eight years ago. They sometimes buy and break them up and carry them piecemeal up the bank, all which is a great job; or they bum them down to the sand and get out the iron alone. It was an impressive sight to see, lying thus insignificant, the hulk of a large (? I walked five rods beside it) vessel which had been lost for years, now cast up and half buried in the sand, like a piece of driftwood. Apparently no longer regarded. It looked very small and insignificant under that impending bank. 

In Newcomb's Hollow I had already entered a Humane house. A sign over the door said "For Cases of Distress only," and directed where the key of the life boat was to be obtained. Mine was a case of distress. Within was a simple apartment containing the boat, a bench, a fireplace and chimney, an india-rubber bucket, a few armfuls of wood, a keg of rags, a tin case with matches and two candles and a candlestick over the fireplace, etc. Also an extract from the laws of the State to protect the property of the Humane Society. I did not look closely for oil or food. I actually sought the Humane house for shelter. It was with peculiar reflections that I contemplated these two candles and those matches prepared to keep the spark of life in some suffering fellow-creature. This was before I went to the house by Newcomb's. 

The waves ran pretty well on account of the easterly wind. I observed how merely undulatory was the motion of the waves. A floating chip or the like on the back of the largest wave often was not advanced in the least toward the shore, however great the undulasion. 

I noticed dor-bugs washed up many miles south of the Highland Light.

I think it was north of Newcomb's Hollow that I passed a perpendicular promontory of clay in the bank, which was conspicuous a good way through the fog.

Reached the Highland Light about 2 p. m. 

The Smilacina racemosa was just out of bloom on the bank. They call it the " wood lily " there. Uncle Sam called it "snake-corn," and said it looked like corn when it first came up. 

Small says that the lighthouse was built about sixty years ago. He knows by his own age. A new light house was built some twenty-five years ago. They are now building another still on the same spot. 

He once drove some cattle up the beach on the Back Side from Newcomb's Hollow to Pamet River Hollow, — a singular road by which to drive cows, yet well fenced! They were rather wild and gave him some trouble by trying to get up the bank at first, though in vain. He could easily head them off when they turned. And also they wanted to drink the salt water. They did not mind the waves, and if the sea had been the other side, where they had belonged and wanted to go, would have taken to it. 

The sea was not frozen there exactly as I had inferred from the papers last winter. Small never knew it to be frozen smooth there so as to bear, but there was last winter a mere brash of pieces several inches thick reaching out half a mile or more, but you cannot go out on it. It is worth the while to see the ice piled up on the shore. 

Small says that the Truro fishermen who were lost in the great shipwreck were on the Nantucket Shoals. Four or five vessels were lost with all aboard. They may have been endeavoring to reach Provincetown Harbor. He spoke of one of his neighbors who was drowned in Truro, and very soon after his bones were found picked clean by the beach-fleas. Thinks you could get off in a boat from the Back Side one day out of three at the right tide. He thinks that what we thought a shark may have been a big bass, since one was taken just alive soon after in that cove.

A youngish man came into Small's with a thick out side coat, when a girl asked where he got that coat. He answered that it was taken off a man that came ashore dead, and he had worn it a year or more. The girls or young ladies expressed surprise that he should be willing to wear [it] and said, "You 'd not dare to go to sea with that coat on." But he answered that he might just as well embark in that coat as any other. 

They brought me an Attacus Cecropia which a boy had found in a swamp near by on the 17th. Its body was large like the one I have preserved, while the two I found to have come out in my chamber meanwhile, and to have laid their eggs, had comparatively small bodies. 

One said there was a little bit of a rill of fresh water near Small's, though it could not be called a brook.

H. D.  Thoreau, Journal, June 18, 1857

A mizzling and rainy day with thick driving fog; a drizzling rain, or "drisk," as one called it. See July 29, 1851 (“In the afternoon I sail to Plymouth, three miles, notwithstanding the drizzling rain, or “drisk” as Uncle Ned calls it.”)

They call it the " wood lily " there. Uncle Sam called it "snake-corn," and said it looked like corn when it first came up. See July 7, 1855 ("What that smilacina-like plant very common in the shrubbery, a foot high, with now green fruit big as peas at end of spike, with reddish streaks? Uncle Sam calls it snake-corn. It is Smilacina racemosa.")

June18.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, June 18

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2020