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--- he gave thanks that we "of all the pale faces were preserved alive." He was probably a Methodist.
But the worst of it is that these evidences of "religion" are no evidence to the traveller of hospitality or generosity. Though he hears the sound of family prayer and sees sanctified faces and a greasy Bible or prayer-book, he feels not the less that he is in the hands of the Philistines, and perceives not the less the greasy and musty scent of a household whose single purpose is to scrape more pennies together, when it has already more than enough for its uses, and it is to be preserved and abetted in this enterprise that they pray.
What's the use of ushering the day with prayer, if it is thus consecrated to turning a few more pennies merely?
All genuine goodness is original and as free from cant and tradition as the air. It is heathen in its liberality and independence on tradition. The accepted or established church is in alliance with the graveyards.
7 a. m. — I go along the sandy road through a region of small hills about half a mile from the sea, between slight gray fences, either post and rail, or slanting rails, a foot apart, resting on two crossed stakes, the rails of unequal length, looking agreeably loose and irregular.
Within half a mile I come to the house of an Indian, a gray one-storied cottage, and there were two or three more beyond. They were just beginning to build a meeting-house to-day! Mrs. Ellis had told me that they were worthy people, especially such a family, that were members of the church, and the others were decent people, though they were not "professors of religion," — as if they were consequently less trustworthy. Ellis thought that if they should get angry with you they wouldn't make anything of taking your life. He had seen it in their eyes.
The usual suspicion.
I asked the way of an Indian whom I met in the road, a respectable-looking young man not darker than a sunburnt white man, with black eyes and the usual straight black hair of his race. He was apparently of mixed race, however. When I observed to him that he was one of the aboriginal stock, he answered, "I suppose so." We could see even to Sandwich Meeting house as we stood in the road, and he showed me where to turn up from the shore to go to Scusset.
I turned off to the seashore at his house, going down through shrubbery enlivened by the strain of the yellow-throat (or black-throat bunting ?). The seringo and bay-wing were also very common near the sea to-day and yesterday. The shore between Manomet and Sandwich has in it two or three rocky capes, which interrupt the view along it, but are not very obvious on the map, between which are successive curving sandy beaches, Bays of Naples of the approved pattern.
Swallows have their nests in the high bank from time to time, as at Cape Cod. Crows are seen lazily flapping away from the shore on your approach. Even a robin was seeking its food there.
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), as if to indicate its locality from time to time to its kind, or it utters a succession of short notes as it flies low over the sand or water. Ever and anon stands still tremblingly, or teeter-ingly, wagtail-like, turning this way and that.
Now and then a rock or two occurs on the sandy shore left by the undermining of the bank, even as on our Assabet, and I used one to-day (as yesterday) in my bathing.
From time to time, summer and winter and far inland, I call to mind that peculiar prolonged cry of the upland plover on the bare heaths of Truro in July, heard from sea to sea, though you cannot guess how far the bird may be, as if it were a characteristic sound of the Cape. In a genuine Cape Cod road you see simple dents in the sand, but cannot tell by what kind of foot they were made, the sand is so light and flowing. The whole length of the Cape the beach-flea is skipping and the plover piping.
Where I turned up to go to Scusset village I saw some handsome patches of Hudsonia tomentosa (not yet had seen the ericoides), its fine bright-yellow flowers open chiefly about the edges of the hemispherical mounds.
About 11 a. m. take the cars from Scusset to Sandwich.
See in the marshes by the railroad the Potentilla anserina, now apparently in prime, like a buttercup.
Stopped on the northwest edge of Yarmouth and in quired of the ticket-master the way to Friends Village in the southeast part of the town. He never heard of it. A stage-driver said it was five miles, and both directed me first northerly a quarter of a mile to the main street and then down that easterly some two miles before I turned off; and when I declared it must be nearer to go across lots, the driver said he would rather go round than get over the fences.
Thus it is commonly; the landlords and stage-drivers are bent on making you walk the whole length of their main street first, wherever you are going. They know no road but such as is fit for a coach and four. I looked despairingly at this straggling village whose street I must run the gantlet of, — so much time and distance lost.
Nevertheless, I turned off earlier than they directed, and found that, as usual, I might have taken a shorter route across the fields and avoided the town altogether.
With my chart and compass I can generally find a shorter way than the inhabitants can tell me. I stop at a depot a little one side of a village and ask the way to some place I am bound to. The landlords and stage-drivers would fain persuade me to go first down on to the main street and follow that a piece; and when I show them a shorter way on the map, which leaves their village on one side, they shrug their shoulders, and say they would rather go round than get over the fences.
I have found the compass and chart safer guides than the inhabitants, though the latter universally abuse the maps.
I do not love to go through a village street any more than a cottage yard. I feel that I am there only by sufferance; but I love to go by the villages by my own road, seeing them from one side, as I do theoretically. When I go through a village, my legs ache at the prospect of the hard gravelled walk. I go by the tavern with its porch full of gazers, and meet a miss taking a walk or the doctor in his sulky, and for half an hour I feel as strange as if I were in a town in China; but soon I am at home in the wide world again, and my feet rebound from the yielding turf.
I followed a retired road across the Cape diagonally some five miles to Friends Village, the southeast part of the town, on Bass River, over at first bare upland with pine plantations, gradually at last rising a low but very broad and flat-backed hill (German's?) in the woods. The pine and oak woods were quite extensive, but the trees small. See the Hudsonia ericoides, with a peduncle.
The road ran directly through woods the last half the way. Passed Long Pond just before reaching Friends Village. Passed through the latter and crossed Bass River by a toll-bridge, and so on through Crowell Village, Grand Cove, to Isaiah Baker's in West Harwich, some eight miles from Yarmouth Depot.
Just after crossing Bass River, plucked a plant in the marsh by the roadside like (if not) mullein pink.
At Swan Pond River in Dennis, where they were just completing a new bridge, plucked the Potentilla anserina, now apparently in prime, with a handsome leaf, silvery beneath, in the marsh.
From near Long Pond, Friends Village, thus far, and also the two miles further that I walked due east the next day, or for five miles at least, it was a continuous street, without a distinct village, the houses but a few rods apart all the way on each side. A sandy road, small houses, with small pine and oak wood close bordering the road, making the soil appear more fertile than in reality it is.
As in Canada along the St. Lawrence, you never got out of the village, only came to a meeting-house now and then. And they told me there was another similar street parallel with this further north.
But all this street had a peculiarly Sabbath-day appearance, for there was scarcely an inhabitant to be seen, and they were commonly women or young children, for the greater part of the able-bodied men were gone to sea, as usual. This makes them very quiet towns. Baker said that half or three quarters of the men were gone.
This afternoon it mizzled a little.
At the supper-table there was a youngish man who, looking very serious, at length observed to me, "Your countenance is very familiar to me, sir." "Where do you think you have seen me?" I asked. "It seems to me that I have been consigned to you," said he. This was said with such a serious tone and look that the suspicion crossed my mind that he meant spiritually, but I soon remembered where I was and the employment of the inhabitants.
Herring River was near by, and Baker sent a little boy to set an eel-pot for eels for breakfast. We had some of the herring for supper. He said that the eels went down the river in the spring, and up in the fall! That last winter many were found in holes under the ice (where passers broke through), left dry by the tide. He said it was a consideration with poor men who talked of migrating West that here shellfish and eels were abundant and easily obtained.
Spoke of the large tract of wood running down the centre of the Cape from Sandwich, three miles wide and thirty long, and he declared repeatedly, since I looked surprised, that there was more wood in Barnstable County than in Ohio County. His father-in-law owned $75,000 worth thereabouts. Wood was worth six dollars per cord.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 16, 1857
June 16. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 16
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
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