Journey along the shore at Manomet

June 15. 

Monday. A. M. — Walked to James Spooner's farm in a valley amid the woods; also to a swamp where white cedars once grew, not far behind the town, and now full of their buried trunks, though I hear of no tradition of trees there.

In digging mud there recently, hog's bristles were found three or four feet deep. Watson told me of such places in Plymouth as "Small Gains " and "Shall I go naked?" 

2 p. m. — Ride to Manomet with Watson and wife, through Manomet Ponds village, about eight miles. 

At the mouth of Eel River, the marsh vetchling (Lathyrus palustris), apparently in prime, some done. 

The curve of the shore on the east of Plymouth Beach is said to resemble the Bay of Naples. 

Manomet was quite a hill, over which the road ran in the woods. We struck the shore near Holmes's Hotel about half a mile north of Manomet Point. There I shouldered my pack and took leave of my friends, — who thought it a dreary place to leave me, — and my journey along the shore was begun. 

Following the rocky shore round the point, I went considerably round without knowing it. Found there many of the small shells that R. W. E. brought from Pigeon Cove. Having got round the point, I found a smooth sandy shore with pretty high sand-banks, like the back side of the Cape (though less). The vegetation on the top of the bank, too, was similar. 

I could see scattered small houses on the road a little inland. The Hudsonia tomentosa was apparently in prime there. 

Passed a few fishers' boats on the sand, with a long rope and anchor carried high up, and one or two places where they land wood. 

Some three miles below Manomet, there appeared another blunt cape in front, which I avoided by going inland, falling into a small road near the coast, on which were two or three houses. Within a mile I crossed the stream or brook laid down on the map, by a rail, in low woods, leaving a wooded hill between me and the shore, then went along the edge of a swamp. 

It was pleasant walking thus at 5 p. m. by solitary sandy paths, through commonly low dry woods of oak or pine, through glistening oak woods (their fresh leaves in the June air), where the yellow-throat (or black-throat?[That is, black-throated bunting. See June 16.]) was heard and the wood thrush sang, and, as I passed a swamp, a bittern boomed. 

As I stood quite near, I heard distinctly two or three dry, hard sucks, as if the bird were drawing up water from the swamp, and then the sounds usually heard, as if ejecting it. 

From time to time passed a yellow-spot or a painted turtle in the path, for now is their laying- season. One of the former was laying. We had before been obliged to stop our horse for fear of running over one in the rut. Now is the time that they are killed in the ruts all the country over. They are caught in them, the clumsy fellows, as in a trap. Now the tortoises are met with in sandy woods and, delaying, are run over in the ruts. 

One old man directed me on my way through the "plewed" land. Was amused at the simple and obliging but evidently despairing way in which a man at the last house endeavored to direct me further on my way by cart-paths through the woods, he evidently not having any faith that I could keep the route, but, getting the general course by compass, I did. 

Having left Ship's Pond and Centre Hill Pond and a cedar swamp on my left, I at length reached one Harlow's, to whom I was recommended, but his neighbors said that "he lived alone like a beast" there ten years. 

I put up at Samuel Ellis's, just beyond the Salt Pond near by, having walked six or seven miles from Manomet through a singularly out-of-the-way region, of which you wonder if it is ever represented in the legislature. Mrs. Ellis agreed to take me in, though they had already supped and she was unusually tired, it being washing-day. They were accustomed to put up peddlers from time to time, and had some pies just baked for such an emergency. At first took me for a peddler and asked what I carried in my bag. 

I was interested in a young peddler who soon after arrived and put up with his horse and cart, a simple and well-behaved boy of sixteen or seventeen only, peddling cutlery, who said that he started from Conway in this State. In answer to my question how he liked peddling, he said that he liked it on some accounts, it enabled him to see the world. I thought him an unusually good specimen of Young America. He found cutlery not good wares for that region; could do better where he came from, and was on his way to Boston for dry goods. Arranged to pay for his keeping partly in kind. 

I saw menhaden skipping in the pond as I came along, it being connected with the sea. Ellis, an oldish man, said that lobsters were plentier than they used to be, that one sometimes got three hundred and upward in a day, and he thought the reason was that they spawned in the cars and so the young were protected from fishes that prey on them. 

He told me of a man whom he had known, who once leaped upon a blackfish that had run or been driven ashore at the head of Buzzard's Bay, where they are very rare, in order to dispatch him, and as he was making a hole in the side of his head, he looked up and found him self a quarter of a mile from land, not having noticed any motion. The fish blowed blood with such force that it cut like a knife, and he saw his shirt-sleeve which appeared as if riddled with shot. He managed with his knife to head him toward shore again, and there landed. 

Told of finding a mud turtle so large that he walked with him standing on his back, though the turtle did not fairly stand up. He had killed a deer close by his house within two or three years. Hunters were then after it. Hearing the noise, he rushed into his house, seized his gun and fired hastily and carelessly, so as to mortally wound his dog (as well as the deer), which he "would not have taken five dollars for!!" and had to dispatch at last. His wife and child also were nearly within range. 

Speaking of the cold of last winter, he said he had no glass, but he knew it was extremely cold by seeing so great a fog on the sea in the morning as never before, which lasted unusually long. Said they fished on a shoal lying northeast, where there were seventeen fathoms of water, but when there was a fog on it, the fishes were gone, and he reckoned that the cold struck through. 

Ellis told of a Boston man who thought he could catch some large trout in his brook with his fine tackling, but, as E. foretold, it broke, and the man offered five dollars apiece for the trout delivered in Boston, whether fresh or not. E. caught them soon after and sent them to Boston by water, but they, being spoiled by delay, were never delivered. 

I heard him praying after I went to bed, and at breakfast the next morning —

H. D. Thoreau, Journal  June 15,1857