A man by the riverside.

June 29

Sunday. P. M. —Bathed in the creek, which swarms with terrapins, as the boys called them. I find no account of them in Storer!! They put their heads out and floated about just like the Emys picta, and often approached and played (?) with each other. Some were apparently seven or eight inches long and of a yellowish color. 

A man by the riverside told us that he had two young ducks which he let out to seek their food along the riverside at low tide that morning. At length he noticed that one remained stationary amid the grass or salt weeds and something prevented its following the other. He went to its rescue and found its foot shut tightly in a quahog’s shell amid the grass which the tide had left. He took up all together, carried to his house, and his wife opened the shell with a knife, released the duck, and cooked the quahog.

Bathed again near Dogfish Bar. It was warm and dirty water, muddy bottom. 

I probably found an Indian’s bone at Throgg’s Point, where their bodies have been dug up. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 29, 1856

Bathed in the creek, which swarms with terrapins . . . I find no account of them in Storer!! See July 20, 1857 ("Holbrook makes the Emys terrapin to be found from Rhode Island to Florida and South America. . . . So did not know it was found at New Bedford.")

She opened the shell 

with a knife, released the duck 

and cooked the quahog.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A man by the riverside

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 ©  2009-2026

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