At Cohasset.

July 26.

At Cohasset.

Called on Captain Snow, who remembered hearing fishermen say that they “fitted out at Thoreau's” remembered him. He had commanded a packet between Boston or New York and England.

Spoke of the wave which he sometimes met on the Atlantic coming against the wind, and which indicated that the wind was blowing from an opposite quarter at a distance, the undulation travelling faster than the wind.

They see Cape Cod loom here. Thought the Bay between here and Cape Ann thirty fathoms deep; between here and Cape Cod, sixty or seventy fathoms.

The “Annual of Scientific Discovery” for 1851 says, quoting a Mr. A. G. Findley, “Waves travel very great distances, and are often raised by distant hurricanes, having been felt simultaneously at St. Helena and Ascension, though 600 miles apart, and it is probable that ground swells often originate at the Cape of Good Hope, 3000 miles distant.”

Sailors tell of tide-rips. Some are thought to be occasioned by earthquakes.

The ocean at Cohasset did not look as if any were ever shipwrecked in it. Not a vestige of a wreck left. It was not grand and sublime now, but beautiful.

The water held in the little hollows of the rocks, on the receding of the tide, is so crystal-pure that you cannot believe it salt, but wish to drink it.

The architect of a Minot Rock lighthouse might profitably spend day studying the worn rocks of Cohasset shore, and learn the power of the waves, see what kind of sand the sea is using to grind them down.

A fine delicate seaweed, which some properly enough call sea-green.

Saw here the staghorn, or velvet, sumach (Rhus typhina), so called from form of young branches, a size larger than the Rhus glabra common with us.

The Plantago maritima, or sea plantain, properly named. I guessed its name before I knew what it was called by botanists.

The American sea-rocket (Bunias edentula) I suppose it was that I saw, the succulent plant with much cut leaves and small pinkish (?) flowers.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 26, 1851

Saw here the staghorn, or velvet, sumach (Rhus typhina). See August 25, 1851 ("I now know all of the Rhus genus in Bigelow. We have all but the staghorn in Concord.")

See July 27, 1851 ("Walk from Cohasset to Duxbury and sail thence to Clark's Island.")

July 26. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 26

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

Walk from Cohasset to Duxbury and sail thence to Clark's Island.

July 27.

Visit the large tupelo tree (Nyssa multiflora) in Scituate, whose rounded and open top I can see from Mr. Sewal's, the tree which George Emerson went twenty-five miles to see, called sometimes snag-tree and swamp hornbeam, also pepperidge and gum-tree. Hard to split. We have it in Concord. See the buckthorn, which is naturalized.


After taking the road by Webster's beyond South Marshfield, I walk a long way at noon, hot and thirsty, before I find a suitable place to sit and eat my dinner. At length I am obliged to put up with a small shade close to the ruts, where the only stream I have seen for some time crosses the road. 

Here numerous robins come to cool and wash themselves and to drink.

They stand in the water up to their bellies, from time to time wetting their wings and tails and also ducking their heads and sprinkling the water over themselves; then they sit on a fence near by to dry. A goldfinch comes and does the same, accompanied by the less brilliant female. These birds evidently enjoy their bath greatly, and it seems indispensable to them.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 27, 1851



Visit the large tupelo tree (Nyssa multiflora) in Scituate, whose rounded and open top I can see from Mr. Sewal's.  See July 5, 1855 (The great tupelo on the edge of Scituate is very conspicuous for many miles .”) See also  June 26, 1857 ("The largest tupelo I remember in Concord is on the northerly edge of Staples's clearing."); June 30, 1856 ("By the roadside, Long Plain, North Fairhaven, observed a tupelo seven feet high with a rounded top, shaped like an umbrella, eight feet diameter."); September 7, 1857 ("Measured that large tupelo behind Merriam's which now is covered with green fruit, and its leaves begin to redden.") ~ Nyssa sylvatica, commonly known as the Black Tupelo, is a medium-sized deciduous tree native to eastern North America, from New England and southern Ontario south to central Florida and eastern Texas. ~ iNaturalist