Generally, the old-fashioned and unpainted houses on the Cape looked more comfortable, as well as picturesque11, than the modern and more pretending ones, which were less in harmony with the scenery, and less firmly planted.
These houses were on the shores of a chain of ponds, seven in number, the source of a small stream called Herring River, which empties into the Bay. There are many Herring Rivers on the Cape; they will, perhaps, be more numerous than herrings soon. We knocked at the door of the first house, but its inhabitants were all gone away. In the meanwhile, we saw the occupants of the next one looking out the window at us, and before we reached it an old woman came out and fastened the door of her bulkhead, and went in again. Nevertheless, we did not hesitate to knock at her door, when a grizzly-looking man appeared, whom we took to be sixty or seventy years old. He asked us, at first, suspiciously, where we were from, and what our business was; to which we returned plain answers.
“Twenty miles by railroad.”
“Twenty miles by railroad,” he repeated.
“Didn’t you ever hear of Concord of Revolutionary fame?”
“Didn’t I ever hear of Concord? Why, I heard the guns fire at the battle of Bunker Hill. [They hear the sound of heavy cannon13 across the Bay.] I am almost ninety; I am eighty-eight year old. I was fourteen year old at the time of Concord Fight,—and where were you then?”
We were obliged to confess that we were not in the fight.
“Well, walk in, we’ll leave it to the women,” said he.
So we walked in, surprised, and sat down, an old woman taking our hats and bundles, and the old man continued, drawing up to the large, old-fashioned fireplace,—
“I am a poor good-for-nothing crittur, as Isaiah says; I am all broken down this year. I am under petticoat government here.”
The family consisted of the old man, his wife, and his daughter, who appeared nearly as old as her mother, a fool, her son (a brutish-looking, aged15" target="_blank">middle-aged14 man, with a prominent lower face, who was standing16 by the hearth17 when we entered, but immediately went out), and a little boy of ten.
While my companion talked with the women, I talked with the old man. They said that he was old and foolish, but he was evidently too knowing for them.
“These women,” said he to me, “are both of them poor good-for-nothing critturs. This one is my wife. I married her sixty-four years ago. She is eighty-four years old, and as deaf as an adder18, and the other is not much better.”
He thought well of the Bible, or at least he spoke19 well, and did not think ill, of it, for that would not have been prudent20 for a man of his age. He said that he had read it attentively21 for many years, and he had much of it at his tongue’s end. He seemed deeply impressed with a sense of his own nothingness, and would repeatedly exclaim,—
“I am a nothing. What I gather from my Bible is just this: that man is a poor good-for-nothing crittur, and everything is just as God sees fit and disposes.”
“May I ask your name?” I said.
“Yes,” he answered, “I am not ashamed to tell my name. My name is——. My great-grandfather came over from England and settled here.”
He was an old Wellfleet oysterman, who had acquired a competency in that business, and had sons still engaged in it.
Nearly all the oyster22 shops and stands in Massachusetts, I am told, are supplied and kept by natives of Wellfleet, and a part of this town is still called Billingsgate from the oysters23 having been formerly24 planted there; but the native oysters are said to have died in 1770. Various causes are assigned for this, such as a ground frost, the carcasses of blackfish kept to rot in the harbor, and the like, but the most common account of the matter is,—and I find that a similar superstition25 with regard to the disappearance26 of fishes exists almost everywhere,—that when Wellfleet began to quarrel with the neighboring towns about the right to gather them, yellow specks27 appeared in them, and Providence28 caused them to disappear. A few years ago sixty thousand bushels were annually29 brought from the South and planted in the harbor of Wellfleet till they attained30 “the proper relish31 of Billingsgate”; but now they are imported commonly full-grown, and laid down near their markets, at Boston and elsewhere, where the water, being a mixture of salt and fresh, suits them better. The business was said to be still good and improving.
The old man said that the oysters were liable to freeze in the winter, if planted too high; but if it were not “so cold as to strain their eyes” they were not injured. The inhabitants of New Brunswick have noticed that “ice will not form over an oyster-bed, unless the cold is very intense indeed, and when the bays are frozen over the oyster-beds are easily discovered by the water above them remaining unfrozen, or as the French residents say, degèle.” Our host said that they kept them in cellars all winter.
“Without anything to eat or drink?” I asked.
“Without anything to eat or drink,” he answered.
“Can the oysters move?”
“Just as much as my shoe.”
But when I caught him saying that they “bedded themselves down in the sand, flat side up, round side down,” I told him that my shoe could not do that, without the aid of my foot in it; at which he said that they merely settled down as they grew; if put down in a square they would be found so; but the clam32 could move quite fast. I have since been told by oystermen of Long Island, where the oyster is still indigenous33 and abundant, that they are found in large masses attached to the parent in their midst, and are so taken up with their tongs34; in which case, they say, the age of the young proves that there could have been no motion for five or six years at least. And Buckland in his Curiosities of Natural History (page 50) says: “An oyster who has once taken up his position and fixed35 himself when quite young can never make a change. Oysters, nevertheless, that have not fixed themselves, but remain loose at the bottom of the sea, have the power of locomotion36; they open their shells to their fullest extent, and then suddenly contracting them, the expulsion of the water forwards gives a motion backwards37. A fisherman at Guernsey told me that he had frequently seen oysters moving in this way.”
Some still entertain the question “whether the oyster was indigenous in Massachusetts Bay,” and whether Wellfleet harbor was a “natural habitat” of this fish; but, to say nothing of the testimony38 of old oystermen, which, I think, is quite conclusive39, though the native oyster may now be extinct there, I saw that their shells, opened by the Indians, were strewn all over the Cape. Indeed, the Cape was at first thickly settled by Indians on account of the abundance of these and other fish. We saw many traces of their occupancy after this, in Truro, near Great Hollow, and at High-Head, near East Harbor River,—oysters, clams40, cockles, and other shells, mingled41 with ashes and the bones of deer and other quadrupeds. I picked up half a dozen arrow-heads, and in an hour or two could have filled my pockets with them. The Indians lived about the edges of the swamps, then probably in some instances ponds, for shelter and water. Moreover, Champlain in the edition of his “Voyages” printed in 1613, says that in the year 1606 he and Poitrincourt explored a harbor (Barnstable Harbor?) in the southerly part of what is now called Massachusetts Bay, in latitude42 42°, about five leagues south, one point west of Cap Blanc (Cape Cod), and there they found many good oysters, and they named it “le Port aux Huistres” (Oyster Harbor). In one edition of his map (1632), the “R. aux Escailles” is drawn43 emptying into the same part of the bay, and on the map “Novi Belgii,” in Ogilby’s “America” (1670), the words “Port aux Huistres” are placed against the same place. Also William Wood, who left New England in 1633, speaks, in his “New England’s Prospect44,” published in 1634, of “a great oyster-bank” in Charles River, and of another in the Mistick, each of which obstructed45 the navigation of its river. “The oysters,” says he, “be great ones in form of a shoehorn; some be a foot long; these breed on certain banks that are bare every spring tide. This fish without the shell is so big, that it must admit of a division before you can well get it into your mouth.” Oysters are still found there. (Also, see Thomas Morton’s “New English Canaan,” page 90.)
Our host told us that the sea-clam, or hen, was not easily obtained; it was raked up, but never on the Atlantic side, only cast ashore46 there in small quantities in storms. The fisherman sometimes wades47 in water several feet deep, and thrusts a pointed48 stick into the sand before him. When this enters between the valves of a clam, he closes them on it, and is drawn out. It has been known to catch and hold coot and teal which were preying49 on it. I chanced to be on the bank of the Acushnet at New Bedford one day since this, watching some ducks, when a man informed me that, having let out his young ducks to seek their food amid the samphire (Salicornia) and other weeds along the river-side at low tide that morning, at length he noticed that one remained stationary51, amid the weeds, something preventing it from following the others, and going to it he found its foot tightly shut in a quahog’s shell. He took up both together, carried them to his home, and his wife opening the shell with a knife released the duck and cooked the quahog. The old man said that the great clams were good to eat, but that they always took out a certain part which was poisonous, before they cooked them. “People said it would kill a cat.” I did not tell him that I had eaten a large one entire that afternoon, but began to think that I was tougher than a cat. He stated that pedlers came round there, and sometimes tried to sell the women folks a skimmer, but he told them that their women had got a better skimmer than they could make, in the shell of their clams; it was shaped just right for this purpose.—They call them “skim-alls” in some places. He also said that the sun-squall was poisonous to handle, and when the sailors came across it, they did not meddle52 with it, but heaved it out of their way. I told him that I had handled it that afternoon, and had felt no ill effects as yet. But he said it made the hands itch53, especially if they had previously54 been scratched, or if I put it into my bosom55 I should find out what it was.
He informed us that no ice ever formed on the back side of the Cape, or not more than once in a century, and but little snow lay there, it being either absorbed or blown or washed away. Sometimes in winter, when the tide was down, the beach was frozen, and afforded a hard road up the back side for some thirty miles, as smooth as a floor. One winter when he was a boy, he and his father “took right out into the back side before daylight, and walked to Provincetown and back to dinner.”
When I asked what they did with all that barren-looking land, where I saw so few cultivated fields,—“Nothing,” he said.
“Then why fence your fields?”
“To keep the sand from blowing and covering up the whole.”
“The yellow sand,” said he, “has some life in it, but the white little or none.”
When, in answer to his questions, I told him that I was a surveyor, he said that they who surveyed his farm were accustomed, where the ground was uneven56, to loop up each chain as high as their elbows; that was the allowance they made, and he wished to know if I could tell him why they did not come out according to his deed, or twice alike. He seemed to have more respect for surveyors of the old school, which I did not wonder at. “King George the Third,” said he, “laid out a road four rods wide and straight the whole length of the Cape,” but where it was now he could not tell.
This story of the surveyors reminded me of a Long-Islander, who once, when I had made ready to jump from the bow of his boat to the shore, and he thought that I underrated the distance and would fall short,—though I found afterward57 that he judged of the elasticity58 of my joints59 by his own,—told me that when he came to a brook60 which he wanted to get over, he held up one leg, and then, if his foot appeared to cover any part of the opposite bank, he knew that he could jump it. “Why,” I told him, “to say nothing of the Mississippi, and other small watery61 streams, I could blot62 out a star with my foot, but I would not engage to jump that distance,” and asked how he knew when he had got his leg at the right elevation63. But he regarded his legs as no less accurate than a pair of screw dividers or an ordinary quadrant, and appeared to have a painful recollection of every degree and minute in the arc which they described; and he would have had me believe that there was a kind of hitch64 in his hip-joint which answered the purpose. I suggested that he should connect his two ankles by a string of the proper length, which should be the chord of an arc, measuring his jumping ability on horizontal surfaces,—assuming one leg to be a perpendicular65 to the plane of the horizon, which, however, may have been too bold an assumption in this case. Nevertheless, this was a kind of geometry in the legs which it interested me to hear of.
Our host took pleasure in telling us the names of the ponds, most of which we could see from his windows, and making us repeat them after him, to see if we had got them right. They were Gull66 Pond, the largest and a very handsome one, clear and deep, and more than a mile in circumference67, Newcomb’s, Swett’s, Slough68, Horse-Leech, Round, and Herring Ponds, all connected at high water, if I do not mistake. The coast-surveyors had come to him for their names, and he told them of one which they had not detected. He said that they were not so high as formerly. There was an earthquake about four years before he was born, which cracked the pans of the ponds, which were of iron, and caused them to settle. I did not remember to have read of this. Innumerable gulls69 used to resort to them; but the large gulls were now very scarce, for, as he said, the English robbed their nests far in the north, where they breed. He remembered well when gulls were taken in the gull-house, and when small birds were killed by means of a frying-pan and fire at night. His father once lost a valuable horse from this cause. A party from Wellfleet having lighted their fire for this purpose, one dark night, on Billingsgate Island, twenty horses which were pastured there, and this colt among them, being frightened by it, and endeavoring in the dark to cross the passage which separated them from the neighboring beach, and which was then fordable at low tide, were all swept out to sea and drowned. I ob-served that many horses were still turned out to pasture all summer on the islands and beaches in Wellfleet, Eastham, and Orleans, as a kind of common. He also described the killing70 of what he called “wild hens” here, after they had gone to roost in the woods, when he was a boy. Perhaps they were “Prairie hens” (pinnated grouse).
He liked the Beach-pea (Lathyrus maritimus), cooked green, as well as the cultivated. He had seen it growing very abundantly in Newfoundland, where also the inhabitants ate them, but he had never been able to obtain any ripe for seed. We read, under the head of Chatham, that “in 1555, during a time of great scarcity71, the people about Orford, in Sussex (England) were preserved from perishing by eating the seeds of this plant, which grew there in great abundance on the sea-coast. Cows, horses, sheep, and goats eat it.” But the writer who quoted this could not learn that they had ever been used in Barnstable County.
He had been a voyager, then? O, he had been about the world in his day. He once considered himself a pilot for all our coast; but now they had changed the names so he might be bothered.
He gave us to taste what he called the Summer Sweeting, a pleasant apple which he raised, and frequently grafted72 from, but had never seen growing elsewhere, except once,—three trees on Newfoundland, or at the Bay of Chaleur, I forget which, as he was sailing by. He was sure that he could tell the tree at a distance.
At length the fool, whom my companion called the wizard, came in, muttering between his teeth, “Damn book-pedlers,—all the time talking about books. Better do something. Damn ’em. I’ll shoot ’em. Got a doctor down here. Damn him, I’ll get a gun and shoot him”; never once holding up his head. Whereat the old man stood up and said in a loud voice, as if he was accustomed to command, and this was not the first time he had been obliged to exert his authority there: “John, go sit down, mind your business,—we’ve heard you talk before,—precious little you’ll do,—your bark is worse than your bite.” But, without minding, John muttered the same gibberish over again, and then sat down at the table which the old folks had left. He ate all there was on it, and then turned to the apples, which his aged mother was paring, that she might give her guests some apple-sauce for breakfast, but she drew them away and sent him off.
When I approached this house the next summer, over the desolate73 hills between it and the shore, which are worthy to have been the birthplace of Ossian, I saw the wizard in the midst of a cornfield on the hillside, but, as usual, he loomed74 so strangely, that I mistook him for a scarecrow.
This was the merriest old man that we had ever seen, and one of the best preserved. His style of conversation was coarse and plain enough to have suited Rabelais. He would have made a good Panurge. Or rather he was a sober Silenus, and we were the boys Chromis and Mnasilus, who listened to his story.
Nor awful Phœbus was on Pindus heard
With deeper silence or with more regard.”
There was a strange mingling76 of past and present in his conversation, for he had lived under King George, and might have remembered when Napoleon and the moderns generally were born. He said that one day, when the troubles between the Colonies and the mother country first broke out, as he, a boy of fifteen, was pitching hay out of a cart, one Doane, an old Tory, who was talking with his father, a good Whig, said to him, “Why, Uncle Bill, you might as well undertake to pitch that pond into the ocean with a pitchfork, as for the Colonies to undertake to gain their independence.” He remembered well General Washington, and how he rode his horse along the streets of Boston, and he stood up to show us how he looked.
“He was a r—a—ther large and portly-looking man, a manly77 and resolute-looking officer, with a pretty good leg as he sat on his horse.”—“There, I’ll tell you, this was the way with Washington.” Then he jumped up again, and bowed gracefully78 to right and left, making show as if he were waving his hat. Said he, “That was Washington.”
He told us many anecdotes79 of the Revolution, and was much pleased when we told him that we had read the same in history, and that his account agreed with the written.
“O,” he said, “I know, I know! I was a young fellow of sixteen, with my ears wide open; and a fellow of that age, you know, is pretty wide awake, and likes to know everything that’s going on. O, I know!”
He told us the story of the wreck80 of the Franklin, which took place there the previous spring: how a boy came to his house early in the morning to know whose boat that was by the shore, for there was a vessel81 in distress82, and he, being an old man, first ate his breakfast, and then walked over to the top of the hill by the shore, and sat down there, having found a comfortable seat, to see the ship wrecked83. She was on the bar, only a quarter of a mile from him, and still nearer to the men on the beach, who had got a boat ready, but could render no assistance on account of the breakers, for there was a pretty high sea running. There were the passengers all crowded together in the forward part of the ship, and some were getting out of the cabin windows and were drawn on deck by the others.
“I saw the captain get out his boat,” said he; “he had one little one; and then they jumped into it one after another, down as straight as an arrow. I counted them. There were nine. One was a woman, and she jumped as straight as any of them. Then they shoved off. The sea took them back, one wave went over them, and when they came up there were six still clinging to the boat; I counted them. The next wave turned the boat bottom upward, and emptied them all out. None of them ever came ashore alive. There were the rest of them all crowded together on the forecastle, the other parts of the ship being under water. They had seen all that happened to the boat. At length a heavy sea separated the forecastle from the rest of the wreck, and set it inside of the worst breaker, and the boat was able to reach them, and it saved all that were left, but one woman.”
He also told us of the steamer Cambria’s getting aground on his shore a few months before we were there, and of her English passengers who roamed over his grounds, and who, he said, thought the prospect from the high hill by the shore “the most delightsome they had ever seen,” and also of the pranks84 which the ladies played with his scoop-net in the ponds. He spoke of these travellers with their purses full of guineas, just as our provincial85 fathers used to speak of British bloods in the time of King George the Third.
Quid loquar? Why repeat what he told us?
“Aut Scyllam Nisi, quam fama secuta est,
Candida succinctam latrantibus inguina monstris,
Dulichias vexâsse rates, et gurgite in alto
Ah timidos nautas canibus lacerâsse marinis?”
In the course of the evening I began to feel the potency86 of the clam which I had eaten, and I was obliged to confess to our host that I was no tougher than the cat he told of; but he answered, that he was a plain-spoken man, and he could tell me that it was all imagination. At any rate, it proved an emetic87 in my case, and I was made quite sick by it for a short time, while he laughed at my expense. I was pleased to read afterward, in Mourt’s Relation of the landing of the Pilgrims in Provincetown Harbor, these words: “We found great muscles (the old editor says that they were undoubtedly88 sea-clams) and very fat and full of sea-pearl; but we could not eat them, for they made us all sick that did eat, as well sailors as passengers, ... but they were soon well again.” It brought me nearer to the Pilgrims to be thus reminded by a similar experience that I was so like them. Moreover, it was a valuable confirmation89 of their story, and I am prepared now to believe every word of Mourt’s Relation. I was also pleased to find that man and the clam lay still at the same angle to one another. But I did not notice sea-pearl. Like Cleopatra, I must have swallowed it. I have since dug these clams on a flat in the Bay and observed them. They could squirt full ten feet before the wind, as appeared by the marks of the drops on the sand.
“Now I’m going to ask you a question,” said the old man, “and I don’t know as you can tell me; but you are a learned man, and I never had any learning, only what I got by natur.”—It was in vain that we reminded him that he could quote Josephus to our confusion.—“I’ve thought, if I ever met a learned man I should like to ask him this question. Can you tell me how Axy is spelt, and what it means? Axy,” says he; “there’s a girl over here is named Axy. Now what is it? What does it mean? Is it Scripture90? I’ve read my Bible twenty-five years over and over, and I never came across it.”
“Did you read it twenty-five years for this object.’” I asked.
“Well, how is it spelt? Wife, how is it spelt?” She said: “It is in the Bible; I’ve seen it.”
“Well, how do you spell it?”
“I don’t know. A c h, ach, s e h, seh,—Achseh.”
“Does that spell Axy? Well, do you know what it means?” asked he, turning to me.
“No,” I replied, “I never heard the sound before.”
“There was a schoolmaster down here once, and they asked him what it meant, and he said it had no more meaning than a bean-pole.”
I told him that I held the same opinion with the schoolmaster. I had been a schoolmaster myself, and had had strange names to deal with. I also heard of such names as Zoleth, Beriah, Amaziah, Bethuel, and Shearjashub, hereabouts.
At length the little boy, who had a seat quite in the chimney-corner, took off his stockings and shoes, warmed his feet, and having had his sore leg freshly salved, went off to bed; then the fool made bare his knotty-looking feet and legs, and followed him; and finally the old man exposed his calves91 also to our gaze. We had never had the good fortune to see an old man’s legs before, and were surprised to find them fair and plump as an infant’s, and we thought that he took a pride in exhibiting them. He then proceeded to make preparations for retiring, discoursing92 meanwhile with Panurgic plainness of speech on the ills to which old humanity is subject. We were a rare haul for him. He could commonly get none but ministers to talk to, though sometimes ten of them at once, and he was glad to meet some of the laity93 at leisure. The evening was not long enough for him. As I had been sick, the old lady asked if I would not go to bed,—it was getting late for old people; but the old man, who had not yet done his stories, said, “You ain’t particular, are you?”
“O, no,” said I, “I am in no hurry. I believe I have weathered the Clam cape.”
“They are good,” said he; “I wish I had some of them now.”
“They never hurt me,” said the old lady.
“But then you took out the part that killed a cat,” said I.
At last we cut him short in the midst of his stories, which he promised to resume in the morning. Yet, after all, one of the old ladies who came into our room in the night to fasten the fire-board, which rattled94, as she went out took the precaution to fasten us in. Old women are by nature more suspicious than old men. However, the winds howled around the house, and made the fire-boards as well as the casements96 rattle95 well that night. It was probably a windy night for any locality, but we could not distinguish the roar which was proper to the ocean from that which was due to the wind alone.
The sounds which the ocean makes must be very significant and interesting to those who live near it. When I was leaving the shore at this place the next summer, and had got a quarter of a mile distant, ascending97 a hill, I was startled by a sudden, loud sound from the sea, as if a large steamer were letting off steam by the shore, so that I caught my breath and felt my blood run cold for an instant, and I turned about, expecting to see one of the Atlantic steamers thus far out of her course, but there was nothing unusual to be seen. There was a low bank at the entrance of the Hollow, between me and the ocean, and suspecting that I might have risen into another stratum98 of air in ascending the hill,—which had wafted99 to me only the ordinary roar of the sea,—I immediately descended100 again, to see if I lost hearing of it; but, without regard to my ascending or descending101, it died away in a minute or two, and yet there was scarcely any wind all the while. The old man said that this was what they called the “rut,” a peculiar102 roar of the sea before the wind changes, which, however, he could not account for. He thought that he could tell all about the weather from the sounds which the sea made.
Old Josselyn, who came to New England in 1638, has it among his weather-signs, that “the resounding103 of the sea from the shore, and murmuring of the winds in the woods, without apparent wind, sheweth wind to follow.”
Being on another part of the coast one night since this, I heard the roar of the surf a mile distant, and the inhabitants said it was a sign that the wind would work round east, and we should have rainy weather. The ocean was heaped up somewhere at the eastward104, and this roar was occasioned by its effort to preserve its equilibrium105, the wave reaching the shore before the wind. Also the captain of a packet between this country and England told me that he sometimes met with a wave on the Atlantic coming against the wind, perhaps in a calm sea, which indicated that at a distance the wind was blowing from an opposite quarter, but the undulation had travelled faster than it. Sailors tell of “tide-rips” and “ground-swells,” which they suppose to have been occasioned by hurricanes and earthquakes, and to have travelled many hundred, and sometimes even two or three thousand miles.
Before sunrise the next morning they let us out again, and I ran over to the beach to see the sun come out of the ocean. The old woman of eighty-four winters was already out in the cold morning wind, bareheaded, tripping about like a young girl, and driving up the cow to milk. She got the breakfast with despatch106, and without noise or bustle107; and meanwhile the old man resumed his stories, standing before us, who were sitting, with his back to the chimney, and ejecting his tobacco juice right and left into the fire behind him, without regard to the various dishes which were there preparing. At breakfast we had eels108, buttermilk cake, cold bread, green beans, doughnuts, and tea. The old man talked a steady stream; and when his wife told him he had better eat his breakfast, he said: “Don’t hurry me; I have lived too long to be hurried.” I ate of the apple-sauce and the doughnuts, which I thought had sustained the least detriment109 from the old man’s shots, but my companion refused the apple-sauce, and ate of the hot cake and green beans, which had appeared to him to occupy the safest part of the hearth. But on comparing notes afterward, I told him that the buttermilk cake was particularly exposed, and I saw how it suffered repeatedly, and therefore I avoided it; but he declared that, however that might be, he witnessed that the apple-sauce was seriously injured, and had therefore declined that. After breakfast we looked at his clock, which was out of order, and oiled it with some “hen’s grease,” for want of sweet oil, for he scarcely could believe that we were not tinkers or pedlers; meanwhile he told a story about visions, which had reference to a crack in the clock-case made by frost one night. He was curious to know to what religious sect110 we belonged. He said that he had been to hear thirteen kinds of preaching in one month, when he was young, but he did not join any of them,—he stuck to his Bible. There was nothing like any of them in his Bible. While I was shaving in the next room, I heard him ask my companion to what sect he belonged, to which he answered:—
“O, I belong to the Universal Brotherhood111.”
“What’s that?” he asked, “Sons o’ Temperance?”
Finally, filling our pockets with doughnuts, which he was pleased to find that we called by the same name that he did, and paying for our entertainment, we took our departure; but he followed us out of doors, and made us tell him the names of the vegetables which he had raised from seeds that came out of the Franklin. They were cabbage, broccoli112, and parsley. As I had asked him the names of so many things, he tried me in turn with all the plants which grew in his garden, both wild and cultivated. It was about half an acre, which he cultivated wholly himself. Besides the common garden vegetables, there were Yellow-Dock, Lemon Balm, Hyssop, Gill-go-over-the-ground. Mouse-ear, Chick-weed, Roman Wormwood, Elecampane, and other plants. As we stood there, I saw a fish-hawk stoop to pick a fish out of his pond.
“There,” said I, “he has got a fish.”
“Well,” said the old man, who was looking all the while, but could see nothing, “he didn’t dive, he just wet his claws.”
And, sure enough, he did not this time, though it is said that they often do, but he merely stooped low enough to pick him out with his talons113; but as he bore his shining prey50 over the bushes, it fell to the ground, and we did not see that he recovered it. That is not their practice.
Thus, having had another crack with the old man, he standing bareheaded under the eaves, he directed us “athwart the fields,” and we took to the beach again for another day, it being now late in the morning.
It was but a day or two after this that the safe of the Provincetown Bank was broken open and robbed by two men from the interior, and we learned that our hospitable114 entertainers did at least transiently harbor the suspicion that we were the men.
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jurisdiction
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| n.司法权，审判权，管辖权，控制权 | |
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uncommonly
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| adv. 稀罕(极，非常) | |
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3
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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illustrated
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| adj. 有插图的，列举的 动词illustrate的过去式和过去分词 | |
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cape
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| n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风 | |
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stature
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| n.（高度）水平，（高度）境界，身高，身材 | |
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triangular
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| adj.三角（形）的，三者间的 | |
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muzzles
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| 枪口( muzzle的名词复数 )； （防止动物咬人的）口套； （四足动物的）鼻口部； （狗）等凸出的鼻子和口 | |
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picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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concord
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| n.和谐；协调 | |
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13
cannon
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| n.大炮，火炮；飞机上的机关炮 | |
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middle-aged
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| adj.中年的 | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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hearth
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| n.壁炉炉床，壁炉地面 | |
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18
adder
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| n.蝰蛇；小毒蛇 | |
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19
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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20
prudent
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| adj.谨慎的，有远见的，精打细算的 | |
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attentively
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| adv.聚精会神地；周到地；谛；凝神 | |
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oyster
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| n.牡蛎；沉默寡言的人 | |
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23
oysters
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| 牡蛎( oyster的名词复数 ) | |
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24
formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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25
superstition
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| n.迷信，迷信行为 | |
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disappearance
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| n.消失，消散，失踪 | |
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specks
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| n.眼镜；斑点，微粒，污点( speck的名词复数 ) | |
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providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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annually
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| adv.一年一次，每年 | |
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30
attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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31
relish
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| n.滋味，享受，爱好，调味品；vt.加调味料，享受，品味；vi.有滋味 | |
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32
clam
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| n.蛤，蛤肉 | |
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33
indigenous
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| adj.土产的，土生土长的，本地的 | |
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34
tongs
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| n.钳；夹子 | |
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35
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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locomotion
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| n.运动，移动 | |
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37
backwards
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| adv.往回地，向原处，倒，相反，前后倒置地 | |
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38
testimony
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| n.证词；见证，证明 | |
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conclusive
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| adj.最后的，结论的；确凿的，消除怀疑的 | |
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clams
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| n.蛤；蚌，蛤( clam的名词复数 )v.（在沙滩上）挖蛤( clam的第三人称单数 ) | |
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41
mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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latitude
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| n.纬度，行动或言论的自由(范围)，(pl.)地区 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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45
obstructed
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| 阻塞( obstruct的过去式和过去分词 )； 堵塞； 阻碍； 阻止 | |
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ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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wades
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| （从水、泥等）蹚，走过，跋( wade的第三人称单数 ) | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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49
preying
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| v.掠食( prey的现在分词 )；掠食；折磨；（人）靠欺诈为生 | |
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50
prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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51
stationary
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| adj.固定的，静止不动的 | |
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52
meddle
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| v.干预，干涉，插手 | |
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53
itch
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| n.痒，渴望，疥癣；vi.发痒，渴望 | |
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54
previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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55
bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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56
uneven
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| adj.不平坦的，不规则的，不均匀的 | |
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57
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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58
elasticity
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| n.弹性，伸缩力 | |
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59
joints
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| 接头( joint的名词复数 )； 关节； 公共场所（尤指价格低廉的饮食和娱乐场所） （非正式）； 一块烤肉 （英式英语） | |
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60
brook
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| n.小河，溪；v.忍受，容让 | |
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61
watery
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| adj.有水的，水汪汪的；湿的，湿润的 | |
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62
blot
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| vt.弄脏（用吸墨纸）吸干；n.污点，污渍 | |
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63
elevation
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| n.高度；海拔；高地；上升；提高 | |
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64
hitch
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| v.免费搭(车旅行)；系住；急提；n.故障；急拉 | |
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perpendicular
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| adj.垂直的，直立的；n.垂直线，垂直的位置 | |
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66
gull
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| n.鸥；受骗的人；v.欺诈 | |
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67
circumference
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| n.圆周，周长，圆周线 | |
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68
slough
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| v.蜕皮，脱落，抛弃 | |
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69
gulls
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| n.鸥( gull的名词复数 )v.欺骗某人( gull的第三人称单数 ) | |
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70
killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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71
scarcity
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| n.缺乏，不足，萧条 | |
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72
grafted
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| 移植( graft的过去式和过去分词 )； 嫁接； 使（思想、制度等）成为（…的一部份）； 植根 | |
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73
desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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74
loomed
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| v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的过去式和过去分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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75
bard
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| n.吟游诗人 | |
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76
mingling
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| adj.混合的 | |
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77
manly
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| adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地 | |
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78
gracefully
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| ad.大大方方地；优美地 | |
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79
anecdotes
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| n.掌故，趣闻，轶事( anecdote的名词复数 ) | |
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80
wreck
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| n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难 | |
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81
vessel
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| n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管 | |
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82
distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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83
wrecked
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| adj.失事的，遇难的 | |
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84
pranks
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| n.玩笑，恶作剧( prank的名词复数 ) | |
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85
provincial
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| adj.省的，地方的；n．外省人，乡下人 | |
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86
potency
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| n. 效力，潜能 | |
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87
emetic
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| n.催吐剂；adj.催吐的 | |
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88
undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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89
confirmation
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| n.证实，确认，批准 | |
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90
scripture
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| n.经文，圣书，手稿；Scripture:(常用复数)《圣经》，《圣经》中的一段 | |
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91
calves
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| n.(calf的复数)笨拙的男子，腓；腿肚子( calf的名词复数 )；牛犊；腓；小腿肚v.生小牛( calve的第三人称单数 )；（冰川）崩解；生（小牛等），产（犊）；使（冰川）崩解 | |
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92
discoursing
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| 演说（discourse的现在分词形式） | |
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93
laity
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| n.俗人；门外汉 | |
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94
rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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95
rattle
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| v.飞奔，碰响；激怒；n.碰撞声；拨浪鼓 | |
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96
casements
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| n.窗扉( casement的名词复数 ) | |
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97
ascending
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| adj.上升的，向上的 | |
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98
stratum
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| n.地层，社会阶层 | |
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99
wafted
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| v.吹送，飘送，（使）浮动( waft的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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100
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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101
descending
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| n. 下行 adj. 下降的 | |
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102
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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103
resounding
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| adj. 响亮的 | |
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104
eastward
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| adv.向东；adj.向东的；n.东方，东部 | |
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105
equilibrium
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| n.平衡，均衡，相称，均势，平静 | |
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106
despatch
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| n./v.(dispatch)派遣；发送；n.急件；新闻报道 | |
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107
bustle
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| v.喧扰地忙乱，匆忙，奔忙；n.忙碌；喧闹 | |
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108
eels
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| abbr. 电子发射器定位系统（=electronic emitter location system） | |
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109
detriment
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| n.损害；损害物，造成损害的根源 | |
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110
sect
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| n.派别，宗教，学派，派系 | |
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111
brotherhood
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| n.兄弟般的关系，手中情谊 | |
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112
broccoli
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| n.绿菜花，花椰菜 | |
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113
talons
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| n.（尤指猛禽的）爪( talon的名词复数 )；（如爪般的）手指；爪状物；锁簧尖状突出部 | |
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114
hospitable
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| adj.好客的；宽容的；有利的，适宜的 | |
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