9 July 1855 – 15 July 1855

Peterson brings word of blackfish. I went over and saw them. The largest about fourteen feet long. Nineteen years ago three hundred and eighty at this (Great) Hollow in one school. Sometimes eat them. Small says they generally come about the last of July; some yield five barrels, average one barrel.® A kind of artemisia or sea wormwood by Bay-side on sand-hills, not out. Bay-wings here. I find the edible mussel generally in bunches as they were washed off the rocks thirty or forty together, held together by the twine-like byssus. Many little mussels on the rocks exposed at high tide. Uncle Sam Small, half blind, sixty-six years old, re- members the building of the lighthouse and their pro- phecies about the bank wasting. Thought the now over- hanging upper solid parts mzght last ten years. His path had sometimes lasted so long (??). Saw him making a long diagonal slanting path with a hoe, in order to get up a small pile of stuff on his back. (There lay his hooked pike-staff on the bank ready for immediate use.) But this path was destroyed before we left. Told of a large rock which was carried along the shore half a mile.‘ He gets all his fuel on the beach. At flood- tide there is a strong inshore current to north. We saw some (perhaps) bales of grass, or else dried bits of marsh, six feet long carried along thus very fast a quarter of a mile out. Told us of man-eating sharks, one twelve feet long, which he killed and drew up with his oxen. No quahogs on this side.

‘The sea, like Walden, is greenish within half a mile of shore, then blue. The purple tinges near the shore run far up and down. Walked to marsh head of East Harbor Creek. Marsh rosemary (Statice Limonium), “meadow root,” rays small, out some time, with five reddish petals. Also see there samphire of two kinds, herbacea and mucronata. Juncus Gerardi, black grass, in bloom. The pigweed about seashore is remarkably white and mealy. Great devil’s-needles above the bank, apparently catching flies. I see a brood of young peeps running on the beach under the sand-hills ahead of me. Indigo out. Heard a cannon from the sea, which echoed under the bank dully, as if a part of the bank had fallen; then saw a pilot-boat standing down and the pilot looking through his glass toward the distant outward-bound vessel, which was putting back to speak with him. The latter sailed many a mile to meet her. She put her sails aback and communicated alongside.

See young piping plover running in a troop on the beach like peetweets. Patches of shrub oaks, bay- berry, beach plum, and early wild roses, overrun with woodbine. What a splendid show of wild roses, whose sweetness is mingled with the aroma of the bayberry! ! Small made three thousand shingles of a mast, worth six dollars a thousand. A bar wholly made within three months; first ex- posed about first of May; as I paced, now seventy- five rods long and six or eight rods wide at high water, and bay within six rods wide. The bay has extended twice as far, but is filled up. Lespedeza Stuvei (?) or procumbens (?). I see five young swallows dead on the sand under their holes. Fell out and died in the storm? The upland plover hovers almost stationary in the air with a quivering note of alarm. Above, dark-brown interspersed with white, darkest in rear; gray-spotted breast, white beneath; bill dark above, yellowish at base beneath, and legs yellowish. Totanus Bartra- mius — “gray,” “grass,” “field” plover. Bank at lighthouse one hundred and seventy feet on the slope, perpendicular one hundred and ten; say shelf slopes four and ordinary tide-fall is nine, makes one hundred and twenty-three in all. Saw sand- bank south fifteen to twenty-five feet higher. Small says cantle for quintal. Mackerel-fishing not healthy like cod-fishing; hard work packing the mackerel, stooping over.

Peterson says he dug one hundred and twenty-six dollars’ worth of small clams near his house in Truro one winter, — twenty-five bucketfuls at one time. One man forty. Says they are scarce because they feed pigs on them. I measure a horseshoe on the back side twenty-two inches by eleven. The low sand-downs between East Harbor head and sea are thinly covered with beach-grass, seaside goldenrod, and beach pea. Fog wets your beard till twelve o’clock.’ Long slender seaside plantain leaf (? ) at East Harbor head. Solanum (with white flowers) nigrum (?) in marsh. Spergularia rubra var. marina. Great many little shells by edge of marsh — Auricula bidentata (?) and Succinea avara (? ). Great variety of beetles, dor-bugs, etc., on beach. I have one green shining one. Also butterflies over bank. Small thought the pine land was worth twenty-five cents an acre. I was surprised to see great spider-holes in pure sand and gravel, with a firm edge, where man could not make a hole without the sand sliding in, — in tunnel form. They are gone off for mackerel and cod; also catching mackerel, halibut, and lobsters about here for the market. The upland plover begins with a quivering note somewhat like a tree-toad and ends with a long, clear, somewhat plaintive (?) or melodious (?) hawk-like scream. I never heard this very near to me, and when I asked the inhabitants about it they did not know what I meant. Frank Forester, in “Manual for Young Sportsmen,” 1856, page 308, says, “This bird has a soft plaintive call or whistle of two notes, which have something of a ventriloquial character and possess this peculiarity, that when uttered close to the ear, they appear to come from a distance, and when the bird is really two or three fields distant, sound as if near at hand.” It hovers on quivering wing, and alights by a steep dive. My paper so damp in this house I can’t press flowers without mildew, nor dry my towel for a week.’ Small thought there was no stone wall west of Or- leans. Squid the bait for bass. Small said the black- fish ran ashore in pursuit of it. Hardly use pure salt at Small’s. Do not drink water.? S. repeats a tradi- tion that the back side was frozen over one mile out in 1680(?). Often is on Bay, but never since on Atlantic.

About $33,000 has been appropriated for the protection of Provincetown Harbor. Northeast winds the strongest. Caught a box tortoise. It appeared to have been feeding on insects, — their wing-cases, etc., in its droppings, — also leaves. No undertow on the bars because the shore is flat.

The sea has that same streaked look that our meadows have in a gale. Go to Bay side. Stench of blackfish. The lobster holds on to the pot himself. Throw away the largest. Find French crown. I was walking close to the water’s edge just after the tide had begun to fall, look- ing for shells and pebbles, and observed on the still wet sand, under the abrupt caving edge of the bank, this dark-colored round, flat — old button? I cheated my companion by holding up round Scutella parma on the bars, between my fingers.’ High hill — where town-house ?—in Provincetown; according to big map, 109 feet high. t [Cape Cod, p. 165; Riv. 198.] ? [Cape Cod, p. 165; Riv. 198.]