20 September 1858 – 26 September 1858

The river probably reaches its highest since June to-day. The Maryland yellow-throat is here. Hear warbling vireos still, in the elms. Miss Pratt shows me a small luminous bug found on the earth floor of their shed (I think a month ago). Had two bright points in its tail, as bright or brighter than the glow-worm. Vide it in paper. It is now dried, three eighths of an inch long by somewhat more than one eighth wide, ovate-oblong with a broad and blunt head, dull straw-color, clear rose-red on the sides, composed of many segments, which give it a dentate appearance on the edges. A broad flattish kind of shield in front, also red and straw-color.

Go to Cape Ann. A very warm day. A.M.— Go with Russell to the rooms of the Essex Institute, — if that is the name. See some Indian pot- tery from the Cayuga Reservation, fragments, very pale brick-color three eighths of an inch thick, with a rude ornament (apparently made with the end of a stick) of this form and size: the lines re- presenting — slight M7 Mit (ttl [L} notlows in a row around it. Saw a stone, apparently slate, shaped like small “sinkers,” but six inches by three and a half with a small handle, found near here. Was it a sinker or pestle? (On the 24th, at the East India Marine Hall, saw a cir- cular stone mortar about six inches in diameter, and a stone exactly like the above in it, described as pestle and mortar found in making Salem Turnpike. Were they together? Also,-at the last place, what was called the blade of an Indian knife found on Governor Endicott’s farm, broken, three or four inches long, of a light- colored kind of slate, quite thin, with a back. It might have been for skinning.) At the Essex Institute (?),—if that’s the name, — the eggs of the Rallus Virginianus, labelled by Brewer, but much smaller than those I have seen, and nearly white, with dull-brown spots! Can mine be the egg of the ft. crepitans, though larger than mine? Their eggs of the Sterna hirundo look like mine which I have so called; also do those of the black-headed gull, which I do not perceive in Peabody. Looked over the asters, goldenrods, and willows in their herbarium, collected and named by Oakes, Lapham, Russell, and Cass1 — something. Oakes’s Salix sericea, also Marshall’s, and what O. calls grisea of Willdenow, is the same I so call, by the white maple at Assabet. What O. calls S. phylli- cifolia from White Mountains, having only sterile cat- kins, — his specimen, —is apparently the one I have from there together with the repens. P. M. — Walked with Russell to Marblehead above railroad. Saw, in Salem, Solidago Canadensis, considerably past prime; our three-ribbed one done; Spartina cyno- suroides; (was that the S. juncea, seven feet high, with a broad leaf, which I mistook for the above? Very com- mon on edge of marshes); apparently Scarpus pungens, two to four feet high; Polygonum aviculare, appar- ently peculiar; swamp thistle, still abundant; Trifolium procumbens, still abundant; Aster Nove-Anglie, dark- violet or lilac-purple, in prime or a little past, three quarters of a mile down railroad; also by shore in Manchester, the 22d; Ruppia maritima, in a ditch. In Marblehead, Aster cordifolius, abundant, railroad; Woodsia Ilvensis. R. pointed out Juncus bujonius (??) (but did not know it); it was tenuts-like and probably that. Juncus Greenwi (?) (tenuis-like), dense-flowered, on high sea-bank, sea side of Marblehead. Herb- robert, near shore, done. Datura Stramonium var. Ta- tula, done there, but out at Rockport; got seeds. Also various lichens. Got Parmelia parietina, elegans, and rubina on the rocks. Saw, but did not get, P. murorum. Cetraria Islandica. R. said that that I saw at the White Mountains was bitter. Endocarpon miniatum (which we have) on rocks. Peltigera polydactyla. Umbilicaria Muhlenbergit, rocks by sea. ‘That common crustaceous lichen on rocks, — black fruit prettily scattered on a white ground, — which reminds me of maps, is Lecidea atroalba. R. thought that my small umbilicaria on Mo- nadnock and Lafayette was U. erosa or hyperborea. He knew a Carex lupulina because the beaks were recurved. Called Marblehead coast greenstone generally with dykes in sienite. Saw artichokes out in several places, at some time. Have a sort of Spouting Horn by shore. Returned by some very deep hollows in Salem (like the Truro ones) called the Dungeons! ! as our Dunge Hole. R. gave me from his garden corns of the true [? | squirrel-corn corydalis, which I plant, and what Tracy gave him for Utricularia intermedia from , not in flower, though he says that T. has examined the flowers. It looks like mine. What I have called the clustered blackberry he has raised from the seed he got here, and this second year (or third) it has run as long as the com- mon, but, perhaps because in rich soil and the shade, no flowers or fruit. Saw no Aster Tradescanti in this walk, but an abun- dance of A. multiflorus in its prime, in Salem and Marblehead.

A clear cold day, wind northwest. Leave Salem for the Cape on foot. Near Beverly Bridge, crossed over that low and flat part of Salem where the first settlement was made and Arabella Stewart [szc] ' is supposed to have been buried. Soon struck off to the shore in Beverly. See the dis- color thistle on a sandy beach, and Phaseolus diversifo- lius (three-lobed bean vine), with pretty terete long pods, some ripe, but a few flowers still. Aster linifolius, per- haps still in prime, — though it has a flexuous stem, — in a marsh, and lyme-grass, apparently like ours, along edge of marsh. Dined on the edge of a high rocky cliff, quite perpendicular, on the west side of entrance of Manchester Harbor. One mile southeast of the village of Manchester, struck the beach of “musical sand,” just this side of a large, high, rocky point called Eagle Head. This is a curving sandy beach, maybe a third of a mile long by some twelve rods wide. (We also found it on a similar but shorter beach on the east side of Eagle Head.) We first perceived the sound when we scratched with our umbrella or finger swiftly and forcibly through the sand; also still louder when we struck forcibly with our heels “scuffing” along. The wet or damp sand yielded no peculiar sound, nor did that which lay loose and deep next the bank, but only the more compact and dry. The sound was not at all musical, nor was it loud. Fisher- men might walk over it all their lives, as indeed they have done, without noticing it. R., who had not heard it, was about right when he said it was like that made by rubbing on wet glass with your fingers. I thought it as much like the sound made in waxing a table as anything. It was a squeaking sound, as of one particle rubbing on another. I should say it was merely the result of the friction of peculiarly formed and constituted particles. The surf was high and made a great noise, yet I could hear the sound made by my companion’s heels two or three rods distant, and if it had been still, probably could have heard it five or six rods. We kept thence along the rocky shore to Kettle Cove, where, however, I did not find any rocks like Lewis’s. Somewhere thereabouts Scirpus maritimus, with its great spikes now withered. In the marsh at Kettle Cove, Gerardia maritima, apparently in prime, four or five inches high; Euphorbia polygonifolia, six inches in diameter. Spartina glabra in the salt water of the cove. The shore, thus far, from Beverly Bridge had been a succession of bold rocky points half a mile apart, with sometimes curving sandy beaches between, or else rocks. We now kept the road to Gloucester, leaving the shore a mile or more to the right, wishing to see the magnolia swamp. ‘This was perhaps about a mile and a half be- yond Kettle Cove. After passing over a sort of height of land in the woods, we took a path to the left, which within a few rods became a corduroy road in the swamp. Within three or four rods on the west side of this, and perhaps ten or fifteen from the highroad, was the mag- nolia. It was two to seven or eight feet high, but distin- guished by its large and still fresh green leaves, which had not begun to fall. I saw last year’s shoots which had died down several feet, and probably this will be the fate of most which has grown this year. The swamp was an ordinary one, not so wet but we got about very well. The bushes of this swamp were not generally more than six feet high. There was another locality the other side of the road. Cooked our supper in a salt marsh some two miles this side of Gloucester, in view of the town. We had cooked our tea for dinner with dead bayberry bushes; now we used the chips and bark which the tide had deposited in little parcels on the marsh, having carried water in our dippers from a brook, a quarter of a mile. There was a large patch of samphire turned a bright crimson, very conspicuous, near by on the flat marsh, the more con- spicuous because large and in the midst of the liquid green of the marsh. We sat on some stones which we obtained flat in the marsh till starlight. I had seen in this day’s walk an abundance of Aster cordifolius (but no A. undulatus); also saw A. corymbo- sus, which is a handsome white wood aster; and, very common, what I called A. longifolius, with shorter thick, clasping leaves and growing in drier ground than ours, methinks; also, all along the road, the up-country hard, small, mulberry-shaped high blackberry, and many still holding on. This may be due to the cool air of the Cape. They were quite sweet and good. Vide a specimen. The foliage had but just fairly begun to change. Put up in Gloucester.

Another fair day and wind northwest, but rather warmer. We kept along the road to Rockport, some two miles or more, to a “thundering big ledge”’ by the road, as a man called it; then turned off toward the south shore, at a house with two very large and old pear trees before it. Part of the house was built by a Witham, one of the first settlers, and the place or neighborhood used to be called “the Farms.’ Saw the F. hyemalis flitting along the walls, and it was cool enough for them on this cape. In a marsh by the shore, where was a very broad curving sandy beach, the shore of a cove, found the Ranunculus Cymbalaria, still in bloom, but mostly in fruit. Glawx maritima (?), nearly prostrate, with oblong leaves. Triglochin palustris in fruit. An eleocharis, apparently marine, with lenticular fruit and a wrinkled mitre-shaped beak. Spergu- larva rubra, etc., samphire, etc. The narrow road — where we followed it — wound about big boulders, past small, often bevel-roofed cot- tages where sometimes was a small flag flying for a vane. The number and variety of bevelled roofs on the Cape is surprising. Some are so nearly flat that they re- minded me of the low brows of monkeys. We had already seen a sort of bare rocky ridge, a bare boulder-covered back of the Cape, running northeast- erly from Gloucester toward Rockport and for some three miles quite bare, the eastern extremity of the Cape being wooded. That would bea good place to walk. In this marsh, saw what I thought the solitary tattler, quite tame. Having reached the shore, we sat under the lee of the rocks on the beach, opposite Salt Island. A man was carting seaweed along the shore between us and the water, the leather-apron kind, which trailed from his cart like the tails of oxen, and, when it came between us and the sun, was of a warm purple-brown glow. Half a mile further, beyond a rocky head, we came to another curving sandy beach, with a marsh between it and the Cape on the north. Saw there, in the soft sand, with beach-grass, apparently Juncus Balticus (?), very like but not so stout (!) as Juncus effusus. Met a gunner from Lynn on the beach, who had sev- eral pigeons which he had killed in the woods by the shore. Said that they had been blown off the mainland. Second, also.a kingfisher. Third, what he called the “‘ox- eye,” about size of peetweet but with a short bill and a blackish-brown crescent on breast, and wing above like . peetweet’s, but no broad white mark below. Could it be Charadrius semipalmatus ? Fourth, what he called a sandpiper, very white with a long bill. Was this Tringa arenaria ? Fifth, what I took to bea solitary tattler, but possibly it was the pectoral sandpiper, which I have seen since. On the edge of the beach you see small dunes, with white or fawn-colored sandy sides, crowned with now yellowish smilax and with bayberry bushes. Just before reaching Loblolly Cove, near Thatcher’s Island, sat on a beach composed entirely of small paving-stones lying very loose and deep. We boiled our tea for dinner on the mainland opposite Straitsmouth Island, just this side the middle of Rock- port, under the lee of a boulder, using, as usual, dead bay- berry bushes for fuel. This was, indeed, all we could get. They make a very quick fire, and I noticed that their smoke covered our dippers with a kind of japan which did not crock or come off nearly so much as ordinary soot. We could see the Salvages very plainly, apparently ex- tending north and south, the Main Rock some fifteen or twenty rods long and east-northeast of Straitsmouth Is- land, apparently one and a half or two miles distant, with half-sunken ledges north and south of it, over which the sea was breaking in white foam. The ledges all together half a mile long. We could see from our dining-place Agamenticus, some forty miles distant in the north. Its two sides loomed thus: so that about a third of the whole was ae lifted up, while a small elevation close to it on the east, which afterward was seen to be a part of it, was wholly lifted up. Rockport well deserves its name, — several little rocky harbors protected by a breakwater, the houses at Rock- port Village backing directly on the beach. At Folly Cove, a wild rocky point running north, covered with beach-grass. See now a mountain on the east of Aga- menticus. Isles of Shoals too low to be seen. Probably land at Boar’s Head, seen on the west of Agamenticus, and then the coast all the way from New Hampshire to Cape Ann plainly, Newburyport included and Plum Is- land. Hog Island looks like a high hill on the mainland. It is evident that a discoverer, having got as far west as Agamenticus, off the coast of Maine, would in clear weather discern the coast trending southerly beyond him as far round as Cape Ann, and if he did not wish to be embayed would stand across to Cape Ann, where the Salvages would be the outmost point. At Annisquam we found ourselves in the midst of boulders scattered over bare hills and fields, such as we had seen on the ridge northerly in the morning, 2. ¢., they abound chiefly in the central and northwesterly part of the Cape. This was the most peculiar scenery of the Cape. We struck inland southerly, just before sundown, and boiled our tea with bayberry bushes by a swamp on the hills, in the midst of these great boulders, about half- way to Gloucester, having carried our water a quarter of a mile, from a swamp, spilling a part in threading swamps and getting over rough places. Two oxen feed- ing in the swamp came up to reconnoitre our fire. We could see no house, but hills strewn with boulders, as if they had rained down, on every side, we sitting under a shelving one. When the moon rose, what had appeared like immense boulders half a mile off in the horizon now looked by contrast no larger than nutshells or buri-nut against the moon’s disk, and she was the biggest boulder of all. When we had put out our bayberry fire, we heard a squawk, and, looking up, saw five geese fly low in the twilight over our heads. We then set out to find our way to Gloucester over the hills, and saw the comet very bright in the northwest. After going astray a little in the moonlight, we fell into a road which at length con- ducted us to the town. As we bought our lodging and breakfast, a pound of good ship-bread, which cost seven cents, and six herring, which cost three cents, with sugar and tea, supplied us amply the rest of the two days. The selection of suit- able spots to get our dinner or supper led us into inter- esting scenery, and it was amusing to watch the boiling of our water for tea. There is a scarcity of fresh water on the Cape, so that you must carry your water a good way in a dipper.

What that singular spiny plant, otherwise like chenopodium, which I found on a wharf in Salem? Saw at the East India Marine Hall a bay lynx killed in Danvers July 21st (I think in 1827); another killed in Lynnfield in March, 1832. These skins were, now at any rate, quite light dirty-whitish or white wolfish color, with small pale-brown spots. The animals much larger than I expected. Saw a large fossil turtle, some twenty inches in diameter, with the plates distinct, in a slate- colored stone from western New York; also a sword in its scabbard, found in the road near Concord April 19, 1775, and supposed to have belonged to a British officer. Cape Ann, from Beverly round to Squam, is bristling with little capes, projecting from the main one and similar to it.

A smart white frost last night, which has killed the sweet potato vines and melons. P. M.—Go a-graping up Assabet with some young ladies. The zizania fruit is green yet, but mostly dropped or plucked. Does it fall, or do birds pluck it? The Gen- tana Andrewsti are now in prime at Gentian Shore. Some are turned dark or reddish-purple with age. There is a very red osier-like cornel on the shore by the stone-heaps. Edward Hoar says he found last year Datura Stra- monium in their garden. Add it, then, to our plants. In the evening Mr. Warren brings me a snipe and a pectoral sandpiper. This last, which is a little less than the snipe but with a longer wing, must be much like 7. solitarius, and I may have confounded them. The shaft of the first primary is conspicuously white above. The catbird still mews occasionally, and the chewink is heard faintly. Melvin says he has found the pigeon hawk’s nest here (distinct from partridge hawk’s); also that he sometimes sees the larger yellow-legs here. Goodwin also says the last.

Another smart frost, making dry walking amid the stiffened grass in the morning. The purple grass (Hragrostis pectinacea) done. Perhaps the first smart frost finished its purple. I observe that the seeds of the Panicum sanguinale and filijorme are perhaps half fallen, evidently affected by the late frosts, as chestnuts, etc., will be by later ones; and now is the time, too, when flocks of sparrows begin to scour over the weedy fields, especially in the morning. Methinks they are attracted to some extent by this their harvest of panic seed. The spikes of P. Crus-galli also are partially bare. Evidently the small granivorous birds abound more after these seeds are ripe. ‘The seeds of pigweed are yet apparently quite green. Maybe they are somewhat peculiar for hanging on all winter.