Here the bank is rapidly washing away. On every side, in Boston Harbor, the evidences of the wasting away of the islands are so obvious and striking that they appear to be wasting faster than they are. You will sometimes see a springing hill, showing by the interrupted arch of its surface against the sky how much space [it] must have occupied where there is now water, as at Point Allerton,—what botanists call premorse.
Hull looks as if it had been two islands, since connected by a beach. I was struck by the gracefully curving and fantastic shore of a small island (Hog Island) inside of Hull,
where everything seemed to be gently lapsing into futurity, as if the inhabitants should bear a ripple
for device on their coat-of-arms, a wave passing over them, with the datura growing on their shores. The wrecks of isles fancifully arranged into a new shore. To see the sea nibbling thus voraciously at the continents![258] A man at the telegraph told me of a white oak pole a foot and a half in diameter, forty feet high, and four feet or more in the rock at Minot’s Ledge, with four guys, which stood only one year. Stone piled up cob-fashion near same place stood eight years.
Hull pretty good land, but bare of trees—only a few cherries for the most part—and mostly uncultivated, being owned by few. I heard the voices of men shouting aboard a vessel half a mile from the shore, which sounded as if they were in a barn in the country, they being between the sails. It was not a sea sound. It was a purely rural sound.[259]
Man needs to know but little more than a lobster in order to catch him in his traps. Here were many lobster traps on the shore. The beds of dry seaweed or eel-grass on the beach remind me of narrow shavings. On the farther hill in Hull, I saw a field full of Canada thistles close up to the fences on all sides, while beyond them there was none. So much for these fields having been subjected to different culture. So a different culture in the case of men brings in different weeds. As are the virtues, so are the vices. Weeds come in with the seeds, though perhaps much more in the manure. Each kind of culture will introduce its own weeds.
I am bothered to walk with those who wish to keep step with me. It is not necessary to keep step with your companion, as some endeavor to do.