72 DYER'S HOLLOW. 



of barrenness and drought increased as we 

 advanced, till toward the end, as the last 

 houses were passed, the total appearance of 

 things became subalpine : stunted, weather- 

 beaten trees, and broad patches of bearberry 

 showing at a little distance like beds of 

 mountain cranberry. 



All in all, Dyer's Hollow did not impress 

 me as a promising farming country. Acres 

 and acres of horseweed, pinweed, stone 

 clover, poverty grass, 1 reindeer moss, mouse- 

 ear everlasting, and bearberry ! No wonder 

 such fields do not pay for fencing-stuff. ^ No 

 wonder, either, that the dwellers here should 

 be mariculturalists rather than agricultural- 

 ists. And still, although their best garden 

 is the bay, they have their gardens on land 

 also, the bottoms of the deepest hollows 

 being selected for the purpose, and by 



1 In looking over the town history, I was pleased to 

 come upon a note in defense of this lowly plant, on the 

 score not only of its beauty, but of its usefulness in hold- 

 ing the sand in place ; but, alas, " all men have not 

 faith," and where the historian wrote Hudsonia tomen- 

 tosa the antipathetic compositor set up Hudsonia tor- 

 mentosa. That compositor was a Cape Cod man, I 

 would wager a dinner upon it. "Thus the whirligig of 

 time brings in his revenges," I hear him mutter, as he 

 slips the superfluous consonant into its place. 



