88 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES 



town in late August, if they would not have 

 stayed. Nowhere in New England would they 

 have found the late summer huckleberries sweeter 

 or more plentiful, nowhere the beach plums 

 rounder or more prolific. Here was to be gath- 

 ered in handfuls bayberry wax for their candles, 

 and its aromatic incense floats over the Prov- 

 incetown hills to-day as rich and enticing as 

 then. There is little hope of fertility in the sand 

 banks, to be sure, yet in the cosy hollows between 

 these the homesteaders of to-day plant corn and 

 beans, pumpkins and peas, and their gardens seem 

 as luxuriant and productive as any that one might 

 find in Plymouth County. The native trees of 

 the place seem dwarfed, as I have said. But in 

 the town itself are willows and silver-leafed pop- 

 lars, planted by later pilgrims, which have reached 

 great size, a willow in particular in the older part 

 of the town being at least five feet — I would 

 readily believe it is six — in diameter. There 

 must be fertility somewhere to grow an im- 

 migrant to such girth. 



Here too, rioting through the old-time flower 

 gardens and out of them, dancing and gossiping 



