200 THE FACE OF THE FIELDS 



We have not sown the clam hitherto: we 

 have only digged ; so that now, for all practical 

 purposes, that is to say, for the old-time, twenty- 

 five-cent, rock-weed clambake, the native, un- 

 cultivated clam has had its day; as the unenter- 

 prising, unbelieving clammers themselves are 

 beginning to see. 



The Providence River fishermen are seeking 

 distant flats for the matchless Providence River 

 clams, bringing them overland from afar by train. 

 So, too, in Massachusetts, the distinguished Dux- 

 bury clams come out of flats that reach all the 

 way from the mouth of the St. Johns, on the 

 down-east coast, to the beds of the Chesapeake. 

 And this, while eight hundred acres of superb 

 clam-lands lie barren in Duxbury town, which 

 might be producing yearly, for the joy of man, 

 eighty thousand bushels of real Duxbury clams ! 



What a clambake Duxbury does not have 

 each year! A multitude of twice eighty thousand 

 might sit down about the steaming stones and be 

 filled. The thought undoes one. And all the more, 

 that Duxbury does not hunger thus alone. For this 

 is the story of fifty other towns in Massachu- 

 setts, from Salisbury down around the Cape to 



