154 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 



Bahamas, floated north by the Gulf Stream, 

 shunted from its warm edge into the chill of the 

 Labrador current and drawn thence by the Co- 

 hasset tides. Beside this lies a cask ripped from 

 the deck of a Gloucester fishing schooner that 

 sought the halibut even on the chill banks that lie 

 just south of the point of Greenland. And so 

 they come, chips from a Maine shipyard, wreck- 

 age from a Bermuda reef, and a thousand tiny 

 things picked up at points between. 



But the tides bring to the marsh and the island 

 in it, to all shores that they touch here on our 

 Atlantic seaboard, more than this. They bear 

 deep in their emerald hearts, generated in their 

 cool, clear depths, a rich vivific principle that 

 bears vigor to all that they touch and sends rich 

 emanations forth on the air beyond. Today on 

 the inland hills and landbound pastures the sun 

 beat in sullen insolence and the wind from the 

 west scorched and wilted the life in all things. 

 The same wind, coming to me across two miles 

 of salt marsh, had in its cool, salty aroma a life- 

 giving principle that set the pulse to bounding 

 and renewed vigor. It had gathered up from the 

 marsh this tonic of the tides, this elixir vitae 

 which all the doctors of the world have sought 



