WILD PASTURES 



tinually giving up oxygen, and this with 

 the humic acid of the mud bottom will 

 soon scatter these disfigurations in scales 

 of brown oxide. But all these solvent 

 forces, acting through two centuries, 

 have had little effect on the stumps of 

 Stumpy Cove. 



The heart-wood is still sound, their 

 interlaced roots tell the story of what 

 happened on the spot in the rich muck 

 of the swamp, as Stumpy Cove was 

 then, before Myles Standish had set foot 

 on Plymouth Rock or the first white 

 man had spied inland from the summit 

 of Blue Hill. For the pond as it is now 

 is only about a hundred years old. For 

 a hundred years before that it was a 

 meadow, flowed occasionally by the 

 farmers of the region about it. 



Before that Stumpy Cove was a great 

 white-cedar swamp and the great white 

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