84 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 



into huckleberry. That Smith should have 

 classed the Cape huckleberries as ''such trash" is 

 proper cause for a riot. 



Two and a half centuries later came Thoreau, 

 the very prince of explorers, for he can take one 

 over well trodden ways and through familiar 

 fields and show him India and the Arctic regions. 

 Patagonia and Panama in one sweeping glance 

 along a sand hill. Cape Cod was as full of ro- 

 mance of remote regions as was Concord. He, 

 too, notes the mirage. "Objects on the beach," 

 he says, ''whether men or inanimate things, look 

 not only exceedingly grotesque, but much larger 

 and more wonderful than they actually are. 

 Later, when approaching the seashore several de- 

 grees south of this, I saw before me, seemingly 

 half a mile distant, what appeared like bold and 

 rugged cliffs on the beach fifteen feet high and 

 whitened by the sun and waves ; but after a few 

 steps it proved to be low heaps of rags — part of 

 the cargo of a wrecked vessel — scarcely more 

 than a foot in height." Thoreau felt the eerie 

 strangeness of beach and sand dunes as all ex- 

 plorers have, and 'he noted, too, the characteristics 

 of the sand and its vegetation and of the inhabi- 

 tants with a humorous minuteness. Writing of 



