1890
June 28
Martha's Vineyard
Drive around the Island.
Clear and warm with fresh S.W. wind in P.M.
  Came to Cottage City last evening and spent the night at the
Island House a wretched hotel in the heart of the town. At daybreak
this morning heard Progue purpurea and Tachycineta bicolor. No song birds.
  Hired a horse and buggy with a young man to drive and started at
7 A.M. for a drive around the island. Our route lay through Vineyard
Haven, Middletown, Chilmark and Tisbury along the north shore, across
the island to W. Tisbury where we stopped for dinner. Thence by a 
straight road to Edgartown thence to Katama on the south shore
and back to Edgartown where my man left me, a total distance
of about 35 miles.
  The country between Cottage City and Tisbury resembles that about
Falmouth being hilly or rolling with brooks and swamps in the
valleys but fewer ponds than on the Cape. It is about equally in
cleared farming land or pastures and woods. The farms are sandy
as a rule but I saw some good fields of English grass. The pastures
are sandy or rock, red with sorrel in many places or overrun with
wild indigo and abounding especially in hollows & along storm walls with
thickets of sweet fern, huckleberry, drawf sumac, smooth sumac, bayberry
and wild roses. A pretty little ping Polygola was common & in full bloom.
  The woods were almost wholly of oaks coccinea & tinctorea most
abundant, alba less so but common, obtusiloba not numerous but
generally distributed. No red oaks and no pines except rigida & a
2-needle foreign species, both apparently planted, in most places at least. 
Along the wood edges and roadsides I saw many hickories & one
Poplar (grandidentata). The oaks grew precisely as they grow on the
Cape in rather stunted & scraggy form, usually 30 to 35 ft. high
but in a few places 40 to 50 feet.
  The growth in the swamps was chiefly of red maple, black alder,
high blueberry, andromeda & dogwood (Rhus venenata) overrun with
greenbriars. I saw withhazel*[witchhazel] on the edge of one swamp.