62 
CAPE COD. 
that the cows ate it. It cut like cheese; for I took the 
earliest opportunity to sit down and deliberately whittle 
up a fathom or two of it, that I might become more 
intimately acquainted with it, see how it cut, and if it 
were hollow all the way through. The blade looked 
like a broad belt, whose edges had been quilled, or as if 
stretched by hammering, and it was also twisted spirally. 
The extremity was generally worn and ragged from the 
lashing of the waves. A piece of the stem which I 
carried home shrunk to one quarter of its size a week 
afterward, and was completely covered with crystals of 
salt like frost. The reader will excuse my greenness, — 
though it is not sea-greenness, like his, perchance, — for 
I live by a river shore, where this weed does not wash 
up. When we consider in what meadows it grew, and 
how it was raked, and in what kind of hay weather 
got in or out, we may well be curious about it. One 
who is weather-wise has given the following account 
of the matter. 
“ When descends on the Atlantic 
The gigantic 
Storm-wind of the equinox, 
Landward in his wrath he scourges 
The toiling surges, 
Laden with sea-weed from the rocks. 
From Bermuda’s reefs, from edges 
Of sunken ledges. 
On some far-off bright Azore; 
From Bahama and the dashing, 
Silver-flashing 
Surges of San Salvador; 
“From the trembling surf that buries 
The Orkneyan Skerries, 
Answering the hoarse Hebrides; 
And from wrecks and ships and drifting 
Spars, uplifting 
On the desolate rainy seas; 
