66 
CAPE COD. 
the spring, at which time nine or ten lives were lost. 
The reader may remember this wreck, from the circum¬ 
stance that a letter was found in the captain’s valise, 
which washed ashore, directing him to wreck the vessel 
before he got to America, and from the trial which took 
place in consequence. The wrecker said that tow cloth 
was still cast up in such storms as this. He also told 
us that the clam which I had was the sea-clam, or hen, 
and was good to eat. We took our nooning under a 
sand-hill, covered with beach-grass, in a dreary little 
hollow, on the top of the bank, while it alternately 
rained and shined. There, having reduced some damp 
drift-wood, which I had picked up on the shore, to shav¬ 
ings with my knife, I kindled a fire with a match and 
some paper, and cooked my clam on the embers for 
my dinner; for breakfast was commonly the only meal 
which I took in a house on this excursion. When 
the clam was done, one valve held the meat and the 
other the liquor. Though it was very tough, I found 
it sweet and savory, and ate the whole with a relish. 
Indeed, with the addition of a cracker or two, it would 
have been a bountiful dinner. I noticed that the shells 
were such as I had seen in the sugar-kit at home. 
Tied to a stick, they formerly made the Indian’s hoe 
hereabouts. 
At length, by mid-afternoon, after we had had two 
or three rainbows over the sea, the showers ceased, and 
the heavens gradually cleared up, though the wind still 
blowed as hard and the breakers ran as high as be¬ 
fore. Keeping on, we soon after came to a Charity- 
house, which we looked into to see how the shipwrecked 
mariner might fare. Far away in some desolate hollow 
by the sea-side, just within the bank, stands a lonely 
