THE PLAINS OF NAUSET. 
35 
[he sand, and the rareness of frosts. A miller, who was 
sharpening his stones, told me that, forty years ago, he 
had been to a husking here, where five hundred bushels 
were husked in one evening, and the corn was piled six 
feet high or more, in the midst, but now, fifteen or 
eighteen bushels to an acre were an average yield. I 
never saw fields of such puny and unpromising looking 
com, as in this town. Probably the inhabitants are con¬ 
tented with small crops from a great surface easily 
cultivated. It is not always the most fertile land that is 
the most profitable, and this sand may repay cultivation, 
as well as the fertile bottoms of the West. It is said, 
moreover, that the vegetables raised in the sand, without 
manure, are remarkably sweet, the pumpkins especially, 
though when their seed is planted in the interior they 
soon degenerate. I can testify that the vegetables here, 
when they succeed at all, look remarkably green and 
healthy, though perhaps it is partly by contrast with the 
sand. Yet the inhabitants of the Cape towns, generally, 
do not raise their own meal or pork. Their gardens are 
commonly little patches, that have been redeemed from 
the edges of the marshes and swamps. 
All the morning we had heard the sea roar on the 
eastern shore, which was several miles distant; for it 
still felt the effects of the storm in which the St. John 
was wrecked, — though a school-boy, whom we overtook, 
hardly knew what we meant, his ears were so used to it. 
He would have more plainly heard the same sound in 
a shell. It was a very inspiriting sound to walk by, fill¬ 
ing the whole air, that of the sea dashing against the 
land, heard several miles inland. Instead of having a 
dog to growl before your door, to have an Atlantic Ocean 
to growl for a whole Cape ! On the whole, we were glad 
