78 
CAPE COD. 
Port aux Huistres^^ (Oyster Harbor). In one edi¬ 
tion of his map (1632), the “P, aux Escailles^^ is drawn 
emptying into the same part of the bay, and on the 
map Novi in Ogilby’s America (1670), the 
words “ Port mix Huistres ” are placed against the 
same place. Also William Wood, who left New Eng¬ 
land in 1633, speaks, in his “New England’s Pros¬ 
pect,” published in 1634, of “a great oyster-bank” 
in Charles River, and of another in the Mistick, each 
of which obstructed the navigation of its river. “The 
oysters,” says he, “be great ones in form of a shoe¬ 
horn ; some be a foot long; these breed on certain 
banks that are bare every spring tide. This fish without 
the shell is so big, that it must admit of a division before 
you can well get it into your mouth.” Oysters are still 
found there. (Also, see Thomas Morton’s New English 
Canaan, page 90.) 
Our host told us that the sea-clam, or hen, was not 
easily obtained; it was raked up, but never on the At¬ 
lantic side, only cast ashore there in small quantities in 
storms. The fisherman sometimes wades in water sev¬ 
eral feet deep, and thrusts a pointed stick into the sand 
before him. When this enters between the valves of 
a clam, he closes them on it, and is drawn out. It has 
been known to catch and hold coot and teal which were 
preying on it. I chanced to be on the bank of the 
Acushnet at New Bedford one day since this, watching 
some ducks, when a man informed me that, having let out 
his young ducks to seek their food amid the samphire {Sm 
licornid) and other weeds along the river-side at low tide 
that morning, at length he noticed that one remained sta¬ 
tionary, amid the weeds, something preventing it from 
following the others, and going to it he found its foot 
