THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN. 
79 
tightly shut in a quahog’s shell. He took up both 
together, carried them to his home, and his wife opening 
the shell with a knife released the duck and cooked the 
quahog. The old man said that the great clams were 
good to eat, but that they always took out a certain part 
which was poisonous, before they cooked them. “ Peo¬ 
ple said it would kill a cat.” I did not tell him that I 
had eaten a large one entire that afternoon, but began 
to think that I was tougher than a cat. He stated that 
pedlers came round there, and sometimes tried to sell the 
women folks a skimmer, but he told them that their wo¬ 
men had got a better skimmer than they could make, in the 
shell of their clams ; it was shaped just right for this 
purpose. — They call them “ skim-alls ” in some places. 
He also said that the sun-squawl was poisonous to handle, 
and when the sailors came across it, they did not meddle 
with it, but heaved it out of their way. I told him that 
I had handled it that afternoon, and had felt no ill effects 
as yet. But he said it made the hands itch, especially 
if they had previously been scratched, or if I put it into 
my bosom, I should find out what it was. 
He informed us that no ice ever formed on the back 
side of the Cape, or not more than once in a century, 
and but little snow lay there, it being either absorbed or 
blown or washed away. Sometimes in winter, when the 
tide was down, the beach was frozen, and afforded a 
hard road up the back side for some thirty miles, as 
smooth as a floor. One winter when he was a boy, he 
and his father ‘‘ took right out into the back side before 
daylight, and walked to Provincetown and back to 
dinner.” 
When I asked what they did with all that barren-look¬ 
ing land, where I saw .so few cultivated fields, — “ Noth¬ 
ing,” he said. 
