82 
CAPE COD. 
which were pastured there, and this colt among them^ 
being frightened by it, and endeavoring in the dark to 
cross the passage which separated them from the neigh¬ 
boring beach, and which was then fordable at low tide, 
were all swept out to sea and drowned. I observed that 
many horses were still turned out to pasture all summer 
on the islands and beaches in Wellfleet, Eastham, and 
Orleans, as a kind of common. He also described the 
killing of what he called “ wild hens ” here, after they 
had gone to roost in the woods, when he was a boy. 
Perhaps they were “Prairie hens” (pinnated grouse). 
He liked the Beach-pea (Lathyrus maritimus ), cooked 
green, as well as the cultivated. Pie had seen it grow¬ 
ing very abundantly in Newfoundland, where also the 
inhabitants ate them, but he had never been able to ob¬ 
tain any ripe for seed. We read, under the head of 
Chatham, that “ in 1555, during a time of great scarcity, 
the people about Orford, in Sussex (England) were pre¬ 
served from perishing by eating the seeds of this plant, 
which grew there in great abundance on the sea-coast. 
Cows, horses, sheep, and goats eat it.” But the writer 
w^ho quoted this could not learn that they had ever been 
used in Barnstable County. 
He had been a voyager, then? O, he had been 
about the world in his day. He once considered him¬ 
self a pilot for all our coast; but now they had changed 
the names so he might be bothered. 
He gave us to taste what he called the Summer Sweet¬ 
ing, a pleasant apple which he raised, and frequently 
grafted from, but had never seen growing elsewhere, ex¬ 
cept once, — three trees on Newfoundland, or at the Bay 
of Chaleur, I forget which, as he was sailing by. 1 Ic 
was sure that he could tell the tree at a distance. 
