THE WELLFLEET OYSTEBMAN. 
89 
well that night. It was probably a windy night foi’ any 
locality, but we could not distinguish the roar which was 
proper to the ocean from that which was due to the 
wind alone. 
The sounds which the ocean makes must be very sig¬ 
nificant and interesting to those who live near it. When 
I was leaving the shore at this place the next summer, 
and had got a quarter of a mile distant, ascending a hill, 
I was startled by a sudden, loud sound from the sea, as 
if a large steamer were letting off steam by the shore, 
so that I caught my breath and felt my blood run cold 
for an instant, and I turned about, expecting to see one 
of the Atlantic steamers thus far out of her course, but 
there was nothing unusual to be seen. There was a low 
bank at the entrance of the Hollow, between me and the 
ocean, and suspecting that I might have risen into 
another stratum of air in ascending the hill, — which had 
wafted to me only the ordinary roar of the sea, — I im¬ 
mediately descended again, to see if I lost hearing of it; 
but, without regard to my ascending or descending, it 
died away in a minute or two, and yet there was scarcely 
any wind all the while. The old man said that this was 
what they called the rut,” a peculiar roar of the sea 
before the wind changes, which, however, he could not 
account for. He thought that he could tell all about the 
weather from the sounds which the sea made. 
Old Josselyn, who came to New England in 1638, has 
it among his weather-signs, that “ the resounding of the 
sea from the shore, and murmuring of the winds in the 
woods, without apparent wind, sheweth wind to follow.” 
Being on another part of the coast one night since 
this, I heard the roar of the surf a mile distant, and the 
inhabitants said it was a sign that the wind would work 
