94 
CAPE COD. 
put them out on purpose to have the incense of the ex¬ 
piring snuff. The melting of these berries is said to 
have been first found out bj a surgeon in New England, 
who performed wonderful things with a salve made of 
them.” From the abundance of berries still hanging on 
the bushes, we judged that the inhabitants did not gener¬ 
ally collect them for tallow, though we had seen a piece 
in the house we had just left. I have since made some 
tallow myself. Holding a basket beneath the bare twigs 
in April, I rubbed them together between my hands and 
thus gathered about a quart in twenty minutes, to which 
were added enough to make three pints, and I might 
have gathered them much faster with a suitable rake and 
a large shallow basket. They have little prominences 
like those of an orange all creased in tallow, which also 
fills the interstices down to the stone. The oily part 
rose to the top, making it look like a savory black broth, 
which smelled much like balm or other herb tea. You 
let it cool, then skim joff the tallow from the surface, 
. melt this, again and strain it. I got about a quarter of 
a pound weight from my three pints, and more yet re¬ 
mained within the berries. A small portion cooled in 
the form of small flattish hemispheres, like crystalliza¬ 
tions, the size of a kernel of corn (nuggets I called them 
as I picked them out from amid the berries). Loudon 
says, that cultivated trees are said to yield more wax 
than those that are found wild.” (See Duplessy, Vege- 
taux ResineuXy Yol. II. p. 60.) If you get any pitch 
on your hands in the pine-woods you have only to rub 
some of these berries between your hands to start it off. 
But the ocean was the grand fact there, which made 
us forget both bayberries and men. 
To-day the air was . beautifully clear, and the sea no 
