THE BEACH AGAIl!^. 
105 
it, for the waves repeatedly washed it within cast, but 
they as often took it back. It would have been a lucky 
haul for some poor wrecker, for I have been told that 
one man who paid three or four dollars for a part of the 
wreck of that vessel, sold fifty or sixty dollars’ worth of 
iron out of it. Another, the same who picked up the 
Captain’s valise with the memorable letter in it, showed 
me, growing in his garden, many pear and plum trees 
which washed ashore from her, all nicely tied up and 
labelled, and he said that he might have got five hun¬ 
dred dollars worth ; for a Mr. Bell was importing the 
nucleus of a nursery to be established near Boston. His 
tumip-seed came from the same source. Also valuable 
spars from the same vessel and from the Cactus lay in 
his yard. In short the inhabitants visit the beach to see 
what they have caught as regularly as a fisherman his 
weir or a lumberer his boom; the Cape is their boom. 
I heard of one who had recently picked up twenty bar¬ 
rels of apples in good condition, probably a part of a 
deck load thrown over in a storm. 
Though there are wreck-masters appointed to look 
after valuable property which must be advertised, yet 
undoubtedly a great deal of value is secretly carried off. 
But are we not all wreckers contriving that some treasure 
may be washed up on our beach, that we may secure 
it, and do we not infer the habits of these Nauset and 
Barnegat wreckers, from the common modes of getting a 
living ? 
The sea, vast and wild as it is, bears thus the waste 
and wrecks of human art to its remotest shore. There 
is no telling what it may not vomit up. It lets nothing 
lie ; not even the giant clams which cling to its bottom. 
It is still heaving up the tow-cloth of the Franklin, and 
