THE SEA AND THE DESERT. 
1G9 
make of getting their dinners, and how universally shift¬ 
lessness and a grovelling taste take refuge in a merely 
ant-like industry. Better go without your dinner, I 
thought, than be thus everlastingly fishing for it like a 
cormorant. Of course, viewed from the shore^ our pur¬ 
suits in the country appear not a whit less frivolous. 
I once sailed three miles on a mackerel cruise myself. 
It was a Sunday evening after a very warm day 
in which there had been frequent thunder-showers, 
and I had walked along the shore from Cohasset to 
Duxbury. I wished to get over from the last place to 
Clark’s Island, but no boat could stir, they said, at that 
stage of the tide, they being left high on the mud. At 
length I learned that the tavern-keeper, Winsor, was 
going out mackerelling with seven men that evening, and 
would take me. When there had been due delay, we 
one after another straggled down to the shore in a 
leisurely manner, as if waiting for the tide still, and in 
India-rubber boots, or carrying our shoes in our hands, 
waded to the boats, each of the crew bearing an armful 
of wood, and one a bucket of new potatoes besides. 
Then they resolved that each should bring one more 
armful of wood, and that would be enough. They had 
already got a barrel of water, and had some more in the 
schooner. We shoved the boats a dozen rods over the 
mud and water till they floated, then rowing half a mile 
to the vessel climbed aboard, and there we were in a 
mackerel schooner, a fine stout vessel of forty-three tons, 
whose name I forget. The baits were not dry on the 
hooks. There was the mill in which they ground the 
mackerel, and the trough to hold it, and the long-handled 
dipper to cast it overboard with ; and already in the 
harbor we saw the surface rippled with schools of small 
