Cape Cod
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~76,200 words · 362 passages
Cite this work
- APAHenry David Thoreau. (n.d.). Cape Cod. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thoreau/cape-cod
- MLAHenry David Thoreau. Cape Cod. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thoreau/cape-cod.
- ChicagoHenry David Thoreau. Cape Cod. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thoreau/cape-cod.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The book Thoreau made out of four journeys to Cape Cod between 1849 and 1857: the bleakest and the funniest of his.
Context and history
It opens with a scene that settles the tone: the day he arrives, a ship of Irish emigrants has just been wrecked and the beach is full of bodies that people are identifying. From there Thoreau walks the outer shore, the one facing the open ocean, and writes about the sand, the ferocity of the sea, the wrecks, the inhabitants — fishermen, oystermen, an old man who tells him magnificent lies — and the vegetation that holds on where there is no soil. The nature here is not the nature of 'Walden': it consoles nobody and is not made for us. It was published posthumously in 1865, and it is the book where his dry humour is most visible.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
absorb the greater part of the old clothes of the Cape, leaving but few rags for the pedlers. The wind-mills on the hills,—large weather-stained octagonal structures,—and the salt-works scattered all along the shore, with their long rows of vats resting on piles driven into the marsh, their low, turtle-like roofs, and their slighter wind-mills, were novel and interesting objects to an inlander. The sand by the road-side was partially covered with bunches of a moss-like plant, _Hudsonia tomentosa_, which a woman in the stage told us was called “poverty-grass,” because it grew where nothing else would. I was struck by the pleasant equality which reigned among the stage company, and their broad and invulnerable good-humor. They were what is called free and easy, and met one another to advantage, as men who had at length learned how to live. They appeared to know each other when they were strangers, they were so simple and downright. They were well met, in an unusual sense, that is, they met as well as they could meet, and did not seem to be troubled with any impediment. They were not afraid nor ashamed of one another, but were contented to make just such a company as the ingredients allowed. It was evident that the same foolish respect was not here claimed for mere wealth and station that is in many parts of New England; yet some of them were the “first people,” as they are called, of the various towns through which we passed. Retired sea-captains, in easy circumstances, who talked of farming as sea-captains are wont; an erect, respectable, and trustworthy-looking man, in his wrapper, some of the salt of the earth, who had formerly been the salt of the sea; or a more courtly gentleman, who, perchance, had been a representative to the General Court in his day; or a broad, red-faced Cape Cod man, who had seen too many storms to be easily irritated; or a fisherman’s wife, who had been waiting a week for a coaster to leave Boston, and had at…