Thoreau’s acquaintance John Lewis Russell (1808-1873) of Salem, Massachusetts, was an avid observer of plants and member of several botanical associations. Russell visited Thoreau in late July of 1856. They corresponded occasionally, mostly about the classification and locations of interesting plants.
Tuesday, September 21, 1858 Thoreau met up with John Russell in Salem and they went to the Essex Institute. Thoreau enjoyed looking at the Indian artifacts, bird eggs and plant specimens. The next day they had a pleasant saunter around Cape Ann. From the Journal:
…One mile southeast of the village of Manchester, struck the beach of “musical sand,” just this side of a large, high, rocky point called Eagle Head. This is a curving sandy beach, maybe a third of a mile long by some twelve rods wide.
…We first perceived the sound when we scratched with our umbrella or finger swiftly and forcibly through the sand; also still louder when we struck forcibly with our heels scuffing along. …The sound was not at all musical, nor was it loud. Fishermen might walk over it all their lives, as indeed they have done, without noticing it. R(ussell), who had not heard it, was about right when he said it was like that made by rubbing on wet glass with your fingers. I thought it as much like the sound made in waxing a table as anything. It was a squeaking sound, as of one particle rubbing on another.
…Cooked our supper in a salt marsh some two miles this side of Gloucester, in view of the town. We had cooked our tea for dinner with dead bayberry bushes; now we used the chips and bark which the tide had deposited in little parcels on the marsh, having carried water in our dippers from a brook a quarter of a mile. There was a large patch of samphire turned a bright crimson… the more conspicuos because large and in the midst of the liquid green of the marsh. We sat on some stones which we obtained flat in the marsh till starlight.
…Put up in Gloucester.
Am I batshit nuts or is/was Cape Henry also locally known as 'Duck's Head'? I thought it was a popular local name but I can't find any reference to it online other than the clothing brand which is unrelated. I feel like it was more common when I was growing up, but I can't find anyone else who grew up in VB who remembers it.
https://preview.redd.it/lfcsgtumo2i71.png?width=618&format=png&auto=webp&s=7d35a02f80973d44ae4333666cebebf6e8840ece
Introduced: Sponsor: Rep. Jefferson Van Drew [R-NJ2]
This bill was referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform which will consider it before sending it to the House floor for consideration.
