PASSAGES FROM THE AMERICAN NOTE-BOOKS

OF

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE


VOL. I.



Salem, June 15, 1835.--A walk down to the Juniper. The shore of the coves
strewn with bunches of sea-weed, driven in by recent winds. Eel-grass,
rolled and bundled up, and entangled with it,--large marine vegetables,
of an olive-color, with round, slender, snake-like stalks, four or five
feet long, and nearly two feet broad: these are the herbage of the deep
sea. Shoals of fishes, at a little distance from the shore, discernible
by their fins out of water. Among the heaps of sea-weed there were
sometimes small pieces of painted wood, bark, and other driftage. On the
shore, with pebbles of granite, there were round or oval pieces of brick,
which the waves had rolled about till they resembled a natural mineral.
Huge stones tossed about, in every variety of confusion, some shagged all
over with sea-weed, others only partly covered, others bare. The old
ten-gun battery, at the outer angle of the Juniper, very verdant, and
besprinkled with white-weed, clover, and buttercups. The juniper-trees
are very aged and decayed and moss-grown. The grass about the hospital
is rank, being trodden, probably, by nobody but myself. There is a
representation of a vessel under sail, cut with a penknife, on the corner
of the house.