Cape Cod Henry David Thoreau 9781230284392 Books
Download As PDF : Cape Cod Henry David Thoreau 9781230284392 Books
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 edition. Excerpt ... PROVINCETOWN EARLY the next morning I walked into a fish-house near our hotel, where three or four men were engaged in trundling out the pickled fish on barrows, and spreading them to dry. They told me that a vessel had lately come in from the Banks with forty-four thousand codfish. Timothy Dwight says that, just before he arrived at Provincetown, "a schooner come in from the Great Bank with fifty-six thousand fish, almost one thousand five hundred quintals, taken in a single voyage; the main deck being, on her return, eight inches under water in calm weather." The cod in this fish-house, just out of the pickle, lay packed several feet deep, and three or four men stood on them in cowhide boots, pitching them on to the barrows with an instrument which had a single iron point. One young man, who chewed tobacco, spat on the fish repeatedly. Well, sir, thought I, when that older man sees you he will speak to you. But presently I saw the older man do the same thing. It reminded me of the figs of Smyrna. "How long does it take to cure these fish?" I asked. "Two good drying days, sir," was the answer. I walked across the street again into the hotel to breakfast, and mine host inquired if I would take "hashed fish or beans." I took beans, though they never were a favorite dish of mine. I found next summer that this was still the only alternative proposed here, and the landlord was still ringing the changes on these two words. In the former dish there was a remarkable proportion of fish. As you travel inland the potato predominates. It chanced that I did not taste fresh fish of any kind on the Cape, and I was assured that they were not so much used there as in the country. That is where they are cured, and where, sometimes, travellers are cured...
Cape Cod Henry David Thoreau 9781230284392 Books
As someone who treasures his limited opportunities to get to coastal Maine (about every 3 years or so), his description of the inland areas I have not visited makes me want to add this to my next visit itinerary. For those of us who appreciate his unique prose and detailed description along with environmental commentary well ahead of his time, this was an enjoyable excursion to a time when the unspoiled was already starting to lose out to commercial interests. Of course those who toiled for subsistence wages in the dangerous and unbearable conditions were glad for the opportunities the resources of the woods provided.Product details
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Tags : Cape Cod [Henry David Thoreau] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 edition. Excerpt: ... PROVINCETOWN EARLY the next morning I walked into a fish-house near our hotel,Henry David Thoreau,Cape Cod,TheClassics.us,1230284397,General,HISTORY General,History,History - General History
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Cape Cod Henry David Thoreau 9781230284392 Books Reviews
I have read all the Thoreau books. This one is my favorite. He doesn't wander off into philosophical realms, he wanders into the Maine wilderness with a companion and a native American guide. He really makes you understand what it must have been like to venture into the barely civilized forests of America. His descriptions are rich and sometimes poetic. When he and/or his companions get lost or lose the trails, which they do sometimes, you realize how it must have felt to be in a wilderness without cell phones and GPS tracking devices.
...no doubt about him.
He leaves no grain (of sand) unturned. It has been decades since I first read this work and many years since I have had the pleasure of being at the Cape. All the memories come flooding back through his excellent narrative.
I am glad I took the time to revisit this work, especially that I am older and in less of a hurry.
This hardcover edition from Peninsula Press is unquestionably the best available edition of Thoreau's Cape Cod, for these reasons
1) While all other editions are based on Thoreau's journal entries from only his first three visits to the Cape, this edition includes an epilogue compiling Thoreau's notes from his fourth and final visit, in which he traveled south to Chatham and Monomoy.
2) This is the only edition to translate the many, many Greek and Latin phrases Thoreau includes throughout the work, and it is also the only edition to provide illustrations, maps, and sidenotes in-text.
3) This is the only indexed edition ever created.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for fans of both Cape literature and Thoreau in general.
Most people are familiar with Thoreau through his Walden. Few know perhaps that he didn't stay put in Concord but journeyed to the Maine Woods and elsewhere, and that these travels were formative of his philosophy and ideas. Thoreau believed the Maine wilderness north of Bangor was every bit as wild as the west and other far flung corners of the continent in the 1850s, and here he shows us an incredible panorama of beauty and wonder. You will gain insight into how Native Americans hunted Moose in the mid-19th Century and why Thoreau, a vegetarian, disdained the killing of animals for meat. One of the most sriking passages is his description of the sound of a huge tree falling in the forest in the distance at night.
In Ktaadn, Thoreau defines the essence of wilderness
"Nature was here something savage and awful, though beautiful. I looked with awe at the ground I trod on, to see what the Powers had made there, the form and fashion and material of their work. This was that Earth of which we have heard, made out of Chaos and Old Night. Here was no man's garden, but the unhandselled globe. It was not lawn, nor pasture, nor mead, nor woodland, nor lea, nor arable, nor wast-land. It was the fresh and natural surface of the planet Earth as it was made forever and ever."
You do not need to read The Maine Woods on a wooded island in Maine (as I did) to be captivated and transported by it to a higher and greater sense of wilderness than you may ever have imagined.
I liked the thorough descriptions of the excursions of the vast, wild Maine woods circa 1860. I followed the narrative going back and forth to Google Earth which made it feel as I was "along on the journey".
Anyone whom appreciates the outdoors and nature will gravitate to the reverence in which HDT treats this collection of essays.
This is a comment about the edition rather than the book
I bought this edition based on the review about the very helpful index. Please be careful about what edition you are actually buying. Many of these reviews are about different editions. I bought the BiblioLife paperback book with a picture of the green bicycle on the cover. I just received it and there is NO INDEX.
It looks like the original text from an original printing (with smaller physical dimensions) was photocopied page by page and put into this paperback book. This will do the trick but I am a little disappointed and wish I had bought a different edition.
It is confusing on because when you click "look inside" it shows an index, with a tiny note saying the "look inside" refers to a different edition.
Of the three books I have read by Thoreau (Walden and the Maine Woods being the other two), I enjoyed this one the most. Thoreau's description of the Cape Cod bay and coast are impeccable, and actually make you long to resort there. I would love to re-trace his course from Barnstable to Provincetown, visiting Truro and Wellfleet as I perused through the dunes and cliffs. There is quite a bit of very interesting history in this book as well, and he often cites "Mourt's Relation", a pilgrim document which I have since endeavored to read as well, and found to be very fascinating. Cape Cod is definitely a very worthwhile book to read, especially if you like images of the sea, wind, sand, and coastal weather. I truly enjoyed it very much.
As someone who treasures his limited opportunities to get to coastal Maine (about every 3 years or so), his description of the inland areas I have not visited makes me want to add this to my next visit itinerary. For those of us who appreciate his unique prose and detailed description along with environmental commentary well ahead of his time, this was an enjoyable excursion to a time when the unspoiled was already starting to lose out to commercial interests. Of course those who toiled for subsistence wages in the dangerous and unbearable conditions were glad for the opportunities the resources of the woods provided.
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