Page:Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist (IA literarypilgrima00packrich).pdf/132

 *town in late August, if they would not have stayed. Nowhere in New England would they have found the late summer huckleberries sweeter or more plentiful, nowhere the beach plums rounder or more prolific. Here was to be gathered in handfuls bayberry wax for their candles, and its aromatic incense floats over the Provincetown hills to-day as rich and enticing as then. There is little hope of fertility in the sand banks, to be sure, yet in the cosy hollows between these the homesteaders of to-day plant corn and beans, pumpkins and peas, and their gardens seem as luxuriant and productive as any that one might find in Plymouth County. The native trees of the place seem dwarfed, as I have said. But in the town itself are willows and silver-leafed poplars, planted by later pilgrims, which have reached great size, a willow in particular in the older part of the town being at least five feet—I would readily believe it is six—in diameter. There must be fertility somewhere to grow an immigrant to such girth.

Here too, rioting through the old-time flower gardens and out of them, dancing and gossiping