the Thoreau Log.
9 October 1849.

Thoreau writes in Cape Cod:

  Wishing to get a better view than I had yet had of the ocean, which, we are told, covers more than two thirds of the globe, but of which a man who lives few miles inland may never see any trace, more than of another world, I made a visit to Cape Cod in October 1849, another the succeeding June and another to Truro in July 1855; the first and last time with a single companion [William Ellery Channing], the second alone . . .

  We left Concord, Massachusetts, on Tuesday, October 9th, 1849. On reaching Boston, we found that the Provincetown steamer, which should have got in the day before, had not yet arrived, on account of a violent storm; and, as we noticed in the streets a handbill headed, “Death! one hundred and forty-five lives lost at Cohasset,” we decided to go by way of Cohasset . . . The brig St. John, from Galway, Ireland, laden with emigrants, was wrecked on Sunday morning; It was now Tuesday morning, and the sea was still breaking violent on the rocks.

(Cape Cod, 3-18)

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