



Produced by Tapio Riikonen and David Widger








PASSAGES FROM THE AMERICAN NOTE-BOOKS, VOLUME I

By Nathaniel Hawthorne




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.

Returning by the almshouse, I stopped a good while to look at the pigs,--a
great herd,--who seemed to be just finishing their suppers.  They
certainly are types of unmitigated sensuality,--some standing in the
trough, in the midst of their own and others' victuals,--some thrusting
their noses deep into the food,--some rubbing their backs against a
post,--some huddled together between sleeping and waking, breathing
hard,--all wallowing about; a great boar swaggering round, and a big sow
waddling along with her huge paunch.  Notwithstanding the unspeakable
defilement with which these strange sensualists spice all their food, they
seem to have a quick and delicate sense of smell.  What
ridiculous-looking animals!  Swift himself could not have imagined
anything nastier than what they practise by the mere impulse of natural
genius.  Yet the Shakers keep their pigs very clean, and with great
advantage.  The legion of devils in the herd of swine,--what a scene it
must have been!

Sunday evening, going by the jail, the setting sun kindled up the windows
most cheerfully; as if there were a bright, comfortable light within its
darksome stone wall.


June 18th.--A walk in North Salem in the decline of yesterday afternoon,
--beautiful weather, bright, sunny, with a western or northwestern wind
just cool enough, and a slight superfluity of heat.  The verdure, both of
trees and grass, is now in its prime, the leaves elastic, all life.  The
grass-fields are plenteously bestrewn with white-weed, large spaces
looking as white as a sheet of snow, at a distance, yet with an
indescribably warmer tinge than snow,--living white, intermixed with
living green.  The hills and hollows beyond the Cold Spring copiously
shaded, principally with oaks of good growth, and some walnut-trees, with
the rich sun brightening in the