n Scituate. In 1770 more than thirty
vessels, principally for mackerel, were fitted out in this one village,
and these vessels not infrequently took a thousand barrels in a season.
In winter they were used for Southern coasting, carrying lumber and fish
and returning with grain and flour. The reason why fishing was so
persistently and exclusively followed in this particular spot is not
hard to seek. The sea yielded a far more profitable and ready crop than
the land, and, besides, had a jealous way of nibbling away at the land
wherever it could. It is estimated that it wastes away from twelve to
fourteen inches of Fourth Cliff every year.

But in spite of the sea's readily accessible crop it was natural that
the "men of Kent" who settled the town should demand some portion of dry
land as well. These men of Kent were not mermen, able to live in and on
the water indefinitely, but decidedly gallant fellows, rather more
courtly than their neighbors, and more polished than the race which
succeeded them. Gilson, Vassal, Hatherly, Cudworth, Tilden, Hoar,
Foster, Stedman, and Hinckley had all been accustomed to the elegancies
of life in England as their names testify. The first land they used was
on the cliffs, for it had already been improved by Indian planting; then
the salt marshes, covered with a natural crop of grass, and then the
mellow intervales near the river. When the sea was forced to the
regretful realization that she could not monopolize the entire attention
of her fellows, she was persuaded to yield up some very excellent
fertilizer in the way of seaweed. But she still nags away at the cliffs
and shore, and proclaims with every flaunting wave and ripple that it is
the water, not the land, which makes Scituate what it is.

And, after all, the sea is right. It is along the shore that one sees
Scituate most truly. Here the characteristic industry of mossing is
still carried on in primitive fashion. The mossers work from dories,
gathering with long-handled rakes the seaweed from the rocks and ledges
along the shore. They bring it in, a heavy, dark, inert mass, all sleek
and dripping, and spread it out to dry in the sun. As it lies there,
neatly arranged on beds of smoothest pebbles, the sun bleaches it. One
can easily differentiate the different days' haul, for the moss which is
just spread out is almost black and that of yesterday is a dark purple.
It shimmers from purple into lavender; the lavender into something lik