Cape Cod

Henry D. Thoreau's trips to Cape Cod were intended, he wrote, to afford "a better view than I had yet had of the ocean". Here, his account of his experiences is presented in its complete form, excluding only the critical apparatus. In the plants, animals, topography, weather, people and human works of Massachusetts' long projection into the Atlantic, Thoreau finds "another world". Encounters with the ocean dominate the book, from the fatal shipwreck of the opening episode to the late reflections on the Pilgrims' Cape Cod landing and reconnaissance. Along the way, Thoreau relates the experiences of fishermen and oystermen, farmers and salvagers, lighthouse-keepers and ship-captains, as well as his own confrontations with the sea as he travels the land's outermost margins.