We found some large clams of the species _Mactra solidissima_, which
the storm had torn up from the bottom, and cast ashore. I selected one
of the largest, about six inches in length, and carried it along,
thinking to try an experiment on it. We soon after met a wrecker, with
a grapple and a rope, who said that he was looking for tow cloth, which
had made part of the cargo of the ship _Franklin_, which was wrecked
here in the spring, at which time nine or ten lives were lost. The
reader may remember this wreck, from the circumstance that a letter was
found in the captain’s valise, which washed ashore, directing him to
wreck the vessel before he got to America, and from the trial which
took place in consequence. The wrecker said that tow cloth was still
cast up in such storms as this. He also told us that the clam which I
had was the sea-clam, or hen, and was good to eat. We took our nooning
under a sand-hill, covered with beach-grass, in a dreary little hollow,
on the top of the bank, while it alternately rained and shined. There,
having reduced some damp drift-wood, which I had picked up on the
shore, to shavings with my knife, I kindled a fire with a match and
some paper and cooked my clam on the embers for my dinner; for
breakfast was commonly the only meal which I took in a house on this
excursion. When the clam was done, one valve held the meat and the
other the liquor. Though it was very tough, I found it sweet and
savory, and ate _the whole_ with a relish. Indeed, with the addition of
a cracker or two, it would have been a bountiful dinner. I noticed that
the shells were such as I had seen in the sugar-kit at home. Tied to a
stick, they formerly made the Indian’s hoe hereabouts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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