Manuscript leaf from Cape Cod by Thoreau, Henry David - 1849

1849. This is a section of Thoreau's working notes from his visit to Cape Cod in 1849, and the text touches on a comparison of land transportation to the expediency of the sea as a means of getting places. At one point, Thoreau muses, "A sleigh is never seen at least it's a great novelty, on the Cape the snow being either absorbed by the sand or blown into drifts." After a paragraph about fences, the manuscript closes on a full sentence about Provincetown Harbor, "which as well as the greater part of the Bay, and an indefinite expanse of the ocean, we overlooked from our perch, is deservedly famous." The published text, which was released posthumously in 1865, varies from this manuscript version—most notably in several sentences describing the lack of sound from carts: the passing of saddle horses make a sound "like a writer sanding his paper copiously." The manuscript shows one area of such erasure in the line about midway down, where Thoreau has sanded away an errant "d" at the end of the word "preserve." One wonders whether this act of eradication caused him to connect the sounds in his imagination.

Single sheet measuring 7 1/2 inches by 9 3/4 inches. In brown ink with pencil annotations and strikethroughs. The leaf is accompanied by a small black & white photographic print showing a beach dune. Faint crease and expertly repaired separation along old horizontal crease with no loss. Fine.