2 P.M.—Ride to Manomet with [Benjamin Marston] Watson and wife, through Manomet Ponds village, about eight miles. At the mouth of Eel River, the marsh vetchling (Lathyrus palustris), apparently in prime, some done. The curve of the shore on the cast of Plymouth Beach is said to resemble the Bay of Naples. Manomet was quite a hill, over which the road ran in the woods. We struck the shore near Holmes’s Hotel about half a mile north of Manomet Point.

  There I shouldered my pack and took leave of my friends,—who thought it a dreary place to leave me,—and my journey along the shore was begun . . .