Printed and Manuscript Americana

The "plains of Nauset', once covered with wood, where in winter the winds howl and the snow blows right merrily in the face of the traveller"

No place, ca. 1849. Single sheet, 9 3/8 x 7 1/2 in. (238 x 190 mm). Autograph manuscript on lined draft paper of a fragment of Thoreau's Cape Cod; 35 lines, approximately 179 words; unsigned. Inlaid; creasing from old folds. In mat with an engraved portrait of Thoreau, and in frame, 17 3/4 x 18 in. (451 x 457 mm).

In full: "These were the 'plains of Nauset', once covered with wood, where in winter the winds howl and the snow blows right merrily in the face of the traveller. As we thus skirted the backside of the towns, for we did not enter any village till we got to Provincetown, we read up their back histories under our umbrellas, with out meeting any body. The old accounts are the richest in topography, which was what we wanted most--Town histories which, at length run into a history of the Church in that place,-that being the only story they have to tell, and conclude by quoting the Latin epitaphs of the old pastors, being written in the good old days of Latin & of Greek. Among other things we read that (second page) I left Concord Tuesday Oct 9th -49 with our companions The next foremoon we reached Sandwich, the first town on the Cape, and as it rained hard with driving mists, and there was no prospect of it holding up soon, we there took the stage for as far as it went that day."

An original autograph manuscript by Henry David Thoreau, being a fragment draft from Chapter III of his posthumously published Cape Cod ("The Plains of Nauset", p. 38).