Thoreau Country: Location Note
Thoreau's journals tell of this December 27-29, 1854 trip to Nantucket. He spent the night with Capt. Edward W. Gardner and listened to yarns. Below is a painting of Fair Street in the town of Nantucket done about 1890 by Mina Keyes Goddard (see, for other Goddard Nantucket paintings, <http://home.earthlink.net/~steveells>).
Thoreau went across the island to the fishing hamlet of Siasconset with the Captain in his buggy. Captain Gardner was extensively engaged in raising pines and this interested Thoreau. "These plantations must very soon change the aspect of the island," Thoreau wrote. Otherwise there was not a tree to be seen except around houses and in the swamps. "This island must look exactly like a prairie, except that the view in clear weather is bounded by the sea." The barrenness and spaciousness of old Nantucket can be seen in the photo (below):
This photo of the moors and the Marconi wireless station was taken about 1904 from the vicinity of Siasconset and Sankaty light. The photo looks west towards the town of Nantucket and its harbor, which are visible miles away.
In his journals, Thoreau wrote about all sorts of island topics and anecdotes: e.g., Gardner showed Thoreau the house of a singular old hermit, who for thirty years had thought only about genealogy. When the hermit went out one day, Captain Gardner helped clean up his house and they took out three barrels of dirt.
That evening, Thoreau delivered an early version of the lecture which came to be known as "Life without Principle." See, Don Jordan, "Thoreau's Nantucket Lecture." Thoreau Society Bulletin 166 (Winter, 1984): 1-3, which discusses Thoreau's lecture "What Shall It Profit?" before the Nantucket Athenaeum on Thursday evening, 28 December l854, and Nantucket Inquirer, 1 January 1855, p. 2, cols. 2-3; rpt.
Thoreau returned to the mainland through the fog--the boat "stopped and sounded many times" and listened for a locomotive whistle to help navigate.
[Note by Stephen Ells, February 8, 2002.
His Thoreau research page is at
<http://homepage.mac.com/sfe/henry/index.html>.