Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 3

Wednesday. 14th.

Friday. 16th.

Thursday. 15th. CFA

1830-07-15

Thursday. 15th. CFA
Thursday. 15th.

The morning was bright and clear. I arose early this morning in order to fulfil my agreement with Robert Buchanan and my brother, which was to go down on a fishing excursion to Cohasset rocks.1 We started early in the little Carriage, and enjoyed our ride. The place I had never before seen. It is naked, and rocky, exposed to the action of the sea and the wind, much like Nahant, though not quite so much insulated. There is a beach here very similar to that and much longer. Having reached there, we went down to fish and very soon caught enough to make a considerable quantity. The sport for the first two hours was very good. It afterwards became less so until the latter hours of the day when it was nothing but nibbling.

The day was agreeable, but it is so long since I have had any kind of exposure to the Sun, that when we returned to the Hotel to dine, I found that I had got my face very thoroughly scorched, so much so as to be not a little painful. We found at the House,2 my Uncle, the Judge, and Mr. Gourgas, his future son in law, and we joined parties at dinner. The Hotel can scarcely be called first rate, so that it needed a tolerable appetite to get along. With this we were all gifted to a considerable degree. We returned home about sunset. On the whole my time for parties of this kind is a little gone by. The suffering is a 282severe counterbalance to the amusement. I was so fatigued as to wish Edmund Quincy away, when he called to pay a visit.

1.

On “Cohasset rocks,” a favorite fishing area seven or eight miles to the east of Quincy in Massachusetts Bay, and on the long association of the Adams family with the area, see JA, Diary and Autobiography , 4:7.

2.

That is, at the hotel.