13 October 1851 – 19 October 1851

Down the railroad before sunrise. A freight-train in the Deep Cut. The sun rising over the woods. When the vapor from the engine rose above the woods, the level rays of the rising sun fell on it. It presented the same redness, —morning red, — inclining to saffron, which the clouds in the eastern horizon do. There was but little wind this morning, yet I heard the telegraph harp. It does not require a strong wind to wake its strings; it depends more on its direction and the tension of the wire apparently. A gentle but steady breeze will often call forth its finest strains, when a strong but unsteady gale, blowing at the wrong angle withal, fails to elicit any melodious sound. In the psychological world there are phenomena analogous to what zoologists call alternate reproduction, in which it reauires several generations unlike each other to evolve the perfect animal. Some men’s lives are but an aspiration, a yearning toward a higher state, and they are wholly misapprehended, until they are re- ferred to, or traced through, all their metamorphoses. We cannot pronounce upon a man’s intellectual and moral state until we foresee what metamorphosis it is preparing him for. It is said that “the working bees . . . are barren females. ‘The attributes of their sex . . . seem to con- sist only in their solicitude for the welfare of the new generation, of which they are the natural guardians, but not the parents.” (Agassiz and Gould.*) This phe- nomenon is paralleled in man by maiden aunts and bachelor uncles, who perform a similar function. “'The muskrat,”’ according to Agassiz and Gould, “is found from the mouth of Mackenzie’s River to Florida.” It is moreover of a type peculiar to temperate America. He is a native American surely. He neither dies of con- sumption in New England nor of fever and ague at the South and West. Thoroughly acclimated and natural- ized. “The hyenas, wild-boars, and rhinoceroses of the Cape of Good Hope have no analogues on the American continent.” At the last menagerie I visited they told me that one of the hyenas came from South America! There is something significant and interesting in the fact that the fauna of Europe and that of the United States are very similar, pointing to the fitness of this country for the settlement of Europeans. They say, “There are . . . many species of animals whose numbers are daily diminishing, and whose ex- tinction may be foreseen; as the Canada deer (Wapiti), the Ibex of the Alps, the Liammergeyer, the bison, the beaver, the wild turkey, etc.’’ With these, of course, is to be associated the Indian. They say that the house-fly has followed man in his migrations. One would say that the Yankee belonged properly to the northern temperate fauna, the region of the pines.

Wednesday. 8.30 a. mM. — Up the river in a boat to Pelham’s Pond with W. E. C. (But first a neighbor sent in a girl to inquire if knew where worm-seed grew, otherwise called “ Jerusalem- oak” (so said the recipe which she brought cut out of a newspaper), for her mistress’s hen had the “gapes.”’ But I answered that this was a Southern plant and [I] knew not where it was to be had. Referred her to the poultry book. Also the next proprietor commenced stoning and settling down the stone for a new well, an operation which I wished to witness, purely beautiful, simple, and necessary. ‘The stones laid on‘a wheel, and continually added to above as it is settled down by dig- ging under the wheel. Also Goodwin, with a partridge and a stout mess of large pickerel, applied to me to dis- pose of a mud turtle which he had found moving the mud in a ditch. Some men will be in the way to see such movements. ) The muskrat-houses appear now for the most part to be finished. Some, it is true, are still rising. They line the river all the way. Some are as big as small hay- cocks. The river is still quite low, though a foot or more higher than when I was last on it. There is quite a wind, and the sky is full of flitting clouds, so that sky and water are quite unlike that warm, bright, transpar- ent day when I last sailed on the river, when the surface was of such oily smoothness. You could not now study the river bottom for the black waves and the streaks of foam. When the sun shines brightest to-day, its pyrami- dal-shaped sheen (when for a short time we are look- ing up-stream, for we row) is dazzling and blinding. It is pleasant to hear the sound of the waves and feel the surging of the boat, — an inspiriting sound, as if you were bound on adventures. It is delightful to be tossed about in such a harmless storm, and see the waves look so an- gry and black. We see objects on shore —trees, etc., — much better from the boat, — from a low point of view. It brings them against the sky, into a novel point of view at least. The otherwise low on the meadows, as well as the hills, is conspicuous. I perceive that the bul- rushes are nibbled along the shore, as if they had been cut by a scythe, yet in such positions as no mower could have reached, even outside the flags. Probably the muskrat was the mower, — for his houses. In this cool sunlight, Fair Haven Hill shows to advantage. Every rock and shrub and protuberance has justice done it, the sun shining at [an] angle on the hill and giving each a shadow. ‘The hills have a hard and distinct out- line, and I see into their very texture. On Fair Haven I see the sunlit light-green grass in the hollows where snow makes water sometimes, and on the russet slopes. Cut three white pine boughs opposite Fair Haven, and set them up in the bow of our boat for a sail. It was pleasant [to] hear the water begin to ripple under the prow, telling of our easy progress. We thus without a tack made the south side of Fair Haven, then threw our sails overboard, and the moment after mistook them for green bushes or weeds which had sprung from the bottom unusually far from shore. Then to hear the wind sough in your sail, — that is to be a sailor and hear a land sound. The grayish-whitish mikania, all fuzzy, covers the endless button-bushes, which are now bare of leaves. Observed the verification of the Scripture saying “as a dog returneth to his vomit.” Our black pup, sole passenger in the stern, perhaps made seasick, vomited, then cleaned the boat again most faithfully and with a bright eye, licking his chops and looking round for more. We comment on the boats of different patterns, — dories (?), punts, bread-troughs, flatirons, etc., etc., — which we pass, the prevailing our genuine dead-river boats, not to be matched by Boston carpenters. One farmer blacksmith whom we know, whose boat we pass in Sudbury, has got a horseshoe nailed about the scull- ing-hole; — keeps off the witches too? The water carriages of various patterns and in various conditions, — some for pleasure (against the gentleman’s seat’); some for ducking, small and portable; some for honest fishing, broad and leaky but not cranky; some with spearing fixtures; some stout and square-endish for hay boats; one canal-boat or mud-scow in the weeds, not worth getting down the stream, like some vast pike that could swallow all the rest, proper craft for our river. In some places in the meadows opposite Bound Rock, the river seemed to have come to an end, it was so narrow suddenly. After getting in sight of Sherman’s Bridge, counted nineteen birches on the right-hand shore in one whirl. Now commenced the remarkable meandering of the river, so that we seemed for some [time] to be now run- ning up, then running down parallel with a long, low hill, tacking over the meadow in spite of ourselves. Landed at Sherman’s Bridge. An apple tree, made scrubby by being browsed by cows. Through what early hardships it may attain to bear a sweet fruit! * No wonder it is prompted to grow thorns at last, to defend itself from such foes.” ‘The pup nibbles clams, or plays with a bone no matter how dry. Thus the dog can be taken on a river voyage, but the cat cannot. She is too set in her ways. Now again for the Great Meadows. What mean- dering! ‘The Serpentine, our river should be called. What makes the river love to delay here? Here come to study the law of meandering. We see the vast meadow studded with haycocks. We suspect that we have got to visit them all. It proves even so. Now we run down one haycock, now another. The distance made is fre- quently not more than a third the distance gone. Be- tween Sherman’s Bridge and Causeway Bridge is about a mile and three quarters in a straight line, but we judged that we went more than three miles. Here the “pipes” (at first) line the shore, and muskrat-houses still. A duck (a loon?) sails within gunshot, unwilling to fly; also a stake-driver (Ardea minor) rises with pro- minent breast or throat bone, as if badly loaded, his ship. Now no button-bushes line the stream, the change- able (?) stream; no rocks exist; the shores are lined with, first, in the water, still green polygonum, then wide fields of dead pontederia, then great bulrushes, then various reeds, sedges, or tall grasses, also dead thalictrum(?),—or is it cicuta? Just this side the causeway bridges a field, like a tall corn-field, of tall rus- tling reeds (?), ten feet high with broadish leaves and large, now seedy tufts, standing amid the button-bushes and great bulrushes.*. [ remember to have seen none elsewhere in this vicinity, unless at Fresh Pond, and there are they not straighter? Also, just beyond the bridges, very tall flags from six to eight feet high, leaves like the cat-tail but no tail. What are they?? We pass under two bridges above the Causeway Bridge. After passing under the first one of these two, — at the mouth of Larnum Brook, which is fed from Blandford’s Pond, comes from Marlborough through Mill Village, and has a branch, Hop Brook, from south of Nobscot, — we see Nobscot, very handsome in a purplish atmosphere in the west, over a very deep meadow, which makes far up. A good way to skate to Nobscot, or within a mile or two. To see a distant hill from the surface of water over a low and very broad meadow, much better than to see it from another hill. This perhaps the most novel and so memorable prospect we got. Walked across half a mile to Pelham’s Pond, whose waves were dashing quite grandly. A house near, with two grand elms in front. I have seen other elms in Wayland. This pond a good point to skate to in winter, when it is easily accessible. Now we should have to draw our boat. On the return, as in going, we expended nearly as much time and labor in counteracting the boat’s ten- dency to whirl round, it is so miserably built. Now and then, — aye, aye, almost an everlasting now, — it will take the bits in its mouth and go round in spite of us, though we row on one side only, for the wind fills the after part of the boat, which is nearly out of water, and we therefore get along best and fastest when the wind is strong and dead ahead. ‘That’s the kind of wind we advertise to race in. To row a boat thus all the day, with an hour’s intermission, making fishes of ourselves as it were, put- ting on these long fins, realizing the finny life! Surely oars and paddles are but the fins which a man may use. The very pads stand perpendicular (on their edges) before this wind, — which appears to have worked more to the north, — showing their red under sides. The muskrats have exposed the clamshells to us in heaps all along the shore; else most [would] not know that a clam existed. If it were not for muskrats, how little would the fisherman see or know of fresh-water clamshells or clams! In the Great Meadows again the loon (?) rises, and again alights, and a heron (?) too flies sluggishly away, with vast wings, and small ducks which seem to have no tails, but their wings set quite aft. The crows ashore are making an ado, perchance about some carrion. We taste some swamp white oak acorns at the south end of Bound Rock Meadow. The sun.sets when we are off Israel Rice’s. A few golden coppery clouds, intensely glowing, like fishes in some molten metal of the sky, and then the small scat- tered clouds grow blue-black above, or one half, and reddish or pink the other half, and after a short twilight the night sets in. We think it is pleasantest to be on the water at this hour. We row across Fair Haven in the thickening twilight and far below it, steadily and with- out speaking. As the night draws on her veil, the shores retreat; we only keep in the middle of this low stream of light; we know not whether we float in the air or in the lower regions. We seem to recede from the trees on shore or the island very slowly, and yet a few reaches make all our voyage. Nature has divided it agreeably into reaches. The reflections of the stars in the water are dim and elongated like the zodiacal light straight down into the depths, but no mist rises to-night. It is pleasant not to get home till after dark, — to steer by the lights of the villagers. The lamps in the houses twinkle now like stars; they shine doubly bright. Rowed about twenty-four miles, going and coming. In a straight line it would be fifteen and one half.

The new moon, seen by day, reminds me of a poet’s cheese. Surveying for Loring to-day. Saw the Indian Ditch, so called. A plant newly leaving out, a shrub; looks somewhat like shad blossom. 'To-night the spearers are out again.

Surveying for Loring. A severe frost this morning, which puts [us] one remove further from summer.

The Indian (?) Ditch crosses the road be- yond Loring’s, running south seven and one half west, or within about two and a half degrees of the true me- ridian. According to Stephen Hosmer’s plan of ‘Thomas Jones’s woodland, made in 1766, the ditch where Derby and Loring bound on it must be about eighty-four rods from old town line. To the northern voyager who does not see the sun for three months, night is expanded into winter, and day into summer. Observed to-day on the edge of a wood-lot of Lor- ing’s, where his shrub oaks bounded on a neighbor’s small pitch pines, which grew very close together, that the line of separation was remarkably straight and dis- tinct, neither a shrub oak nor a pine passing its limit, the ground where the pines grew having apparently been cultivated so far, and its edges defined by the plow. A surveyor must be curious in studying the wounds of trees, to distinguish a natural disease or scar from the “blazing” of an axe. Has the aspen (?) poplar any more of a red heart than the other? The powder man does not want the red- ° hearted. Even this poor wood has its use. Observed an oak, —a red or black, — at a pigeon- place, whose top limbs were cut off perhaps a month ago; the leaves had dried a sort of snuff-yellow and rather glossy.