19 July 1852 – 25 July 1852

P. M.—R. W. E.’s cliff.

To Assabet behind Lee Place. Perceived a small weed, coming up all over the fields, which has an aromatic scent. . Did not at first discover that it was blue-curls. It is a little affecting that the year should be thus solemn and regular, that this weed should have withheld itself so long, biding its appointed time, and now, without fail, be coming up all over the land, still extracting that well-known aroma out of the elements, to adorn its part of the year! I also perceive one of the coarse late fleabanes making itself conspicu- ous. The stinging nettle is not very obvious, methinks. Fields are yellow with grain, being cut and stacked, or still standing. Long rows I see from far, as they were left by the cradle. Elodea Virginica, marsh St. John’s-wort. Dug open a muskrat’s gallery. It was flat on the bot- tom, on sand, and quite regularly arched, and strewn with coarse meadow-grass or flags for a carpet. There was half of a critchicrotch in it. Sunset. — To Cliffs. The clouds, as usual, are arranged with reference to the sunset. The sun is gone. An amber light and golden glow. The first redness is on clouds in the east horizon. As we go by the farmhouses, the chickens are coming home to roost. The horns of the moon only three or four days old look very sharp, still cloud- like, in the midst of a blue space, prepared to shine a brief half-hour before it sets. The redness now begins to fade on eastern clouds, and the western cloudlets glow with burnished copper alloyed with gold. As we approach the woods, we perceive a fresh, cool evening scent from them. The squeak of the nighthawk is heard; the hum of mosquitoes in the woods; the song sparrow and the huckleberry-bird. The bat seen fly- ing over the path. The western clouds grow more red or fiery, by fits and starts, and now, as suddenly, their glory departs, and they remain gray or greenish. We see from the hill darkness infolding the village, col- lected first in the elm-tops. If it were not for the light- colored barns and white houses, it would already be dark there. The redness of the clouds, or the golden or coppery or fuscous glow, appears to endure almost till starlight. Then the cloudlets in the west turn rap- idly dark, the shadow of night advances in the east, and the first stars become visible. Then, and before the western clouds, the light behind them having faded, do or appear to disperse and contract and leave a clear sky, when I invert my head (on Fair Haven Hill), the dark cloudlets in the west horizon are like isles, like the tops of mountains cut off by the gross atmosphere. The pitch pine woods are heavy and dark, but the river is full of golden light and more conspicuous than by day. It is starlight. You see the first star in the southwest, and know not how much earlier you might have seen it had you looked. Now the first whip-poor- will sings hollowly in the dark pitch pine wood on Bear Garden Hill, as if the night had never ceased, and it had never ceased to sing, only now we heard it. And now, when we had thought the day birds gone to roost, the wood thrush takes up the strain. The bullfrog trumps. We sit on the warm rocks (Cliffs). Now is the evening red; late into the night almost it reaches.

4 A. M.— Robins sing as loud as in spring, and the chip-bird breathes in the dawn. The eastern waters reflect the morning redness, and now it fades into saffron. And now the glow concentrates about one point. At this season the northeast horizon is lit up and glows red and saffron, and the sun sets so far northwest that but a small part of the north horizon is left un- illustrated. The meadows are incrusted with low, flat, white, and apparently hard fog. Soon it begins to rise and disperse. Walden Pond and Lake Superior are both uncom- monly high this year.

This morning, though perfectly fair except a haziness in the east, which prevented any splendor, the birds do not sing as yesterday. They appear to make distinctions which we cannot appreciate, and perhaps sing with most animation:on the finest morn- ings. 1 p. M.— Lee’s Bridge, via Conantum; return by Clematis Brook. There men in the fields are at work thus indefatiga- bly, more or less honestly getting bread for men. The writer should be employed with at least equal industry to an analogous though higher end. Flocks of yellow-breasted, russet-backed female bobo- links are seen flitting stragglingly across the meadows. The bobolink loses his song as he loses his colors. Tansy is now conspicuous by the roadsides, covered with small red butterflies. It is not an uninteresting plant. I probably put it down a little too early. Is that a slender bellflower with entire leaves by the Corner road? The green berries of the arum are seen, and the now reddish fruit of the trillium, and the round green- pea-sized green berries of the axil-flowering Solomon’s- seal. Farmers have commenced their meadow-haying. The Aster macrophyllus, large-leafed, in Miles’s Swamp. Is not that the Lysimachia ciliata, or hairy-stalked loosestrife, by the Corner road, not the lanceolata ? Eupatorium sessilifolium now whitish. A strong west wind, saving us from intolerable heat, accompanied by a blue haze, making the mountains invisible. We have . more of the furnace-like heat to-day, after all. The Rhus glabra flowers are covered with bees, large yellowish wasps, and butterflies; they are all alive with them. How much account insects make of some flowers! There are other botanists than I. The Asclepias syriaca is going to seed. Here is a kingfisher frequenting the Corner Brook Pond. They find out such places. Huckleberrying and blackberrying have commenced. The round-leafed sundew. Jonotropa uniflora, Indian- pipe. Solidago Canadensis (?) almost out. Either a smooth Polygonum hydropiperoides or a white P. am- phibium var. terrestre. The spear thistle." Galvwm cir- cezans, wild liquorice, in Baker Farm Swamp.

P. M.—To Annursnack. Herbage is drying up; even weeds are wilted, and the corn rolls. Agriculture is a good school in which to drill a man. Successful farming admits of no idling. Now is the haying season. How active must these men be, all the country over, that they may get through their work in season! A few spoiled windrows, all black and musty, have taught them that they must make hay while the sun shines, and get it in before it rains.

The cardinal-flower probably open to-day. The quails are heard whistling this morning near the village. It would be well if the false preacher of Christianity were always met and balked by a superior, more living and elastic faith in his audience; just as some mission- aries in India are balked by the easiness with which the Hindoos believe every word of the miracles and prophecies, being only surprised ‘that they are so much less wonderful than those of their own scripture, which also they implicitly believe.” 3.30 p. M.— To Goose Pond. Is that slender narrow-leaved weed which is just coming into flower everywhere the Erigeron Canadensis which has spread so far and wide? Not only blue-curls but wormwood, both aromatic herbs, are seen preparing for their reign: the former a few inches high now over all fields, which has reserved itself so long; and most ~ do not recognize it, but you stoop and pluck it and are thankful for the reminiscence of autumn which its aroma affords; the latter, still larger, shows itself on all com- post-heaps and in all gardens, where the chenopodium and amaranth are already rank. I sympathize with weeds perhaps more than with the crop they choke, they express so much vigor. They are the truer crop which the earth more willingly bears. The ground is very dry, the berries are drying up. It is long since we have had any rain to speak of. Gardeners use the watering-pot. The sere and fallen leaves of the birches in many places redden the ground; this heat and drouth have the effect of autumn to some extent. The smooth sumach berries are red. However, there is a short, fresh green on the shorn fields, the aftermath. When the first crop of grass is off, and the aftermath springs, the year has passed its culmination. 7p. M.— To the hills by Abel Hosmer’s. How dusty the roads! Wagons, chaises, loads of barrels, etc., all drive into the dust and are lost. The dust now, looking toward the sun, is white and hand- some like a vapor in the morning, curling round the head and load of the teamster, while his dog walks ob- scured in it under the wagon. Even this dust is to one at a distance an agreeable object. I heard this afternoon the cool water twitter of the goldfinch, and saw the bird. They come with the spring- ing aftermath. It is refreshing as a cup of cold water to a thirsty man to hear them, now only one at a time. Walden has fallen about six inches from where it was a month or so ago. I found, by wading out on the bar, that it had been about six feet higher than the lowest stage I have known. Just after sunrise this morning I noticed Hayden walking beside his team, which was slowly drawing a heavy hewn stone swung under the axle, surrounded by an atmosphere of industry, his day’s work begun. Honest, peaceful industry, conserving the world, which all men respect, which society has consecrated. A re- proach to all sluggards and idlers. Pausing abreast the shoulders of his oxen and half turning round, with a flourish of his merciful whip, while they gained their length on him. And I thought, such is the labor which the American Congress exists to protect, — honest, manly toil. His brow has commenced to sweat. Honest as the day is long. One of the sacred band doing the needful but irksome drudgery. Toil that makes his bread taste sweet, and keeps society sweet. The day went by, and at evening I passed a rich man’s yard, who keeps many servants and foolishly spends much money while he adds nothing to the common stock, and there I saw Hayden’s stone lying beside a whimsical structure intended to adorn this Lord Timothy Dexter’s mansion, and the dignity forthwith departed from Hay- den’s labor, in my eyes.'’ I am frequently invited to survey farms in a rude manner, a very [sic] and insig- nificant labor, though I manage to get more out of it than my employers; but I am never invited by the community to do anything quite worth the while to do. How much of the industry of the boor, traced to the end, is found thus to be subserving some rich man’s foolish enterprise! ‘There is a coarse, boisterous, money- making fellow in the north part of the town who is going to build a bank wall under the hill along the edge of his meadow. The powers have put this into his head to keep him out of mischief, and he wishes me to spend three weeks digging there with him. The result will be that he will perchance get a little more money to hoard, or leave for his heirs to spend fool- ishly when he is dead. Now, if I do this, the commu- nity will commend me as an industrious and hard- working man; but, as I choose to devote myself to labors which yield more real profit, though but little money, they regard me as a loafer. But, as I do not need this police of meaningless labor to regulate me, and do not see anything absolutely praiseworthy in his undertaking, however amusing 1t may be to him, I prefer to finish my education at a different school.’ The corn now forms solid phalanxes, though the ears have not set, and, the sun going down, the shadows, even of corn-fields, falllong over the meadows, and a sweetness comes up from the shaven grass, and the crickets creak more loud in the new-springing grass. Just after sunset I notice that a thin veil of clouds, far in the east, beyond the nearer and heavier dark-gray masses, glows a fine rose-color, like the inner bark or lining of some evergreens. The clear, solemn western sky till far into night was framed by a dark line of clouds with a heavy edge, curving across the northwest sky, at a considerable height, separating the region of day from that of night. Lay on a lichen-covered hill which loeked white in the moonlight.

44.mM.— To Cliffs. This early twitter or breathing of chip-birds in the dawn sounds like something organic in the earth. This is a morning celebrated by birds. Our bluebird sits on the peak of the house and warbles as in the spring, but as he does not now by day. This morning is all the more glorious for a white fog, which, though not universal, is still very extensive over all lowlands, some fifty feet high or more, though there was none at ten last night. There are white cobwebs on the grass. The battalions of the fog are continually on the move. How hardy are cows that lie in the fog chewing the cud all night! They wake up with no stiffness in their limbs. They are indifferent to fogs as frogs to water; like hippopotami, fitted are they to dwell ever on the river bank of this world, fitted to meadows and their vicissitudes. I see where, in pastures of short, firm turf, they have pulled up the grass by the roots, and it lies scattered in small tufts. To anticipate a little, when I return this way I find two farmers loading their cart with dirt, and they are so unmanly as to excuse them- selves to me for working this Sunday morning by say- ing with a serious face that they are burying a cow which died last night after some months of sickness, — which, however, they unthinkingly admit that they killed last night, being the most convenient time for them, and I see that they are now putting more loads of soil over her body to save the manure. How often men will betray their sense of guilt, and hence their actual guilt, by their excuses, where no guilt necessarily was. I remarked that it must be cold for a cow lying in such fogs all night, but one answered, properly, ‘Well, I don’t know how it may be with a sick cow, but it won’t hurt a well critter any.”’ The ditch stonecrop is abundant in the now dry pool by the roadside near Hubbard’s. From Fair Haven Hill, the sun having risen, I see great wreaths of fog far northeast, revealing the course of the river, a noble sight, as it were the river elevated, or rather the ghost of the ample stream that once flowed to ocean between these now distant uplands in another geological period, filling the broad meadows, — the dews saved to the earth by this great Musketaquid condenser, refrigerator. And now the rising sun makes glow with downiest white the ample wreaths, which rise higher than the highest trees. The farmers that lie slumbering on this their day of rest, how little do they know of this stupendous pageant! The bright, fresh aspect of the woods glistening with moisture when the early sun falls on them. (As I came along, the whole earth resounded with the crowing of cocks, from the eastern unto the western horizon, and as I passed a yard, I saw a white rooster on the topmost rail of a fence pouring forth his challenges for destiny to come on. This salutation was travelling round the world; some six hours since had resounded through England, France, and Spain; then the sun passed over a belt of silence where the Atlantic flows, except a clarion here and there from some cooped-up cock upon the waves, till greeted with a general all-hail along the Atlantic shore.) Looking now from the rocks, the fog is a per- fect sea over the great Sudbury meadows in the south- west, commencing at the base of this Cliff and reach- ing to the hills south of Wayland, and further still to Framingham, through which only the tops of the higher hills are seen as islands, great bays of the sea, many miles across, where the largest fleets would find ample room and in which countless farms and farmhouses are immersed. The fog rises highest over the channel of the river and over the ponds in the woods which are thus revealed. I clearly distinguish where White Pond lies by this sign, and various other ponds, methinks, to which I have walked ten or twelve miles distant, and I distinguish the course of the Assabet far in the west and southwest beyond the woods. Every valley is densely packed with the downy vapor. What levelling on a great scale is done thus for the eye! The fog rises to the top of Round Hill in the Sudbury meadows, whose sunburnt yellow grass makes it look like a low sand-bar in the ocean, and I can judge thus pretty accurately what hills are higher than this by their ele- vation above the surface of the fog. Every meadow and watercourse makes an arm of this bay. The primeval banks make thus a channel which only the fogs of late summer and autumn fill. The Wayland hills make a sort of promontory or peninsula like some Nahant. As I look across thither, I think of the sea monsters that swim in that sea and of the wrecks that strew the bottom, many fathom deep, where, in an hour, when this sea dries up, farms will smile and farmhouses be revealed. A certain thrilling vastness or wasteness it now suggests. This is one of those ambro- sial, white, ever-memorable fogs presaging fair weather. It produces the most picturesque and grandest effects as it rises, and travels hither and thither, enveloping and concealing trees and forests and hills. It is lifted up now into quite a little white mountain over Fair Haven Bay, and, even on its skirts, only the tops of the high- est pines are seen above it, and all adown the river it has an uneven outline like a rugged mountain ridge; in one place some rainbow tints, and far, far in the south horizon, near the further verge of the sea (over Saxonville?) it is heaved up into great waves, as if there were breakers there. In the meanwhile the wood thrush and the jay and the robin sing around me here, and birds are heard singing from the midst of the fog. And in one short hour this sea will all evaporate and the sun be reflected from farm windows on its green bottom. It is a rare music, the earliest bee’s hum amid the flowers, revisiting the flower-bells just after sunrise. Of flowers observed before June 11th the following I know or think to be still in blossom, viz. : — Stellaria media Nuphars, both not numerous Shepherd’s-purse rail Ranunculus Purshii ? ? Potentilla Cana- Brora Ribwort densis } Cotton-grass, common Columbine? Rubus Canadensis ? Hedyotis Cistus, very scarce Grasses and sedges Canada snapdragon Sorrel ? ? Potentula argentea, not very Trijolium procumbens, yellow | common? clover Whiteweed, may be here and there Celandine White clover Red clover in favorable moist Meadow-rue, very common Tall crowfoot J and shady places High blackberry? Forget-me-not, common Bitter-sweet, still Hypoxis erecta Yarrow, very common Blue-eyed grass, scarce Knawel ? Sarracenia ? ? ? Utricularia vulgaris ?