20 October 1856 – 26 October 1856

P. M. — To Hill, to look for ground squir- rel nests. The river-banks have now assumed almost their November aspect. The button-bushes are nearly bare. The water is smooth, the sun warm, and the reflections particularly fine and distinct; but there are reflected now, for the most part, only gray twigs and a few sere and curled brown leaves, wool-grass, etc. Land at Hemlocks, in the eddy there, where the white bits of sawdust keep boiling up and down and whirling round as in a pot. Amid the young pitch pines in the pasture behind I notice, as elsewhere of late, a great many brownish-yel- <= low (and some pink) election-cake fungi, ——ti——- eaten by crickets; about three inches in diameter. Some of those spread chocolate-colored ones have many grubs in them, though dry and dusty. Think I heard the very faint gnah of a nuthatch. Thus, of late, when the season is declining, many birds have departed, and our thoughts are turned towards winter (began to have a fire, more or less, say ten days or a fortnight ago), we hear the jay again more frequently, and the chickadees are more numerous and lively and familiar and utter their phebe note, and the nuthatch is heard again, and the small woodpecker seen amid the bare twigs. Owing to the great height of the river, there has been no Bidens Becki nor Polygonum amphibium to my knowledge this year, nor have I found any myrio- phyllum. I dig into two or three squirrel-holes under a black oak, and in a rotten stump trace them a foot or more and lose them, or else they come to an end? Though I saw a squirrel enter the ground, I dug and Jost it. They are apparently very busy now laying up their stores. I see a gray one making haste with waving tail across the field from the nut trees to the woods. Looking up the side of the hill toward the sun, I see a little gossamer on the sweet-fern, etc.; and, from my boat, little flocks of white gossamer occasionally, three quarters of an inch long, in the air or caught on twigs, as if where a spider had hauled in his line. I think that all spiders can walk on water, for when, last summer, I knocked one off my boat by chance, he ran swiftly back to the boat and climbed up, as if more to avoid the fishes than the water. This would account for those long lines stretched low over the water from one grass stem to another. I see one of them now five or six feet long and only three or four inches above the surface, and it is remarkable that there is no per- ceptible sag to it, weak as the line must be. The pin- weeds are now bare, and their stem and fruit turned a dark brown. The thorns on the hill are all bare. There are fewer turtles, now and for some time, out sunning. A very little Solidago nemoralis in one place from the axil. I hear from my chamber the note of myrtle-birds * mingled with sparrows, in the yard, especially in the morning, quite like a clear, sweet squeaking wheel- barrow.

A very warm Indian-summer day, too warm for a thick coat. It is remarkably hazy, too, but when I open the door I smell smoke, which may in part account for it. After being out awhile I do not perceive the smoke, only on first opening the door. It is so thick a blue haze that, when, going along in Thrush Alley Path, I look through the trees into Abel Brooks’s deep hollow, I cannot see across it to the woods beyond, though it is only a stone’s throw. Like a deep blue lake at first glance. Had a chat with Minott, sitting on a log by his door. He says he began to carry a gun when he was fifteen or sixteen years old; afterward he owned three at one time, one training-piece and two fowling-pieces. He lived at James Baker’s seven years; not till after he was of age. He used to range all over that neigh- borhood, away down into Lexington, and knew every stone and stump; used to go chestnutting about Flint’s Pond, and a-fishing there, too. The fish and fowl were ten times as plenty as they are now. Why, he has been along the ridges (the moraines toward Ditch Pond) when, the ducks rising up on each side, the sky was black with them. His training-piece was an old king’s- arm, taken from the British some time, he supposed. It was a capital piece, even for shot, and thoroughly made, made upon honor every part of it. There are no such guns made in this country. The lock was strong and smart, so that when you snapped it, it filled the pan chock-full of fire, and he could burn a single kernel of powder in it. But it took a good deal of powder to load it. He kept its brass mountings burnished so bright that you could see your face in them. He had also owned a French piece. Once, too, he had a little English cocking-piece, 7. e. fowling-piece. It had the word “London” on the barrel close to the lock. It was a plaguy smart piece, bell-muzzled, and would carry ball well. He could knock over a robin with it eight rods off with ball or a slug. He had a rifle once. What did they use rifles for? Oh, for turkey- shooting. Once, one Rice, who lived in Lincoln where Hayden does now, made a turkey-shooting, and he went to it 1856) MINOTT AT A TURKEY-SHOOTING 131 with his English fowling-piece. He saw many on the road going to it. Saw Dakin [and] Jonas Minott (Captain Minott’s son, who spent quite a fortune on shooting), one offering to take another down to the shooting for a mug of flip. They asked him what he was going to do with that little thing. You paid fourpence a shot at a live turkey only twenty rods off. Those who had rifles were not allowed to rest. Amos Baker was there (who was at Concord Fight). The turkey was a large. white one. Minott rammed down his slug and, getting down behind a fence, rested on it while the rest laughed at him. He told Amos to look sharp and tell him where his ball struck, and fired. Amos said the ball struck just above the turkey. Others were firing in the mean- while. Minott loaded and tried once more, and this time his ball cut off the turkey’s neck, and it was his; worth a dollar, at least. You: only had to draw blood to get the turkey. Another, a black one, was set up, and this time his ball struck the ground just this side the turkey, then scaled up and passed right through its body, lodging under the skin on the opposite side, and he cut it out. Rice made his money chiefly by his liquor, etc. Some set up the turkeys they had gained: others “hustled” for liquor or for a supper; 72. e., they would take sides and then, putting seven coppers in a hat, shake them up well and empty them, and the party that got the fewest heads after three casts paid for the supper. M. says that, in all the time he lived at Baker's, in fact in all his life, he never went to market. Told me how they used to carry on, on Concord Common formerly, on great days. Once, when they were shaking dice there in the evening for money, round a table with twenty-five or thirty dollars in cash upon it, some rogue fastened a rope to one leg of the table, and so at a distance suddenly started off with the table, at the same time upsetting and extinguish- ing the light. This made a great outcry. They ran up crying, “Mister, I’ll help you pick up your money,” but they put the half into their own pockets. Father told me about his father the other night, — that he remembers his father used to breakfast before the family at one time, on account of his business, and he with him. His father used to eat the under crusts of biscuits, and he the upper. His father died in 1801, aged forty-seven. When the war came on, he was ap- prentice or journeyman to a cooper who employed many hands. He called them together, and told them that on account of the war his business was ruined and he had no more work for them. So, my father thinks, his father went privateering. Yet he remembers his telling him of his being employed digging at some defenses, when a cannon-ball came and sprinkled the sand all over them. After the war he went into business as a merchant, commencing with a single hogshead of sugar. His shop was on Long Wharf. He was a short man, a little taller than my father, stout and very strong for his size. Levi Melchier [?], a powerful man, who was his clerk or tender, used to tell my father that he did not believe he was so strong a man as his father was. He would never give in to him in handling a hogs- head of molasses, — setting it on its head, or the like. Minott, too, sings the praises of Beatton, the store- keeper, though of course he does not remember him. He was a Scotchman and a peddler, and the most honest man that is mentioned in Concord history. You might send a child to the store, and if there was a fraction still due the child after making change, he would give him a needle or a large pin.

Friday. 12 m.—Set out for Eagleswood, Perth Amboy, N. J. Spent the afternoon in Worcester. By cars in evening to Allyn’s Point and Steamer Commonwealth to New York.

Saw, at Barnum’s Museum, the stuffed skin of a cougar that was found floating dead in the Hudson many years ago. The stuffed jaguar there looks rather the largest. Had seen a clergyman in Worcester the previous afternoon (at Higginson’s) who told me of one killed near the head of the Delaware, in New York State, by an acquaintance of his. His dog had treed it or found it on a tree on a mountain- side, and the hunter first saw it as he came up from below, stretched out on a limb and looking intently at him, ready to spring. He fired and wounded it, but, as usual, it sprang as soon as struck, in the direc- tion it was pointing. It struck seventy feet down the mountain from the tree, or a hundred feet distant, tearing off the sleeve of the hunter’s very thick and stout coat, as it passed, and marking his arm from shoulder to hand. It took to a tree, and again, and this time approaching it from above, he shot it. The specimens I have seen were long-bodied. Looked into De Kay’s Report at the Astor Library. He describes one, the largest “of which we have any account,” killed in Lake Fourth, Herkimer County. “It had a total length of 11 feet 3inches.”’ He says that Vander- donk speaks of lions and their skins, only the latter seen by Christians, meaning panthers. According to D., haunts ledges of rocks called “panther ledges.” There is no well-authenticated account of their having attacked a man, and it is not well established that the northern and southern species are the same.’ De Kay describes the Sorex Dekayi, “nearly allied to brevicaudus, but is larger and more robust in its form.” From Massachusetts to Virginia. “Cheek teeth 48,” instead of 48 in S. brevicaudus. The color resembles the fur of the star-nosed mole. Length of head and body, 4.8 inches; tail, .8; to end of hairs, .9. He never met with S. brevicaudus in New York. Is not this my sorex of July 12th, 1856? Or is mine possibly the Sorex Fosteri, whose cheek teeth are 13; and total length, 4; tail, 1.5. Arrived at Eagleswood, Perth Amboy, Saturday, 5 p. M., October 25th.’ ? (Concerning this visit, its object, and the interesting people with whom it made Thoreau acquainted, see Familiar Letters, pp. 283, 286-291; Riv. 333-341.]

Sunday. An abundance of a viburnum, making thickets in dry woods and ravines and set out about houses, now full of edible fruit like that of V. nudum, and also of leaves. At first I was inclined to call it V. nudum, but beside that it bears an abun- dance of berries still, long after the V. nudum berries have fallen with us (and they hold on for three or four weeks afterward at least), it grows generally in dry woods and ravines and uplands; the leaf is quite thin, now reddened, of various forms; and the bush is quite thorny (!), in the woods making almost impene- trable thickets in many places, like a thorn bush, and gave me much trouble to cut through in surveying, as did the cat-briar. I think it must be the V. prunifolium, or black haw. It is quite ornamental, with its abun- dance of purple fruit, which tastes much like dates. I think I have never seen it in Concord, and perhaps Emerson and others confounded it with V. nudum. It is thorny like a wild apple, but of course much more slender. ‘The privet was a very common shrub, with its black berries. Flowers almost entirely done. See apparently the seaside goldenrod, lingering still by the Raritan River, and a new aster. The persimmon (Diospyros Virginiana) quite com- mon. Saw some trees quite full of fruit. There was a little left on the trees when I left, November 24th, | but I should think it was in its prime about the end of the first week of November, 7. e., what would readily shake off. Before, it was commonly puckery. In any case it furs the mouth just like the choke-cherry. It is not good for much. They would be more edible if it were not for the numerous large seeds, and when you have rejected them there is little but skin left. Yet I was surprised that the fruit was not more gen- erally gathered. The sassafras was common. Saw and heard a katydid about the Ist of November.