18 July 1859 – 24 July 1859

One tells me that he stopped at Stedman Buttrick’s on the 10th, and found him sitting under a cherry tree ringing a bell, in order to keep the birds off! If you get on to a rock in the river, rock the boat, while you keep steadily pushing, and thus there will be mo- ments when the boat does not rest on the rock at all, and you will rapidly get it off. The river is getting low, so that the entrances to musquash-holes in the bank are revealed and often laid bare, with fresh green rushes or flags, etc., in them. Nathan Hosmer remembers that when the two new stone piers at Hunt’s Bridge were built, about 1820, one Nutting went under water to place the stones, and he was surprised to see how long he would remain under about this business. Nothing has got built without labor. Past generations have spent their blood and strength for us. They have cleared the land, built roads, etc., for us. In all fields men have laid down their lives for us. Men are industrious as ants. I find myself very heavy-headed these days. It oc- curs to me that probably in different states of what we call health, even in morbid states, we are peculiarly fitted for certain investigations, — we are the better able to deal with certain phenomena. N. Barrett says that he has formerly cut six cocks of hay on his bar.

P. M. — Up Assabet. The architect of the river builds with sand chiefly, not with mud. Mud is deposited very slowly, only in the stagnant places, but sand is the ordinary building- material. | It is remarkable how the river, while it may be en- croaching on the bank on one side, preserves its ordi- nary breadth by filling up the other side. Generally speaking, up and down this and the other stream, where there is a swift place and the bank worn away on one side, — which, other things being equal, would leave the river wider there, — a bank or island or bar is being built up on the other, since the eddy where, on one side, sand, etc., are deposited is produced by the rapidity of the current, thus: — e. g. north side of Egg Rock, at Hemlocks, at Pigeon Rock Bend, at Swift Place Bank, etc., and on main stream at Ash Tree Bend. The eddy occasioned by the swiftness deposits sand, etc., close by on one side and a little offshore, leaving finally a low meadow outside where was once the bed of the river. There are count- less places where the one shore is thus advancing and, as it were, dragging the other after it.

'The little Holbrook boy showed me an egg which I unhesitatingly pronounced a peetweet’s, given him by Joe Smith. The latter, to my surprise, declares it a meadow-hen’s; saw the bird and young, and says the latter were quite black and had hen bills. Can it be so? Humphrey Buttrick says he finds snipes’ nests in our meadows oftener than woodcocks’. P. M. — To Eddy Bridge. Abel Hosmer says that the Turnpike Company did not fulfill their engagement to build a new bridge over the Assabet in 1807; that the present stone bridge was not built till about the time the Orthodox meeting-house was built. (That was in 1826.) Benjamin says it was built soon after the meeting-house, or perhaps 1827, and was placed some fifty feet higher up-stream than the old wooden one. Hosmer says that the eddy and wearing away of the bank has been occasioned wholly by the bridge; that there was only the regular bend there before. He had thought that it was in consequence of the bridge being set askew or diagonally with the stream, so that the abutments turned the water and gave it a slant into the banks, thus: *-.

P. M.— To Assabet, above factory. For about one third the way from the factory dam to the powder-mills the river is broad and deep, in short a mill-pond.

Start just before 8 a.m. and sail to the Falls of Concord River. Water 24+ inches above summer level. A south- west wind rises and blows us rapidly along. We are early enough to see the light reflected from the sides of the gyrating water-bugs. Heard from a bittern above the factory yesterday, too large for the small one and too small, perhaps, for the large one, a peculiar hoarse, grating note, lazily uttered, —a bit- tern’s croak, — at 1 Pp. M., as it flew over the meadows, —a sound perfectly becoming the bird, far as possible from music. Some have just begun to get the hay on our Great Meadows. The peetweet, our only beach-bird, teeters along the shore, reminding me that this is an arm of the ocean stream. At Hill’s Bridge we begin to find ourselves shut in by hills, and the character of the shores is fairly changed. There is very little meadow along the stream hence- forward, but commonly a firm bank and pastures and cultivated fields —— corn and potatoes — down to the shore, for it is commonly a firm shore, though it may be subject to inundation. The shores are still uninhabited, —the road being remote,— especially on the west side, and in the neighborhood of Middle Bridge we find ourselves off the middle of Billerica, the quiet town, and see its rural spire rising above the trees. Many hand- some elm-tops and groves of elms are visible in Bil- lerica. There is a fine grove of elms about the first house of the Atkins boat-house. Jug Island is a peculiar one, the only one of the kind that I know in the river, — except the small one at Falls, — firm and rocky, not made by the river, with deep water about it, especially on the east side, always separated from the shore, rising to a considerable height above the surface, — a part of the adjacent rocky range cut off by the river. The inter- val becomes more and more narrow and sandy or firm below this island and range of hills, and you see red-top and corn on it and woods.

P.M. — To Walden. Going through Thrush Alley and beyond, I am pestered by flies about my head, — not till now (though I may have said so before). They are perfect imps, for they gain nothing for their pains and only pester me. They do not for the most part attempt to settle on me, ~, never sting me. Yet they seriously interfere with walk- ing in the wood. ‘Though I may keep a leafy twig con- stantly revolving about my head, they too constantly revolve, nevertheless, and appear to avoid it success- fully. They leave you only when you have got fairly out of the wood. They seem to do it for deviltry and sport. The second and fourth, or lake-like, reaches of the river are those in which there is the least fall, if indeed there can be said to be any much of the year. A slight northerly wind, or a shower at the lower end, will make it easier to row up stream than down. Low blackberries have begun. I notice the scarlet leaves of the sand cherry, which grows in dry places, and skunk-cabbage leaves: have now begun to decay, turning black, and the angelica fall has commenced along the brooks. Rhexia in bloom, how long? What I call Juncus scirpoides is common at Hubbard’s Close, and also what I call Juncus marginatus (somewhat like the luzula). Prenanthes alba, how long? See an early kind of wool-grass, done, of various sizes, and another with larger reflexed sheaths, not begun. Aster Radula, how long?

P.M. — To Ledum Swamp. The hairy huckleberry still lingers in bloom, — a few of them. The white orchis will hardly open for a week. Mulgedium, how long? Near the ditch beyond Dennis’s Lupine Hill, a vaccinium near to Pennsylvanicum, perhaps a variety of it, with ripe fruit, little or no bloom, broader-leaved than that, and not shining beneath but somewhat glaucous.