16 April 1860 – 22 April 1860

Rather warm. In afternoon a true April rain, dripping and soaking into the earth and heard on the roof, which continuing, in the night it is very dark. This is owing to both the absence of the moon and the presence of the clouds. I observed yesterday, in the cellar of the old Conan- tum house, a regular frame or “horse” to rest barrels (of cider, vinegar, etc.) on. It was probably made before the house was built, being exactly the length of the cellar, — two pieces of timber framed together, that is, connected by crosspieces and lying on the cellar- bottom against one side, the whole length, with con- cavities cut in them to receive the barrels and prevent their rolling. There were places for eight barrels. It — — a et Q Sa suggests how much more preparation was made in those days for the storing of liquors. We have at most one keg in our cellar for which such a horse would be a con- venient place; yet in this now remote and uncovered cellar-hole lies a horse with places for eight barrels of liquor. It would make a toper’s mouth water to behold it. You wonder how they got apples and cider-mills a-going so early, say a hundred and fifty years ago. No doubt they worked hard and sweated a good deal, and perhaps they required, or could bear, more strong drink than the present generation. This horse is a fixture, framed with the house, or rather with the cellar; a first thought it must have been, perchance made by a sepa- rate contract, since it comes below the sills. The barrels and their contents, and they who emptied them, and the house above, are all gone, and still the scalloped logs remain now in broad daylight to testify to the exact number of barrels of liquor which the former occu- pant expected to, and probably did, lay in. His grave- stone somewhere tells one sober story no doubt, and this his barrel-horse tells another, —and the only one that I hear. For twenty and odd years only the wood - chucks and wild mice to my knowledge have occu- pied this cellar. Such is the lowest stick of timber in an old New England man’s house. He dug a hole ~ six feet into the earth and laid down a timber to hold his cider-barrel. Then he proceeded to build a house over it, with kitchen and sitting and sleeping rooms. It reminds me of travellers’ stories of the Lon- don docks, of rows of hogsheads, of bonded liquors. Every New England cellar was once something like it. It is a relic of old England with her ale. The first settlers made preparations to drink a good deal, and they did not disappoint themselves.

I hear this forenoon the soothing and simple, though monotonous, notes of the chip-bird, telling us better than our thermometers what degree of summer warmth is reached; adds its humble but very pleasant contribution to the steadily increasing quire of the spring. It perches on a cherry tree, perchance, near the house, and unseen, by its steady che-che-che-che-che- che, affecting: us often without our distinctly hearing it, it blends all the other and previous sounds of the season together. It invites us to walk in the yard and inspect the springing plants. The evenings are very considerably shortened. We begin ‘to be more out of doors, the less housed, think less, stir about more, are fuller of affairs and chores, come in chiefly to eat and to sleep. The amelanchier flower-buds are conspicuously swollen. Willows (Salix alba) probably (did not four or five days ago). P. M. — Sail to Ball’s Hill. It is quite warm — 67 at 2 p. m. — and hazy, though rather strong and gusty northwest wind.

Cold, and still a strong wind. 46 at 2 Pp. M. The Salix discolor peels well; also the aspen (early) has begun to peel. Melvin says he has heard snipe some days, but thinks them scarce. As I go by the site of Staples’s new barn on the Kettle place, I see that they have just dug a well’on the hillside and are bricking it up. They have dug twenty- four feet through sand (no stones of any size or con- sequence in it; I see none at all in what was thrown out; should say it was pure sand), and have some four feet of water in the well. This is probably as low as water in the meadow in front. It is just as far to water as in Messer’s well east of it, and about as high up the hill. The whole range appears to be strictly a sand- hill. Humphrey Buttrick, the sportsman, was at the bottom, bricking up the well; a Clark who had been mining lately in California, and who had dug the well, was passing down brick and mortar to him; and Melvin, with a bundle of apple scions in his hand, was sitting close by and looking over into the well from time to time. Melvin said he feared that, the water being so low, the snipes would be overtaken by it and their nests broken up when it rose; that Josh Haynes told him that he found a woodcock’s nest, and afterward he sailed over the nest in a boat, and yet, when the water went down, the bird went on and hatched the eggs. Melvin has seen a dandelion in bloom. Clark has heard a partridge drum. I find that the side-hill just below the Dutch house is more loose and sandy than half a dozen years ago, and I attribute it to the hens wallowing in the earth and dusting themselves, and also pecking the grass and pre- venting its growing.

Surveying J. B. Moore’s farm. Hear the field sparrow sing on his dry upland, it being a warm day, and see the small blue butterfly hovering over the dry leaves. Toward night, hear a partridge drum. You wilt hear at first a single beat or two far apart and have time to say, “ There is a partridge,” so distinct and deliber- ate is it often, before it becomes a rapid roll. Part of the Bedford road in Moore’s Swamp had set- tled a few days ago so much more that the water was six inches deep over it, when they proceeded to cart on more sand; and about the 17th, when they had carted on considerable, half a dozen rods in length suddenly sank before their eyes, and only water and sand was seen where the road had been. One said that the water was six feet deep over the road. It certainly was four or five. The road was laid out fifty feet wide, and without this, one ach side, a broad ditch had been dug, thus: — Lt het Bf Nt sy oy As I calculate, at least ten feet in thickness of sand have been placed on this swamp, and the firm mud could not have been less than a dozen more. The weight of the sand has now at last pressed down the mud and broken through it, causing the sides to turn up suddenly, 2.¢., a thickness of six feet or more to turn, indeed, completely over and bottom side up on to the middle of the road a part of the way. The weight of sand suddenly jerked this tremendous weight of mud right back on to the road, bottom up. Minan’y N ’ ay Za wy <A Ss f ae) / @ § ‘“ *. a7 bg “ a. : . ” “Ay - — ae ae Cm 1. * tad aad The evening of the 21st a few rods more, with the culvert, went down, so that it was full four feet under water, making some seyen or eight rods in all. Up to about the 17th it had settled gradually, but then it sank instanily some five feet. This shows that the weight of sand had burst through the mud, and that therefore it must have been comparatively liquid be- neath. Perhaps it was water. In the deepest part of many a seemingly firm swamp which is cultivated, there is an exceedingly thin and liquid mud, or perhaps water. Here was probably once a pond, which has filled up and grown over, but still a relic of it survives deep under the mud in the deepest part. There are thus the relics of ponds concealed deep under the surface, where they are little suspected, perchance, as under cleared and cultivated swamps or under roads and culverts. The two walls of the culvert must have been ten or twelve feet high, of heavy rocks, and yet they had not broken through in all this time till now!

The Saliaz purpurea in prime; began, say, 18th. A warm day. Now begin to sit without fires more commonly, and to wear but one coat commonly. Moore tells me that last fall his men, digging sand in that hollow just up the hill, dug up a parcel of snakes half torpid. They were both striped and black together, in a place somewhat porous, he thought where a horse had been buried once. The men killed them, and laid them all in a line on the ground, and they measured several hundred feet. This seems to be the common practice when such collections are found; they are at once killed-and stretched out in a line, and the sum of their lengths measured and re- lated. It is a warm evening, and I hear toads ring distinctly for the first time. C. sees bluets and some kind of thrush to-day, size of wood thrush, — he thought probably hermit thrush.

Row to Fair Haven. Thermometer 56° or 54°. See shad-flies. Scare up woodcock on the shore by my boat’s place, — the first I had seen. It was feeding within a couple of rods, but I had not seen or thought of it. When I made a loud and sharp sound driving in my rowlocks, it suddenly flew up. It is evident that we very often come quite near woodcocks and snipe thus concealed on the ground, without starting them and so without suspecting that they are near. These marsh- birds, like the bittern, have this habit of keeping still and trusting to their resemblance to the ground. See now hen-hawks, a pair, soaring high as for pleasure, circling ever further and further away, as if it were midsummer. The peculiar flight of a hawk thus fetches the year about. I do not see it soar in this serene and leisurely manner very early in the season, methinks. The early luzula is almost in bloom; makes a show, with its budded head and its purplish and downy, silky leaves, on the warm margin of Clamshell Bank. Two or three dandelions in bloom spot the ground there. Land at Lee’s Cliff. The cassandra (water-brush) is well out, — how long? *— and in one place we dis- turb great clouds of the little fuzzy gnats that were resting on the bushes, as we push up the shallow ditch there. The Ranunculus fascicularis is now in prime, rather than before. The columbine is hardly yet out. I hear that the Viola ovata was found the 17th and the 20th, and the bloodroot in E. Emerson’s garden the 20th. J. B. Moore gave me some mineral which he found being thrown out of [a] drain that was dug between Knight’s factory and his house. It appears to me to be red lead and quartz, and the lead is quite pure and marks very well, or freely, but is pretty dark.