30 October 1854 – 5 November 1854

Rain; still warm. Ever since October 27th we have had remarkably warm and pleasant Indian summer, with frequent frosts in the morning. Sat with open window for a week.

It is a little cooler.

Thursday. P. M. — By boat to Clamshell. I suspect the clams are partly gone down. May not this movement contribute to compel the muskrats to erect their cabins nearer the brink or channel, in order still to be near their food? Other things being equal, they would have to swim further than before to get the clams in the middle, but now, in addition, the water is beginning to rise and widen the river. I see larks hovering over the meadow and hear a faint note or two, and a pleasant note from tree spar- rows (?). Sailing past the bank above the railroad, just before a clear sundown, close to the shore on the east side I see a second fainter shadow of the boat, sail, myself, and paddle, etc., directly above and upon the first on the bank. What makes the second? At length I dis- covered that it was the reflected sun which cast a higher - shadow like the true one. As I moved to the west side, the upper shadow rose, grew larger and less percep- tible; and at last when I was so near the west shore that I could not see the reflected sun, it disappeared; but then there appeared one upside down in its place!

Saw a shrike in an apple tree, with appar- ently a worm in its mouth. The shad-bush buds have expanded into small leafets already. This while sur- veying on the old Colburn farm.

Sunday. To White Pond with Charles Wheeler. Passing the mouth of John Hosmer’s hollow near the river, was hailed by him and Anthony Wright, sitting there, to come and see where they had dug for money. There was a hole six feet square and as many deep, and the sand was heaped about over a rod square. Hosmer said that it was dug two or three weeks be- fore, that three men came in a chaise and dug it in the night. They were seen about there by day. Some- body dug near there in June, and then they covered up the hole again. He said they had been digging thereabouts from time to time for a hundred years. I asked him why. He said that Dr. Lee, who lived where Joe Barrett did, told him that old Mr. Wood, who lived in a house very near his (Hosmer’s), told him that, one night in Captain Kidd’s day, three pirates came to his house with a pair of old-fashioned deer-skin breeches, both legs full of coin, and asked leave to bury it in his cellar. He was afraid, and re- fused them. They then asked for some earthen pots and shovels and a lanthorn, which he let them have. A woman in the house followed the pirates at a distance down the next hollow on the south, and saw them go along the meadow-side and turn up this hollow, and then, being alone and afraid, she returned. Soon after the men returned with the tools and an old-fashioned hat full of the coin (holding about a quart), which they gave to Wood. He, being afraid, buried it in his cellar, but afterward, becoming a poor man, dug it up and used it. A bailiff made some inquiry hereabouts after the pirates. Hosmer said that one thing which confirmed the diggers in their belief was the fact that when he was a little boy, plowing one day with his father on the hill- side, they found three old-fashioned bottles bottom upward but empty under the plow. Somebody con- sulted Moll Pitcher, who directed to dig at a certain distance from an apple tree on a line with the bottles, and then they would find the treasure. I think it is the fox-colored sparrow I see in flocks and hear sing now by wood-sides.