25 December 1854 – 31 December 1854

To New Bedford via Cambridge.'

At Ricketson’s. I do not remember to have ever seen such a day as this in Concord. There is no snow here (though there has been excellent sleighing at Concord since the 5th), but it is very muddy, the frost coming out of the ground as in spring with us. I went to walk in the woods with R. It was wonderfully warm and pleasant, and the cockerels crowed just as in a spring day at home. I felt the winter breaking up in me, and if I had been at home I should have tried to write poetry. They told me that this was not a rare day there, that they had little or no winter such as we have, and it was owing to the influence of the Gulf Stream, which was only sixty miles from Nantucket at the nearest, or one hundred and twenty miles from them. In midwinter, when the wind was southeast or even southwest, they frequently had days as warm and debilitating as in summer. ‘There is a difference of about a degree in latitude between Concord and New Bedford, but far more in climate. The American holly is quite common there, with its red berries still holding on, and is now their Christ- mas evergreen. I heard the larks sing strong and sweet, and saw robins. R. lives in that part of New Bedford three miles north of the town called the Head of the River, 2. e. the Acushnet River. There is a Quaker meeting-house there. Such an ugly shed, without a tree or bush about it, which they call their meeting- house (without steeple, of course) is altogether repulsive to me, like a powder-house or grave. And even the quietness and perhaps unworldliness of an aged Quaker has something ghostly and saddening about it, as it were a mere preparation for the grave. R. said that pheasants from England (where they are not indigenous) had been imported into Naushon and were now killed there.

To Nantucket via Hyannis in misty rain. On Cape Cod saw the hills through the mist covered with cladonias. A head wind and rather rough passage of three hours to Nantucket, the water being thirty miles over. Captain Edward W. Gardiner (where I spent the evening) thought there was a beach at Barne- gat similar to that at Cape Cod. Mr. Barney, formerly a Quaker minister there, who was at Gardiner’s, told of one Bunker of Nantucket in old times, ‘“‘ who had eight sons, and steered each in his turn to the kill- ing of a whale.” Gardiner said you must have been a-whaling there before you could be married, and must have struck a whale before you could dance. They do not think much of crossing from Hyannis in a small boat, — in pleasant weather, that is, — but they can safely do it. A boy was drifted across thus in a storm in a rowboat about two years ago. By luck he struck Nantucket. The outline of the island is con- tinually changing. The whalers now go chiefly to Behring’s Straits, and everywhere between 35 N. and S. latitude and catch several kinds of whales. It was Edmund Gardiner of New Bedford (a relative of Edward’s) who was carried down by a whale, and Hussey of Nantucket who, I believe, was one to draw lots to see who should be eaten. As for communica- tion with the mainland being interrupted, Gardiner remembers when thirty-one mails were landed at once, which, taking out Sundays, made five weeks and one day. The snow ten days ago fell about two inches deep, but melted instantly. At the Ocean House I copied from William Coffin’s Map of the town (1834) this: 30,590 acres, including 3 isles beside. 1050 are fresh ponds; about 750, peat swamp. Clay in all parts. But only granite or gneiss boulders.

A misty rain as yesterday. Captain Gar- diner carried me to Siasconset in his carriage. He has got from forty to forty-five or fifty bushels of corn to an acre from his land. Wished to know how to distin- guish guinea cocks from guinea hens. He is extensively engaged in raising pines on the island. There is not a tree to be seen, except such as are set out about houses. ‘The land is worth commonly from a dollar to a dollar and a half. He showed me several lots of his, of different ages, — one tract of three hundred acres sown in rows with a planter, where the young trees, two years old, were just beginning to green the ground, —and I saw one of Norway pine and our pitch mixed, eight years old, which looked quite like a forest at a distance. The Norway pines had grown the fastest, with a longer shoot, and had a bluer look at a distance, more like the white pine. The Ameri- can pitch pines have a reddish, crisped look at top. Some are sown in rows, some broadcast. At first he was alarmed to find that the ground moles had gone along in the furrows directly under the plants and so injured the roots as to kill many of the trees, and he sowed over again. He was also discouraged to find that a sort of spindle-worm had killed the leading shoot of a great part of his neighbors’ older trees. These plantations must very soon change the aspect of the island. His common pitch pine seed, obtained from the Cape, cost him about twenty dollars a bushel at least, about a dollar a quart, with the wings, and they told him it took about eighty bushels of cones to make one such bushel of seeds. I was surprised to hear that the Norway pine seed without the wings, imported from France, had cost not quite $200 a bushel delivered at New York or Philadelphia. He has ordered eight hogsheads (!!!) of the last, clear wingless seeds, at this rate. I think he said it took about a gallon to sow an acre. He had tried to get white pine seed, but in vain. The cones had not con- tained any of late (?). This looks as if he meant to sow a good part of the island, though he said he might sell some of the seed. It is an interesting enterprise. Half-way to Siasconset I saw the old corn-hills where they had formerly cultivated, the authorities laying out a new tract for this purpose each year. This island must look exactly like a prairie, except that the view in clear weather is bounded by the sea. Saw crows, saw and heard larks frequently, and saw robins; but most abundant, running along the ruts or circling about just over the ground in small flocks, what the inhabitants call snowbirds, a gray bunting- like bird about the size of the snow bunting. Can it be the seaside finch? or the Savannah sparrow? or the shore lark ? Gardiner said that they had pigeon, hen, and other hawks, but there are no places for them to breed; also owls, which must breed, for he had seen their young. A few years ago some one imported a dozen partridges from the mainland, but, though some were seen for a year or two, not one had been seen for some time, and they were thought to be extinct. He thought the raccoons, which had been very numerous, might have caught them. In Harrison days some coons were imported and turned loose, and they multiplied very fast and became quite a pest, killing hens, etc., and were killed in turn. Finally they turned out and hunted them with hounds and killed seventy-five at one time, since which he had not heard of any. There were foxes once, but none now, and no indigenous ani- mal bigger than a “ground mole.” The nearest approach to woods that I saw was the swamps, where the blueberries, maples, etc., are higher than one’s head. I saw, as I rode, high blueberry bushes and maple in the swamps, huckleberries, shrub oaks, uva-ursi (which he called mealy plum), gaultheria, beach plum, clethra, mayflower (well bud- ded). Also withered poverty-grass, goldenrods, asters. In the swamps are cranberries, and I saw one carting the vines home to set out, which also many are doing. G. described what he made out to be “star-grass” as common.

Nantucket to Concord at 7.30 a. M. Still in mist. The fog was so thick that we were lost on the water; stopped and sounded many times. The clerk said the depth varied from three to eight fathoms between the island and Cape. Whistled and listened for the locomotive’s answer, but probably heard only the echo of our own whistle at first, but at last the locomotive’s whistle and the life-boat bell. I forgot to say yesterday that there was at one place an almost imperceptible rise not far west of Siasconset, to a slight ridge or swell running from Tom Never’s Head northward to (John) Gibbs’s Swamp. This conceals the town of Nantucket. (John Gibbs was the name of the Indian Philip came after.) This, seen a mile off through the mist which concealed the relative distance of the base and summit, ap- peared like an abrupt hill, though an extremely gradual swell. At the end of Obed Macy’s History of Nantucket are some verses signed “Peter Folger, 1676.” As for the sin which God would punish by the Indian war, — “ Sure ’t is not chiefly for those sins that magistrates do name,” but for the sin of persecution and the like, the banishing and whipping of godly men. “The cause of this their suffering was not for any sin, But for the witness that they bare against babes sprinkling. “The church may now go stay at home, there’s nothing for to do; Their work is all cut out by law, and almost made up too. “*°*T is like that some may think and say, our war would not remain, If so be that a thousand more of natives were but slain. ** Alas! these are but foolish thoughts; God can make more arise, And if that there were none at all, He can make war with flies.”

P. M.— On river to Fair Haven Pond. A beautiful, clear, not very cold day. The shadows on the snow are indigo-blue. The pines look very dark. The white oak leaves are a cinnamon-color, the black and red (? ) oak leaves a reddish brown or leather-color. I see mice and rabbit and fox tracks on the meadow. Once a partridge rises from the alders and skims across the river at its widest part just before me; a fine sight. On the edge of A. Wheeler’s cranberry meadow I see the track of an otter made since yesterday morning. How glorious the perfect stillness and peace of the winter landscape !