25 August 1856 – 31 August 1856

P. M.— To Hill by boat. Silvery cinquefoil now begins to show itself com- monly again. Perhaps it is owing to the rain, spring- like, which we have in August. I paddle directly across the meadow, the river is so high, and land east of the elm on the third or fourth row of potatoes. The water makes more show on the meadows than yesterday, though hardly so high, be- cause the grass is more flatted down. I easily make my way amid the thin spires. Almost every stem which rises above the surface has a grasshopper or caterpillar upon it. Some have seven or eight grasshoppers, clinging to their masts, one close and directly above an- other, like shipwrecked sailors, now the third or fourth day exposed. Whither shall they jump? It is a quar- ter of a mile to shore, and countless sharks lie in wait for them. They are so thick that they are like a crop which the grass bears; some stems are bent down by their weight. This flood affects other inhabitants of these fields than men; not only the owners of the grass, but its inhabitants much more. It drives them to their upper stories, — to take refuge in the rigging. Many that have taken an imprudent leap are seen strug- gling in the water. How much life is drowned out that inhabits about the roots of the meadow-grass! How many a family, perchance, of short-tailed meadow mice has had to scamper or swim! The river-meadow cranberries are covered deep. I can count them as they lie in dense beds a foot under water, so distinct and white, or just beginning to have a red cheek. They will probably be spoiled, and this crop will fail. Potatoes, too, in the low land on which water has stood so long, will rot. The farmers commonly say that the spring floods, being of cold water, do not injure the grass like later ones when the water is warm, but I suspect it is not so much owing to the warmth of the water as to the age and condition of the grass and whatever else is exposed to them. They say that if you let the water rise and stand some time over the roots of trees in warm weather it will kill them. This, then, may be the value of these occasional freshets in August: they steam and kill the shrubs and trees which had crept into the river meadows, and so keep them open per- petually, which, perchance, the spring floods alone might not do. It is commonly supposed that our river meadows were much drier than now originally, or when the town was settled. They were probably drier before the dam was built at Billerica, but if they were much or at all drier than now originally, I ask what pre- vented their being converted into maple swamps? Maples, alders, birches, etc., are creeping into them quite fast on many sides at present. If they had been so dry as is supposed they would not have been open meadows. It seems to be true that high water in mid- summer, when perchance the trees and shrubs are in a more tender state, kills them. It “steams” them, as it does the grass; and maybe the river thus asserts its rights, and possibly it would still to great extent, though the meadows should be considerably raised. Yet, I ask, why do maples, alders, etc., at present bor- der the stream, though they do not spring up to any extent in the open meadow? Is it because the immediate bank is commonly more firm as well as higher (their seeds also are more lable to be caught there), and where it is low they are protected by willows and but- ton-bushes, which can bear the flood? Not even willows and button-bushes prevail in the Great Meadows, — though many of the former, at least, spring up there, — except on the most elevated parts or hummocks. The reason for this cannot be solely in the fact that the water stands over them there a part of the year, be- cause they are still more exposed to the water in many places on the shore of the river where yet they thrive. Is it then owing to the soft character of the ground in the meadow and the ice tearing up the meadow so extensively? On the immediate bank of the river that kind of sod and soil is not commonly formed which the ice lifts up. Why is the black willow so strictly confined to the bank of the river? What is the use, in Nature’s economy, of these occasional floods in August? Is it not partly to preserve the meadows open ? Mr. Rice says that the brook just beyond his brother Israel’s in Sudbury rises and runs out before the river, and then you will see the river running up the brook as fast as the brook ran down before. Apparently half the pads are now afloat, notwith- standing the depth of the water, but they are almost all white lily pads, the others being eaten and decayed. They have apparently lengthened their stems some- what. They generally lie with more or less coil, pre- pared for a rise of the water, and perhaps the length of that coil shows pretty accurately to how great a rise they are ordinarily subject at this season. I was suggesting yesterday, as I have often before, that the town should provide a stone monument to be placed in the river, so as to be surrounded by water at its lowest stage, and a dozen feet high, so as to rise above it at its highest stage; on this feet and inches to be permanently marked; and it be made some one’s duty to record each high or low stage of the water. Now, when we have a remarkable freshet, we cannot tell surely whether it is higher than the one thirty or sixty years ago or not. It would be not merely in- teresting, but often practically valuable, to know this. Reuben Rice was telling me to-night that the great freshet of two or three years ago came, according to his brother Israel, within two inches of one that oc- curred about forty years ago. I asked how he knew. He said that the former one took place early (Febru- ary ?), and the surface froze so that boys skated on it, and the ice marked a particular apple tree, girdled it, so that it is seen to this day. But we wish to speak more confidently than this allows. It is important when building a causeway, or a bridge, or a house even, in some situations, to know exactly how high the river has ever risen. It would need to be a very large stone or pile of stones, which the ice could not move or break. Perhaps one corner of a bridge abutment would do. Rice killed a woodchuck to-day that was shearing off his beans. He was very fat.

Tuesday. More wind and quite cold this morning, but very bright and sparkling, autumn-like air, reminding of frosts to be apprehended,’ also tempt- ing abroad to adventure. The fall cricket —or is it alder locust ?—sings the praises of the day. So about 9 A. M. up river to Fair Haven Pond. The flooded meadow, where the grasshoppers cling to the grass so thickly, is alive with swallows skim- ming just over the surface amid the grass-tops and apparently snapping up insects there. Are they catch- ing the grasshoppers as they cling to bare poles? (I see the swallows equally thick there at 5 p. mM. when I return also.) River slowly fallmg. The most con- spicuous weed rising above the water is the wool-grass, with its great, rich, seedy heads, which rise from a few inches to a foot above at present, as I push over the uncut meadows. I see many white lilies fairly and freshly in bloom after all this flood, though it looks like a resurrection. The wind is northwest, apparently by west, and I sail before it and under Hubbard’s Bridge. The red maples of Potter’s Swamp show a dull-purple blush and sometimes a low scarlet bough, the effect evidently of the rain ripening them. Rice told me about their crossing the causeway from Wayland to Sudbury some sixty years ago in a freshet which he could just remember, in a half-hogs- head tub, used for scalding pigs, having nailed some boards on the bottom to keep it from upsetting. It was too deep for a team. We begin to apprehend frosts before the melons are ripe! A blue heron sails away from a pine at Holden Swamp shore and alights on the meadow above. Again he flies, and alights on the hard Conantum side, where at length I detect him standing far away stake-like (his body concealed), eying me and depending on his stronger vision.

P. M.— To Clintonia Swamp and Car- dinal Ditch. Unusually cold last night. Goodyera pubescens, rattlesnake-plantain, is appar- ently a little past its prime. It is very abundant on Clintonia Swamp hillside, quite erect, with its white spike eight to ten inches high on the sloping hillside, the lower half or more turning brown, but the beau- tifully reticulated leaves which pave the moist shady hillside about its base are the chief attraction. These oval leaves, perfectly smooth like velvet to the touch, about one inch long, have a broad white midrib and four to six longitudinal white veins, very prettily and thickly connected by other conspicuous white veins transversely and irregularly, all on a dark rich green ground. Is it not the prettiest leaf that paves the forest floor? As a cultivated exotic it would attract great attention for its leaf. Many of the leaves are eaten. Is it by partridges? It is a leaf of firm texture, not apt to be partially eaten by insects or decayed, and does not soon wilt. So unsoiled and undecayed. It might be imitated on carpets and rugs. Some old withered stems of last year still stand. On dry, open hillsides and fields the Spiranthes gracilis is very common of late, rising tall and slender, with its spiral of white flowers like a screw-thread at top; sometimes fifteen inches high. | There are, close by the former, the peculiar large dark blue indigo clintonia berries of irregular form and dark-spotted, in umbels of four or five on very brittle stems which break with a snap and on erectish stem- lets or pedicels. See no fringed gentian yet. Veronica serpyllifolia again by Brister’s Spring. Krigia yesterday at Lee’s Cliff, apparently again, though it may be uninter- ruptedly. Tobacco-pipe still. The rhexia greets me in bright patches on meadow banks. Ludwigia alter- nifolia still. It is abundant in Cardinal Ditch, twenty rods from road. Bidens frondosa, how long? Hype- ricum Canadense and mutilum now pretty generally open at 4 Pp. m., thus late in the season, it being more moist and cooler. The cardinals in this ditch make a splendid show now, though they would have been much fresher and finer a week ago. They nearly fill the ditch for thirty-five rods perfectly straight, about three feet high. I count at random ten in one square foot, and as they are two feet wide by thirty-five rods, there are four or five thou- sand at least, and maybe more. They look like slender plumes of soldiers advancing in a dense troop, and a few white (or rather pale-pink) ones are mingled with the scarlet. That is the most splendid show of cardinal- flowers I ever saw. They are mostly gone to seed, 2. e. the greater part of the spike. Mimulus there still common. Near the clintonia berries, I found the Polygonatum pubescens berries on its handsome leafy stem recurved over the hillside, generally two slaty-blue (but dark- green beneath the bloom) berries on an axillary pe- duncle three quarters of an inch long, hanging straight down; eight or nine such peduncles, dividing to two short pedicels at end; the berries successively smaller from below upwards, from three eighths of an inch [in] diameter to hardly more than one eighth. There are many wild-looking berries about now. The Viburnum Lentago begin to show their hand- some red cheeks, rather elliptic-shaped and mucronated, one cheek clear red with a purplish bloom, the other pale green, now. Among the handsomest of berries, one half inch long by three eighths by two eighths, being somewhat flattish. Then there are the Vibur- num dentatum berries, in flattish cymes, dull lead- colored berries, depressed globular, three sixteenths of an inch in diameter, with a mucronation, hard, seedy, dryish, and unpalatable. The large depressed globular hips of the moss rose begin to turn scarlet in low ground.

First watermelon. P. M. — To tortoise eggs, Marlborough road. Potentilla Norvegica again. I go over linnea sprout- lands. The panicled cornel berries are whitening, but already mostly fallen. As usual the leaves of this shrub, though it is so wet, are rolled like corn, show- ing the paler under sides. At this season it would seem that rain, frost, and drought all produce similar effects. Now the black cherries in sprout-lands are in their prime, and the black choke-berries just after huckle- berries and blueberries. They are both very abundant this year. ‘The branches droop with cherries. Those on some trees are very superior to others. The bushes are weighed down with choke-berries, which no crea- ture appears to gather. This crop is as abundant as the huckleberries have been. 'They have a sweet and pleasant taste enough, but leave a mass of dry pulp in the mouth. But it is worth the while to see their profusion, if only to know what nature can do. Huckleberries are about given up, low blueberries more or less shrivelled, low blackberries done, high blackberries still to be had. Viburnum nudum berries are beginning; I already see a few shrivelled purple ones amid the light green. Poke berries also begun. A goldfinch twitters away from every thistle now, and soon returns to it when I am past. I see the ground strewn with the thistle-down they have scattered on every side. At Tarbell’s andromeda swamp. A probable Bidens connata or small chrysanthemoides. I open the painted tortoise nest of June 10th, and find a young turtle partly out of his shell. He is roundish and the sternum clear uniform pink. The marks on the sides are pink. The upper shell is fifteen sixteenths of an inch plus by thirteen sixteenths. He is already wonderfully strong and precocious. Though those eyes never saw the light before, he watches me very warily, even at a distance. With what vigor he crawls out of the hole I have made, over opposing weeds! He struggles in my fingers with great strength; has none of the tenderness of infancy. His whole snout is convex, and curved like a beak. Having attained the surface, he pauses and warily watches me. In the meanwhile another has put his head out of his shell, but I bury the latter up and leave them. Meanwhile a striped squirrel sits on the wall across the road under a pine, eying me, with his cheek-pouches stuffed with nuts and puffed out ludicrously, as if he had the mumps, while the wall is strewn with the dry brown husks of hazelnuts he has stripped. A bird, perhaps a thrasher, in the pine close above him is hopping restlessly and scolding at him. June, July, and August, the tortoise eggs are hatch- ing a few inches beneath the surface in sandy fields. You tell of active labors, of works of art, and wars the past summer; meanwhile the tortoise eggs underlie this turmoil. What events have transpired on the lit and airy surface three inches above them! Sumner knocked down; Kansas living an age of suspense. Think what is a summer to them! How many worthy men have died and had their funeral sermons preached since I saw the mother turtle bury her eggs here! They contained an undeveloped liquid then, they are now turtles. June, July, and August, — the lhvelong sum- mer, — what are they with their heats and fevers but sufficient to hatch a tortoise in. Be not in haste; mind your private affairs. Consider the turtle. A whole summer — June, July, and August — is not too good nor too much to hatch a turtle in. Perchance you have worried yourself, despaired of the world, meditated the end of life, and all things seemed rushing to de- struction; but nature has steadily and serenely ad- vanced with a turtle’s pace. The young turtle spends its infancy within its shell. It gets experience and learns the ways of the world through that wall. While it rests warily on the edge of its hole, rash schemes are undertaken by men and fail. Has not the tortoise also learned the true value of time? You go to India and back, and the turtle eggs in your field are still unhatched. French empires rise or fall, but the turtle is developed only so fast. What’s a summer? Time for a turtle’s eggs to hatch. So is the turtle devel- oped, fitted to endure, for he outlives twenty French dynasties. One turtle knows several Napoleons. They have seen no berries, had no cares, yet has not the great world existed for them as much as for you? Euphorbia hyperieifolia, how long? It has pretty little white and also rose-colored petals, or, as they are now called, . involucre. Stands six inches high, regularly fr curving, with large leaves pret- tily arranged at an angle with both a horizontal and perpendicular line. See the great oval masses of scarlet berries of the arum now in the meadows. Trilium fruit, long time. The river being thus high, for ten days or more I have seen little parcels of shells left by the muskrats. So they eat them thus early. Peppermint, how long? May be earlier than I have thought, for the mowers clipit. The bright china-colored blue berries of the Cornus sericea begin to show themselves along the river, amid their red-brown leaves,—the kinnikinnic of the Indians.

Heavy rain in the night and this forenoon. P. M.— To J. Farmer’s by river. The Helwanthus decapetalus, apparently a variety, with eight petals, about three feet high, leaves petioled, but not wing-petioled, and broader-leaved than that of August 12th, quite ovate with a tapering point, with ciliate petioles, thin but quite rough beneath and above, stem purple and smoothish, Hosmer’s bank, op- posite Azalea Swamp. Fragrant everlasting in prime and very abundant, whitening Carter’s pasture. Rib- wort still. An apparent white vervain with bluish flowers, as blue as bluets even or more so, roadside beyond Farmer’s barn.

Rain again in the night, as well as most of yesterday, raising the river a second time. They say there has not been such a year as this for more than half a century, — for winter cold, summer heat, and rain. | P. M. — To Vaccinium Oxycoccus Swamp. Fair weather, clear and rather cool. Pratt shows me at his shop a bottle filled with alcohol and camphor. The alcohol is clear and the camphor beautifully crystallized at the bottom for nearly an inch in depth, in the form of small feathers, like a hoar frost. He has read that this is as good a barometer as any. It stands quite still, and has not been unstoppled for a year; yet some days the alcohol will be quite clear, and even no camphor will be seen, and again it will be quite full of fine feathery particles, or it will be partly clear, as to-day. Bidens connata abundant at Moore’s Swamp, how long? ‘The aspect of some of what I have called the swamp Solidago stricta there at present makes me doubt if it be not more than a variety, the leaves are so broad, smooth (2. e. uncurled or wrinkled), and thick, and some cauline ones so large, almost speciosa-like, to say nothing of size of rays. The Aster puniceus is hardly yet in prime; its great umbel-shaped tops not yet fully out. Its leaves are pretty generally whitened with mildew and unsightly. Even the chelone, where prostrate, has put forth roots from its stem, near the top. | The sarothra is now apparently in prime on the Great Fields, and comes near being open now, at 3 P. M. Bruised, it has the fragrance of sorrel and lemon, rather pungent or stinging, like a bee. Hypericum corymbosum lingers still, with perforatum.

Sunday. P. M.— To Hubbard Bath Swamp by boat. There sits one by the shore who wishes to go with me, but I cannot think of it. I must be fancy-free. There is no such mote in the sky as a man who is not perfectly transparent to you, — who has any opacity. I would rather attend to him earnestly for half an hour, on shore or elsewhere, and then dismiss him. He thinks I could merely take him into my boat and then not mind him. He does not realize that I should by the same act take him into my mind, where there is no room for him, and my bark would surely founder in such a voyage as I was contemplating. I know very well that I should never reach that expansion of the river I have in my mind, with him aboard with his broad terrene qualities. He would sink my bark (not to another sea) and never know it. I could better carry a heaped load of meadow mud and sit on the thole- pins. There would be more room for me, and I should reach that expansion of the river nevertheless. I could better afford to take him into bed with me, for then I might, perhaps, abandon him in my dreams. Ah! you are a heavy fellow, but I am well disposed. If you could go without going, then you might go. There’s the captain’s stateroom, empty to be sure, and you say you could go in the steerage. I know very well that only your baggage would be dropped in © the steerage, while you would settle right down into that other snug recess. Why, I am gozng, not staying. I have come on purpose to sail, to paddle away from such as you, and you have waylaid me at the shore. You have chosen to make your assault at the moment of embarkation. Why, if I thought you were steadily gazing after me a mile off, I could not endure it. It is because I trust that I shall ere long depart from your thoughts, and so you from mine, that I am encour- aged to set sail at all. I make haste to put several meanders and some hills between us. This Company is obliged to make a distinction between dead freight and passengers. I will take almost any amount of freight for you cheerfully,—anything, my dear sir, but yourself.