9 February 1857 – 15 February 1857

The thaw which began on the 4th lasted through the 8th. When I surveyed Shattuck’s Merrick’s pasture fields, about January 10th, I was the more pleased with the task because of the three willow-rows about them. One, trimmed a year before, had grown about seven feet, a dense hedge of bright-yellow osiers. But MacManus, who was helping me, said that he thought the land would be worth two hundred dollars more if the wil- lows were out of the way, they so filled the ground with their roots. He had found that you could not plow within five rods [sic] of them, unless at nght angles with the rows. Hayden, senior, tells me that when he lived with Abel Moore, Moore’s son Henry one day set out a row of willow boughs for a hedge, but the father, who had just been eradicating an old willow- row at great labor and expense, asked Hayden who had done that and finally offered him a dollar if he would destroy them, which he agreed to do. So each morning, as he went to and from his work, he used to pull some of them up a little way, and if there were many roots formed he rubbed them off on a rock. And when, at the breakfast-table, Henry expressed won- der that his willows did not grow any better, being set in a rich soil, the father would look at Hayden and laugh. Burton, the traveller, quotes an Arab saying, “ Voy- aging is a victory,” which he refers to the feeling of independence on overcoming the difficulties and dangers of the desert. But I think that commonly voyaging is a defeat, a rout, to which the traveller is compelled by want of valor. The traveller’s peculiar valor is com- monly a bill of exchange. He is at home anywhere but where he was born and bred. Petitioning some Sir Joseph Banks or other representative of a Geographical Society to avail himself of his restlessness, and, if not receiving a favorable answer, necessarily going off some- where next morning. It is a prevalent disease, which at- tacks Americans especially, both men and women, the opposite to nostalgia. Yet it does not differ much from nostalgia. I read the story of one voyageress round the world, who, it seemed to me, having started, had no other object but to get home again, only she took the longest way round. Snatching at a fact or two in be- half of science as he goes, just as a panther in his leap will take off a man’s sleeve and land twenty feet beyond him when travelling down-hill, being fitted out by some Sir Joseph Banks. It seems that in Arabia, as well as in New England, they have the art of springing a prayer upon you. The Madani or inhabitants of El Medinah are, according to Burton, notwithstanding an assumed austerity and ceremoniousness, not easily matched in volubility and personal abuse. “ When a man is opposed to more than his match in disputing or bargaining, . . . he interrupts the adversary with a ‘Sall’ ala Mohammed,’ — bless the Prophet. Every good Moslem is obliged to obey such requisition by responding, ‘ Allahumma salli alayh,’ —O Allah bless him! But the Madani curtails the phrase to “A’n,’ supposing it to be an equivalent, and proceeds in his loquacity. Then perhaps the baffled opponent will shout out ‘Wabhid,’ 7. e. ‘Attest the unity of the Deity;’ when, instead of employing the usual religious phrases to assert that dogma, he will briefly ejaculate, ‘Al,’ and hurry on with the course of con- versation.”” (Page 283.)

Wednesday. The meadows, flooded by the thaw of the last half of last week and Sunday, are now frozen hard enough to bear, and it is excellent skating. 4 Near the other swamp white oak on Shattuck’s piece I found another caterpillar on the ice. From its position I thought it possible that it had been washed from its winter quarters by the freshet, and so left on top of the ice. It was not frozen in, and may have been blown from the oak. It was of a different species from that of January 8th, about one and one tenth inches long, with but little fuzziness, black with three longi- tudinal buff stripes, the two lateral quite pale, and a black head; the foremost feet black, the others lighter- colored. It was frozen quite stiffly, as many tested, being curled up like the other, and I did not dare to bend it hard for fear of breaking it, even after I took it out in the house. But being placed on the mantelpiece it soon became relaxed, and in fifteen minutes began to crawl.

7.30 a. m. — The caterpillar, which I placed last night on the snow beneath the thermometer, is frozen stiff again, this time not being curled up, the temperature being —6° now. Yet, being placed on the mantelpiece, it thaws and begins to crawl in five or ten minutes, before the rear half of its body is limber. Perhaps they were revived last week, when the ther- mometer stood at 52 and 53. To Worcester.

Higginson told me yesterday of a large tract near Fayal and near Pico (Mountain), covered with the reindeer (?) (as I suggested and he assented) lichens, very remarkable and desolate, extending for miles, the effect of an earthquake, which will in course of time be again clothed with a larger vegetation. Described at length remarkable force of the wind on the summit of Pico. Told of a person in West Newbury, who told him that he once saw the moon rising out of the sea from his house in that place, and on the moonlight in his room the distinct shadow of a vessel which was somewhere on the sea between him and the moon! ! It is a fine, somewhat springlike day. The ice is softening so that skates begin to cut in, and numerous caterpillars are now crawling about on the ice and snow, the thermometer in the shade north of house standing 42°. So it appears that they must often thaw in the course of the winter, and find nothing to eat.

About the Ist of January, when I was sur- veying the Lee farm, Captain Elwell, the proprietor, asked me how old I thought the house was. I looked into Shattuck’s History and found that, according to him, “Henry Woodhouse, or Woodis, as his name was sometimes written, came to Concord from London, about 1650, freeman 1656. His farm, esti- mated at three hundred and fifty acres, lay between the two rivers, and descended to his son-in-law, Joseph Lee, whose posterity successively held it for more than one hundred years. . . . He d[ied] June 16, 1701.” (Vide page 389.) Shattuck says that the principal sachem of our In- dians, Tahattawan, lived “near Nahshawtuck hill.’’ Shattuck (page 28) says that the celebrated Waban originally lived in Concord, and he describes Squaw Sachem and John Tahattawan, son of Tahattawan, as Musketaquid Indians. In 1684 “Mantatukwet, a Christian Indian of Natick, aged 70 years or there- abouts,” according to the Register at Cambridge, de- posed “that about 50 years since he lived within the bounds of that place which is now called Concord, at the foot of an hill, named Nahshawtuck, now in the possession of Mr. Henry Woodis,” etc. (page 7). A vote of Henry Woodies in 1654 is mentioned. Under date 1666, Shattuck finds in the South Quarter, among the names of the town at that time, “Henry Woodhouse When I returned from Worcester yesterday morning, I found that the Lee house, of which six weeks ago I made an accurate plan, had been completely burned up the evening before, 7. e. the 13th, while I was lec- turing in Worcester. (It took fire and came near being destroyed in the night of the previous December 18th, early in morning. I was the first to get there from town.) In the course of the forenoon of yesterday I walked up to the site of the house, whither many peo- ple were flocking, on foot and in carriages. ‘There was nothing of the house left but the chimneys and cellar walls. The eastern chimney had fallen in the night. On my way I met Abel Hunt, to whom I observed that it was perhaps the oldest house in town. “No,” said he, “they saw the date on it during the fire, — 1707.” When I arrived I inquired where the date had been seen, and read it for myself on the chimney, but there was too much smouldering fire to permit of my ap- proaching it nearly. I was interested in the old elm near the southeast corner of the house, which I found had been a mere shell a few years since, now filled up with brick. Flood, who has lived there, told me that Wheeler asked his advice with regard to that tree, — whether he could do better than lay the axe at its root. F. told him that he had. seen an ash in the old country which was in the same condition, and is a tenderer tree than an “elum,” preserved by being filled up, and with masonry, and then cemented over. So, soon after, the mason was set to work upon it under his directions, Flood having scraped out all the rotten wood first with a hoe. The cavity was full three feet wide and eight or ten high commencing at the ground. The mason had covered the bricks and rounded off with mortar, which he had scored with his trowel so that [one] did not observe but it was bark. It seemed an admirable plan, and not only improved the appearance but the strength and durability of the tree.