A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers by Henry David Thoreau

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EDITORIAL NOTES

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A WEEK
ON THE
CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS.

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A WEEK

ON THE

CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS

By HENRY D. THOREAU,

AUTHOR OF "WALDEN," ETC.

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Where'er thou sail'st who sailed with me,
Though now thou climbest loftier mounts,
And fairer rivers dost ascend,
Be thou my Muse, my Brother--.

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I am bound, I am bound, for a distant shore,
By a lonely isle, by a far Azore,
There it is, there it is, the treasure I seek,
On the barren sands of a desolate creek.

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I sailed up a river with a pleasant wind,
New lands, new people, and new thoughts to find;
Many fair reaches and headlands appeared,
And many dangers were there to be feared;
But when I remember where I have been,
And the fair landscapes that I have seen,
^Thou^ seemest the only permanent shore,
The cape never rounded, nor wandered o'er.

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Fluminaque obliquis cinxit declivia ripis;
Quae, diversa locis, partim sorbentur ab ipsa;
In mare perveniunt partim, campoque recepta
Liberioris aquae, pro ripis litora pulsant.
^Ovid^, Met. I. 39

He confined the rivers within their sloping banks,
Which in different places are part absorbed by the earth,
Part reach the sea, and being received within the plain
Of its freer waters, beat the shore for banks.

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CONCORD RIVER.

"Beneath low hills, in the broad interval
Through which at will our Indian rivulet
Winds mindful still of sannup and of squaw,
Whose pipe and arrow oft the plough unburies,
Here, in pine houses, built of new-fallen trees,
Supplanters of the tribe, the farmers dwell."

^Emerson^.

The Musketaquid, or Grass-ground River, though probably as old as
the Nile or Euphrates, did not begin to have a place in civilized
history, until the fame of its grassy meadows and its fish
attracted settlers out of England in 1635, when it received the
other but kindred name of ^Concord^ from the first plantation on
its banks, which appears to have been commenced in a spirit of
peace and harmony. It will be Grass-ground River as long as grass
grows and water runs here; it will be Concord River only while
men lead peaceable lives on its banks. To an extinct race it was
grass-ground, where they hunted and fished, and it is still
perennial grass-ground to Concord farmers, who own the Great
Meadows, and get the hay from year to year. "One branch of it,"
according to the historian of Concord, for I love to quote so
good authority, "rises in the south part of Hopkinton, and
another from a pond and a large cedar-swamp in Westborough," and
flowing between Hopkinton and Southborough, through Framingham,
and between Sudbury and Wayland, where it is sometimes called
Sudbury River, it enters Concord at the south part of the town,
and after receiving the North or Assabeth River, which has its
source a little farther to the north and west, goes out at the
northeast angle, and flowing between Bedford and Carlisle, and
through Billerica, empties into the Merrimack at Lowell. In
Concord it is, in summer, from four to fifteen feet deep, and
from one hundred to three hundred feet wide, but in the spring
freshets, when it overflows its banks, it is in some places
nearly a mile wide. Between Sudbury and Wayland the meadows
acquire their greatest breadth, and when covered with water, they
form a handsome chain of shallow vernal lakes, resorted to by
numerous gulls and ducks. Just above Sherman's Bridge, between
these towns, is the largest expanse, and when the wind blows
freshly in a raw March day, heaving up the surface into dark and
sober billows or regular swells, skirted as it is in the distance
with alder-swamps and smoke-like maples, it looks like a smaller
Lake Huron, and is very pleasant and exciting for a landsman to
row or sail over. The farm-houses along the Sudbury shore, which
rises gently to a considerable height, command fine water
prospects at this season. The shore is more flat on the Wayland
side, and this town is the greatest loser by the flood. Its
farmers tell me that thousands of acres are flooded now, since
the dams have been erected, where they remember to have seen the
white honeysuckle or clover growing once, and they could go dry
with shoes only in summer. Now there is nothing but blue-joint
and sedge and cut-grass there, standing in water all the year
round. For a long time, they made the most of the driest season
to get their hay, working sometimes till nine o'clock at night,
sedulously paring with their scythes in the twilight round the
hummocks left by the ice; but now it is not worth the getting
when they can come at it, and they look sadly round to their
wood-lots and upland as a last resource.

It is worth the while to make a voyage up this stream, if you go
no farther than Sudbury, only to see how much country there is in
the rear of us; great hills, and a hundred brooks, and
farm-houses, and barns, and haystacks, you never saw before, and
men everywhere, Sudbury, that is Southborough men, and Wayland,
and Nine-Acre-Corner men, and Bound Rock, where four towns bound
on a rock in the river, Lincoln, Wayland, Sudbury, Concord. Many
waves are there agitated by the wind, keeping nature fresh, the
spray blowing in your face, reeds and rushes waving; ducks by the
hundred, all uneasy in the surf, in the raw wind, just ready to
rise, and now going off with a clatter and a whistling like
riggers straight for Labrador, flying against the stiff gale with
reefed wings, or else circling round first, with all their
paddles briskly moving, just over the surf, to reconnoitre you
before they leave these parts; gulls wheeling overhead, muskrats
swimming for dear life, wet and cold, with no fire to warm them
by that you know of; their labored homes rising here and there
like haystacks; and countless mice and moles and winged titmice
along the sunny windy shore; cranberries tossed on the waves and
heaving up on the beach, their little red skiffs beating about
among the alders;--such healthy natural tumult as proves the last
day is not yet at hand. And there stand all around the alders,
and birches, and oaks, and maples full of glee and sap, holding
in their buds until the waters subside. You shall perhaps run
aground on Cranberry Island, only some spires of last year's
pipe-grass above water, to show where the danger is, and get as
good a freezing there as anywhere on the Northwest Coast. I never
voyaged so far in all my life. You shall see men you never heard
of before, whose names you don't know, going away down through
the meadows with long ducking-guns, with water-tight boots wading
through the fowl-meadow grass, on bleak, wintry, distant shores,
with guns at half-cock, and they shall see teal, blue-winged,
green-winged, shelldrakes, whistlers, black ducks, ospreys, and
many other wild and noble sights before night, such as they who
sit in parlors never dream of. You shall see rude and sturdy,
experienced and wise men, keeping their castles, or teaming up
their summer's wood, or chopping alone in the woods, men fuller
of talk and rare adventure in the sun and wind and rain, than a
chestnut is of meat; who were out not only in '75 and 1812, but
have been out every day of their lives; greater men than Homer,
or Chaucer, or Shakespeare, only they never got time to say so;
they never took to the way of writing. Look at their fields, and
imagine what they might write, if ever they should put pen to
paper. Or what have they not written on the face of the earth
already, clearing, and burning, and scratching, and harrowing,
and ploughing, and subsoiling, in and in, and out and out, and
over and over, again and again, erasing what they had already
written for want of parchment.

As yesterday and the historical ages are past, as the work of
to-day is present, so some flitting perspectives, and
demi-experiences of the life that is in nature are in time
veritably future, or rather outside to time, perennial, young,
divine, in the wind and rain which never die.

The respectable folks,--
Where dwell they?
They whisper in the oaks,
And they sigh in the hay;
Summer and winter, night and day,
Out on the meadow, there dwell they.
They never die,
Nor snivel, nor cry,
Nor ask our pity
With a wet eye.
A sound estate they ever mend
To every asker readily lend;
To the ocean wealth,
To the meadow health,
To Time his length,
To the rocks strength,
To the stars light,
To the weary night,
To the busy day,
To the idle play;
And so their good cheer never ends,
For all are their debtors, and all their friends.

Concord River is remarkable for the gentleness of its current,
which is scarcely perceptible, and some have referred to its
influence the proverbial moderation of the inhabitants of
Concord, as exhibited in the Revolution, and on later occasions.
It has been proposed, that the town should adopt for its coat of
arms a field verdant, with the Concord circling nine times round.
I have read that a descent of an eighth of an inch in a mile is
sufficient to produce a flow. Our river has, probably, very near
the smallest allowance. The story is current, at any rate,
though I believe that strict history will not bear it out, that
the only bridge ever carried away on the main branch, within the
limits of the town, was driven up stream by the wind. But
wherever it makes a sudden bend it is shallower and swifter, and
asserts its title to be called a river. Compared with the other
tributaries of the Merrimack, it appears to have been properly
named Musketaquid, or Meadow River, by the Indians. For the most
part, it creeps through broad meadows, adorned with scattered
oaks, where the cranberry is found in abundance, covering the
ground like a moss-bed. A row of sunken dwarf willows borders
the stream on one or both sides, while at a greater distance the
meadow is skirted with maples, alders, and other fluviatile
trees, overrun with the grape-vine, which bears fruit in its
season, purple, red, white, and other grapes. Still farther from
the stream, on the edge of the firm land, are seen the gray and
white dwellings of the inhabitants. According to the valuation
of 1831, there were in Concord two thousand one hundred and
eleven acres, or about one seventh of the whole territory in
meadow; this standing next in the list after pasturage and
unimproved lands, and, judging from the returns of previous
years, the meadow is not reclaimed so fast as the woods are
cleared.

Let us here read what old Johnson says of these meadows in his
"Wonder-working Providence," which gives the account of New
England from 1628 to 1652, and see how matters looked to him. He
says of the Twelfth Church of Christ gathered at Concord: "This
town is seated upon a fair fresh river, whose rivulets are filled
with fresh marsh, and her streams with fish, it being a branch of
that large river of Merrimack. Allwifes and shad in their season
come up to this town, but salmon and dace cannot come up, by
reason of the rocky falls, which causeth their meadows to lie
much covered with water, the which these people, together with
their neighbor town, have several times essayed to cut through
but cannot, yet it may be turned another way with an hundred
pound charge as it appeared." As to their farming he says:
"Having laid out their estate upon cattle at 5 to 20 pound a cow,
when they came to winter them with inland hay, and feed upon such
wild fother as was never cut before, they could not hold out the
winter, but, ordinarily the first or second year after their
coming up to a new plantation, many of their cattle died." And
this from the same author "Of the Planting of the 19th Church in
the Mattachusets' Government, called Sudbury": "This year [does
he mean 1654] the town and church of Christ at Sudbury began to
have the first foundation stones laid, taking up her station in
the inland country, as her elder sister Concord had formerly
done, lying further up the same river, being furnished with great
plenty of fresh marsh, but, it lying very low is much indamaged
with land floods, insomuch that when the summer proves wet they
lose part of their hay; yet are they so sufficiently provided
that they take in cattle of other towns to winter."

The sluggish artery of the Concord meadows steals thus unobserved
through the town, without a murmur or a pulse-beat, its general
course from southwest to northeast, and its length about fifty
miles; a huge volume of matter, ceaselessly rolling through the
plains and valleys of the substantial earth with the moccasoned
tread of an Indian warrior, making haste from the high places of
the earth to its ancient reservoir. The murmurs of many a famous
river on the other side of the globe reach even to us here, as to
more distant dwellers on its banks; many a poet's stream floating
the helms and shields of heroes on its bosom. The Xanthus or
Scamander is not a mere dry channel and bed of a mountain
torrent, but fed by the everflowing springs of fame;--

"And thou Simois, that as an arrowe, clere
Through Troy rennest, aie downward to the sea";--

and I trust that I may be allowed to associate our muddy but much
abused Concord River with the most famous in history.

"Sure there are poets which did never dream
Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream
Of Helicon; we therefore may suppose
Those made not poets, but the poets those."

The Mississippi, the Ganges, and the Nile, those journeying atoms
from the Rocky Mountains, the Himmaleh, and Mountains of the
Moon, have a kind of personal importance in the annals of the
world. The heavens are not yet drained over their sources, but
the Mountains of the Moon still send their annual tribute to the
Pasha without fail, as they did to the Pharaohs, though he must
collect the rest of his revenue at the point of the sword.
Rivers must have been the guides which conducted the footsteps of
the first travellers. They are the constant lure, when they flow
by our doors, to distant enterprise and adventure, and, by a
natural impulse, the dwellers on their banks will at length
accompany their currents to the lowlands of the globe, or explore
at their invitation the interior of continents. They are the
natural highways of all nations, not only levelling the ground
and removing obstacles from the path of the traveller, quenching
his thirst and bearing him on their bosoms, but conducting him
through the most interesting scenery, the most populous portions
of the globe, and where the animal and vegetable kingdoms attain
their greatest perfection.

I had often stood on the banks of the Concord, watching the lapse
of the current, an emblem of all progress, following the same law
with the system, with time, and all that is made; the weeds at
the bottom gently bending down the stream, shaken by the watery
wind, still planted where their seeds had sunk, but erelong to
die and go down likewise; the shining pebbles, not yet anxious to
better their condition, the chips and weeds, and occasional logs
and stems of trees that floated past, fulfilling their fate, were
objects of singular interest to me, and at last I resolved to
launch myself on its bosom and float whither it would bear me.

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SATURDAY.

"Come, come, my lovely fair, and let us try
Those rural delicacies."
_Christ's Invitation to the Soul._ ^Quarles^

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SATURDAY.

--*--

At length, on Saturday, the last day of August, 1839, we two,
brothers, and natives of Concord, weighed anchor in this river
port; for Concord, too, lies under the sun, a port of entry and
departure for the bodies as well as the souls of men; one shore
at least exempted from all duties but such as an honest man will
gladly discharge. A warm drizzling rain had obscured the
morning, and threatened to delay our voyage, but at length the
leaves and grass were dried, and it came out a mild afternoon, as
serene and fresh as if Nature were maturing some greater scheme
of her own. After this long dripping and oozing from every pore,
she began to respire again more healthily than ever. So with a
vigorous shove we launched our boat from the bank, while the
flags and bulrushes courtesied a God-speed, and dropped silently
down the stream.

Our boat, which had cost us a week's labor in the spring, was in
form like a fisherman's dory, fifteen feet long by three and a
half in breadth at the widest part, painted green below, with a
border of blue, with reference to the two elements in which it
was to spend its existence. It had been loaded the evening before
at our door, half a mile from the river, with potatoes and melons
from a patch which we had cultivated, and a few utensils, and was
provided with wheels in order to be rolled around falls, as well
as with two sets of oars, and several slender poles for shoving
in shallow places, and also two masts, one of which served for a
tent-pole at night; for a buffalo-skin was to be our bed, and a
tent of cotton cloth our roof. It was strongly built, but heavy,
and hardly of better model than usual. If rightly made, a boat
would be a sort of amphibious animal, a creature of two elements,
related by one half its structure to some swift and shapely fish,
and by the other to some strong-winged and graceful bird. The
fish shows where there should be the greatest breadth of beam and
depth in the hold; its fins direct where to set the oars, and the
tail gives some hint for the form and position of the rudder. The
bird shows how to rig and trim the sails, and what form to give
to the prow that it may balance the boat, and divide the air and
water best. These hints we had but partially obeyed. But the
eyes, though they are no sailors, will never be satisfied with
any model, however fashionable, which does not answer all the
requisitions of art. However, as art is all of a ship but the
wood, and yet the wood alone will rudely serve the purpose of a
ship, so our boat, being of wood, gladly availed itself of the
old law that the heavier shall float the lighter, and though a
dull water-fowl, proved a sufficient buoy for our purpose.

"Were it the will of Heaven, an osier bough
Were vessel safe enough the seas to plough."

Some village friends stood upon a promontory lower down the
stream to wave us a last farewell; but we, having already
performed these shore rites, with excusable reserve, as befits
those who are embarked on unusual enterprises, who behold but
speak not, silently glided past the firm lands of Concord, both
peopled cape and lonely summer meadow, with steady sweeps. And
yet we did unbend so far as to let our guns speak for us, when at
length we had swept out of sight, and thus left the woods to ring
again with their echoes; and it may be many russet-clad children,
lurking in those broad meadows, with the bittern and the woodcock
and the rail, though wholly concealed by brakes and hardhack and
meadow-sweet, heard our salute that afternoon.

We were soon floating past the first regular battle ground of the
Revolution, resting on our oars between the still visible
abutments of that "North Bridge," over which in April, 1775,
rolled the first faint tide of that war, which ceased not, till,
as we read on the stone on our right, it "gave peace to these
United States." As a Concord poet has sung:--

"By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

"The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps."

Our reflections had already acquired a historical remoteness from
the scenes we had left, and we ourselves essayed to sing.

Ah, 't is in vain the peaceful din
That wakes the ignoble town,
Not thus did braver spirits win
A patriot's renown.

There is one field beside this stream,
Wherein no foot does fall,
But yet it beareth in my dream
A richer crop than all.

Let me believe a dream so dear,
Some heart beat high that day,
Above the petty Province here,
And Britain far away;

Some hero of the ancient mould,
Some arm of knightly worth,
Of strength unbought, and faith unsold,
Honored this spot of earth;

Who sought the prize his heart described,
And did not ask release,
Whose free-born valor was not bribed
By prospect of a peace.

The men who stood on yonder height
That day are long since gone;
Not the same hand directs the fight
And monumental stone.

Ye were the Grecian cities then,
The Romes of modern birth,
Where the New England husbandmen
Have shown a Roman worth.

In vain I search a foreign land
To find our Bunker Hill,
And Lexington and Concord stand
By no Laconian rill.

With such thoughts we swept gently by this now peaceful
pasture-ground, on waves of Concord, in which was long since
drowned the din of war.

But since we sailed
Some things have failed,
And many a dream
Gone down the stream.

Here then an aged shepherd dwelt,
Who to his flock his substance dealt,
And ruled them with a vigorous crook,
By precept of the sacred Book;
But he the pierless bridge passed o'er,
And solitary left the shore.

Anon a youthful pastor came,
Whose crook was not unknown to fame,
His lambs he viewed with gentle glance,
Spread o'er the country's wide expanse,
And fed with "Mosses from the Manse."
Here was our Hawthorne in the dale,
And here the shepherd told his tale.

That slight shaft had now sunk behind the hills, and we had
floated round the neighboring bend, and under the new North
Bridge between Ponkawtasset and the Poplar Hill, into the Great
Meadows, which, like a broad moccason print, have levelled a
fertile and juicy place in nature.

On Ponkawtasset, since, we took our way,
Down this still stream to far Billericay,
A poet wise has settled, whose fine ray
Doth often shine on Concord's twilight day.

Like those first stars, whose silver beams on high,
Shining more brightly as the day goes by,
Most travellers cannot at first descry,
But eyes that wont to range the evening sky,

And know celestial lights, do plainly see,
And gladly hail them, numbering two or three;
For lore that's deep must deeply studied be,
As from deep wells men read star-poetry.

These stars are never paled, though out of sight,
But like the sun they shine forever bright;
Ay, _they_ are suns, though earth must in its flight
Put out its eyes that it may see their light.

Who would neglect the least celestial sound,
Or faintest light that falls on earthly ground,
If he could know it one day would be found
That star in Cygnus whither we are bound,
And pale our sun with heavenly radiance round?

Gradually the village murmur subsided, and we seemed to be
embarked on the placid current of our dreams, floating from past
to future as silently as one awakes to fresh morning or evening
thoughts. We glided noiselessly down the stream, occasionally
driving a pickerel or a bream from the covert of the pads, and
the smaller bittern now and then sailed away on sluggish wings
from some recess in the shore, or the larger lifted itself out of
the long grass at our approach, and carried its precious legs
away to deposit them in a place of safety. The tortoises also
rapidly dropped into the water, as our boat ruffled the surface
amid the willows, breaking the reflections of the trees. The
banks had passed the height of their beauty, and some of the
brighter flowers showed by their faded tints that the season was
verging towards the afternoon of the year; but this sombre tinge
enhanced their sincerity, and in the still unabated heats they
seemed like the mossy brink of some cool well. The narrow-leaved
willow (_Salix Purshiana_) lay along the surface of the water in
masses of light green foliage, interspersed with the large balls
of the button-bush. The small rose-colored polygonum raised its
head proudly above the water on either hand, and flowering at
this season and in these localities, in front of dense fields of
the white species which skirted the sides of the stream, its
little streak of red looked very rare and precious. The pure
white blossoms of the arrow-head stood in the shallower parts,
and a few cardinals on the margin still proudly surveyed
themselves reflected in the water, though the latter, as well
as the pickerel-weed, was now nearly out of blossom. The
snake-head, _Chelone glabra_, grew close to the shore, while a
kind of coreopsis, turning its brazen face to the sun, full and
rank, and a tall dull red flower, _Eupatorium purpureum_, or
trumpet-weed, formed the rear rank of the fluvial array. The
bright blue flowers of the soap-wort gentian were sprinkled here
and there in the adjacent meadows, like flowers which Proserpine
had dropped, and still farther in the fields or higher on the
bank were seen the purple Gerardia, the Virginian rhexia, and
drooping neottia or ladies'-tresses; while from the more distant
waysides which we occasionally passed, and banks where the sun
had lodged, was reflected still a dull yellow beam from the ranks
of tansy, now past its prime. In short, Nature seemed to have
adorned herself for our departure with a profusion of fringes and
curls, mingled with the bright tints of flowers, reflected in the
water. But we missed the white water-lily, which is the queen of
river flowers, its reign being over for this season. He makes
his voyage too late, perhaps, by a true water clock who delays so
long. Many of this species inhabit our Concord water. I have
passed down the river before sunrise on a summer morning between
fields of lilies still shut in sleep; and when, at length, the
flakes of sunlight from over the bank fell on the surface of the
water, whole fields of white blossoms seemed to flash open before
me, as I floated along, like the unfolding of a banner, so
sensible is this flower to the influence of the sun's rays.

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