It must be the largest lake in Middlesex.

November 7. 


8 A. M. – To Long Pond with W. E. C. . . .

Close by we found Long Pond, in Wayland, Framingham, and Natick, a great body of water with singularly sandy, shelving, caving, undermined banks; and there we ate our luncheon.

The mayflower leaves we saw there, and the Viola pedata in blossom.

We went down it a mile or two on the east side through the woods on its high bank, and then dined, looking far down to what seemed the Boston outlet (opposite to its natural outlet), where a solitary building stood on the shore.

It is a wild and stretching loch, where yachts might sail, — Cochituate.

It was not only larger but wilder and more novel than I had expected.

In some respects unlike New England.

I could hardly have told in what part of the world I was, if I had been carried there blindfolded.

Yet some features, at least the composition of the soil, were familiar.

The glorious sandy banks far and near, caving and sliding, — far sandy slopes, the forts of the land, where you see  the naked flesh of New England, her garment being blown aside like that of the priests (of the Levites?) when they ascend to the altar.

Seen through this November sky, these sands are dear to me, worth all the gold of California, suggesting Pactolus, while the Saxonville, factory-bell sounds o'er the woods.

That sound perchance it is that whets my vision. . . .

Dear to me to lie in, this sand; fit to preserve the bones of a race for thousands of years to come. And this is my home, my native soil; and I am a New-Englander. Of thee, O earth, are my bone and sinew made; to thee, O sun, am I brother. It must be the largest lake in Middlesex. To this dust my body will gladly return as to its origin. Here have I my habitat I am of thee.

Dear to me to lie in, this sand;

fit to preserve the bones of a race

for thousands of years to come.

And this is my home,

my native soil; and I am

a New-Englander.

Of thee, O earth,

are my bone

and sinew made.

To thee,

O sun,

am I brother.

To this dust

my body will gladly return

as to its origin.

Here have I

my habitat

I am of thee.

Returned by the south side of Dudley Pond, which looked fairer than ever, though smaller, - now so still, the afternoon somewhat advanced, Nobscot in the west in a purplish light . . .

At Nonesuch Pond, in Natick, we saw a boulder some thirty-two feet square by sixteen high, with a large rock leaning against it, -- under which we walked, -- forming a triangular frame, through which we beheld the picture of the pond. How many white Indians have passed under it! Boulder Pond!

Thence across lots by the Weston elm, to the bounds of Lincoln at the railroad.

Saw a delicate fringed purple flower, Gentiana crinita, between those Weston hills, in a meadow, and after on higher land.
. . .

The sun sets while we are perched on a high rock in the north of Weston.  It soon grows finger cold.

At Walden are three reflections of the bright full (or nearly) moon, one moon and two sheens further off.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 7, 1851

It is a wild and stretching loch, where yachts might sail, —Cochituate. See August 24, 1857 ("B. says . . . that Cochituate Pond is only between three and four miles long, or five including the meadows that are flowed, yet it has been called even ten miles long.")

Lake Cochituate was created by the construction, beginning in 1846, of a dam to raise Long Pond, as it was then called , nine feet to create the first public drinking water reservoir for Boston. The Lake consists of three linked kettle ponds in "the Great Sand Plain of Framingham" having a general north and south direction, within the Middlesex County towns of Framingham, Wayland and Natick. The Pond is nearly three and one half miles long , and its greatest breadth about eighteen hundred feet. It naturally discharges into the Sudbury River about 14 miles above Concord where the Sudbury or North River joins the Assabet to form the Concord River. See Annual Report of the Cochituate Water Board For 1851.

And this is my home, my native soil; and I am a New-Englander. See November 8, 1851 ("When I saw the bare sand at Cochituate I felt my relation to the soil. These are my sands not yet run out. Not yet will the fates turn the glass. This air have I title to taint with my decay. In this clean sand my bones will gladly lie. Like Viola pedata, I shall be ready to bloom again here in my Indian summer days. Here ever springing, never dying, with perennial root I stand; for the winter of the land is warm to me. While the flowers bloom again as in the spring, shall I pine? When I see her sands exposed, thrown up from beneath the surface, it touches me inwardly, it reminds me of my origin; for I am such a plant, so native to New England, me thinks, as springs from the sand cast up from below")

The Weston elm. See October 24, 1852 ("There is an agreeable prospect from near the post-office in the northwest of Sudbury. The southeast (?) horizon is very distant. . .extending to the Weston elm in the horizon. You are more impressed with the extent of earth overlooked than if the view were bounded by mountains.")

Three reflections of the bright full (or nearly) moon. See October 8, 1851 ("The sun set red in haze,. . .and the moon rose in like manner at the same time. . . . The moon is full."); February 3, 1852 ("The moon is nearly full tonight,"); March 7, 1852 ("To the woods by the full moon."); April 3, 1852 ("I came out mainly to see the light of the moon reflected from the meadowy flood. It is a pathway of light, of sheeny ripples, extending across the meadow toward the moon, consisting of a myriad little bent and broken moons.")

Bacon says he has seen pitch pine pollen in a cloud going over a hill a mile off

June 14.

P. M.--To lime-kiln with Mr. Bacon of Natick.

Sisymbrium amphibium (?) of Bigelow, some days, at foot of Loring's land.

Common mallows well out; how long? 

What is that sisymbrium or mustard-like plant at foot of Loring 's ?

Erigeron strigosus (??) out earliest, say yesterday.

Observed a ribwort near Simon Brown's barn by road, with elongated spikes and only pistillate flowers.

Hedge-mustard, how long? Pepper grass, how long? Some time.

Scirpus lacustris, maybe some days.

I see a black caterpillar on the black willows nowadays with red spots.

Mr. Bacon thinks that cherry-birds are abundant where cankerworms are.

Says that only female mosquitoes sting (not his observation alone); that there are one or two arbor-vitæs native in Natick.

He has found the Lygodium palmatum there.

There is one pure-blooded Indian woman there. Pearl [?], I think he called her.

He thought those the exuviæ of mosquitoes on the river weeds under water.

Makes his own microscopes and uses garnets.

He called the huckleberry-apple a parasitic plant, — pterospora, – which grown on and changed the nature of the huckleberry.

Observed a diseased Andromeda paniculata twig prematurely in blossom.

Caught a locust, — properly harvest-fly (cicada), — drumming on a birch, which Bacon and Hill (of Waltham) think like the septendecim, except that ours has not red eyes but black ones. 

Harris's other kind, the dog-day cicada (canicularis), or harvest-fly. He says it begins to be heard invariably at the beginning of dog-days; he (Harris) heard it for many years in succession with few exceptions on the 25th of July.

Bacon says he has seen pitch pine pollen in a cloud going over a hill a mile off; is pretty sure.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 14, 1854

To lime-kiln with Mr. Bacon of Natick. See August 24, 1857 ("Ride to Austin Bacon’s, Natick.")
Makes his own microscopes and uses garnets. See August 24. 1857 ("A. Bacon showed me a drawing apparatus which he said he invented, very simple and convenient, also microscopes and many glasses for them which he made.")

Bacon says there are one or two arbor-vitæs native in Natick. See August 24, 1857 ("B[acon] says that the arbor-vitae grows indigenously in pretty large patches in Needham")

Thee dog-day cicada begins to be heard invariably at the beginning of dog-days; he (Harris) heard it for many years in succession with few exceptions on the 25th of July. See note to July 22, 1860 ("First locust heard.")

Bacon says he has seen pitch pine pollen in a cloud going over a hill a mile off; See. June 3, 1857 ("The pitch pine at Hemlocks is in bloom. . . .As usual, when I jar them the pollen rises in a little cloud about the pistillate flowers and the tops of the twigs, there being a little wind"); June 9, 1850 ("I see the pollen of the pitch pine now beginning to cover the surface of the pond.")

Mt. Washington is 6285 feet above high water mark at Portland.

August 24. 

A. M. – Ride to Austin Bacon’s, Natick.

On the left hand, just this side the centre of Wayland, I measure the largest, or northernmost, of two large elms standing in front of an old house. At four feet from the ground, where, looking from one side, is the smallest place between the ground and the branches, it is seventeen feet in circumference, but there is a bulge on the north side for five feet upward. At five feet it divides to two branches, and each of these soon divides again. 

A. Bacon showed me a drawing apparatus which he said he invented, very simple and convenient, also microscopes and many glasses for them which he made. 

Showed me an exotic called “cypress,” which he said had spread from the cemetery over the neighboring fields. Did not know what it was. Is it not Euphorbia Cyparissias? and does it not grow by the north roadside east of Jarvis's [Also at J. Moore's front yard]?

I measured a scarlet oak northeast of his house, on land of the heirs of John Bacon, which at seven feet from the ground, or the smallest place below the branches, was ten feet eight inches in circumference, at one foot from ground sixteen and one fourth feet in circumference. It branched at twelve feet into three. Its trunk tapered or lessened very gradually and regularly from the ground to the smallest place, after the true Eddystone Lighthouse fashion. It has a large and handsome top, rather high than spreading (spreads about three and a half rods), but the branches often dead at the ends. This has grown considerably since Emerson measured; vide his account. Bacon says that E. pronounced it the largest oak in the State. 

Showed us an elm on the north side of the same field, some ten feet in circumference, which he said was as large in 1714, his grandmother having remembered it nearly so long. There was a dead Rhus radicans on it two inches in diameter.

In the meadow south of this field, we looked for the Drosera filiformis, which formerly grew there, but could not find it. Got a specimen of very red clover, said to be from the field of Waterloo, in front of the house near the schoolhouse on the hill. Returned eastward over a bare hill with some walnuts on it, formerly called Pine Hill, from whence a very good view of the new town of Natick. 

On the northeast base of this hill Bacon pointed out to me what he called Indian corn-hills, in heavy, moist pasture ground where had been a pine wood. The hillocks were in irregular rows four feet apart which ran along the side of the hill, and were much larger than you would expect after this lapse of time. I was confident that if Indian, they could not be very old, perhaps not more than a century or so, for such could never have been made with the ancient Indian hoes, – clamshells, stones, or the like, — but with the aid of plows and white men's hoes. Also pointed out to me what he thought the home site of an Indian squaw marked by a buckthorn bush by the wall. 

These hillocks were like tussocks with lichens thick on them, and B. thought that the rows were not running as a white man's with furrow.

We crossed the road which runs east and west, and, in the low ground on the south side, saw a white oak and a red maple, each forty or fifty feet high, which had fairly grown together for three or more feet upward from the ground. Also, nearby, a large white ash which though healthy bore a mark or scar where a branch had been broken off and stripped down the trunk. 

B. said that one of his ancestors, perhaps his grandfather, before the Revolution, went to climb this tree, and reached up and took hold of this branch, which he stripped down, and this was the scar!

Under the dead bark of this tree saw several large crickets of a rare kind. They had a peculiar naked and tender look, with branched legs and a rounded incurved front. 

Red cohosh grows along a wall in low ground close by. We ascended a ridge hill northeast of this, or east by south of Bacon’s house, on the north end of which Squaw Poquet, as well as her father, who was a powwow, before her, lived. Bacon thought that powwows commonly withdrew at last to the northeast side of a hill and lived alone. We saw the remains of apple trees in the woods, which she had planted.

B. thought apple trees did not now grow so large in New England as formerly, that they only grew to be one foot in diameter and then began to decay, whereas they formerly grew to be two or three and even sometimes four feet in diameter. 

The Corallorhiza multiflora was common in these woods, and out. 

The Galium circæzans  leaves taste very much like licorice and, according to B., produce a great flow of water, also make you perspire and are good for a cold. 

We came down northward to the Boston and Worcester turnpike, by the side of which the Malaxis liliifolia grows, though we did not find it. 

We waded into Coos Swamp on the south side the turnpike to find the ledum, but did not succeed. B. is sure it grows there. This is a large swamp with a small pond, or pond-hole, in the midst and the usual variety of shrubs. I noticed small spruces, high blueberry, the water andromeda, rhodora, Vaccinium dumosum (hairy) ripe, Kalmia glauca, Decodon verticillatus, etc. 

B. says that the arbor-vitae grows indigenously in pretty large patches in Needham; that Cochituate Pond is only between three and four miles long, or five including the meadows that are flowed, yet it has been called even ten miles long.

B. gave me a stone with very pretty black markings like jungermannias, from a blasting on the aqueduct in Natick. Some refer it to electricity. 

According to Guizot at the Montreal meeting the other day, Mt. Washington is 6285 feet above high water mark at Portland.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 24, 1857

The Corallorhiza multiflora was common in these woods. . . See note to August 13, 1857.

From the New York Times August 12, 1861 ("In 1851, Prof. GUYOT established the height of Mount Washington at 6,291 feet, by the most careful barometrical observations; and subsequently, in the same year or next succeeding one, the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad Company caused a measurement by the spirit level, by W.A. GOODWIN, Esq., Civil Engineer, who fixed the height at 6,285 feet. The engineers of the Coast Survey, in 1853, found the height of Mount Washington 6,293 feet, by a similar measurement. These slight differences arose from a variation of the base line or the different methods of ascertaining the sea level. The mean of the two measurements by GUYOT and GOODWIN, 6,288 feet, has been adopted as the true height of the summit of Mount Washington.")

B. says Cochituate Pond is only between three and four miles long, or five including the meadows that are flowed. See November 7, 1851 ("It must be the largest lake in Middlesex."). See also   Annual Report of the Cochituate Water Board For 1851. ( The Pond within the towns of Framingham , Wayland and Natick is nearly three and one half miles long. It naturally discharges into the Sudbury River about 14 miles above Concord where the Sudbury joins the Assabet to form the Concord River.)