A voyage up the Sudbury

September 14.

To opposite Pelham’s Pond by boat.

Quite cool, with some wind from east and southeast. Took a watermelon for drink.

Now, instead of haying, they are raking cranberries all along the river. The raker moves slowly along with a basket before him, into which he rakes (hauling) the berries, and his wagon stands one side. It is now the middle of the cranberry season.

The river has risen about a foot within a week, and now the weeds in midstream have generally disappeared, washed away or drowned. Now our oars leave a broad wake of large bubbles, which are slow to burst.

This cooler morning methinks the jays are heard more. Now that the pontederias have mostly fallen, the polygonums are the most common and conspicuous flowers of the river.  I see a stream of small white insects in the air over the side of the river.

At a distance, entering the pond, we mistake some fine sparkles, probably of insects, for ducks in the water, they were so large, which when we are nearer, looking down at a greater angle with the surface, wholly disappear. Crossing Fair Haven, the reflections are very fine, prolonged by the ripples made by an east wind just risen. 

The Bidens Beckii is drowned or dried up, and has given place to

Bidens cernua

Large-flowered bidens,

or beggar-ticks,

or bur-marigold,

now abundant by riverside.

September 19, 1851

The great bidens, the flower and ornament of the riversides at present, and now in its glory, especially at I. Rice’s shore, where there are dense beds. It is a splendid yellow — Channing says a lemon yellow — and looks larger than it is (two inches in diameter, more or less). 

Full of the sun. It needs a name.

We see half a dozen herons in this voyage. Their wings are so long in proportion to their bodies that there seems to be more than one undulation to a wing as they are disappearing in the distance, and so you can distinguish them. You see another begin before the first has ended. It is remarkable how common these birds are about our sluggish and marshy river.

A flock of thirteen tell tales, great yellow-legs, start up with their shrill whistle from the midst of the great Sudbury meadow, and away they sail in a flock,—a sailing (or skimming) flock, that is something rare methinks, — showing their white tails, to alight in a more distant place.

We went up thirteen or fourteen miles at least, and, as we stopped at Fair Haven Hill returning, rowed about twenty-five miles to-day.

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


Great bidens. See September 13, 1852 ("How surely this yellow comes out along the brooks in autumn.")

Needs a name. See September 12, 1859 ("The four kinds of bidens (frondosa, connata, cernua, and chrysanthemoides) abound now, but much of the Beckii was drowned by the rise of the river. Omitting this, the first two are inconspicuous flowers, cheap and ineffectual, commonly without petals, like the erechthites, but the third and fourth are conspicuous and interesting, expressing by their brilliant yellow the ripeness of the low grounds.")

Tell tale, great yellow-legs. See May 31, 1854 ( "It acts the part of a telltale."   "watchful, but not timid, ... while it stands on the lookout ... wades in the water to the middle of its yellow legs; goes off with a loud and sharp phe phe phe phe. ...")