Checkerberry-Tea Camp.

July 30. 

Thursday. 

I saw thus early the slate-colored snowbird (Fringilla hyemalis) here. 

As I walked along the ridge of the island, through the woods, I heard the rush and clatter of a great many ducks which I had alarmed from the concealed northern shore beneath me. . . . 

I heard here, at the foot of the lake, the cawing of a crow, which sounded so strangely that I suspected it might be an uncommon species. . . . 

To a philosopher there is in a sense no great and no small, and I do not often submit to the criticism which objects to comparing so-called great things with small. It is often a question which is most dignified by the comparison, and, beside, it is pleasant to be reminded that ancient worthies who dealt with affairs of state recognized small and familiar objects known to ourselves. We are surprised at the permanence of the relation. 

Loudon in his " Arboretum," vol. iv, page 2038, says, "Dionysius the geographer compares the form of the Morea in the Levant, the ancient Peloponnesus, to the leaf of this tree [the Oriental plane]; and Pliny makes the same remark in allusion to its numerous bays. To illustrate this comparison, Martyn, in his Virgil (vol. ii, page 149), gives a figure of the plane tree leaf, and a map of the Morea," both which Loudon copies.

Loudon says ("Arboretum," vol. iv, page 2323,  apparently using the authority of Michaux, whom see in my books) of the hemlock that "in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, the district of Maine, the state of Vermont, and the upper parts of New Hampshire, it forms three quarters of the evergreen woods, of which the remainder consists of the black spruce." (!) Speaks of its being "constantly found at the foot of the hills.” 

The events attending the fall of Dr. Johnson's celebrated willow at Lichfield, — a Salix Russelliana twenty-one feet in circumference at six feet from the ground, — which was blown down in 1829, were characteristic of the Briton, whose whole island, indeed, is a museum. While the neighbors were lamenting the fate of the tree, a coachmaker remembered that he had used some of the twigs for pea-sticks the year before and made haste to see if any of these chanced to be alive. Finding that one had taken root, it was forth with transplanted to the site of the old tree, "a band of music," says Loudon, "and a number of persons attending its removal, and a dinner being given after wards by Mr. Holmes [the coachmaker] to his friends, and the admirers of Johnson.”

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, July 30, 1857

See The Maine Woods (“Thursday, July 30. I aroused the Indian early this morning to go in search of our companion, expecting to find him within a mile or two, farther down the stream.. . . We had launched our canoe and gone but little way down the East Branch, when I heard an answering shout from my companion, . . . It was just below the mouth of Webster Stream.. . . He had been considering how long he could live on berries alone. . . .The morning was a bright one, and perfectly still and serene, the lake as smooth as glass, we making the only ripple as we paddled into it.. . .We continued along the outlet toward Grand Lake, through a swampy region,. . .We paddled southward down this handsome lake, which appeared to extend nearly as far east as south, keeping near the western shore, . . .I could not distinguish the outlet till we were almost in it, and heard the water falling over the dam there. Here was a considerable fall, and a very substantial dam,. . . Having carried over the dam, he darted down the rapids, leaving us to walk for a mile or more, where for the most part there was no path, . . .We decided to camp early to-night, . . . so we stopped at the first favorable shore, where there was a narrow gravelly beach on the western side, some five miles below the out let of the lake. It was an interesting spot, .. . . We called this therefore Checkerberry-Tea Camp.. . .It is all mossy and moosey. In some of those dense fir and spruce woods there is hardly room for the smoke to go up.”)