Set fire to the carburetted hydrogen from the sawdust shoal

July 14.

P. M. — Up Assabet with Loomis and Wilde.

Set fire to the carburetted hydrogen from the sawdust shoal with matches, and heard it flash.

It must be an interesting sight by night.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 14, 1857

Set fire to the carburetted hydrogen. See July 9, 1857 ("Am surprised to find how much carburetted hydrogen gas there is in the beds of sawdust by the side of this stream, as at the "Narrows.""); February 28, 1856 ("What a smell as of gun-wash when he raised the gate! . . .It must be the carburetted hydrogen gas from the bottom of the pond under the ice. It powerfully scents the whole mill.")

The sawdust shoal. See  note to July 9, 1857 ("the beds of sawdust by the side of this stream") and April 19, 1854 ("Yesterday, as I was returning down the Assabet, . . . I was surprised to find the river so full of sawdust from the pail-factory and Barrett's mill that I could not easily distinguish if the stone-heaps had been repaired. There was not a square three inches clear. And I saw the sawdust deposited by an eddy in one place on the bottom like a sand-bank a foot or more deep half a mile below the mill.”); October 20, 1856 (“ at Hemlocks, in the eddy there, where the white bits of sawdust keep boiling up and down and whirling round as in a pot.”): July 7, 1859 ("Bathing at Barrett's Bay, I find it to be composed in good part of sawdust, mixed with sand.”); July 16, 1859 ("Afternoons, I sounded the Assabet as far up as the stone bridge.. . . The banks and bars are peculiar. They are commonly composed of a fine sand mixed with sawdust, shavings, etc. in which the black willow loves to grow. I know of no such banks on the main stream.") July 18, 1859 ("One such bank . . . or bar is composed of saw-dust and shavings, almost entirely so to a depth of two feet.")