I see tobacco-pipes now in the path.

July 31.

 P. M. — To Flint’s Pond.

I see much eriocaulon floating, with its mass of white roots uppermost, near the shore in Goose Pond. I suspect it may have been loosened up by the musquash, which either feeds on it, or merely makes its way through its dense mats. 

I also see small fishes, apparently shiners, four or five inches long, in this pond. Yet I have seen this almost all dried up.

I have smelled fungi in the thick woods for a week, though they are not very common. I see tobacco-pipes now in the path. 

You are liable to be overtaken by a thunder-shower these afternoons. 

The anychia already shows green seed-vessels on its lower branches. 

Petty morel has begun to bloom in shady swamps, how long?

Got the wood thrush’s nest of June 19th (now empty). It was placed between many small upright shoots, against the main stem of the slender maple, and measures four and a half to five inches in diameter from outside to outside of the rim, and one and three quarters deep within. 

It is quite firm (except the external leaves falling off) the rim about three quarters of an inch thick,  and it is composed externally of leaves, apparently chiefly chestnut, very much decayed, beneath which, in the place of the grass and stubble of which most nests are composed, are apparently the midribs of the same leaves, whose whole pulp, etc., is gone, arranged as compactly and densely (in a curving manner) as grass or stubble could be, upon a core, not of mud, but a pale-brown composition quite firm and smooth (within), looking like inside of a cocoanut-shell, and apparently composed of decayed leaf pulp (?) which the bird has perhaps mixed and cemented with its saliva. This is about a quarter of an inch thick and about as regular as a half of a cocoanut-shell. 

Within this, the lower part is lined with considerable rather coarse black root-fibre and a very little fine stubble. From some particles of fine white sand, etc., on the pale brown composition of the nest, I thought it was obtained from the pond shore. This composition, viewed through a microscope, has almost a cellular structure.

H. D. Thoreau Journal, July 31, 1858

I see tobacco-pipes now in the path. See July 30, 1854 ("I have seen a few new fungi within a week. The tobacco-pipes are still pushing up white amid the dry leaves, sometimes lifting a canopy of leaves with them four or five inches."); August 10, 1858 ("I see many tobacco-pipes, now perhaps in their prime, ... bursting up through the dry leaves, which, elevated around, may serve to prop them. Springing up in the shade with so little color, they look the more fragile and delicate.")

You are liable to be overtaken by a thunder-shower these afternoons.  See July 31, 1860 ("At mid-afternoon I am caught in a deluging rain as I stand under a maple by the Assabet shore ")

The wood thrush’s nest of June 19th. See August 10, 1858 ("The wood thrush’s was a peculiarly woodland nest, made solely of such materials as that unfrequented grove afforded.")

Looking for the Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum berries.

July 29. 

P. M. — To Pine Hill, looking for the Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum berries. 

I find plenty of bushes, but these bear very sparingly. They appear to bear but one or two years before they are overgrown. Also they probably love a cool atmosphere, for they bear annually on mountains, as Monadnock. Where the woods have been cut a year or two they have put forth fresh shoots of a livelier green. 

The V. vacillans berries are in dense clusters, raceme-like, as huckleberries are not. 

I see nowadays young martins perched on the dead tops of high trees; also young swallows on the telegraph wire. 

In the Chinese novel “ Ju-Kiao-Li, or The Two Fair Cousins,” I find in a motto to a chapter (quoted):

“He who aims at success should be continually on his guard against a thousand accidents. How many preparations are necessary before the sour plum begins to sweeten! . . . But if supreme happiness was to be attained in the space of an hour, of what use would be in life the noblest sentiments ?” (Page 227.)

Also these verses on page 230: —

“Nourished by the study of ten thousand dififerent works,
The pen in hand, one is equal to the gods.
 Let not humility take its rank amongst virtues:
Genius never yields the palm that belongs to it.” 

Again, page 22, vol. ii: — 

“If the spring did not announce its reign by the return of the leaves,
The moss, with its greenish tints, would find favor in men’s eyes.”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 29, 1858 

Looking for the Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum berries. See note to July 16, 1857(“I hear of the first early blueberries brought to market.”)

The V. vacillans berries are in dense clusters, raceme-like, as huckleberries are not. See July 29,, 1859 (“Vaccinium vacillans begin to be pretty thick and some huckleberries.”); July 31, 1856 (“How thick the berries — low blackberries, Vaccinium vacillans, and huckleberries — on the side of Fair Haven Hill! ”)

I see nowadays young martins perched on the dead tops of high trees. See July 14, 1856 (“See and hear martins twittering on the elms by riverside.”); July 28, 1859 ("Saw young martins being fed on a bridge-rail yesterday.")

Young swallows on the telegraph wire. See July 5, 1854 ("One hundred and nine swallows on telegraph-wire at bridge within eight rods, and others flying about."); July 12, 1852 ("I observed this morning a row of several dozen swallows perched on the telegraph-wire by the bridge, and ever and anon a part of them would launch forth as with one consent, circle a few moments over the water or meadow, and return to the wire again."); July 12, 1859 (" They take their broods to the telegraph-wire for an aerial perch, where they teach them to fly.")

Note on blueberries: The difference between the often confused Huckleberry (Gaylussacia) and Lowbush Blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium and vacillans) is inside the berry. Huckleberries have 10 hardened seeds inside each berry, compared the numerous softer seeds in the lowbush blueberry. The plants also differ in the texture of their stems. Huckleberry stems are smooth and lowbush blueberry are "warty". The two species of Lowbush Blueberry (angustifolium and vacillans) are distinguished by their leaves. Angustifolium has leaves which are a uniform green above and below; vacillans has leaves which are noticeably more pale beneath. ` Voyageur Country

July 29. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 29

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2024

A pinkish patch on side-hill.

July 28. 

July 28, 2018

P. M.—-To Conantum. 

From wall corner saw a pinkish patch on side-hill west of Baker Farm, which turned out to be epilobium, a rod across. Through the glass it was as fine as a moss, but with the naked eye it might have been mistaken for a dead pine bough. This pink flower was distinguished perhaps three quarters of a mile.

Heard a kingfisher, which had been hovering over the river, plunge forty rods off. 

The under sides of maples are very bright and conspicuous nowadays as you walk, also of the curled panicled andromeda leaves. Some grape leaves, also, are blown up.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 28, 1858

A pinkish patch on side-hill  west of Baker Farm, which turned out to be epilobium, distinguished perhaps three quarters of a mile. See July 28, 1852 ("Epilobium coloratum, roadside just this side of Dennis's"); August 21, 1858 ("I still see the patch of epilobium on Bee Tree Hill as plainly as ever, though only the pink seed-vessels and stems are left"): See also July 24, 1857 (“Great fields of epilobium or fire-weed, a mass of color.); July 31, 1856 (“Dense fields of the great epilobium now in its prime, like soldiers in the meadow, resounding with the hum of bees.”)

Heard a kingfisher, which had been hovering over the river, plunge forty rods off. See June 12, 1854 (“As he flies off, he hovers two or three times thirty or forty feet above the pond, and at last dives ”); August 6, 1858 ("The kingfisher is seen hovering steadily over one spot, or hurrying away with a small fish in his mouth, sounding his alarum nevertheless.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. The Kingfisher

July 28. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 28

From wall corner saw 

a pinkish patch on side-hill 

west of Baker Farm

turned out to be 

epilobium

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2024

A broad egg, white with large reddish and purplish brown spots.

July 26.

Yellow-winged sparrow

Fringilla passerina

Grasshopper Sparrow

Ammodramus savannarum

Button-bush in prime. 

Edward Bartlett shows me a nest in the Agricultural ground which had four eggs, yet pretty fresh, but the bird has now deserted it. (Vide one.) It is like Farmer’s seringo.

It is a broad egg, white with large reddish and purplish brown spots chiefly about large end. 

The nest is small and deep and low in the grass of this pasture. (Vide nest out of order.)

Could not see the bird; only saw bay-wings and huckleberry-birds. I suspect it may be the Fringilla passerina? He says the bird had a clear yellowish-white breast!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 26, 1858

Bay-wings and Huckleberry-birds. See A Book of the Seasons, the Bay-Wing [Vesper] Sparrow; also April 27, 1852 ("Heard the field or rush sparrow this morning (Fringilla juncorum), George Minott's "huckleberry-bird." "); April 9, 1856 ("Wandering over that high huckleberry pasture, I hear the sweet jingle of the Fringilla juncorum."); ; April 15, 1856 ("I hear the note of the Fringilla juncorum (huckleberry-bird) from the plains beyond. ")

A broad egg, white with large reddish and purplish brown spots chiefly about large end. I suspect it may be the Fringilla passerina? See June 26, 1856 ("According to Audubon’s and Wilson’s plates, the Fringilla passerina has for the most part clear yellowish-white breast .... Audubon says that the eggs . . .of the yellow-winged sparrow are “of a dingy white, sprinkled with brown spots.”); May 28, 1856 (“A seringo or yellow-browed (?) sparrow’s nest . . .Egg, bluish-white ground, thickly blotched with brown, yet most like a small ground bird’s egg, rather broad at one end, pretty fresh.”)

July 26. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 26

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021

Northern slender ladies'-tresses,

July 23. 

Neottia gracilis, how long?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 23, 1858

Neottia gracilis,.  See August 20, 1851  ("The neottia, or ladies'-tresses, behind Garfield's house."); July 15, 1856 ("Spiranthes gracilis well out, in dry, slender grass by roadside."); August 27, 1856 ("On dry, open hillsides and fields the Spiranthes gracilis is very common of late, rising tall and slender, with its spiral of white flowers like a screw-thread at top; sometimes fifteen inches high.")

Note:  “Spiranthes gracilis” not distinguished from  “Neottia gracilis” in the manuals used by Thoreau. See Vascular Flora of Concord, Massachusetts compiled by Ray Angelo

July 23. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 23

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.” 

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021

Refuge from a shower.

July 22. 

July 22, 2018

The nest of the marsh hawk is empty. It has probably flown. 

C. and I took refuge from a shower under our boat at Clamshell; staid an hour at least. A thunderbolt fell close by. A mole ran under the boat. The wind canted round as usual (is not this owing to the circular manner of storms?) more easterly, and compelled us to turn the boat over. 

Left a little too soon, but enjoyed a splendid rainbow for half an hour.

July 22, 2018

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 22, 1858

C. and I took refuge from a shower under our boat at Clamshell; staid an hour at least. See June 14, 1855 (“It suddenly begins to rain with great violence, and we in haste draw up our boat on the Clamshell shore, upset it, and get under, sitting on the paddles, and so are quite dry while our friends thought we were being wet to our skins. But we have as good a roof as they. It is very pleasant to lie there half an hour close to the edge of the water and see and hear the great drops patter on the river, each making a great bubble”)

A splendid rainbow for half an hour. See April 18, 1855 ("Am overtaken by a sudden sun-shower, after which a rainbow.”); August 17, 1858 (“Being overtaken by a shower, we took refuge in the basement of Sam Barrett’s sawmill, where we spent an hour, and at length came home with a rainbow over arching the road before us.”)

July 22. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 22

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024

It was the Falco fuscus, the American brown or slate-colored hawk.

July 21. 

Wednesday. Concord. P. M.—To Walden, with E. Bartlett and E. Emerson. 

The former wished to show me what he thought an owl’s nest he had found. Near it, in Abel Brooks’s wood lot, heard a note and saw a small hawk fly over. It was the nest of this bird. Saw several of the young flitting about and occasionally an old bird. 

The nest was in a middling-sized white pine, some twenty feet from the ground, resting on two limbs close to the main stem, on the south side of it. It was quite solid, composed entirely of twigs about as big round as a pipe-stem and less; was some fifteen inches in diameter and one inch deep, or nearly flat, and perhaps five inches thick. It was very much dirtied on the sides by the droppings of the young. 

As we were standing about the tree, we heard again the note of a young one approaching. We dropped upon the ground, and it alighted on the edge of the nest; another alighted near by, and a third a little further off. The young were apparently as big as the old, but still lingered about the nest and returned to it. 

I could hear them coming some distance off. Their note was a kind of peeping squeal, which you might at first suspect to be made by a jay; not very loud, but as if to attract the old and reveal their whereabouts. 

The note of the old bird, which occasionally dashed past, was somewhat like that of the marsh hawk or pigeon woodpecker, a cackling or clattering sound, chiding us. The old bird was anxious about her inexperienced young, and was trying to get them off. At length she dashed close past us, and appeared to fairly strike one of the young, knocking him off his perch, and he soon followed her off. 

I saw the remains of several birds lying about in that neighborhood, and saw and heard again the young and old there abouts for several days thereafter. 

A young man killed one of the young hawks, and I saw it. It was the Falco fuscus, the American brown or slate-colored hawk. 

J. J. Audubon
Sharp-shinned Hawk

Its length was thirteen inches; alar extent, twenty-three. The tail reached two or more inches beyond the closed wings. Nuttall says the upper parts are “a deep slate color” (these were very dark brown); also that the nest is yet unknown. But Wilson describes his F. velox (which is the same as Nuttall’s F. fuscus) as “whole upper parts very dark brown,” but legs, greenish-yellow (these were yellow). The toes had the peculiar pendulous lobes which W. refers to. 

As I saw it in the woods, I was struck by its dark color above, its tawny throat and breast, brown-spotted, its clean, slender, long yellow legs, feathered but little below the knee, its white vent, its wings distinctly and rather finely dark-barred beneath, short, black, much curved bill, and slender black sharp claws. Its tail with a dark bar near edge beneath. 

In hand I found it had the white spots on scapulars of the F. fuscus, and had not the white bars on tail of the F. Pennsylvanicus. It also had the fine sharp shin.

But what then is my hawk killed by Farrar, with so stout a leg? Had that any white bars on tail? 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 21, 1858

In Abel Brooks’s wood lot, heard a note and saw a small hawk fly over. It was the Falco fuscus, the American brown or slate-colored hawk. See May 4, 1855 (“Sitting in Abel Brooks’s Hollow, see a small hawk go over high in the air, with a long tail and distinct from wings. It advanced by a sort of limping flight yet rapidly, not circling nor tacking, but flapping briskly at intervals and then gliding straight ahead with rapidity, controlling itself with its tail. It seemed to be going a journey. Was it not the sharp-shinned, or Falco fuscus?  I think that what I have called the sparrow hawk falsely, and latterly pigeon hawk, is also the sharp-shinned (vide April 26th and May 8th, 1854, and April 16th, 1855), for the pigeon hawk’s tail is white-barred.”); September 22, 1852 ("Some of those I see are probably the sharp-shinned hawk.");  March 28, 1854 (“See a small slate-colored hawk, with wings transversely mottled beneath, — probably the sharp-shinned hawk.”); April 26, 1854 (“Saw probably a pigeon hawk skim straight and low over field and wood, and another the next day apparently dark slate-color.”); May 8, 1854 (“Saw a small hawk flying low, about size of a robin — tail with black bars”);  April 16, 1855 ( "What I call a pigeon hawk, probably sharp-shinned.”); ; April 25, 1860 ("Looking up, I see what I take to be a sharp-shinned hawk just alighting on the trees . . . The hawk plumes himself, and then flies off, rising gradually and beginning to circle, and soon it joins its mate, and soars with it high in the sky and out of sight. . . It appeared to have a plain reddish-fawn breast. The size more than anything made me think it a sharp-shin."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the sharp-shinned hawk. and   A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Hawk (Merlin)

But what then is my hawk killed by Farrar, with so stout a leg? See October 11, 1856 (“Farrar gave me a wing and foot of a hawk which he shot about three weeks ago . . . . This foot has a sharp shin and stout claws, but the wing is much larger than that of the Falco fuscus (or sharp-shinned hawk), being, . . . the size of the F. Pennsylvanicus. ”)

If you take one side of a rock, and your companion another, it is enough to separate you sometimes for the rest of the ascent.

July 19. 

July 19, 2018

Get home at noon.

For such an excursion as the above, carry and wear: —

• Three strong check shirts. 
• Two pairs socks. 
• Neck ribbon and handkerchief.
• Three pocket handkerchiefs.
• One thick waistcoat. 
• One thin (or half-thick) coat. 
• One thick coat (for mountain). 
• A large, broad india-rubber knapsack, with a broad flap.
• A flannel shirt. India-rubber coat. 
• Three bosoms (to go and come in). 
• A napkin. 
• Pins, needles, thread. 
• A blanket. .
• A cap to lie in at night. 
• Tent (or a large simple piece of india-rubber cloth for the mountain tops ?). 
• Veil and gloves (or enough millinet to cover all at night).
•  Map and compass. 
• Plant book and paper. 
• Paper and stamps. 
• Botany, spy-glass, microscope. 
• Tape, insect-boxes. 
• Jack-knife and clasp-knife. 
• Fish-line and hooks. 
• Matches. 
• Soap and dish-cloths. 
• Waste-paper and twine. 
• Iron spoon. 
• Pint dipper with a pail-handle added (not to put out the fire), and perhaps a bag to carry water in. 
• Frying-pan, only if you ride. 
• Hatchet (sharp), if you ride, and perhaps in any case on mountain, with a sheath to it. 
• Hard-bread (sweet crackers good); a moist, sweet plum cake very good and lasting; pork, corned beef or tongue, sugar, tea or coffee, and a little salt.

As I remember, those dwarf firs on the mountains grew up straight three or four feet without diminishing much if any, and then sent forth every way very stout branches, like bulls’ horns or shorter, horizontally four or five feet each way. They were stout because they grew so slowly. Apparently they were kept flat-topped by the snow and wind. But when the surrounding trees rose above them, they, being sheltered a little, apparently sent up shoots from the horizontal limbs, which also were again more or less bent, and this added to the horn-like appearance. 

We might easily have built us a shed of spruce bark at the foot of Tuckerman’s Ravine. I thought that I might in a few moments strip off the bark of a spruce a little bigger than myself and seven feet long, letting it curve as it naturally would, then crawl into it and be protected against any rain. Wentworth said that he had sometimes stripped off birch bark two feet wide, and put his head through a slit in the middle, letting the ends fall down before and behind, as he walked. 

The slides in Tuckerman’s Ravine appeared to be a series of deep gullies side by side, where sometimes it appeared as if a very large rock had slid down without turning over, plowing this deep furrow all the way, only a few rods wide. Some of the slides were streams of rocks, a rod or more in diameter each. In some cases which I noticed, the ravine-side had evidently been undermined by water on the lower side. 

It is surprising how much more bewildering is a mountain-top than a level area of the same extent. Its ridges and shelves and ravines add greatly to its apparent extent and diversity. You may be separated from your party by only stepping a rod or two out of the path. We turned off three or four rods to the pond on our way up Lafayette, knowing that Hoar was behind, but so we lost him for three quarters of an hour and did not see him again till we reached the summit. One walking a few rods more to the right or left is not seen over the ridge of the summit, and, other things being equal, this is truer the nearer you are to the apex. 

If you take one side of a rock, and your companion another, it is enough to separate you sometimes for the rest of the ascent. 

On these mountain-summits, or near them, you find small and almost uninhabited ponds, apparently with out fish, sources of rivers, still and cold, strange as condensed clouds, weird-like, -- of which nevertheless you make tea! -- surrounded by dryish bogs, in which, perchance, you may detect traces of the bear or loup-cervier. 

We got the best views of the mountains from Conway, Jefferson, Bethlehem, and Campton. Conway combines the Italian (?) level and softness with Alpine peaks around. Jefferson offers the completest view of the range a dozen or more miles distant; the place from which to behold the manifold varying lights of departing day on the summits. Bethlehem also afforded a complete but generally more distant view of the range, and, with respect to the highest summits, more diagonal. Campton afforded a fine distant view of'the pyramidal Franconia Mountains with the lumpish Profile Mountain. The last view, with its smaller intervals and partial view of the great range far in the north, was somewhat like the view from Conway. 

Belknap in his “ History of New Hampshire,” third volume, page 33, says: “On some mountains we find a shrubbery of hemlock [?] and spruce, whose branches are knit together so as to be impenetrable. The snow lodges on their tops, and a cavity is formed underneath. These are called by the Indians, Hakmantaks.” 

Willey quotes some one  as saying of the White Mountains, “Above this hedge of dwarf trees, which is about 4000 feet above the level of the sea, the scattered fir and spruce bushes, shrinking from the cold mountain wind, and clinging to the ground in sheltered hollows by the sides of the rocks, with a few similar bushes of white and yellow [?] birch, reach almost a thousand feet high.” 

Willey says that “the tops of the mountains are covered with snow from the last of October to the end of May;” that the alpine flowers spring up under the shelter of high rocks. Probably, then, they are most abundant on the southeast sides? 

To sum up (omitting sedges, etc.), plants prevailed thus on Mt. Washington:— 

1st. For three quarters of a mile: Black (?) spruce, yellow birch, hemlock, beech, canoe birch, rock maple, fir, mountain maple, red cherry, striped maple, etc. 

2d. At one and three quarters miles: Spruce prevails, with fir, canoe and yellow birch. Rock maple, beech, and hemlock disappear. (On Lafayette, lambkill, Viburnum nudum, nemopanthes, mountain-ash.) Hard woods in bottom of ravines, above and below.

3d. At three miles, or limit of trees (colliers’ shanty and Ravine Camp): Fir prevails, with some spruce and canoe birch; mountain-ash, Alnus iridis (in moist ravines), red cherry, mountain maple, Salix (humilis-like and Torreyana-like, etc.), Vaccinium Camdense, Ribes lacustre, prostratum, and floridum (?), rhodora, Amelanchier oligocarpa, tree-cranberry, chiogenes, Cornus Camdensis, Oxalis Acetosella, clintonia, gold-thread, Listera cordata, Smilacina bifolia, Solidago thyrsoidea, Ranunculus abortiims, Platanthera obtusata and dilatata, Oxyria digyna, Viola blanda, Aster prenanthes (?), A. acumimtus,A ralia nudicaulis,Polystichum aculeatum(?), wool-grass, etc.

4th. Limit of trees to within one mile of top, or as far as dwarf firs: Dwarf fir, spruce, and some canoe birch, Vaccinium uligimsum and Vitis-Idwa, Salim Uva-ursi, ledum, Empetrum nigrum, Oxalis Acetosella, Limuea borealis, Cornus Canadensis, Alsima Graenlamlica, Dia pensia Lappo'nica, gold-thread, epigaéa, sorrel, Geum radiatum var. Peckii, Solidago Virgaurea var. alpina, S. thyrsoidea (not so high as last), hellebore, oldenlandia, clintonia, Viola palustris, trientalis, a little Vaccinium angustifolium (?), ditto of Vaccinium coespitosum, Phyllodoce taxifolia, Uvularia grandiflora, Loiseleuria procumbe'ns, Cassiope hypnoides, Rubus triflorus, Heracleum lanatum, archangelica, Rhododendron Lapponi cum, Arctostaphylos alpina, Salix herbacea, Polygonum viviparum, Veronica alpina, Nabalus Boottii, Epilo bium alpinum, Platanthera dilatata, common rue, Cas tilleja septentrionalis, Arnica mollis, Spirwa salicifolia,Saliw repens,1 Solidago thyrsoidea, raspberry (Hoar), Lycopodium annotinum and Selago, small fern, grass, sedges, moss and lichens.2 (On Lafayette, Vaccinium. Oxycoccus, Smilacina trifolia, Kalmia glauca, Andro meda calyculata, red cherry, yellow (water) lily, Erio phorum vaginatum.) 

5th. Within one mile of top: Potentilla tridentata, a very little fir, spruce, and canoe birch, one mountain ash, Alsine Graenlandica, diapensia, Vaccinium Vitis Idaaa, gold-thread, Lycopodium annotinum and Selago, sorrel, Silene aca-ulis, Solidago Virgaurea var. alpina, hellebore, oldenlandia, Lonicera coerulea, clintonia, Viola palustris, trientalis, Vaccinium, angustifolium (?), a little fern, Geum‘ radiatum var. Peckii, sedges, rush, moss, and lichens, and probably more of the last list. 

6th. At apex: Sedge, moss, and lichens, and a little alsine, diapensia, Solidago Virgaurea var. alpina(?), etc.

The 2d may be called the Spruce Zone; 3d, the Fir Zone; 4th, the Shrub, or Berry, Zone; 

5th, the Cinque foil, or Sedge, Zone; 6th, the Lichen, or Cloud, Zone. 

Durand in Kane (page 444, 2d vol.) thinks that plants suffer more in alpine regions than in the polar zone. Among authorities on northern plants, names E. Meyer’s “Plantae Labradoricae” (1830) and Giesecke’s list of Greenland plants in Brewster’s Edinburgh Encyclopedia (1832). 

It is remarkable that what you may call trees on the White Mountains, i. e. the forests, cease abruptly with those about a dozen feet high, and then succeeds a distinct kind of growth, quite dwarfish and flattened and confined almost entirely to fir and spruce, as if it marked the limit of almost perpetual snow, as if it indicated a zone where the trees were peculiarly oppressed by the snow, cold, wind, etc. The transition from these flattened firs and spruces to shrubless rock is not nearly so abrupt as from upright or slender trees to these dwarfed thickets.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 19, 1858

The road should be for the use of the traveller.

July 18. 

Sunday. Keep on through New Boston, the east side of Mount Vernon, Amherst to Hollis, and noon by a mill-pond in the woods, on Pennichook Brook, in Hollis, or three miles north of village. 

At evening go on to Pepperell. 

A marked difference when we enter Massachusetts, in roads, farms, houses, trees, fences, etc., — a great improvement, showing an older-settled country. In New Hampshire there is a greater want of shade trees, but long bleak or sunny roads from which there is no escape. 

What barbarians we are! The convenience of the traveller is very little consulted. He merely has the privilege of crossing somebody’s farm by a particular narrow and maybe unpleasant path. The individual retains all other rights, — as to trees and fruit, and wash of the road, etc. 

On the other hand, these should belong to mankind inalienably. The road should be of ample width and adorned with trees expressly for the use of the traveller. There should be broad recesses in it, especially at springs and watering-places, where he can turn out and rest, or camp if he will. 

I feel commonly as if I were condemned to drive through somebody’s cow-yard or huckleberry pasture by a narrow lane, and if I make a fire by the roadside to boil my hasty pudding, the farmer comes running over to see if I am not burning up his stuff. You are barked along through the country, from door to door.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 18, 1858

July 18. See A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 18

A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021

Spent the noon on the bank of the Contoocook

July 17. 

Saturday. Passed by Webster’s place, three miles this side of the village. 

Some half-dozen houses there; no store nor public buildings. A very quiet place. Road lined with elms and maples. Railroad between house and barn. The farm apparently a level and rather sandy interval, nothing particularly attractive about it. A plain public graveyard within its limits. 

Saw the grave of Ebenezer Webster, Esq, who died 1806, aged sixty-seven, and of Abigail, his wife, who died 1816, aged seventy-six, probably Webster’s father and mother; also of other Websters, and Haddocks. Now belongs to one Fay [?] of Boston. W. was born two or more miles northwest, but house now gone. 

Spent the noon on the bank of the Contoocook in the northwest corner of Concord, there a stagnant river owing to dams. Began to find raspberries ripe. Saw much elecampane by roadsides near farmhouses, all the way through New Hampshire. 

Reached Weare and put up at a quiet and agreeable house, without any sign or barroom. Many Friends in this town. Know Pillsbury and Rogers here. The former lived in Henniker, next town.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 17, 1858

About the mountains were wilder and rarer birds, more or less arctic, like the vegetation.

July 16.

Friday. Continue on through Thornton and Campton.

The butternut is first noticed in these towns, a common tree. Urtica Canadensis in Campton.

July 16, 2018

About the mountains were wilder and rarer birds, more or less arctic, like the vegetation. I did not even hear the robin on them, and when I had left them a few miles behind, it was a great change and surprise to hear the lark, the wood pewee, the robin, and the bobolink (for the last had not done singing). On the mountains, especially at Tuckerman’s Ravine, the notes even of familiar birds sounded strange to me. I hardly knew the wood thrush and veery and oven-bird at first. They sing differently there.

In two instances, — going down the Mt. Jefferson road and along the road in the Franconia Notch, —- I started an F. hyemalis within two feet, close to the roadside, but looked in vain for a nest. They alight and sit thus close. I'doubt if the chipping sparrow is found about the mountains.

We were not troubled at all by black flies after leaving the Franconia Notch. It is apparently only in primitive woods that they work.

We had grand views of the Franconia Mountains from Campton, and were surprised by the regular pyramidal form of most of the peaks, including Lafayette, which we had ascended. I think that there must be some ocular illusion about this, for no such regularity was observable in ascending Lafayette. I remember that when I got more than half a mile down it I met two men walking up, and perspiring very much, one of whom asked me if a cliff within a stone’s throw before them was the summit.

Indeed the summit of a mountain, though it may appear thus regular at a distance, is not, after all, the easiest thing to find, even in clear weather. The surface was so irregular that you would have thought you saw the summit a dozen times before you did, and in one sense the nearer you got to it, the further off it was.

 I told the man it was seven or eight times as far as that.

I suspect that such are the laws of light that our eye, as it were, leaps from one prominence to another, connecting them by a straight line when at a distance and making one side balance the other. So that when the summit viewed is fifty or a hundred miles distant, there is but very general and very little truth in the impression of its outline conveyed to the mind.

Seen from Campton and lower, the Franconia Mountains show three or four sharp and regular blue pyramids, reminding you of pictures of the Pyramids of Egypt, though when near you suspected no such resemblance. You know from having climbed them, most of the time out of sight of the summit, that they must be at least of a scalloped outline, and it is hardly to be supposed that a nearer or more distant prominence

 It would seem as if by some law of light and vision the eye inclined to connect the base and apex of a peak in the horizon by a straight line. Twenty-five miles off, in this case, you might think that the summit was a smooth inclined plane, though you can reach it only over a succession of promontories and shelves.

Cannon Mountain on the west side of the Franconia Notch (on whose side is the profile) is the most singularly lumpish mass of any mountain I ever saw, especially so high. It looks like a behemoth or a load of hay, and suggests no such pyramid as I have described. So my theory does not quite hold together, and I would say that the eye needs only a hint of the general form and completes the outline from the slightest suggestion. The huge lumpish mass and curving outline of Cannon Mountain is yet more remarkable than the pyramidal summits of the others. It would be less remarkable in a mere hill, but it is, in fact, an elevated and bald rocky mountain.

My last view of these Franconia Mountains was from a hill in the road just this side of Plymouth village. Campton apparently affords the best views of them, and some artists board there.

Gathered the Carex straminea (?) some three feet high, scoparia-like, in Bridgewater.

 Nooned on west bank of the Pemigewasset, half a mile above the New Hampton covered bridge. Saw first pitch pines in New Hampton. Saw chestnuts first and frequently in Franklin and Boscawen, or about 431/2, or half a degree higher than Emerson put it. It was quite common in Hollis. Of oaks, I saw and heard only of the red in the north of New Hampshire. The witch-hazel was very abundant and large in the north part of New Hampshire and about the mountains.

 Lodged at tavern in Franklin, west side of river.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 16, 1858


Surprised by the regular pyramidal form of most of the peaks, including Lafayette, which we had ascended. See  June 4, 1858 ("It is remarkable how, as you are leaving a mountain and looking back at it from time to time, it gradually gathers up its slopes and spurs to itself into a regular whole, and makes a new and total impression"); October 20, 1854 ("Soon after sunrise I saw the pyramidal shadow of the mountain reaching quite across the State"); October 22, 1857 (" I look up northwest toward my mountains, . . . See how they look. They are shaped like tents, inclining to sharp peaks. What is it lifts them upward so? Why not rest level along the horizon? They seem not perfect, they seem not satisfied, until their central parts have curved upward to a sharp summit. They are a succession of pickets with scallops between.")

I saw, about west-northwest, a large Green Mountain, perhaps Mansfield Mountain.

July 15. 

Thursday. Continued the ascent of Lafayette, also called the Great Haystack. 

It is perhaps three and a half miles from the road to the top by path along winding ridge. At about a mile and a half up by path, the spruce began to be small. 

Saw there a silent bird, dark slate and blackish above, especially head, with a white line over the brows, then dark slate next beneath, white throat and reddish belly, black bill. A little like a nut hatch. Also saw an F. hyemalis on top of a dead tree. 

The wood was about all spruce here, twenty feet high, together with Vaccinium Canadense, lambkill in bloom, mountain-ash, Viburnum nudum, rhodora, Amelanchier oligocarpa, nemopanthes. 

As I looked down into some very broad and deep ravines from this point, their sides appeared to be covered chiefly with spruce, with a few bodkin points of fir here and there (had seen two days before some very handsome firs on low ground which were actually concave on sides  of cone), while the narrow bottom or middle of the ravine, as far up and down as trees reached, where, of course, there was most water, was almost exclusively hardwood, apparently birch chiefly. 

As we proceeded, the number of firs began to increase, and the spruce to diminish, till, at about two miles perhaps, the wood was almost pure fir about fourteen feet high; but this suddenly ceased at about half a mile further and gave place to a very dwarfish fir, and to spruce again, the latter of a very dwarfish, procumbent form, dense and flat, one to two feet high, which crept yet higher up the mountain than the fir, —over the rocks beyond the edge of the fir, -- and with this spruce was mixed Empetrum nigrum, dense and matted on the rocks, partly dead, with berries already blackening, also Vaccinium uliginosum. 

Though the edges all around and the greater part of such a thicket high up the otherwise bare rocks might be spruce, yet the deeper hollows between the rocks, in the midst, would invariably be filled with fir, rising only to the same level, but much larger round. These firs especially made the stag-horns when dead. 

The spruce was mostly procumbent at that height, but the fir upright, though flat-topped. In short, spruce gave place to fir from a mile and a half to a mile below the top, — so you may say firs were the highest trees, — and then succeeded to it in a very dwarfish and procum bent form yet higher up. 

At about one mile or three quarters below the summit, just above the limit of trees, we came to a little pond, maybe of a quarter of an acre (with a yet smaller one near by), the source of one head of the Pemigewasset, in which grew a great many yellow lilies (Nuphar advena) and I think a potamogeton. 

In the flat, dryish bog by its shore, I noticed the Empetrum nigrum (1), ledum (2), Vaccinium Oxycoccus, Smilacina trifolia, Kalmia glauca (3) (in bloom still), Andromeda calyculata (4) (and I think Polifolia), Eriophorum vaginatum, Vaccinium uliginosum (5), Juncus filiformis, four kinds of sedge (e. g. Carex pauciflora .9), C. irrigua with dangling spikes, and a C. lupulzna-like, and the Scirpus caespitosus (?) of Mt. Washington, brown lichens (q. v.), and cladonias, all low and in a moss-like bed in the moss of the bog; also rhodora of good size. 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 were quite dwarfish. 

The outlet of the pond was considerable, but soon lost beneath the rocks. A willow, rostrata-like but not downy, grew there. 

In the dwarf fir thickets above and below this pond, I saw the most beautiful linnaeas that I ever saw. They grew quite densely, full of rose-purple flowers, — deeper reddish purple than ours, which are pale, — perhaps nodding over the brink of a spring, altogether the fairest mountain flowers I saw, lining the side of the narrow horse track through the fir scrub. As you walk, you overlook the top of this thicket on each side. 

There also grew near that pond red cherry, Aster prenanthes (?) and common rue. 

We saw a line of fog over the Connecticut Valley. Found near summit apparently the Vaccinium angustifolium of Aitman (variety of Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum, Gray), bluets, and a broad-leaved vaccinium lower down (q. ‘12.). 

Just below top, reclined on a dense bed of Salix Uva-ursi, five feet in diameter by four or five inches deep, a good spot to sit on, mixed with a rush, amid rocks. This willow was generally showing its down.

We had fine weather on this mountain, and from the summit a good view of Mt. Washington and the rest, though it was a little hazy in the horizon. It was a wild mountain and forest scene from south-southeast round easterwardly to north-northeast. 

On the northwest the country was half cleared, as from Monadnock, -— the leopard-spotted land. I saw, about west-northwest, a large Green Mountain, perhaps Mansfield Mountain, though the compass was affected here. 

The Carex scirpoidea (?) grew at top, and it was surprising how many large bees, wasps, butterflies, and other insects were hovering and fluttering about the very apex, though not particularly below. What attracts them to such a locality.

Heard one white-throated sparrow above the trees, and also saw a little bird by the pond. Think I heard a song sparrow about latter place. Saw a toad near limit of trees, and many pollywogs in the pond above trees. 

Boiled tea for our dinner by the little pond, the head of the Pemigewasset. Saw tracks in the muddy bog by the pond-side, shaped somewhat like a small human foot sometimes, perhaps made by a bear. We made our fire on the moss and lichens, by a rock, amid the shallow fir and spruce, burning the dead fir twigs, or “deer’s-horns.” 

I cut off a flourishing fir three feet high and not flattened at top yet. This was one and a quarter inches in diameter and had thirty four rings. One, also flourishing, fifteen inches high, had twelve rings at ground. One, a dead one, was twenty nine inches in circumference, and at four feet from ground branched horizontally as much as five feet each way, making a flat top, curving upward again into stag horns, with branches very large and stout at base. 

Another fir, close by and dead, was thirty  inches in circumference at ground and only half an inch in diameter at four and a half feet. 

Another fir, three feet high, fresh and vigorous, without a flat top as yet, had its woody part an inch and an eighth thick (or diameter) at base (the bark being one eighth inch thick) and sixty-one rings. There was no sign of decay, though it was, as usual, mossy, or covered with lichens. 

I cut off at ground one of the little procumbent spruce trees, which spread much like a juniper, but not curving upward. This rose about nine inches above the ground, but I could not count the rings, they were so fine. (Vide piece.) 

The smallest diameter of the wood is forty-one eightieths of an inch. The number of rings, as near as I can count with a microscope, taking much pains, is about seventy, and on one side these are included within a radius of nine fortieths of an inch, of which a little more than half is heart-wood, or each layer on this side is less than one three-hundredth of an inch thick. The bark was three fortieths of an inch thick. It was quite round and easy to cut, it was so fresh. 

If the fir thirty inches in circumference grew no faster than that an inch and an eighth in diameter, then it was about five hundred and forty-nine years old. If as fast as the little spruce, it would be nearly fourteen hundred years old. 

When half-way down the mountain, amid the spruce, we saw two pine grosbeaks, male and female, close by the path, and looked for a nest, but in vain. They were remarkably tame, and the male a brilliant red orange, —neck, head, breast beneath, and rump,—blackish wings and tail, with two white bars on wings. (Female, yellowish.) 

The male flew nearer inquisitively, uttering a low twitter, and perched fearlessly within four feet of us, eying us and pluming himself and plucking and eating the leaves of the Amelanchier oligocarpa on which he sat, for several minutes. The female, meanwhile, was a rod off. 

They were evidently breeding there. Yet neither Wilson nor Nuttall speak of their breeding in the United States. 

At the base of the mountain, over the road, heard (and saw), at the same place where I heard him the evening before, a splendid rose-breasted grosbeak singing. I had before mistaken him at first for a tanager, then for a red-eye, but was not satisfied; but now, with my glass, I distinguished him sitting quite still, high above the road at the entrance of the mountain-path in the deep woods, and singing steadily for twenty minutes. 

It was remarkable for sitting so still and where yesterday. It was much richer and sweeter and, I think, more powerful than the note of the tanager or red-eye. It had not the hoarseness of the tanager, and more sweetness and fullness than the red-eye. Wilson does not give their breeding-place. Nuttall quotes Pennant as saying that some breed in New York but most further north. They, too, appear to breed about the White Mountains. 

Heard the evergreen-forest note on the sides of the mountains often. 

Heard no robins in the White Mountains. 

Rode on and stopped at Morrison’s (once Tilton’s) Inn in West Thornton. 

Heracleum lanatum in Notch and near, very large, some seven feet high. 

Observed, as we rode south through Lincoln, that the face of cliffs on the hills and mountains east of the river, and even the stems of the spruce, reflected a pink light at sunset.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 15, 1858

Two pine grosbeaks, male and female, . . .the male a brilliant red orange, —neck, head, breast beneath, and rump,—blackish wings and tail, with two white bars on wings. See December 24, 1851 (“Saw also some pine grosbeaks, magnificent winter birds . . .with red or crimson reflections, more beautiful than a steady bright red would be. The note I heard, a rather faint and innocent whistle of two bars.”)

A splendid rose-breasted grosbeak singing. See May 25, 1854 ("Hear and see . . . the rose-breasted grosbeak, a handsome bird with a loud and very rich song, in character between that of a robin and a red-eye. . . . Rose breast, white beneath, black head and above, white on shoulder and wings.”); May 24, 1855 (“Hear a rose-breasted grosbeak. At first think it a tanager, but soon I perceive its more clear and instrumental — should say whistle, if one could whistle like a flute; a noble singer, reminding me also of a robin; clear, loud and flute-like; . . . Song not so sweet as clear and strong.”); May 21, 1856 (“What strong colored fellows, black, white, and fiery rose-red breasts! Strong-natured, too, with their stout bills. A clear, sweet singer, like a tanager but hoarse somewhat, and not shy.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Rose-breasted Grosbeak

July 15. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau July 15

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021