Ascended the Fall Mountain with a heavy valise on my back.

"Bellows Falls from Table Rock; From a Lithograph made in 1855”
(source: danaxtell)

September 10. 

10.30 A. M. — Took the cars to Bellows Falls, through Dummerston, Putney, and Westminster. 

Looked at the falls and rocks. River higher than usual at this season, yet could cross all but about twenty feet on the rocks. Some pot-holes, real pot-holes, but commonly several curves commingled, or the whole more rounded. 

Found, spreading prostrate on the rocks amid the pot-holes, apparently a small willow, with shining dark-red stems and smooth, spatulate, rather obtuse serrate leaves. (Vide press.) 

I read that salmon passed these falls but not shad. When the water is lowest, it is contracted to sixteen feet here, and Peters's, an old history of Connecticut, says it was so condensed that you could not thrust a crowbar into it. 

It did me good to read his wholesale hearty statements, — strong, living, human speech, so much better than the emasculated modern histories, like Bancroft's and the rest, cursed with a style. I would rather read such histories, though every sentence were a falsehood, than our dull emasculated reports which bear the name of histories. The former, having a human breath and interest behind them, are nearer to nature and to truth, after all. The historian is required to feel a human interest in his subject and to so express it.

President Dwight, speaking of the origin of those pot-holes, says, "The river now is often fuller than it probably ever was before the country above was cleared of its forests: the snows in open ground melting much more suddenly, and forming much greater freshets, than in forested ground." (Vol. ii, page 92.) 

Ascended the Fall Mountain with a heavy valise on my back, against the advice of the toll-man. But when I got up so soon and easily I was amused to remember his anxiety. It is seven hundred and fifty feet high, according to Gazetteer. 

Saw great red oaks on this hill, particularly tall, straight, and bare of limbs, for a great distance, amid the woods. Here, as at Brattleboro, a fine view of the country immediately beneath you; but these views lack breadth, a distant horizon. There is a complete view of the falls from this height. 

Saw a pair of middle-sized black hawks hovering about this cliff, with some white spots, with peculiar shrill snapping notes like a gull, a new kind to me. 

Descending the steep south end of this hill, I saw an apparent Corydalis glauca, mostly withered, three feet or more, and more than usually broad and stout in proportion. (Vide press.) My shoes were very smooth, and I got many falls descending, battering my valise. 

By the railroad below, the Solanum nigrum, with white flowers but yet green fruit. 

Just after crossing Cold River, bathed in the Connecticut, evidently not far from site of the old Kilbourn fort. Clay-muddy shore. 

Near the site of the old Bellows Fort, saw completely purple Polygala verticillata abundant in road. 

Rode the last mile into Walpole with a lumberer, who said that when he commenced operations at Bellows Falls he thought that there was not more than one hundred thousand there, but they had already got out four millions. 

He imported some of those masts I had seen go through Concord from Canada West. They were rafted along Lake Erie (a Mr. Dorr of Buffalo afterward told me that he did this part with steamers, merely running an inch chain through the butt of each log and fastening the ends to a boom, which surrounded the whole, leaving the small ends to play) and in small rafts by canal to Albany, and thence by railroad via Rutland to Portland, for the navy; and it cost only one third more to get them from Canada West than from Bellows Falls. Remembering the difficulty in old times of loading one of these sticks in New Hampshire for the King's Navy, this seemed the greatest triumph of the railroad. 

In Walpole, the Chenopodium Botrys.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 10, 1856

Those masts I had seen go through Concord from Canada West. See November 18, 1852 ("Measured a stick of round timber, probably white pine, on the cars this afternoon. . .”)

The Concord is worth a hundred of it for my purposes.

September 7.

Sunday.

At Brattleboro, Vt. a. m. — Climbed the hill behind Mr. Addison Brown's. 

The leaves of the Tiarella cordifolia very abundant in the woods, but hardly sharp-lobed. 

Also observed the leaves of the Hepatica triloba. 

Was that Sium lineare in the pool on the hilltop? Oakes allows only S. latifolium to grow in Vermont. The seeds are apparently ribbed like ours. (Vide press.) 

Found the lemna mantling that pool. Mrs. Brown has found it in flower there. 

Flowering dogwood on hill. 

P. M. — Up the bank of the Connecticut to West River, up that to a brook, and up that nearly to hospital. 

The Connecticut, though unusually high (several feet more than usual), looks low, there being four or five or six rods of bare gravel on each side, and the bushes and weeds covered with clayey soil from a freshet. Not a boat to be seen on it. The Concord is worth a hundred of it for my purposes. It looks narrow as well as shallow. No doubt it is dwarfed by the mountain rising directly from it in front, which, as usual, looking nearer than it is, makes the opposite shore seem nearer. 

The Solidago Canadensis, and the smooth three - ribbed one, and nemoralis, etc., the helianthus (apparently decapetalus), and Aster or Diplopappus linariifolius, Vitis cordifolius (?) (now beginning to be ripe) are quite common along the bank. 

On a bank-side on West River, Urtica Canadensis, apparently in prime and going to seed, the same that Mr. Whitlow once recommended as a substitute for hemp. 

Near by the phryma, or lopseed, with still a few small rose-white flowers. I at first thought it a circrea. 

Plenty of harebells thereabouts, and, by the brook, Polygonum Virginianum, three feet high, mostly gone to seed. 

Apparently Cornus stolonifera (?) by brook (vide press), with the sericea. 

Aster macrophyllus much past prime.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 7, 1856