Walking by moonliight til dawn.

September 9.

2 A.M. -The moon not quite full.

To Conantum via, road.

There is a low vapor in the meadows beyond the depot, dense and white, though scarcely higher than a man's head, concealing the stems of the trees. I see that the oaks, which are so dark and distinctly outlined, are illumined by the moon on the opposite side. This as I go up the back road.

A few thin, ineffectual clouds in the sky. 

I come out thus into the moonlit night, where men are not, as if into a scenery anciently deserted by men. The life of men is like a dream. It is three thousand years since night has had possession.

Go forth and hear the crickets chirp at midnight. Hear if their dynasty is not an ancient one and well founded. I feel the antiquity of the night.

She surely repossesses herself of her realms, as if her dynasty were uninterrupted, or she had underlain the day. No sounds but the steady creaking of crickets and the occasional crowing of cocks.

I go by the farmer's houses and barns, standing there in the dim light under the trees, as if they lay at an immense distance or under a veil. The farmer and his oxen now all asleep. Not even a watch-dog awake.

The human slumbers. There is less of man in the world.

The fog in the lowlands on the Corner road is never still. It now advances and envelops me as I stand to write these words, then clears away, with ever noiseless step. It covers the meadows like a web.

I hear the clock strike three.

Now at the clayey bank. The light of Orion's belt seems to show traces of the blue day through which it came to us. The sky at least is lighter on that side than in the west, even about the moon.

Even by night the sky is blue and not black, for we see through the veil of night into the distant atmosphere of day. I see to the plains of the sun, where the sunbeams are revelling.

The cricket's (?) song, on the alders of the causeway, not quite so loud at this hour as at evening. 

The moon is getting low. I hear a wagon cross one of the bridges leading into the town. I see the moonlight at this hour on a different side of objects. 

I smell the ripe apples many rods off beyond the bridge. A sultry night; a thin coat is enough.

On the first top of Conantum. I hear the farmer harnessing his horse and starting for the distant market, but no man harnesses himself, and starts for worthier enterprises. One cock-crow tells the whole story of the farmer's life.

The moon is now sinking into clouds in the horizon. I see the glow-worms deep in the grass by the little brookside in midst of Conantum. The moon shines dun and red. A solitary whip-poor-will sings.

The clock strikes four.

A few dogs bark. A few more wagons start for market, their faint rattling heard in the distance. 

I hear my owl without a name; the murmur of the slow-approaching freight-train, as far off, perchance, as Waltham; and one early bird.

The round, red moon disappearing in the west. I detect a whiteness in the east.

Some dark, massive clouds have come over from the west within the hour, as if attracted by the approaching sun, and have arranged themselves raywise about the eastern portal, as if to bar his coming. They have moved suddenly and almost unobservedly quite across the sky (which before was clear) from west to east.

No trumpet was heard which marshalled and advanced these dark masses of the west's forces thus rapidly against the coming day. Column after column the mighty west sent forth across the sky while men slept, but all in vain.

The eastern horizon is now grown dun-colored, showing where the advanced guard of the night are already skirmishing with the vanguard of the sun, a lurid light tingeing the atmosphere there, while a dark-columned cloud hangs imminent over the broad portal, untouched by the glare.

Some bird flies over, making a noise like the barking of a puppy.

It is yet so dark that I have dropped my pencil and cannot find it. It was a cuckoo.

The sound of the cars is like that of a rushing wind. They come on slowly. I thought at first a morning wind was rising.

And now (perchance at half-past four) I hear the sound of some far-off factory bell arousing the operatives to their early labors. It sounds very sweet here. It is very likely some factory which I have never seen, in some valley which I have never visited; yet now I hear this, which is its only matin bell, sweet and inspiring as if it summoned holy men and maids to worship and not factory girls and men to resume their trivial toil, as if it were the summons of some religious or even poetic community. 

My first impression is that it is the matin bell of some holy community who in a distant valley dwell, a band of spiritual knights, - thus sounding far and wide, sweet and sonorous, in harmony with their own morning thoughts. What else could I suppose fitting this earth and hour? Some man of high resolve, devoted soul, has touched the rope; and by its peals how many men and maids are waked from peaceful slumbers to fragrant morning thoughts! Why should I fear to tell that it is Knight's factory bell at Assabet? 

A few melodious peals and all is still again.

The whip-poor-wills now begin to sing in earnest about half an hour before sunrise, as if making haste to improve the short time that is left them. As far as my observation goes, they sing for several hours in the early part of the night, are silent commonly at midnight, - though you may meet [them] then sitting on a rock or flitting silently about, - then sing again just before sunrise.

It grows more and more red in the east – a fine-grained red under the overhanging cloud – and lighter too, and the threatening clouds are falling off to southward of the sun's passage, shrunken and defeated, leaving his path comparatively clear. The increased light shows more distinctly the river and the fog.

5 o'clock. - The light now reveals a thin film of vapor like a gossamer veil cast over the lower hills beneath the Cliffs and stretching to the river, thicker in the ravines, thinnest on the even slopes. The distant meadows towards the north beyond Conant's Grove, full of fog, appear like a vast lake out of which rise Annursnack and Ponkawtasset like rounded islands. Nawshawtuct is a low and wooded isle, scarcely seen above the waves. The heavens are now clear again. 

The vapor, which was confined to the river and meadows, now rises and creeps up the sides of the hills. I see it in transparent columns advancing clown the valley of the river, ghost-like, from hair Haven, and investing some wooded or rocky promontory, before free. are said to advance.

Annursnack is exactly like some round, steep, distant hill on the opposite shore of a large lake (and Tabor on the other side), with here and there some low Brush Island in middle of the waves (the tops of some oaks or elms).

Oh, what a sail I could take, if I had the right kind of bark, over to Annursnack! for there she lies four miles from land as sailors say. And all the farms and houses of Concord are at bottom of that sea. So I forget them, and my thought sails triumphantly over them.

As I looked down where the village of Concord lay buried in fog, I thought of nothing but the surface of a lake, a summer sea over which to sail; no more than a voyager on the Dead Sea who had not read the Testament would think of Sodom and Gomorrah, once cities of the plain.

I only wished to get off to one of the low isles I saw in midst of the [sea] (it may have been the top of Holbrook's elm), and spend the whole summer day there.

Meanwhile the redness in the east had diminished and was less deep. (The fog over some meadows looked green.) 

I went down to Tupelo Cliff to bathe. A great bittern, which I had scared, flew heavily across the stream. 

The redness had risen at length above the dark cloud, the sun approaching. And next the redness became a sort of yellowish or fawn-colored light, and the sun now set fire to the edges of the broken cloud which had hung over the horizon, and they glowed like burning turf.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 9, 1851

 Even by night the sky is blue and not black, for we see through the veil of night into the distant atmosphere of day. See ; January 21, 1853 ("The blueness of the sky at night — the color it wears by day — is an everlasting surprise to me, suggesting the constant presence and prevalence of light in the firmament, that we see through the veil of night to the constant blue, as by day."); February 12, 1860 ("There is an annual light in the darkness of the winter night. The shadows are blue, as the sky is forever blue."); May 11, 1853 ("Blue is the color of the day, and the sky is blue by night as well as by day, because it knows no night.") See also  Night and Moonlight (first published in the Atlantic Monthly, November 1863) ("Nevertheless, even by night the sky is blue and not black, for we see through the shadow of the earth into the distant atmosphere of day, where the sunbeams are reveling.")

We see through the veil

of night into the distant

atmosphere of day.

To see the lilies open

July 4.  Sunday.

July 4, 2022

3 A. M. - To Conantum, to see the lilies open.

I hear an occasional crowing of cocks in distant barns, as has been their habit for how many thousand years. It was so when I was young; and it will be so when I am old.

I hear the croak of a tree-toad as I am crossing the yard.

I am surprised to find the dawn so far advanced.  There is a yellowish segment of light in the east, paling a star and adding sensibly to the light of the waning and now declining moon.

There is very little dew on the uplands.

I hear a little twittering and some clear singing from the seringo and the song sparrow as I go along the back road, and now and then the note of a bullfrog from the river.

The light in the east has acquired a reddish tinge near the horizon.  Small wisps of cloud are already fuscous and dark, seen against the light, as in the west at evening.

It being Sunday morning, I hear no early stirring farmer driving over a bridge.  The crickets are not remarkably loud at this season. The sound of a whip-poor-will is wafted from the woods.  Now, on the Corner road, the hedges are alive with twittering sparrows, a bluebird or two, etc. 

The daylight now balances the moonlight.

How short the nights! The last traces of day have not disappeared much before 10 o'clock, or perchance 9.30, and before 3 A. M. you see them again in the east, probably 2.30, leaving about five hours of solid night, the sun so soon coming round again.

The robins sing, but not so loud and long as in the spring. I have not been awakened by them latterly in the mornings. Is it my fault? 

Ah! those mornings when you are awakened in the dawn by the singing, the matins, of the birds!

 

I hear the dumping sound of frogs now on the causeway.

Some small clouds in the east are reddish fuscous. There is no fog on the river nor in the meadows.

The kingbird twitters (?) on the black willows.

Methinks I saw the not yet extinguished lights of one or two fireflies in the darker ruts in the grass, in Conant's meadow.

The moon yields to the sun. She pales even in the presence of his dawn.

It is chiefly the spring birds that I hear at this hour, and in each dawn the spring is thus revived.

The notes of the sparrows and the bluebirds and the robin have a prominence now which they have not by day.

The light is more and more general, and some low bars begin to look bluish as well as reddish. (Else-where the sky wholly clear of clouds.) The dawn is at this stage far lighter than the brightest moonlight. I write by it. Yet the sun will not rise for some time.

Those bars are reddening more purplish, or lilac rather, light in the eastern sky. (And now, descending to the Cliff by the riverside, I cannot see the low horizon and its phenomena.)

I love to go through these old apple orchards so irregularly set out. Sometimes two trees standing close together. The rows of grafted fruit will never tempt me to wander amid them like these.

A bittern leaves the shore at my approach. I suppose it is he whose excrement has whitened the rocks, as if a mason had spilled his whitewash.

A nighthawk squeaks and booms, before sunrise.

The insects shaped like shad-flies (some which I see are larger and yellowish) begin to leave their cases (and selves?) on the stems of the grasses and the rushes in the water. I find them so weak they can hardly hold on.

I hear the black-bird's conqueree, and the kingfisher darts away with his alarum and outstretched neck.

Every lily is shut.

Sunrise. I see it gilding the top of the hill behind me, but the sun itself is concealed by the hills and woods on the east shore.

A very slight fog begins to rise now in one place on the river.

There is something serenely glorious and memorable to me in the sight of the first cool sunlight now gilding the eastern extremity of the bushy island in Fair Haven, that wild lake.

The subdued light and the repose remind me of Hades. In such sunlight there is no fever. It is such an innocent pale yellow as the spring flowers. It is the pollen of the sun, fertilizing plants. The color of the earliest spring flowers is as cool and innocent as the first rays of the sun in the morning falling on woods and hills.

The fog not only rises upward (about two feet), but at once there is a motion from the sun over the surface.

What means this endless motion of water-bugs collected in little groups on the surface and ceaselessly circling about their centre, as if they were a family hatched from the eggs on the under side of a pad? Is not this motion intended partly to balk the fishes? Methinks they did not begin to move till sunrise. Where were they? 

And now I see an army of skaters advancing in loose array, of chasseurs or scouts, as Indian allies are drawn in old books.

Now the rays of the sun have reached my seat, a few feet above the water; flies begin to buzz, mosquitoes to be less troublesome.

A hummingbird hums by over the pads up the river, as if looking, like myself, to see if lilies have blossomed.

The birds begin to sing generally, and, if not loudest, at least most noticeably on account of the quietness of the hour, just before -- a few minutes before -- sunrise. They do not sing so incessantly and earnestly, as a regular thing, half an hour later.

Carefully looking both up and down the river, I could perceive that the lilies began to open about fifteen minutes after the sun from over the opposite bank fell on them, which was perhaps three quarters of an hour after sunrise (which is about 4.30), and one was fully expanded about twenty minutes later.  When I returned over the bridge about 6.15, there were perhaps a dozen open ones in sight. 

It was very difficult to find one not injured by insects.  Even the buds which were just about to expand were frequently bored quite through, and the water had rotted them. You must be on hand early to anticipate insects.

One thimble-berry which will be quite ripe by to-morrow.

Indigo almost expanded.

I perceive the meadow fragrance on the causeway.

Bobolinks still.

I bring home a dozen perfect lily buds, — all I can find within many rods, — which have never yet opened; I prepare a large pan of water; I cut their stems quite short; I turn back their calyx-leaves with my fingers, so that they may float upright; I touch the points of their petals, and breathe or blow on them, and toss them in. They spring open rapidly, or gradually expand in the course of an hour, all but one or two. 

At 12.30 P. M., I perceive that the lilies in the river have begun to shut up. The water has gone down so much that I can stand on the shore and pluck as many as I want, and they are the fairest ones, concealed by the pickerel-weed, often the whole plant high and dry. I go again to the river at 2.30 P. M., and every lily is shut.

I will here tell the history of my rosaceous lilies plucked the 1st of July.

• They were buds at the bottom of a pitcher of water all the 2d, having been kept in my hat part of the day before.
• On the morning of the 3d I assisted their opening, and put them in water, as I have described; but they did not shut up at noon, like those in the river, but at dark, their petals, at least, quite tight and close.
• They all opened again in the course of the forenoon of the 4th, but had not shut up at 10 o'clock P. M., though I found them shut in the morning of the 5th.

May it be that they can bear only a certain amount of light, and these, being in the shade, remained open longer? ( I think not, for they shut up in the river that quite cloudy day, July 1st.) Or is their vitality too little to permit [them] to perform their regu- lar functions? 

Can that meadow fragrance come from the purple summits of the eupatorium? 

I looked down on the river behind Dodd's at 2.30 P. M., a slate-colored stream with a scarcely perceptible current, with a male and female shore; the former, more abrupt, of button-bushes and willows, the other, flat, of grass and pickerel-weed alone. Beyond the former, the water being deep, extends a border or fringe of green and purplish pads lying perfectly flat on the surface, but on the latter side the pads extend a half a rood or a rod beyond the pickerel-weed, — shining pads reflecting the light, dotted with white or yellow lilies. This sort of ruff does the river wear, and so the land is graduated off to water.

A tender place in nature, an exposed vein, and nature making a feint to bridge it quite over with a paddy film, with red-winged black- birds liquidly warbling and whistling on the willows, and kingbirds on the elms and oaks; these pads, if there is any wind, rippling with the water and helping to smooth and allay it. It looks tender and exposed, as if it were naturally subterranean, and now, with these shields of pads, held scale-like by long threads from the bottom, she makes a feint to bridge it.

So floats the Musketaquid over its segment of the sphere.

Methinks there is not even a lily, white or yellow, in Walden.

I see perfectly formed pouts by the shore of the river, one inch long.

The great spatterdock lily is a rich yellow at a little distance, and, seen lying on its great pads, it is an indispensable evidence of the fertility of the river.  The gratiola begins to yellow the mud by the riverside. The Lysimachia lanceolata var. hybrida is out, in the meadows. 

The Rosa nitida (?) appears to be now out of bloom.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 4, 1852

the light of the waning and now declining moon. See June 30, 1852 ('Moon nearly full; rose a little before sunset.") See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, July Moonlight

To see the lilies open. See June 21, 1853 ("4.30 A.M.––Up river for lilies . . .The few lilies begin to open about 5."); July 1, 1852 ("...to see the white lilies in blossom...to breathe the atmosphere of lilies, and get the full impression which lilies are fitted to make"); July 11, 1852 ("The first lily I noticed opened about half an hour after sunrise, or at 5 o'clock."); July 17, 1854 ("I go to observe the lilies . . .I think that I could tell when it was 12 o'clock within half an hour by the lilies.")

They shut up in the river that quite cloudy day, July 1st. See July 1, 1852 ("The freshly opened lilies are a pearly white, and though the water amid the pads is quite unrippled, the passing air gives a slight oscillating, boat-like motion to and fro to the flowers, like boats held fast by their cables.After eating our luncheon at Rice's landing, I can not find one open anywhere for the rest of the day.")

The Rosa nitida (?) appears to be now out of bloom. See June 16, 1854 ("The Rosa nitida grows along the edge of the ditches, the half-open flowers showing the deepest rosy tints, so glowing that they make an evening or twilight of the surrounding afternoon, seeming to stand in the shade or twilight. Already the bright petals of yesterday's flowers are thickly strewn along on the black mud at the bottom of the ditch."); July 8, 1854 ("The Rosa nitida I think has [been] some time done") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Rose

The perception of truth vs. the collection of facts.

December 16.

The east was glowing with a narrow but ill-defined crescent of light, the blue of the zenith mingling in all possible proportions with the salmon-color of the horizon.

The woods were this morning covered with thin bars of vapor, — the evaporation of the leaves according to Sprengel, — which seemed to have been suddenly stiffened by the cold.

And now the neighboring hilltops telegraph to us poor crawlers of the plain the Monarch's golden ensign in the east, and anon his “long levelled rules” fall sector wise, and humblest cottage windows greet their lord.

FACTS 

How indispensable to a correct study of Nature is a perception of her true meaning.

The fact will one day flower out into a truth. The season will mature and fructify what the understanding had cultivated.

Mere accumulators of facts — collectors of materials for the master-workmen — are like those plants growing in dark forests, which “put forth only leaves instead of blossoms.”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 16, 1837

The blue of the zenith mingling in all possible proportions with the salmon-color of the horizon. See April 16, 1855 ("I could see very clearly the pale salmon of the eastern horizon reflected there and contrasting with an intermediate streak of skim-milk blue, — now, just after sunrise.")

And now the neighboring hilltops telegraph the Monarch's golden ensign in the east, and anon humblest cottage windows greet their lord. See April 16, 1856 ("5.30 A. M. — A little sunshine at the rising. I see it first reflected from E. Wood’s windows before I can see the sun.")

The fact will one day flower out into a truth. See June 19, 1852 (“Facts collected by a poet are set down at last as winged seeds of truth.”); February 18, 1852 ("I have a commonplace-book for facts and another for poetry, but I find it difficult always to preserve the vague distinction which I had in my mind, for the most interesting and beautiful facts are so much the more poetry and that is their success. ... I see that if my facts were sufficiently vital and significant, ... I should need but one book of poetry to contain them all.") February 23. 1860 ("A fact stated barely is dry. It must be the vehicle of some humanity in order to interest us. It is like giving a man a stone when he asks you for bread.")

December 16. See A Book of the Seasons, By Henry Thoreau, December 16 

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 ©  2009-2023

tinyurl.com/hdt371216

The never-failing wood thrush inviting the day once more to enter his pine woods.

August 17.

Twenty minutes before 5 a. m. — To Cliffs and Walden.

Dawn.

No breathing of chip-birds nor singing of robins as in spring, but still the cock crows lustily.

The creak of the crickets sounds louder.

As I go along the back road, hear two or three song sparrows.

This morning's red, there being a misty cloud there, is equal to an evening red.

The woods are very still. I hear only a faint peep or twitter from one bird, then the never-failing wood thrush, it being about sunrise, and after, on the Cliff, the phoebe note of a chickadee, a night-warbler, a creeper (?), and a pewee (?), and, later still, the huckleberry-bird and red-eye, but all few and faint.

Cannot distinguish the steam of the engine toward Waltham from one of the morning fogs over hollows in woods.

Lespedeza violacea var. (apparently) angustifolia (?), sessiliflora of Bigelow. Also another L. violacea, or at least violet, perhaps different from what I saw some time since.

Gerardia pedicularia, bushy gerardia, almost ready.

The white cornel berries are dropping off before they are fairly white.

Is not the hibiscus a very bright pink or even flesh- color? It is so delicate and peculiar. I do not think of any flower just like it. It reminds me of some of the wild geraniums most. It is a singular, large, delicate, high-colored flower with a tree-like leaf.

Gaylussada frondosa, blue-tangle, dangle-berry, ripe perhaps a week.

Weston of Lincoln thought there were more grapes, both cultivated and wild, than usual this year, because the rose-bugs had not done so much harm. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal August 17, 1852

The never-failing wood thrush about sunrise. See  August 10, 1856 ("Hear the wood thrush still."); August  12, 1851 ("I hear a wood thrush even now, long before sunrise. . .The wood thrush, that beautiful singer, inviting the day once more to enter his pine woods.") Compare August 12, 1854 ("Have not heard a wood thrush since last week of July. "); August 14, 1853 ("I hear no wood thrushes for a week.")

Lespedeza violacea.  See August 19, 1856 ("I spent my afternoon among the desmodiums and lespedezas, sociably. . . .  All the lespedezas are apparently more open and delicate in the woods, and of a darker green, especially the violet ones. When not too much crowded, their leaves are very pretty and perfect.") and  note to August 14, 1856 ("A short elliptic-leaved Lespedeza violacea, loose and open in Veery Nest Path, at Flint's Pond. In press.")

Bushy gerardia, almost ready. See August 12, 1856 ("Gerardia pedicularia, how long?"); August 23, 1856 ("On the west side of Emerson's Cliff, I notice many Gerardia pedicularia out. A bee is hovering about one bush");August 24, 1858 ("Climbing the hill at the bend, I find Gerardia Pedicularia, apparently several days, or how long?")

There are but us three, the moon, the earth and myself.

 August 12

August 12, 2018

Tuesday. 1.30 A. M. — Full moon.

Arose and went to the river and bathed, stepping very carefully not to disturb the household, and still carefully in the street not to disturb the neighbors. I did not walk naturally and freely till I had got over the wall.

Then to Hubbard’s Bridge at 2 A. M.

There was a whip-poor-will in the road just beyond Goodwin’s, which flew up and lighted on the fence and kept alighting on the fence within a rod of me and circling round me with a slight squeak as if inquisitive about me.

I do not remember what I observed or thought in coming hither.

The traveller’s whole employment is to calculate what cloud will obscure the moon and what she will triumph over.

In the after-midnight hours the traveller’s sole companion is the moon.

All his thoughts are centred in her.

She is waging continual war with the clouds in his behalf.

What cloud will enter the lists with her next, this employs his thoughts; and when she enters on a clear field of great extent in the heavens, and shines unobstructedly, he is glad.

And when she has fought her way through all the squadrons of her foes, and rides majestic in a clear sky, he cheerfully and confidently pursues his way, and rejoices in his heart.

But if he sees that she has many new clouds to contend with, he pursues his way moodily, as one disappointed and aggrieved; he resents it as an injury to himself.

It is his employment to watch the moon, the companion and guide of his journey, wading through clouds, and calculate what one is destined to shut out her cheering light.

He traces her course, now almost completely obscured, through the ranks of her foes, and calculates where she will issue from them.

He is disappointed and saddened when he sees that she has many clouds to contend with.

Sitting on the sleepers of Hubbard’s Bridge, which is being repaired, now, 3 o’clock A. M., I hear a cock crow.

How admirably adapted to the dawn is that sound! as if made by the first rays of light rending the darkness, the creaking of the sun’s axle heard already over the eastern hills.

Though man’s life is trivial and handselled, Nature is holy and heroic.

With what infinite faith and promise and moderation begins each new day! 

It is only a little after 3 o’clock, and already there is evidence of morning in the sky. 

He rejoices when the moon comes forth from the squadrons of the clouds unscathed and there are no more any obstructions in her path, and the cricket also seems to express joy in his song.

It does not concern men who are asleep in their beds, but it is very important to the traveller, whether the moon shines bright and unobstructed or is obscured by clouds.

It is not easy to realize the serene joy of all the earth when the moon commences to shine unobstructedly, unless you have often been a traveller by night.

The traveller also resents it if the wind rises and rustles the leaves or ripples the water and increases the coolness at such an hour.

A solitary horse in his pasture was scared by the sudden sight of me, an apparition to him, standing still in the moonlight, and moved about, inspecting with alarm, but I spoke and he heard the sound of my voice; he was at once reassured and expressed his pleasure by wagging his stump of a tail, though still half a dozen rods off.

How wholesome the taste of huckleberries, when now by moonlight I feel for them amid the bushes!

And now the first signs of morning attract the traveller’s attention, and he cannot help rejoicing, and the moon begins gradually to fade from his recollection.

The wind rises and rustles the copses.

The sand is cool on the surface but warm two or three inches beneath, and the rocks are quite warm to the hand, so that he sits on them or leans against them for warmth, though indeed it is not cold elsewhere.

As I walk along the side of Fair Haven Hill, I see a ripple on the river, and now the moon has gone behind a large and black mass of clouds, and I realize that I may not see her again in her glory this night, that perchance ere she rises from this obscurity, the sun will have risen, and she will appear but as a cloud herself, and sink unnoticed into the west (being a little after full (a day?)).

As yet no sounds of awakening men; only the more frequent crowing of cocks, still standing on their perches in the barns.

The milkmen are the earliest risers, — though I see no lan-thorns carried to their barns in the distance, – preparing to carry the milk of cows in their tin cans for men’s breakfasts, even for those who dwell in distant cities.

In the twilight now, by the light of the stars alone, the moon being concealed, they are pressing the bounteous streams from full udders into their milk-pails, and the sound of the streaming milk is all that breaks the sacred stillness of the dawn; distributing their milk to such as have no cows.

I perceive no mosquitoes now.

Are they vespertinal, like the singing of the whip-poor-will? 

I see the light of the obscured moon reflected from the river brightly.

With what mild emphasis Nature marks the spot! — so bright and serene a sheen that does not more contrast with the night.

4 A. M. — It adds a charm, a dignity, a glory, to the earth to see the light of the moon reflected from her streams.

There are but us three, the moon, the earth which wears this jewel (the moon’s reflection) in her crown, and myself.

Now there has come round the Cliff (on which I sit), which faces the west, all unobserved and mingled with the dusky sky of night, a lighter and more ethereal living blue, whispering of the sun still far, far away, behind the horizon.

From the summit of our atmosphere, perchance, he may already be seen by soaring spirits that inhabit those thin upper regions, and they communicate the glorious intelligence to us lower ones.

The real divine, the heavenly, blue, the Jove-containing air, it is, I see through this dusky lower stratum.

The sun gilding the summits of the air.

The broad artery of light flows over all the sky.

Yet not without sadness and compassion I reflect that I shall not see the moon again in her glory.

(Not far from four, still in the night, I heard a nighthawk squeak and boom, high in the air, as I sat on the Cliff. What is said about this being less of a night bird than the whip-poor-will is perhaps to be questioned. For neither do I remember to have heard the whip-poor-will sing at 12 o’clock, though I met one sitting and flying between two and three this morning. I believe that both may be heard at midnight, though very rarely.) 

Now at very earliest dawn the nighthawk booms and the whip-poor-will sings.

Returning down the hill by the path to where the woods [are] cut off, I see the signs of the day, the morning red.

There is the lurid morning star, soon to be blotted out by a cloud.

There is an early redness in the east which I was not prepared for, changing to amber or saffron, with clouds beneath in the horizon and also above this clear streak.

The birds utter a few languid and yawning notes, as if they had not left their perches, so sensible to light to wake so soon, — a faint peeping sound from I know not what kind, a slight, innocent, half-awake sound, like the sounds which a quiet housewife makes in the earliest dawn.

Nature preserves her innocence like a beautiful child.

I hear a wood thrush even now, long before sunrise, as in the heat of the day.

And the pewee and the catbird and the vireo, red-eyed? 

I do not hear— or do not mind, perchance — the crickets now. 

Now whip-poor-wills commence to sing in earnest, considerably after the wood thrush.

The wood thrush, that beautiful singer, inviting the day once more to enter his pine woods.

(So you may hear the wood thrush and whip-poor-will at the same time.) 

Now go by two whip-poor-wills, in haste seeking some coverts from the eye of day.

And the bats are flying about on the edge of the wood, improving the last moments of their day in catching insects.

The moon appears at length, not yet as a cloud, but with a frozen light, ominous of her fate.

The early cars sound like a wind in the woods.

The chewinks make a business now of waking each other up with their low yorrick in the neighboring low copse.

The sun would have shown before but for the cloud.

Now, on his rising, not the clear sky, but the cheeks of the clouds high and wide, are tinged with red, which, like the sky before, turns gradually to saffron and then to the white light of day.

The nettle-leaved vervain (Verbena urticifolia) by roadside at Emerson’s.

What we have called hemp answers best to Urtica dioica, large stinging nettle? 

Now the great sunflower’s golden disk is seen.

The days for some time have been sensibly shorter; there is time for music in the evening.

I see polygonums in blossom by roadside, white and red.

A eupatorium from Hubbard’s Bridge causeway answers to E. purpureum, except in these doubtful points, that the former has four leaves in a whorl, is unequally serrate, the stem is nearly filled with a thin pith, the corymb is not merely terminal, florets eight and nine.

Differs from verticillatum in the stem being not solid, and I perceive no difference between calyx and corolla in color, if I know what the two are. It may be one of the intermediate varieties referred to

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 12, 1851



1.30 A. M. — Full moon. Arose and went to the river. See July 16, 1850 ("Many men walk by day; few walk by night. It is a very different season..")

There are but us three, the moon, the earth and myself.  See May 16, 1851 (" In the moonlight night what intervals are created! . . . There may be only three objects, — myself, a pine tree, and the moon, nearly equidistant."); September 22, 1854 ("By moonlight all is simple. We are enabled to erect ourselves, our minds, on account of the fewness of objects. We are no longer distracted."); See also August 5, 1851 ("Moonlight is like a cup of cold water to a thirsty man. As the twilight deepens and the moonlight is more and more bright, I begin to distinguish myself, who I am and where. I become more collected and composed, and sensible of my own existence, as when a lamp is brought into a dark apartment and I see who the company are. "); July 26, 1852 ("My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening, compels me to solitude.")

It is his employment to watch the moon, the companion and guide of his journey, wading through clouds, and calculate what one is destined to shut out her cheering light. See June 1, 1852 (".The moving clouds are the drama of the moonlight nights")

Now, 3 o’clock A. M., I hear a cock crow. How admirably adapted to the dawn is that sound! as if made by the first rays of light. See July 18, 1851 ("Have you knowledge of the morning ? Do you sympathize with that season of nature? Are you abroad early, brushing the dews aside ? If the sun rises on you slumbering, if you do not hear the morning cock-crow, if you do not witness the blushes of Aurora, if you are not acquainted with Venus as the morning star, what relation have you to wisdom and purity? "); February 25, 1859 ("Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature, — if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you,— know that the morning and spring of your life are past.")

She will appear but as a cloud herself, and sink unnoticed into the west. See April 30, 1852 ("Then when I turned, I saw in the east, just over the woods, the modest, pale, cloud-like moon, two thirds full, looking spirit-like on these daylight scenes. Such a sight excites me. The earth is worthy to inhabit.")

There are but us three –

the moon, the earth and myself

(the moon’s reflection).

First signs of morning 

and the moon begins to fade 

from recollection.

The Library a wilderness of books.

March 16. 

Before sunrise. 

With what infinite and unwearied expectation and proclamation the cocks usher in every dawn, as if there had never been one before! And the dogs bark still, and the thallus of lichens springs, so tenacious of life is nature. 

Spent the day in Cambridge Library. 

Walden is not yet melted round the edge. 

It is, perhaps, more suddenly warm this spring than usual. 

Mr. Bull thinks that the pine grosbeaks, which have been unusually numerous the past winter, have killed many branches of his elms by budding them, and that they will die and the wind bring them down, as heretofore. 

Saw a large flock of geese go over Cambridge and heard the robins in the College Yard. 

The Library a wilderness of books. 

Looking over books on Canada written within the last three hundred years, could see how one had been built upon another, each author consulting and referring to his predecessors. You could read most of them without changing your leg on the steps.

It is necessary to find out exactly what books to read on a given subject. Though there may be a thousand books written upon it, it is only important to read three or four; they will contain all that is essential, and a few pages will show which they are. Books which are books are all that you want, and there are but half a dozen in any thousand. 

I saw that while we are clearing the forest in our westward progress, we are accumulating a forest of books in our rear, as wild and unexplored as any of nature's primitive wildernesses. 

The volumes of the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, which lie so near on the shelf, are rarely opened, are effectually forgotten and not implied by our literature and newspapers. 

When I looked into Purchas's Pilgrims, it affected me like looking into an impassable swamp, ten feet deep with sphagnum, where the monarchs of the forest, covered with mosses and stretched along the ground, were making haste to become peat. 

Those old books suggested a  certain fertility, an Ohio soil, as if they were making a humus for new literatures to spring in. I heard the bellowing of bullfrogs and the hum of mosquitoes reverberating through the thick embossed covers when I had closed the book. 

Decayed literature makes the richest of all soils.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 16, 1852

Saw a large flock of geese go over Cambridge and heard the robins in the College Yard. See March 14, 1854 ("From within the house at 5.30 p. m. I hear the loud honking of geese, throw up the window, and see a large flock in disordered harrow flying more directly north or even northwest than usual. Raw, thick, misty weather"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring; Geese Overhead

Walden is not yet melted round the edge.  See March 14, 1852 ("The ice on Walden has now for some days looked white like snow, the surface being softened by the sun.");  Journal, March 18, 1852("The pond is still very little melted around the shore.");  April 1, 1852 ("Walden is all white ice, but little melted about the shores."); April 14. 1852 (" Walden is only melted two or three rods from the north shore yet."); April 19, 1852 (" Walden is clear of ice. The ice left it yesterday, then, the 18th. ");Walden. ("In 1845 Walden was first completely open on the 1st of April; in '46, the 25th of March; in '47, the 8th of April;  in '51, the 28th of March; in '52, the 18th of April; in '53, the 23rd of March;  in '54, about the 7th of April.")

Already the elms with denser foliage begin to hang dark against the glaucous mist.

July 13. 

Very hot weather. 

P. M. — To Rattlesnake Fern Swamp. 

I hear before I start the distant mutterings of thunder in the northwest, though I see no cloud. The haymakers are busy raking their hay, to be ready for a shower. They would rather have their grass wet a little than not have the rain. 

I keep on, regardless of the prospect. 

See the indigo-bird still, chirping anxiously on the bushes in that sprout-land beyond the red huckleberry. 

Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum berries pretty thick there, and one lass is picking them with a dipper tied to her girdle. The first thought is, What a good school this lass goes to! 

Rattlesnake fern just done. 

I make haste home, expecting a thunder-shower, which we need, but it goes by. The grass by the roadside is burnt yellow and is quite dusty. This, with the sultry air, the parched fields, and the languid inhabitants, marks the season. Already the elms with denser foliage begin to hang dark against the glaucous mist. 

The price of friendship is the total surrender of yourself; no lesser kindness, no ordinary attentions and offerings will buy it. There is forever that purchase to be made with that wealth which you possess, yet only once in a long while are you advertised of such a commodity. 

I sometimes awake in the night and think of friendship and its possibilities, a new life and revelation to me, which perhaps I had not experienced for many months. Such transient thoughts have been my nearest approach to realization of it, thoughts which I know of no one to communicate to. 

I suddenly erect myself in my thoughts, or find myself erected, infinite degrees above the possibility of ordinary endeavors, and see for what grand stakes the game of life may be played. 

Men, with their indiscriminate attentions and ceremonious good-will, offer you trivial baits, which do not tempt; they are not serious enough either for success or failure. 

I wake up in the night to these higher levels of life, as to a day that begins to dawn, as if my intervening life had been a long night. 

I catch an echo of the great strain of Friendship played somewhere, and feel compensated for months and years of commonplace. I rise into a diviner atmosphere, in which simply to exist and breathe is a triumph, and my thoughts inevitably tend toward the grand and infinite, as aeronauts report that there is ever an upper current hereabouts which sets toward the ocean. If they rise high enough they go out to sea, and be hold the vessels seemingly in mid-air like themselves. It is as if I were serenaded, and the highest and truest compliments were paid me. 

The universe gives me three cheers. 

Friendship is the fruit which the year should bear; it lends its fragrance to the flowers, and it is in vain if we get only a large crop of apples without it. 

This experience makes us unavailable for the ordinary courtesy and intercourse of men. We can only recognize them when they rise to that level and realize our dream.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 13, 1857

Rattlesnake fern swamp. This is Fever-bush Swamp, which HDT today names “Rattlesnake Fern Swamp”. On September 16, 1857 HDT begins to refer to it as Botrychium Swamp. It is the same as his Yellow Birch Swamp See May 5, 1859 and  Vascular Flora of Concord, Massachusetts ( "Rattlesnake Fern")

The grass by the roadside is burnt yellow and is quite dusty. This, with the sultry air, the parched fields, and the languid inhabitants, marks the season. See July 13, 1860 ("For a week past. . the season has had a more advanced look, from the reddening, imbrowning, or yellowing, and ripening of many grasses")

Already the elms with denser foliage begin to hang dark . . .See July 7, 1851 (". . .the heavy shadows of the elms covering the ground with their rich tracery . . . like chandeliers of darkness.")

I sometimes awake in the night and think of friendship and its possibilities. . . See June 11, 1855 ("What if we feel a yearning to which no breast answers? I walk alone. My heart is full. Feelings impede the current of my thoughts. I knock on the earth but no friend appears, and perhaps none is dreaming of me.")

July 13. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 13.

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

No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of the spring.

March 17. 

These days, beginning with the 14th, more springlike.

March 17, 2017

Last night it rained a little, carrying off nearly all the little snow that remained, but this morning it is fair, and I hear the note of the woodpecker on the elms (that early note) and the bluebird again. 

Launch my boat. 

No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of the spring, but he will presently discover some evidence that vegetation had awaked some days at least before. Early as I have looked this year, perhaps the first unquestionable growth of an indigenous plant detected was the fine tips of grass blades which the frost had killed, floating pale and flaccid, though still attached to their stems, spotting the pools like a slight fall or flurry of dull-colored snowflmakes. 

After a few mild and sunny days, even in February, the grass in still muddy pools or ditches sheltered by the surrounding banks, which reflect the heat upon it, ventures to lift the points of its green phalanx into the mild and flattering atmosphere, advances rapidly from the saffron even to the rosy tints of morning. But the following night comes the frost, which, with rude and ruthless hand, sweeps the surface of the pool, and the advancing morning pales into the dim light of earliest dawn. 

I thus detect the first approach of spring by finding here and there its scouts and vanguard which have been slain by the rear-guard of retreating winter. 

It is only some very early still, warm, and pleasant morning in February or March that I notice that woodpecker-like whar-whar-whar-whar-whar-whar, earliest spring sound.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 17, 1857

.I notice that woodpecker-like whar-whar-whar-whar-whar-whar, earliest spring sound.  See February 18, 1857 ("When I step out into the yard I hear that earliest spring note from some bird, perhaps a pigeon woodpecker . . ., the rapid whar whar, whar whar, whar whar, which I have so often heard before any other note.”); February 17, 1855 ("Can it be a jay? or a pigeon woodpecker? Is it not the earliest springward note of a bird?”); March 5, 1859 ("Going down-town this forenoon, I heard a white-bellied nuthatch on an elm within twenty feet, uttering peculiar notes and more like a song than I remember to have heard from it.. . .It was something like to-what what what what what, rapidly repeated, and not the usual gnah gnah; and this instant it occurs to me that this may be that earliest spring note which I hear, and have referred to a woodpecker! (This is before I have chanced to see a bluebird, blackbird, or robin in Concord this year.) It is the spring note of the nuthatch")

No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of the spring .See March 3, 1859 ("How imperceptibly the first springing takes place!"); March 15, 1857 (“An early dawn and premature blush of spring, at which I was not present.”)  See also  Walden, “Spring” ("I am on the alert for the first signs of spring,”). Compare Walden (“ The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake.”); Walden ("We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, by an infinite expectation of the dawn.”); January 26, 1853 (“ I look back for the era of this creation, not into the night, but to a dawn for which no man ever rose early enough.”); March 17, 1852 (“There is a moment in the dawn,. . . when we see things more truly than at any other time.”); and note to June 13, 1852 ("All things in this world must be seen with the morning dew on them, must be seen with youthful, early-opened, hopeful eyes. ")

Ducks on ice

"The parallelism produced
 by their necks and bodies
 steering the same way
 gives the idea of order."

March 21

At sunrise to Clamshell Hill.

River skimmed over at Willow Bay last night. Think I should find ducks cornered up by the ice; they get behind this hill for shelter.  Look with glass and find  more than thirty black ducks asleep with their heads on their backs, motionless, and thin ice formed about them. 

There was an open space, eight or ten rods by one or two. At first all within a space of apparently less than a rod diameter. Soon one or two are moving about slowly. It is 6.30 a. m., the sun shining on them, but bitter cold.  How tough they are! 

I crawl on my stomach and get a near view of them, thirty rods off. At length they detect me and quack. Some get out upon the ice, and when I rise up all take to flight in a great straggling flock, which at a distance looks like crows, in no order.  Yet, when you see two or three  the parallelism produced by their necks and bodies steering the same way gives the idea of order. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 21, 1854

Look with glass and find more than thirty black ducks. See March 13, 1854 ("Bought a telescope to-day for eight dollars"); March 22, 1854 ("Scare up my flock of black ducks and count forty together."); March 22, 1858 ("About forty black ducks, pretty close together, sometimes apparently in close single lines.") See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Black Duck

March 21.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 21

Thirty ducks asleep

with heads on backs, motionless -

ice forms about them.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ducks on ice

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540321

Mornings of Creation

January 26. 

A sharp, cutting air. 

This is a pretty good winter morning, however. 

Not one of the rarer.

There are from time to time mornings, 

both in summer and winter,
when especially the world seems to begin anew,

mornings beyond which memory need not go, 

for not behind them is yesterday and our past life;

when, as in the morning of a hoar frost,

there are visible the effects of a certain creative energy, 

the world has visibly been recreated in the night.

Mornings of creation, 

I call them. 

In the midst of these marks of a creative energy recently active, 

while the sun is rising with more than usual splendor, 
I look back,- 

I look back for the era of this creation, 

not into the night, 

but to a dawn
for which no man ever rose early enough. 

A morning which carries us back beyond the Mosaic creation,
where crystallizations are fresh and unmelted.

It is the poet's hour. 

Mornings when men are new-born, 

men who have the seeds of life in them. 

This is not one of those mornings, but a clear, cold, airy winter day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 26, 1853

There are from time to time mornings. . .when especially the world seems to begin anew,. See January 23, 1860 ("Walking on the ice by the side of the river this very pleasant morning, I recommence life.”); January 7, 1858 ("These are true mornings of creation, original and poetic days, not mere repetitions of the past')

See also, Walden, Where I Lived, And What I Lived For  ("The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it.")

Jan. 26. 

Up river on ice 9 A. M., above Pantry,

  A sharp, cutting air,

  This is a pretty good winter  morning, however.  Not one of the rarer,

  There are from time to time mornings, both in summer and winter, when especially the world seems to begin anew, beyond which memory need not go, for not behind them is yesterday and our past life; when, as in the morning of a hoar frost, there are visible the effects of a certain creative energy, the world has visibly been recreated in the night,

 Mornings of creation, I call them,

  In the midst of these marks of a creative energy recently active, while the sun is rising with more than usual splendor, I look back, — I look back for the era of this creation, not into the night, but to a dawn for which no man ever rose early enough,

  A morning which carries us back beyond the Mosaic creation, where crystallizations are fresh and unmelted,

  It is the poet's hour,

  Mornings when men are new - born, men who have the seeds of life in them,

  It should be a part of my religion to [ be ] abroad then,

  This is not one of those mornings, but a clear, cold, airy winter day,

 

  It is surprising how much room there is in nature, if a man will follow his proper path.

  In these broad fields, in these extensive woods, on this stretching river, I never meet a walker,

  Passing behind the farmhouses, I see no man out.

  Perhaps I do not meet so many men as I should have met three centuries ago, when the Indian hunter roamed these woods.

  I enjoy the retirement and solitude of an early settler.

  Men have cleared some of the earth, which no doubt is an advantage to the walker.

  I see a man sometimes chopping in the woods, or planting or hoeing in a field, at a distance; and yet there may be a lyceum in the evening, and there  is a book - shop and library in the village, and five times a day I can be whirled to Boston within an hour.

  There is a little thin ice on the meadows.

  I see the bubbles underneath, looking like coin.

  A slight, fine snow has fallen in the night and drifted before the wind.

  I observe that it is so distributed over the ice as [ to ] show equal spaces of bare ice and of snow at pretty regular distances.

  I have seen the same phenomenon on the surface of snow in fields, as if the surface of the snow disposed itself according to the same law that makes waves of water.

  There is now a fine steam - like snow blowing over the ice, which continually lodges here and there, and forthwith a little drift accumulates.

  But why does it lodge at such regular intervals ? I see this fine drifting snow in the air ten or twelve feet high at a distance.

  Perhaps it may have to do with the manner in, or the angle at, which the wind strikes the earth.

  Made a roaring fire on the edge of the meadow at Ware ( ? ) Hill in Sudbury.

  A piece of paper, birch bark, and dry leaves started it, and then we depended on the dead maple twigs and limbs to kindle the large dead wood.

  Green wood will burn better than the damp and rotten wood that lies on the ground.

  We chose a place which afforded a prospect, but it turned out that we looked only at the fire.

  It made all places indifferent.

  The color of the coals, in a glowing heap or seen through the white ashes on the brands, like rubies.

  The shadows, coming and going, of the flame passing over the white ashes of the brands.

  I burnt off my eye lashes when the fire suddenly blazed up with the wind, without knowing that I had come very near it.

  Though  our fuel was dead and rotten wood found in the snow, it made very little smoke, which may have been owing to the state of the atmosphere, clear and cold.

  The sound of the air or steam escaping from a brand, its sighing or dying shriek, fine and sharp as a cambric needle, is the music we hear.

  One half the pleasure is in making the fire.

  But then we should have something to cook by it.

  Collecting fresh fuel from time to time is very pleasant.

  The smoke ever and anon compelled us to move round to the opposite side.

  The sap which flowed from some maple boughs which I cut froze in large drops at the end.

  How came sap there now ?

 It is remarkable that many men will go with eagerness to Walden Pond in the winter to fish for pickerel and yet not seem to care for the landscape.

  Of course it cannot be merely for the pickerel they may catch; there is some adventure in it; but any love of nature which they may feel is certainly very slight and indefinite.

  They call it going a - fishing, and so indeed it is, though, perchance, their natures know better.

  Now I go a - fishing and a - hunting every day, but omit the fish and the game, which are the least important part.

  I have learned to do without them.

  They were indispensable only as long as I was a boy. 

 I am encouraged when I see a dozen villagers drawn to Walden Pond to spend a day in fishing through the ice, and suspect that I have more fellows than I knew, but I am disappointed and surprised to find that they lay all the stress on the fish which they catch or fail to catch, and on nothing else, as if there were nothing else to be caught.

  When we got off at some distance from our fire, returning, we saw a light bluish smoke rising as high as the woods above it, though we had not perceived it before, and thought that no one could have detected us.

  At the fall on Clematis Brook the forms of the ice were admirable.

  The coarse spray had frozen as it fell on the rocks, and formed shell - like crusts over them, with irregular but beautifully clear and sparkling surfaces like egg - shaped diamonds, each being the top of a club - shaped and branched fungus icicle.

  This spray had improved the least core —as the dead and slender rushes drooping over the water - and formed larger icicles about them, shaped exactly like horns, skulls often attached, or roots On similar slight limbs there out from the shore and rocks all fantastic forms, with broader ter bases, from which hung stalactites of ice; and on logs in the water were perfect ice fungi with the of horns.

  were built sorts of and flat of all sizes, under which the water gurgled, flat underneath and hemi spherical.

  A form like this would project over the six inches deep by four or five in and a foot long, held by the but with a slight weed for core.

  could take off the incrustations rocks, water : width rocks, You on the turn Looking down on it them up, and they were perfect shells.

 

 

 

 

**** 

 

The only birds I have seen to-day were some jays, one whistled clearly, — some of my mewing red frontlets, and some familiar chickadees. They are inquisitive, and fly along after the traveller to inspect him.

  In civilized nations there are those answering to the rain - makers and sorcerers of savages,

  Also this office ' is universal among savage tribes.

Bitter, cutting, cold northwest wind on causeway, stiffening the face, freezing the ears.