Dr. Elisha Kent Kane1

Home , Elisha Kent Kane, Henry Grinnell, Jane Franklin

PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

ALMOST MENTIONED IN WALDEN:

DR. ELISHA KENT KANE1

“You shall not be overbold When you deal with Arctic cold.” — Waldo Emerson

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

1. Refer to the chapter “The Lost-Boy Complex in 19th-Century Exploration” in Eric Leed’s SHORES OF DISCOVERY: HOW EXPEDITIONARIES HAVE CONSTRUCTED THE WORLD (NY: HarperCollins BasicBooks, 1995). HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

WALDEN: What does Africa, –what does the West stand for? Is not our own interior white on the chart? black though it may prove, like the coast, PEOPLE OF when discovered. Is it the source of the Nile, or the Niger, or the WALDEN Mississippi, or a North-West Passage around this continent, that we would find? Are these the problems which most concern mankind? Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is? Be rather the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clarke and Frobisher, of your own streams and oceans; explore your own higher latitudes, –with shiploads of preserved meats to support you, if they be necessary; and pile the empty cans sky-high for a sign. Were preserved meats invented to preserve meat merely? Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads. What was the meaning of that South- Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact, that there are continents and seas in the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.– “Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos. Plus habet hic vitæ, plus habet ille viæ.” Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians. I have more of God, they more of the road.

SIR JOHN FRANKLIN DR. ELISHA KENT KANE LEWIS AND CLARK CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS MUNGO PARK

“SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES”: In the planting of the seeds of most trees, the best gardeners do no more than follow Nature, though they may not know it. Generally, both large and small ones are most sure to germinate, and succeed best, when only beaten into the earth with the back of a spade, and then covered with leaves or straw. These results to which planters have arrived, remind us of the experience of Kane and his companions at the North, who, when learning to live in that climate, were surprised to find themselves steadily adopting the customs of the natives, simply becoming Esquimaux. So, when we experiment in planting forests, we find ourselves at last doing as Nature does. Would it not be well to consult with Nature in the outset? for she is the most extensive and experienced planter of us all, not excepting the Dukes of Athol.

DR. ELISHA KENT KANE THE DUKES OF ATHOLL HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1607

Henry Hudson sailed north of Spitsbergen to the 80th parallel, an accomplishment which would remain unbested until Dr. Elisha Kent Kane’s expedition of 1853. He accurately predicted the wild success of the fishing and whaling industries there. On his 3rd voyage (this time for the Dutch) he sailed the Hopewell up the Hudson River from Manhattan (“Manahatin” means “hilly island”) to Albany, hoping it might open into a Northwest Passage. Hudson and his youngest son “Jack” perished after being set adrift from the Discovery in Hudson Bay by mutineers during his 4th voyage to seek the Passage. THE FROZEN NORTH

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Walden: Dr. Elisha Kent Kane HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1820

February 3, Thursday: John Keats’s hemorrhaging began. Trained in medicine, he recognized the blood as arterial and understood that this indicated that his disease was terminal.2

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day attended the Quarterly Meeting at large, in the first meeting we were burdened with several appearances from Micah Ruggles who I desire & pray may experience deeper Wisdom than he has yet known Thos Anthony was engaged in a lively testimony -there were several other appearances of which I can say but little.- — In the last meeting there was but little buisness & the heft of the first meeting remained I dined at Moses Browns, spent the remainder of the Afternoon & evening, in a very agreeable & edifying conversation with Moses & several friends there —lodged & next morning rode again to Providence & set out for home over India Bridge - we dined at James Maxwells in Warren & proceeded to Bristol Ferry but found Ice obstructed so that it was not prudent to cross & we returned to Warren & lodged at James Maxwells who very kindly entertained us. — 7th day, This Morning set out from Warren to Sleids ferry where we crossed in season to get to Abraham Barkers to dinner & got home before night. This little journey tho’ attended with considerable bodily & mental suffering I trust has been a proffitable one to me — I was impressed with a belief that it was best for me to go being in health & not knowing how soon it may be otherwise with me. — time is both short & Uncertain many of my towns men & women have 2. He would succumb at the age of 25, four months after his engagement to Fanny Brawne as depicted in the Jane Campion movie “Bright Star” — Fanny’s loveletters would be placed in the coffin.

Fanny would not languish forever in grief, but would marry with Louis Lindon, Esq. and bear him three children and lead a long life. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

been removed the last year, some of whom promised a long & useful life.-1st day [Sunday] 6th of 2nd M 1820 / Our Meetings were both silent & to me seasons of labor. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

Elisha Kent Kane was born in Philadelphia. Elisha Kent Kane passed a relatively unremarkable childhood. A first-born child, his family moved several times as it grew, within the precincts of Philadelphia, finally moving to an estate named Rensselaer. According to his contemporaneous biographer, William Elder, Kane was an average student, who was accepted at the University of Virginia. In his second year of college he contracted rheumatic fever. This event, more than any other was to configure the rest of his life. The first outcome of his illness was his attraction to the world of medicine. Upon his graduation from the University of Virginia, Kane began the study of medicine in Philadelphia. By twenty-two, he had published a study of early pregnancy detection in the American Journal of Medical Sciences. More profound than this was the effect of the resulting terminal endocarditis on his world view. In the present time, of course, the existence of antibiotics would make short work of a chronic infection of the cardiac lining. In the early 19th century, however, it was a death sentence. Perhaps a couple of years would pass, perhaps a few decades, but the sentence was final. Kane set out with a vengeance to live a life that would be remembered. Joining the US Navy, he set out to discover the world. Finding himself in the South Pacific, he descended into the crater of an active volcano to retrieve water samples, much to the dismay of his companions, who fled the scene in mortal fear. Travelling to China, he practiced medicine on a hospital ship for several months before setting off to the west through India and Egypt, Athens and Paris. Two more tours of stultifying naval duty sent him to the White House to beg for a more exciting tour of duty. President Polk assigned him to an extremely dangerous mission: carry a message to the commander of American forces in Mexico during the Mexican-American War. After saving a Mexican general from being murdered by the mercenaries hired to escort him to Mexico City, Kane emerged as an important figure at the international level. Once again bored by navy duty, he wrote the Secretary of War, proposing a mission to the Arctic to rescue a missing British explorer, Sir John Franklin. Two weeks later began the most incredible chapters in this man’s life, as he set off to Baffin Bay, between Canada and Greenland. Three out of the next five years were spent locked in pack ice, under unendurable conditions. After the incredible feat of leading eighteen of his twenty men to safety on foot, Kane wrote the largest selling book in American history about his adventures. Although largely forgotten today, Elisha Kent Kane was a hugely HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

popular figure in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It has been said that, if homesteaders heading west across the United States’ frontier carried two books, one was certainly by Dr. Kane; the other was probably a Bible. His rescue missions to the Arctic were widely regarded as suicidal. Inasmuch as his missions were validated by the scientific goal of the discovery of the Open Polar Sea (a popular theory among scientists of the era,) his was a scientific as well as a cultural mandate. His published accounts held a nation spellbound. The efforts connected with the writing of the account of his second mission (abetted by the “dragon within” of his chronic endocaditis) eventually killed him. Upon his death in Havana at the age of thirty-seven, the Governor of Cuba personally escorted the cortege as far as New Orleans. From New Orleans to Cincinnati, the banks of Mississippi were lined with mourners, and the train trip from Cincinnati to Philadelphia took nearly four days because of the throngs on the tracks. His funeral was the largest in American history, eclipsed only by Lincoln’s a decade later. Culturally, Kane was the embodiment of Patricia Limerick’s “sustainable American hero,” representing the ascent of American Science and Technology to the stature of the European Renaissance and Enlightenment movements of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Walden: Dr. Elisha Kent Kane HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1842

Elisha Kent Kane graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School.

Dr. Robert Montgomery Smith Jackson began the practice of medicine in Blairsville, Pennsylvania (he would continue this for a decade, before relocating his practice to Allegheny Mountain).

July: In 1831 M. Nauche had inferred that the presence of “kiesteine” in the urine would be diagnostic of pregnancy. After long controversy, in this month an article by Dr. Elisha Kent Kane (and his faculty mentor, Dr.William McPheeters) in the American Journal of the Medical Sciences demonstrated this secretion not to be peculiar to pregnancy.

NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Walden: Dr. Elisha Kent Kane HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1843

September 14, Thursday: Dr. Elisha Kent Kane became an Assistant Surgeon in the US Navy.

Henry Thoreau wrote to Waldo Emerson from Staten Island, recounting that although he had been reduced to attempting to sell magazine subscriptions door-to-door since “Literature comes to a poor market here, and even the little that I write is more than will sell,” John L. O’Sullivan had accepted his article “The Landlord” for publication in The United States Magazine and Democratic Review:

O’Sullivan is printing the Manuscript I sent him some time ago[,] having objec[ted] only to my want of sympathy with the [C]ommunities.—

Staten-Island Sep. 14th Dear Friend, Miss Fuller will tell you the news from these parts, so I will only devote these few moments to what she does not know as well. I was absent only one day and night from the Island, the family expecting me back immediately. I was to earn a certain sum before winter, and thought it worth the while to try various experiments. I carried the Agriculturist about the city, and up as far as Manhattanville, and called at the Croton Reservoir, where [indeed] they did not want any Agriculturists, but paid well enough in their way. Literature comes to a poor market here, and even the little that I write is more than will sell. I have tried the Dem. Review — The New Mirror & [Brother] Jonathan[.] The last two as well as the New-World, are overwhelmed with contributions[,] which

Page 2 cost nothing, and are worth no more. The Knickerbocker is too poor, and only the Ladies Companion HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

pays. O’Sullivan is printing the Manuscript I sent him some time ago[,] having objec[ted] only to my want of sympathy with the [C]ommunities. — I doubt if you have made more corrections in my manuscript than I should have done ere this, though they may be better, but I am glad that you have taken any pains with it. — I have not prepared any translations for the Dial, supposing there would be no room — though it is the only place for them. I have been seeing [men] during these days, and trying experiments upon trees; have inserted 3 or 4 hundred buds — Quite a Buddhist, one might say — Books I have access to through your brother and Mr Mackean — and have read a good deal — Quarle’s “Divine Poems” as well as Emblems are quite a discovery.

Page 3 I am sorry that Mrs[.] Emerson is so sick. Remember me to her and to your [M]other. I like to think of [your] living on the banks of the [M]ill- brook, in the midst of the garden with all its weeds, for what are botanical distinctions at this distance? Your friend Henry D. Thoreau

Page 4 Return address: H. D. Thoreau Sept. 1843 Address: R. Waldo Emerson Concord Mass. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Meanwhile, Isaac Hecker wrote to the Reverend Orestes Augustus Brownson:

Alcott and Lane have been here 5 days; they started for home yesterday morning. They occupied their time in visiting various individuals and holding conversations. They held three while they were here, one at Wm Channing’s place and there was present Channing, Margaret Fuller, Vethake, and Alcott, and Lane. How they took, I know not, for if they are the “newness” to a Boston transcendental audience what must they be to a New York one? They made our place their home while they were here.

BRONSON ALCOTT MARGARET FULLER Frederick Douglass, George Bradburn, and William A. White arrived in Pendleton, Indiana for a three-day series of lectures.

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Walden: Dr. Elisha Kent Kane HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1844

Upon the conclusion of the Opium War between Great Britain and China, Caleb Cushing led a formal mission to China and brokered a Treaty of Wangxia, securing trading privileges for American merchants and opening new Chinese ports to American vessels. Dr. Elisha Kent Kane served aboard the Brandywine during this expedition.

Wei Yuan printed his ILLUSTRATED GAZETTEER OF THE MARITIME NATIONS, an attempt to engage with China’s failure in the war of 1839-1842. The explanation would be proposed, that Jesus must have had the Confucian canon translated into Latin, and must have used this as the basis for his new Christian religion.3

3. An early manifestation of the ever-popular idea, that China originated civilization. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1846

Dr. Elisha Kent Kane served in the Africa Squadron, and visited the slave markets of Dahomey.

The Reverend James W.C. Pennington’s Union Missionary Society merged with the Committee for West Indian Missions and the Western Evangelical Missionary Society to form the American Missionary Association.

LA AMISTAD

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Walden: Dr. Elisha Kent Kane HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1847

Dr. Elisha Kent Kane served with the United States Marine Corps. The Secretary of War sent him to Mexico City to deliver an oral message to General Winfield Scott and, during an encounter with guerillas, he was severely wounded. WAR ON MEXICO

At about this time the poinsettia plant was brought up from Mexico into the United States. It was introduced by, and named after, a man who like Thoreau was a descendant of French Huguenot religious refugees, Joel Roberts Poinsett. Poinsett was industrious, was frugal, was active in botany, and helped create a precursor organization to the Smithsonian Institution. Unfortunately, the resemblance to Thoreau ends there, for Squire Poinsett was a Charleston plantation slaveholder.4

4. Legally, there was a distinction between a slaveowner and a slaveholder. The owner of a slave might rent the custody and use of that slave out for a year, in which case the distinction would arise and be a meaningful one in law, since the other party to such a transaction would be the holder but not the owner. However, in this Kouroo database, I will ordinarily be deploying the term “slaveholder” as the normative term, as we are no longer all that concerned with the making of such fine economic distinctions but are, rather, concerned almost exclusively with the human issues involved in the enslavement of other human beings. I use the term “slaveholder” in preference to “slaveowner” not only because no human being can really own another human being but also because it is important that slavery never be defined as the legal ownership of one person by another — in fact not only had human slavery existed before the first such legislation but also it has continued long since we abolished all legal deployment of the term “slave.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1850

Dr. Elisha Kent Kane conducted the initial of his pair of fruitless Arctic searches for the Sir John Franklin party of lost explorers. Henry Grinnell retired from business. At about this point he became involved in the effort to discover the fate of the Franklin expedition. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

For the initial of these ventures he purchased and loaned to the US Navy the brigs Rescue and Advance that Lieutenant Edwin De Haven would use to search the polar region. After these vessels would return without information, he would fund a 2d expedition in the Advance under Dr. Elisha Kent Kane that would between 1853 and 1855 search the peninsula to be designated as Grinnell Land, off the north-western coast of Greenland, until the Advance, hopelessly stuck in the ice, would be abandoned.

John M’Clure entered the Arctic Ocean from the Pacific and coasted eastward to Cape Parry. He then turned north and sailed north through the Prince of Wales Strait to the north-east angle of Banks Island thus reaching Viscount Melville Sound from the west. This virtually completed the exploration of one of the Northwest Passages. THE FROZEN NORTH

The rolled 24-scene panorama before which William Wells Brown lectured on the Lyceum circuit, entitled “Original Panoramic Views of the Scenes in the Life of an American Slave,” included painted depictions of the brig Creole and of the schooners Pearl and Franklin which had figured prominently in attempts to escape from human enslavement. (In this year H.C. Selous painted a panorama of Sir James Clark Ross’s attempt to locate traces of Sir John Franklin. Below is a Daguerreotype of a man, evidently a lecturer, standing in front of such an arctic panorama (on the following screen appears a printed version of this panorama that was making the rounds).

THE FROZEN NORTH

Henry Thoreau went to one of the traveling “panorama” shows made up of painted canvas rolls then being exhibited behind lecturers on theater stages, of the Rhine, and was intrigued enough by it, and by the idea of himself as a “younger son” who would, at least traditionally, need to venture and adventure for his inheritance, that he soon went to see another panorama, one of travel up the Mississippi.

After January 10 and before February 9, 1851: I went some months ago to see a panorama of the Rhine It was like a dream of the Middle ages– I floated down its historic stream in something more than imagination under bridges built by the Romans and repaired by later heroes past cities & castles whose very names were music to me made my ears tingle –& each of which was the subject of a legend. There seemed to come up from its waters & its vine-clad hills & vallys a hushed music as of crusaders departing for the Holy HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Land– There were Ehrenbreitstein & Rolandseck & Coblentz which I knew only in history. I floated along through the moonlight of history under the spell of enchanment It was as if I remembered a glorious dream as if I had been transported to a heroic age & breathed an atmospher of chivalry Those times appeared far more poetic & heroic than these Soon after I went to see the panorama of the Mississippi and as I fitly worked my way upward in the light of today –& saw the steamboats wooding up –& loooked up the Ohio & the Missouri & saw its unpeopled cliffs –& counted the rising cities –& saw the Indians removing west across the stream & heard the legends of Dubuque & of Wenona’s Cliff –still thinking more of the future than of the past or present –I saw that this was a Rhine stream of a dif kind that the foundations {One leaf missing} all this West –which our thoughts traverse so often & so freely. We have never doubted that their prosperity was our prosperity– It is the home of the younger-sons As among the Scandinavians the younger sons took to the seas for their inheritance and became the Vikings or Kings of the Bays & colonized Ice land & Greenland & probably discovered the continent of America

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Walden: Dr. Elisha Kent Kane HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1851

November 10, Monday: Henry Thoreau made a journal entry he was later to copy into his early lecture “WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT” as:

[Paragraph 63] In our science and philosophy even there is no true and absolute account of things—but a petty reference to classes of men and their affairs—often falsely to christianity. At every bush that trips or pricks us—as BRAD DEAN’S the problem whether the stars are inhabited or not—we turn and tear one COMMENTARY another like fret-ful wild-cats; as if telescopes and microscopes were the tools of a party. Why must we daub the heavens as well as the earth? It was an unfortunate discovery surely that Dr. Kane was a Mason,1 and that Sir John Franklin was another.2 But it was a more cruel suggestion that possibly that was the reason why the former went in search of the latter.

1. Bradley P. Dean has emended the manuscript copy-text from “mason.” 2. Dr. Elisha Kent Kane was the US Navy medical officer who became famous in the early 1850s by leading an expedition to the Arctic in search of Sir John Franklin, the British explorer who was believed to be lost there but who actually had died there in 1847. Kane joined the Order of the Masons just before his expedition set out from New-York on May 31, 1851 (see George W. Corner, DOCTOR KANE OF THE ARCTIC SEAS [Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1972], page 129).

ASTRONOMY FREEMASONRY PARANOIA More than a decade after teaching the boy Cyrus Warren in the Concord Academy, Henry Thoreau encountered him as a grown man walking along the sidewalk.

November 10, Monday, 1851: … In relation to politics–to society–aye to the whole out-ward world I am tempted to ask–Why do they lay such stress on a particular experience which you have had?– That after 25 years you should meet Cyrus Warren again on the sidewalk! Haven’t I budged an inch then?– 5 This daily routine should go on then like those–it must be conceded–vital functions of digestion–circulation of the blood &c which in health we know nothing about. A wise man is as unconscious of the movements in the body politic as he is of digestion & the circulation of the blood in the natural body. …

I will include here a list of those who attended this Concord Academy. I do not know why the name of Cyrus Warren is absent from the list:

Martha Adams

Mary Ball

Elizabeth W. Barrett

Martha Barrett HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Hannah Reed Batcheller Grafton

Sarah Stone Batcheller Grafton

Mary Bowers Chelmsford

Helen Bowers Boston

Caroline Brooks

Sarah Brown

Sarah Davis Clarke Brookline

Susan Colburn Clairborn, Alabama

Nancy Conant Littleton

Eliza A. Cutler Lexington

Abby Hubbard Davis

Agusta Davis

Mary Davis

Cynthia F. Dennis

Martha Field Lincoln

Lucy Fiske Lincoln

Elizabeth Gates Ashby

Elizabeth Hoar

Sarah S. Hoar

5. Henry Thoreau was later to copy this into his early lecture “WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT” as:

[Paragraph 61] In relation to politics, to what is called society—aye, often to the whole outward world, I am often tempted to ask—why such stress is laid on a particular experience which you have had?—that after twenty-five years BRAD DEAN’S you should meet Hobbins—registrar of deeds, again on the side-walk?1 COMMENTARY Haven’t I budged an inch then?

1. There were no County Registrars of Deeds by the name of Hobbins in Massachusetts from 1823 to 1862.

ROSS/ADAMS COMMENTARY HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Ann P. Hosmer

Helen M. Hosmer

Rebecca P. Hubbard

Susan H. Hubbard

Lucy M. Mann

Lucy Miles

Harriet N. Pratt

Martha Prescott

Amelia M. Prichard

Elizabeth H. Prichard

Frances J. Prichard

Lucia M. Rice

Sarah E. Shattuck

Sarah Dodge Sitwell Boston

Maria Smith Lincoln

Eliza B. Stacy

Mary Stow

Jane Tarbell Lincoln

Sophia Thoreau

Mary Wetherby Acton

Louisa J. Whiting

Ann M. Whiting

Eliza Woodward

Susan H. Wyman

William Baker

Jonathan F. Barrett

Gorham Bartlett

Edwin Bent HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Alber W. Bridge

George M. Brooks

John Brown

Leonard Brown

Elbridge Clark

Asabel Dakin

Hiram Dennis

Josiah G. Davis

William Derby

Isaac Fiske

Deming J. Hastings

George Heywood

Stephen Hidden

Ebenezer R. Hoar

Edward S. Hoar

George F. Hoar

Samuel Hoar

James Hosmer

Silas T. Jewell

B.F. Johnson

John S. Keyes

Rufus B. Lawrence Groton

George Loring

Elbridge Marshal Littleton

John Maynard

Richmond Nichles Carlisle

S.S. Niles

Nathaniel Parker HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Owen Peabody

Samuel Pierce

Charles Prescott

Moses Prichard

William Prichard

Agustus Robbins Harvard

Henry Shattuck

William Shepherd

John D. Sherman Lincoln

Francis Smith Lincoln

Edward Stearns Lincoln

Daniel Stedman Boston

Nathan Brooks Stow

William Thayer

Isaac Thayer

John Thoreau

Henry Thoreau

William Tuttle Littleton

Agustus Tuttle

Henry Vose Boston

Amiel Whipple

William Whiting

James Barrett Wood HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

The Town Meeting of Concord adopted regulations relative to the use and care of the new Town House:

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Walden: Dr. Elisha Kent Kane HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1852

The 32-year-old famous explorer Dr. Elisha Kent Kane began to court 18-year-old Maggie Fox. The courtship would go on for five years before Kane died — then Maggie would have an emotional breakdown. It would be Kane’s skepticism about Spiritualism, combined with Maggie’s continued inability to contact him after his death, that would eventually lead to her confession that it had all been “a humbug from beginning to end.” SPIRITUALISM

Meanwhile, this Spiritualism was having quite a run. For instance, at Hopedale, after Adin Augustus Ballou died of typhoid, his parents Adin Ballou and Lucy Ballou, who had become convinced believers in such communications, put out a volume entitled SPIRIT MANIFESTATIONS and were able to find some solace by way of seances and mediums and “messages.” “...Borrowed Brigham the wheel wright’s boat at the Corner Bridge– He was quite ready to lend it –and took pains to shave down the handle of a paddle for me, conversing the while on the subject of spiritual knocking –which he asked if I had looked into –which made him the slower– An obliging man who understands that I am abroad viewing the works of Nature & not loafing –though he makes the pursuit a semi-religious one –as are all more serious ones to most men. All that is not sporting in the field –as hunting & fishing– is of a religious or else love-cracked character.....” — Henry Thoreau, JOURNAL, July 1, 1852

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Walden: Dr. Elisha Kent Kane HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Fall: As he had done with his brother John Thoreau at the beginning of fall in 1839, at the beginning of this fall season Henry Thoreau went river-sailing. This time he went with Ellery Channing to Peterboro and Mount Monadnock and returned from Troy, New Hampshire by train (when Ellery would return to Concord he would find his wife preparing to take their children and separate from him).

John Adams went up into the mountains of California in an old wagon pulled by two oxen, armed with a pistol and two rifles, plus bowie knives. Despite his maimed condition after having been mauled by a Bengal tiger, he would be able to catch bears in log traps and construct cages in which to transport them for sale. He would venture eventually as far as eastern Washington. He would contribute mightily to the extinction of the grizzly, so that the only bear that now remains in this mountain range is the smaller brown bear.

Kate Fox left for school and Maggie Fox, in the company of her mother, traveled to Philadelphia and set up shop in the bridal suite of Webb’s Union Hotel. It was there that the young and handsome Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, still grieving from the recent death of his youngest brother Willie, would come one November morning to investigate the “Spiritual Manifestations” that enthralled the nation (whether this is properly to be described as “love at first sight” as Margaret would later assert is a matter for speculation). SPIRITUALISM

December 14, Tuesday: Dr. Elisha Kent Kane publicly announced his plan to lead a 2d Grinnell Expedition. He explained to the American Geographical Society of New York that on the other side of Smith Sound beyond the Arctic ice barrier he was going to sail into an open sea with milder skies and warmer air than the icy barrier margin, a sea just teeming with birds and fishes. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1853

After completing a 3-year course of medical studies at the University of Pennsylvania in 2 years, Isaac Israel Hayes signed on as ship’s surgeon for a 2d fruitless expedition led by Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, to search for the Sir John Franklin party of lost explorers (at no point of his life would Hayes seek to earn his living as a medical doctor). His 1854 exploration of the east coast of Ellesmere Island north of 79° North would result in new and accurately mapped geographical discoveries.

A popular song of this year was making use of the Lady Jane Franklin / Sir John Franklin lonely-lady / lost- laddie scenario of the Franklin case: I wonder if my faithful John Is still battling with the breeze; Or, if he e’er will return again, To these fond arms once more To heal the wounds of dearest Jane, Whose heart is grieve’d full sore.

“Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is?” — Henry Thoreau

THE FROZEN NORTH Upon his return from this expedition with one foot mutilated, Hayes would attempt to earn his living as a HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

lecturer, but this would not go well and it would take him five years to accumulate enough support for him to create another sailing-ship expedition toward the North Polar Ocean.

January: Dr. Elisha Kent Kane proposed to Maggie Fox, and for the next four months their relationship was to swing back and forth between statements of everlasting unions and tragic farewells. Much of this psychodrama has been preserved for us in letters, because Kane was traveling giving lectures and preparing for his voyage while Fox was relocating from Philadelphia to Washington DC and then back to New-York setting up seances. Karen Lystra’s SEARCHING THE HEART: WOMEN, MEN, AND ROMANTIC LOVE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA (1989) has it that Fox and Kane’s on-again off-again relationship was typical for the times, because arranged marriages were giving way to marriages of romance. One of the consequences of a young woman being able to chose her own mate was that she needed to make very sure that the suitor was serious — if she lost her reputation without gaining a husband, she would destined herself to a lifetime of poverty and neglect. Lystra’s take on the situation is that it was this that “resulted in the dominant motif of nineteenth-century American courtship: women setting and men passing tests of love.”

May 30, Monday: Father Isaac Hecker, CSSR wrote to Orestes Augustus Brownson, Esq.

Dr. Elisha Kent Kane made a final call to assure his fiancée Maggie Fox that all would be well, in preparation for sailing for the Arctic on the following day. He asked Cornelius Grinnell to act as Maggie’s guardian during his absence, keeping her supplied her with funds and information about the expedition. In a final letter written as he left Newfoundland, Kane would imagine his beloved under the shade of a drooping chestnut, startling the birds with her “tokens of the spirit-world.” He advised her to study German and asked that she “write naughty letters” to him in that “noble language.” He promised to be true to his promises and asked her only to “exercise often, laugh when you can, grow as fat as you please; and when I return-God granting me that distant blessing-... let me have at least the rewarding consciousness of having done my duty.”

May 31, Tuesday: Dr. Elisha Kent Kane sailed with the 2d Grinnell expedition from New-York harbor. They would winter in Rensselaer Bay. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1854

THE U.S. GRINNELL EXPEDITION IN SEARCH OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. A PERSONAL NARRATIVE. BY ELISHA KENT KANE, M.D., U.S.N. (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 329 & 331 Pearl Street, Franklin Square). Henry Thoreau would be able to consult this at the Concord Public Library, and it would figure in WALDEN and in “SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES”. U.S. GRINNELL EXPEDITION PEOPLE OF WALDEN: What does Africa, –what does the West stand for? Is not our own WALDEN interior white on the chart? black though it may prove, like the coast, when discovered. Is it the source of the Nile, or the Niger, or the Mississippi, or a North-West Passage around this continent, that we would find? Are these the problems which most concern mankind? Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is? Be rather the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clarke and Frobisher, of your own streams and oceans; explore your own higher latitudes, –with shiploads of preserved meats to support you, if they be necessary; and pile the empty cans sky-high for a sign. Were preserved meats invented to preserve meat merely? Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads. What was the meaning of that South- Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact, that there are continents and seas in the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.– “Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos. Plus habet hic vitæ, plus habet ille viæ.” Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians. I have more of God, they more of the road.

SIR JOHN FRANKLIN DR. ELISHA KENT KANE LEWIS AND CLARK CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS MUNGO PARK HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

DR. ELISHA KENT KANE THE DUKES OF ATHOLL HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

February 26, Sunday: Henry Thoreau was reading about Dr. Elisha Kent Kane’s expedition to find the remains of the expedition of Sir John Franklin in the Arctic.

U.S. GRINNELL EXPEDITION THE FROZEN NORTH In the afternoon he walked in the rain to Martial Miles’s. Miles said he thought he had heard a bluebird. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

SIR JOHN FRANKLIN DR. ELISHA KENT KANE LEWIS AND CLARK CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS MUNGO PARK 3 Thoreau wrote Elijah Wood about beginning to forward to him /4ths of Michael Flannery’s wages. A comment made was that this was in repayment of “money lent him in some pinch.” Concord Feb. 26th ’54 Mr Wood, 3 I mentioned to you that Mr. Flannery had given me an order on you for /4 of his wages. I have agreed with him that that arrangement shall not begin to take effect until the first of March 1854. yrs Henry D. Thoreau THOREAU ON THE IRISH HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

In a few years, upon returning to a friend a copy of Dr. Kane’s ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS: THE SECOND GRINNELL EXPEDITION IN SEARCH OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN, 1853, ’54, ’55, Thoreau would remark that “most of the phenomena therein recorded are to be observed about Concord”:

ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS, I ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS, II Eventually Thoreau would obtain his own personal set of these volumes and would make notes in his Indian Notebooks #8 and #10 and his Fact Book. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

There was one Philadelphian book of the fifties that lay on countless parlour tables, acclaimed by Irving, Bancroft, Prescott and Bryant, the ARCTIC E XPLORATIONS of Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, who had reached the highest latitude, the furthest north. A surgeon in the navy in Oriental waters, he had previously explored the Philippines in 1844 more extensively than any traveller before him; then he led one of the expeditions in search of the British explorer Franklin, who had vanished with his ship and crew in the northern ice-fields. He spent two winters in the arctic zone, encountering with his comrades the utmost of hardship and danger that men can endure, beset by darkness, cold, scurvy and rats and the perils of lockjaw and floating ice, subsisting on blubber and the beef of walrus and bear. Obliged at last to abandon their brig, the party escaped on sledges, having found what they thought was an open polar sea, and Dr. Kane’s record of these adventures, describing their daily arctic life, revealed a world that was all but unknown and new. It abounded in pictures of Eskimo customs, seal-stalking and walrus-hunts, and Dr. Kane sketched landscapes that Dante might have conjured up, so mysterious, so inorganic and so desolate they were. They appeared to have been left unfinished when the earth was formed. The moonlight painted on the snow-fields fantastic profiles of crags and spires, and the firmament seemed to be close overhead with the stars magnified in glory in the awful frozen silence of the arctic night. One felt amid these night-scenes as if the life of the planet were suspended, its companionships and its colours, its movements and its sounds.

Feb. 26. Kane, ashore far up Baffin’s Bay, says, “How strangely this crust we wander over asserts its identity through all the disguises of climate!” Speaking of the effects of refraction on the water, he says: “The single repetition was visible all around us; the secondary or inverted image sometimes above and sometimes below the primary. But it was not uncommon to see, also, the uplifted ice-berg, with its accompanying or false horizon, joined at its summit by its inverted image, and then above a second horizon, a third berg in its natural position.” He refers to Agassiz at Lake Superior as suggesting “that it may be simply the reflection of the landscape inverted upon the surface of the lake, and reproduced with the actual landscape;” though there there was but one inversion. He says that he saw sledge-tracks of Franklin’s party in the neighborhood of Wellington Sound, made on the snow, six years old, which had been covered by the aftersnows of five winters. This reminds me of the sled- tracks I saw this winter. Kane says that, some mornings in that winter in the ice, they heard “a peculiar crisping or crackling sound.” “This sound, as the ‘noise accompanying the aurora,’ has been attributed by Wrangell and others, ourselves among the rest, to changes of atmospheric temperature acting upon the crust of the snow.” Kane thinks it is rather owing “to the unequal contraction and dilatation” of unequally presenting surfaces, “not to a sudden change of atmospheric temperature acting upon the snow.” Is not this the same crackling I heard at Fair Haven on the 19th, and are not most of the arctic phenomena to be witnessed in our latitude on a smaller scale? At Fair Haven it seemed a slighter contraction of the ice, -- not enough to make it thunder, This morning it began with HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

snowing, turned to a fine freezing rain producing a glaze, -the most of a glaze thus far,-but in the afternoon changed to pure rain.

P. M. -To Martial Miles’s in rain. The weeds, trees, etc., are covered with a, glaze. The blue-curl cups are overflowing with icy drops. All trees present a new appearance, their twigs being bent down by the ice, - birches, apple trees, etc., but, above all, the pines. Tall, feathery white pines look like cockerels’ tails in a shower. Both these and white [= pitch] pines, their branches being inclined downward, have sharpened tops like fir and spruce trees. Thus an arctic effect is produced. Very young white and pitch pines are most changed, all their branches drooping in a compact pyramid toward the ground except a single plume in the centre. They have a singularly crestfallen look. The rain is fast washing off all the glaze on which I had counted, thinking of the effect of to-morrow’s sun on it. The wind rises and the rain increases. Deep pools of water have formed in the fields, which have an agreeable green or blue tint, - sometimes the one, sometimes the other. Yet the quantity of water which is fallen is by no means remarkable but, the ground being frozen, it is not soaked up. There is more `eater on the surface than before this winter.

May 20, Sunday: The expedition led by U.S. explorer Dr. Elisha Kent Kane abandoned the Advance and started home in open boats from the Arctic Sea.

May 20. Rains a little.

October 11, Thursday: Dr. Elisha Kent Kane and the remaining members of his expedition (all but one) returned to New-York harbor aboard the “propeller” Arctic and the bark Release. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1856

Henry Grinnell was instrumental in persuading the US federal government to restore the recently salvaged HMS Resolute and return it to Great Britain as a gesture of good will (his scheme was that this might oblige the British government to fund a further search for the remains of the Franklin expedition).

ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS: THE SECOND GRINNELL EXPEDITION IN SEARCH OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN, 1853, ’54, ’55. BY ELISHA KENT KANE, M.D., U.S.N. ILLUSTRATED BY UPWARDS OF THREE HUNDRED ENGRAVINGS, FROM SKETCHES BY THE AUTHOR. THE STEEL PLATES EXECUTED UNDER THE SUPERINTENDENCE OF J.M. BUTLER, THE WOOD ENGRAVINGS BY VAN INGEN & SNYDER. (Philadelphia: Childs & Peterson, 124 Arch Street. New York: Sheldon, Blakeman & Co., 115 Nassau St.), described what had previously been reported

ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS, I ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS, II in the newspapers, the finding of 600 preserved-meat cans left by Sir John Franklin. These volumes would be in the personal library of Henry Thoreau, and he would make notes from them in his Indian Notebook #10 and his Fact Book. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

SIR JOHN FRANKLIN DR. ELISHA KENT KANE LEWIS AND CLARK CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS MUNGO PARK HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Lady Jane Franklin pled with Lord Palmerston for one last official attempt at finding her husband: This final and exhausting search is all I seek on behalf of the first and only martyrs to Arctic discovery in modern times. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Little did she know, he was hiding from her in a cigar box:

The Admiralty made its final decision to abandon the search for Sir John Franklin. Sir George Back, almost alone among the Arctic veterans, concurred with this decision and was attacked by Sophia Cracroft: “That miserable Sir G. Back,” she wrote, “will say anything that a Lord of the Admiralty tells him, and is held in contempt or something worse by all who have served with him.”

December 21, Sunday: Henry Thoreau was being written to by Benjamin B. Wiley in Chicago. Chicago Dec 21, l856 Mr Thoreau So much time had elapsed since I wrote you that I feared I should get no reply; I was therefore surprised & delighted as well as encouraged, when your letter of 12th reached me. I do not want to encroach on your time but I shall take the liberty of writing to you occasionally, in hopes of drawing out a response, even though it be a criticism, for this would be valuable to me, as I do not want to slumber in false security. Like those knights who loudly sang hymns while they were passing the enchanted isle, I will remember that I am going to tell you some of my outward, though more of my inward life[.] This of itself will be a [s]trong incentive to virtue. The arrival of your letter at this time makes me think of Napoleon’s practice of leaving letters unopened for weeks till in many cases there was no necessity for a reply. Though I HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

wanted your views, I kept on in my path and already more than dimly apprehended that no man can penetrate the secrets of creation & futurity— Still I like to dwell on these themes, particularly the latter, as I have never found a present worthy to have permanent dominion over me. I like to send my thoughts forward to meet my destiny more than half way and prepare myself to meet with alacrity any decree of Eternal Fate.

Page 2 I am obliged for the excellent quotations from Confucius and the idea given of his teachings. I trust that if on this planet I attain the age of 40 years, I shall by the wisdom that may be mine merit the respect of those whose standard is infinitely high and whose motto is excelsior. “To be rich & honored by iniquitous means is for me as the [floating] cloud which passes” speaks to me with power. The last No of the Westminster magazine contains an article on Buddhism which I presume you may have seen. It does not mention him (Confucius) ^ though as you told me he was above all sects On my way back to Providence after my unforgotten Concord visit, I pondered deeply on what you had told me “to follow the faintest aspiration &c”. I perhaps almost resolved to give up my Western plans of trade. Soon after, I walked with Newcomb and I of course fully agree with you in your high estimate of him and when you speak of my few opportunities for repeating those walks, I hope you only refer to my distance-- not to his health. He asked me if I knew any active outdoor sphere he was qualified to fill and from what he said I doubt not he would come here did such a place present itself. [He] could much better than I afford to let books alone, as he has studied much more and has a more original and powerful mind, at least for metaphysical thoughts. It would give me deep satisfaction to have him here if I am to remain here. Just before your letter reached me I had been thinking

Page 3 of a future White Mountain trip with him and was not putting it far off. It is a good plan for traders to go to higher spheres occasionally. I will give you some of my reasons for coming here though I withhold such as these from “business men” or “worldlings” tech- nically so called. I think I can truly say that I am content with (I have told [these] to no other person) ^ my outward circumstances but I hope at some future day to sustain a refined intercourse with some good & gentle being whom HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

I can call wife, or better still companion and I know that all persons would not be satisfied to live on what would content me. At that time I should want to carry out my ideas of life as well as I can now but I should want to give my companion the facilities to carry out her views. Again, unless I deceive myself, I wish to be liberal beyond the sphere of my own family. The perfect transparency of soul that I would have between us leads me to say that I also had some thought of reputation. While in business formerly I travelled courses that I shall never tread again, and this, united with the success that generally accompa- nies able industry but which at the same time whets the edge of envy & malice, raised against me in some quarters the & also my habit of refusing to justify my acts ^ voice of calumny, though it is true that it is [not] often applied to those concerns where I feel that censure may be due. Not from any inconvenience of this kind however did I leave Providence, for such would have been the very thing to make me remain there, as I am ready and like to face difficulties & dangers. My former partner is my personal friend, but as

Page 4 partners I [felt] that we were entirely unsuited to each other and I dissolved the connection against his will and that of his present associate[.] [Had] it not been for my personal relations to him I should have recommenced there, as my friends wished me to do, but such a course would have brought me into direct competition with him and would inevitably have taken away much of his profit and that I will not do particularly as here is a field large enough for all and where I am specially prominent invited to take an important part in a large house. Do not imagine from what I said that my former [cause] was a type of all that is disgraceful in man. I was intensely busy and acted thoughtlessly & unintelligently and my acts were such as are all the time adroitly done by business men decent men rather with eclat than with damage to their reputation. That other men do the same however is no excuse for me and having during the quiet of my past summer drunk somewhat of eternal truth I see & feel my errors and [s]o help me God shall not again fall into them. My very retirement from trade was in the eyes of my detracting neighbors not the least of my short-comings though I know it to be one of the most fortunate things I ever did. As I place character however infinitely before reputation, I am not necessarily pledged to trade again. The fact that I am almost HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

invariably popular and flattered & courted in Providence circles shows me that I need a higher monitor than the voice of the multitude who must necessarily know so little of the motives that actuate me. So little do detracting remarks [ruffle] my temper that were it in my way I should gladly assist any of the quintette club that try to injure me though of course with the littleness of soul which they display I cannot have particular love for them. I trust that if I have future antagonists they may be greater than these little men who have never had the manliness to face me. I expect to find in Montaigne somewhere the story of Alexander the Great who when urged to punish a slanderer, refused, saying he would live so purely that all men would see the fellow spoke falsely

Page 5 I thus give you the leading motives that influenced me to come here. Since I arrived I heard that one of my leading prospective partners is dissatisfied with the determination I have shown to attend to higher things than trade. I am perfectly aware that I have lost caste with mere traders. The gentleman referred to is now here and our grand council will soon begin. Walden will not change color during its continuance nor the Concord stop flowing. I am here at the wish of others as well as the result of my own reasoning but I will not become a common business drudge for all the wealth of Chicago. Instead of a trader I am going to be a man. I believe a divine life can be nourished even in this Western Shrine of Mammon. Should our Council not end in a partnership, I have no settled plans for the future. I should in all probability soon favor myself with a visit to Concord. Were I more gifted I would now leave trade forever and be your Plato. I freely admit to you that this kind of life is not what pleases me. Do not interpret my remarks into the grumblings of disappointment, for I am what the world calls singularly favored by fortune. I await the wishes result of our Council calmly though my nature would lead me to the haunts of Nature. If you think my ideas erroneous write a severe el criticism for me. I would like to have you tell me just what you think I have a good deal of leisure now. I have read Montaigne’s Essays to some extent & with unfailing interest. The ancient anecdotes make the valuable part of the book to me though they are so

Page 6 well incorporated with his generally sensible & pithy remarks that no common HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

man can approach him. I have read some of Emerson, a man to whom I am much indebted. I saw his notice of Mr. Hoar. You mentioned to me Miss Hoar when I was there. In one respect I think Emerson of infinite moment ^ has put in for me the key-stone of an arch which [has] cost me much labor & travail to build. He will be here next month to lecture and I shall call on him, as he asked me to do. Most men here are intensely devoted to trade but I have found one with whom I have unreserved & delightful intercourse— Rev Rush R Shippen the Unitarian minister. Mr Emerson will remember him. He is no ways priestly but has that open guileless countenance that wins the fullest confidence. He is of course intelligent & well-informed[.] He generously places his library at my disposal. I gladly accepted an invitation to take tea with him tomorrow as there is entire absence of [cere]mony. I am glad to find such a man with whom I can talk of the Infinite & Eternal. In addition to his library I have access to a public one of about 2000 volumes & I think I can largely extend my facilities. Very few books I read but I like to look at the tables of contents the engravings & portraits of others. The N[.]Y. Tribune often has things of more than transient interest. Some of their political articles are most powerful. Their notice of “Walden” introduced it to me. I take walks of considerable length almost daily and think I in that respect am the most enthusiastic of the 100,000 here. plus ^ I generally go along the Lake shore. I have to go 3 miles to

Page 7 reach woods my way. The Lake is the great feature of the place. Everything being level I have nothing on the land to meet my New England bred eyes and have learned (from Newcomb) to watch the clouds and I find it not the least valuable of his suggestions. One cloudy morning I saw in the East over the Lake as the moon rose what resembled a vast bird with outstretched wings holding her course towards the East. I recorded in my Journal that I might consider it emblematic of my own desire of progress towards the source of [ ] inward illumination. One morning I saw in the East a perpendicular pillar of cloud that would have answered well enough to guide any Israelites that were going in that direction--another morning I saw on the hitherto level surface of the frozen lake ice-hills of considerable size. I was glad to see hills anywhere. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

The Lake water is carried over the city for drinking &c. It [is almost] always discolored by storms. That which comes moderately clear I [fancy] I can render white by beating with my hands and if allowed to [stand,] a sediment of lime is deposited. It makes some trouble with [strang’ers] digestive organs and I am not entirely accustomed to it. If you [have at] your tongue’s end a description of your own way to make a filter, I should probably put it in practice & should appreciate your kindness. I have been wondering how you [know] the different species of plants as described by science. Is the description

Page 8 so accurate that you [know] them at sight? are millers that come round our summer lamps Chrysalides and into what are they next transformed? I have written much more than I expected to do. I hope I may ere long have a reply from you. Please remember me to Mr Emerson if you meet him. I am yours sincerely B B Wiley

{written perpendicular to text: Postmark: CHICAGO [ ] DEC 1856 Address: Henry D. Thoreau Esq. Concord Mass.}

Dec. 21. Sunday. Think what a pitiful kind of life ours is, eating our kindred animals! and in some places one another! Some of us (the Esquimaux), half whose life is spent in the dark, wholly dependent on one or two animals not many degrees removed from themselves for food, clothing, and fuel, and partly for shelter; making their sledges “of small fragments of porous bones [of whale], admirably knit together by thongs of hide” (Kane’s last book, vol. i, page 205), thus getting about, sliding about, on the bones of our cousins. Where Kane wintered in the Advance in 1853-54, on the coast of Greenland, about 78½° north latitude, or further north than any navigator had been excepting Parry at Spitzbergen, he meets with Esquimaux, and “the fleam-shaped tips of their lances were of unmistakable steel.” “The metal was obtained in traffic from the more southern tribes.” Such is trade.

P. M. — To Walden. The pond is open again in the middle, owing to [lie rain of yesterday. I go across to the cliffs by way of the Andromeda Ponds. How interesting and wholesome their color now! A broad level thick stuff, without a crevice in it, composed of the dull brown-red andromeda. Is it not the most uniform and deepest red that covers a large surface now? No withered oak leaves are nearly as red at present. In a broad hollow amid the hills, you have this perfectly level red stuff, marked here and there only with gray streaks or patches of bare high blueberry bushes, etc., and all surrounded by a light border of straw-colored sedge, etc. Even the little red buds of the Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum and vacillans on the now bare and dry-looking stems attract me as I go through the open glades between the first Andromeda Pond and the Well Meadow Field. Many HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

twigs of the Vaccinium vacillans appear to have been nibbled off, and some of its buds have unfolded, apparently in the fall. I observe sage willows with many leaves on them still. Apparently the red oak retains much fewer leaves than the white, scarlet, and black. I notice the petioles of both the black and red twisted in that peculiar way. The red oak leaves look thinner and flatter, and therefore perhaps show the lobes more, than those of the black. The white oak leaves are the palest and most shrivelled, the lightest, perhaps a shade of buff, but they are of various shades, some pretty dark with a salmon tinge. The swamp white oak leaves (which I am surprised to find Gray makes a variety (discolor) of the Quercus Prinus) are very much like the shrub oak, but more curled. These two are the best preserved, though they do not hang on so well as the white and scarlet. Both remarkable for their thick, leathery, sound leaves, uninjured by insects, and their very light downy under sides. The black oak leaves are the darkest brown, with clear or deep yellowish-brown under sides, obovate in outline. The scarlet oak leaves, which are very numerous still, are of a ruddy color, having much blood in their cheeks. They are all winter the reddest on the hillsides. They still spread their ruddy fingers to the breeze. After the shrub and swamp white, they are perhaps the best preserved of any I describe. The red oak leaves are a little lighter brown than the black oak, less yellowish beneath. Their lobes, methinks, are narrower and straighter-sided. They are the color of their own acorns.

December 28, Sunday: Woodrow Wilson and Pierre Auguste Roques were born.

Dec. 28. Sunday. Am surprised to see the F. hyemalis here. Walden completely frozen over again last night. Goodwin & Co. are fishing there to-day. Ice about four inches thick, occasionally sunk by the snow beneath the water. They have had but poor luck. One middling-sized pickerel and one large yellow perch only, since 9 or 10 A.M. It is now nearly sundown. The perch is very full of spawn. How handsome, with its broad dark transverse bars, sharp narrow triangles, broadest on the back! The men are standing or sitting about a smoky fire of damp dead wood, near by the spot where many a fisherman has sat before, and I draw near, hoping to hear a fish story. One says that Louis Menan, the French Canadian who lives in Lincoln, fed his ducks on the fresh-water clams which he got at Fair Haven Pond. He saw him open the shells, and the ducks snapped them up out of the shells very fast. I observe that some shrub oak leaves have but little silveriness beneath, as if they were a variety, the color of the under approaching that of the upper surface somewhat. Since the snow of the 23d, the days seem considerably lengthened, owing to the increased light after sundown. The fishermen sit by their damp fire of rotten pine wood, so wet and chilly that even smoke in their eyes is a kind of comfort. There they sit, ever and anon scanning their reels to see if any have fallen, and, if not catching many fish, still getting what they wait for, though they may not be aware of it, i.e. a wilder experience than the town affords. There lies a pickerel or perch on the ice, waving a fin or lifting its gills from time to time, gasping its life away. I thrive best on solitude. If I have had a companion only one day in a week, unless it were one or two I could name, I find that the value of the week to one has been seriously affected. It dissipates my days, and often it takes me another week to get over it. As the Esquimaux of Smith’s Strait in North Greenland laughed when Kane warned them of their utter extermination, cut off as they were by ice on all sides from their race, unless they attempted in season to cross the glacier southward, so do I laugh when you tell me of the danger of impoverishing myself by isolation. It is here that the walrus and the seal, and the white bear, and the cider ducks and auks on which I batten, most abound. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1857

The Reverend William Rounseville Alger’s A BRIEF TRIBUTE TO THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF DR. KANE was printed in Boston by the firm of Williams.

Dr. E.K. Elder’s LIFE OF KANE.

Reported Death of Dr. E. K. Kane (Telegraphic) Philadelphia, Monday, February 23 (1857). It is reported that a special dispatch has been received from New-Orleans announcing the death of Dr. Kane, and the arrival of his body there en route for Philadelphia. ______

It is a painful duty that we are called to perform in chronicling the decease of Dr. Kane, which we announce on the somewhat dubious authority of the above dispatch. It is but a few weeks since intelligence was received of his departure from England in search of health in Havana, and strong hopes were entertained that his change of scene and climate would serve the purpose of recruiting the physical energies which had become prostrate through a long course of unremitting toil and exposure. The hope proved fallacious, and Dr. Kane is gathered to his fathers, while yet at the threshold of his life, and at the commencement of a career whose early promise was already abundantly fulfilled. He died at Havana, at the age of 35 years (sic). His mind remained clear, and his disease, though making rapid headway, left him moments for calm reflection, and gave him a peaceful end. Dr. Elisha Kent Kane was a native of Pennsylvania, born in Philadelphia, on the 3rd of February, 1822 (sic). His early years were notable chiefly for the rapid development of that spirit of adventure and love of investigation which afterwards carried him over the world and led him into places where no man but he had ever trod. While yet a student, he joined one of the brothers Rogers in a geological exploration of the Blue Mountains of Virginia, and when this task had been accomplished, devoted himself with renewed assiduity to the study of the Natural Sciences. In the interim, he pursued the necessary course of culture to qualify himself to enter college, and, having entered, studied diligently. In the year 1843, he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, and immediately after that event, undertook a course in the Medical Department HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

of the same institution. During his prosecution of scientific investigations, the Doctor had made himself thoroughly familiar with chemistry, geology, mineralogy, astronomy and surgery, and, besides, was a good classical scholar. He was one of that rare class that have the faculty of acquiring knowledge almost without effort, and when once acquired, of keeping it ready for use on all occasions. The natural consequence of the close application he was compelled to bestow upon his studies, however, undermined the physical system, which rebelled against the stagnation it had undergone, so the young Doctor, now scarcely of age, came out from his closet far from robust. He made application for an appointment in the Navy, and having received it, demanded active service. His request was complied with, and he was appointed on the Diplomatic staff of the first American Embassy to China, as Assistant Surgeon. This position gave him abundant opportunities for the gratification of his passion for witnessing new scenes and visiting queer places. He went successively through the accessible portions of China, Ceylon and the Philippines, and explored India quite thoroughly. In the island of Luzon,-the northernmost and largest of the Philippine group, he created a remarkable excitement by making a descent into the crater of Tael, suspended by a bamboo rope from a crag which projected two hundred feet above the interior scoriae. The natives looked upon this as a daring feat, and declared that the Doctor was the first white man who had ever attempted it. Their Doctor suffered by his exposure to the gases of the crater, but was plucky enough to remain below until he had made a sketch of the interior and collected specimens, all of which he brought up with him. His remaining adventures during this first foreign experience were things to be remembered. He ascended the Himalayas, visited Egypt and went to the upper Nile, where he made the acquaintance of Leprius, who was at the time, prosecuting his archeological researches;- and, obtaining his discharge from the Embassy, returned home by way of Greece, which country he traversed on foot. He reached the United States, after a brief sojourn in Europe, in the year 1846. The Mexican War now broke out, and Dr. Kane requested active service in the campaign; but the War department preferred sending him to the coast of Africa, whither he presently sailed. While engaged in service on that coast he made an effort to visit the slave marts of Wydah, but was frustrated by the coast-fever, and was sent home in 1847 invalided. From the effects of that attack he never fully recovered. The war had not closed when he again set foot on American soil and he had scarcely regained strength to walk, when he applied to President Polk for permission to enter the service. The request was complied with, and the Doctor was sent to Mexico, charged with dispatches of great importance to General Scott. He did not make his way unscathed through the enemy’s country; but was wounded and had his horse killed under him in a sharp skirmish. The kind nursing of a family in Puebla, who received him into their house, caused his restoration to health, so that he resumed active service, HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

and remained in Mexico until the close of the campaign. Returning to his own country, he was detailed for service on the Coast Survey, and continued in that employment for a considerable time. His varied acquirements made him a most useful member of that important corps. But it is upon Dr. Kane’s remarkable explorations in the Arctic regions while making his search for traces of Sir John Franklin’s Expedition, that his fame chiefly rests. The early series of adventures in which the Doctor was engaged served only as a preparation and foundation for the greater that followed. In his modest narrative of the first expedition, the Doctor gives an account of the orders he received to join the Arctic Expedition. He says: “On the 19th of May, while bathing in the tepid waters of the Gulf of Mexico, I received one of those curious little epistles from Washington, which the electric telegraph. It detached me from the Coast Survey, and ordered me to ‘proceed forthwith to New-York for duty up on the Arctic Expedition.’ Seven and a half days later (he adds) I had accomplished my overland journey of thirteen hundred miles, and in forty hours more was beyond the limits of the United States. The Department had calculated my traveling-time to a nicety.” The Expedition consisted of “two little hermaphrodite brigs,” the Advance and the Rescue. They were under the command of Lieut. Edwin J. De Haven. Dr. Kane was appointed to the Advance, as surgeon. The vessel was towed out of this port by “an asthmatic old steam-tug” on the 22nd of May, 1850, and was followed by the Rescue. They pushed for the Arctic Sea direct, and on the first day of the following December, entered Lancaster Sound, where the discovery of the graves of three of Franklin’s men was made, while the British Searching Expedition, under Commander Penney, and the American were lying together. After the expeditions separated, Lieutenant De Haven’s party proceeded further to the northward, and were soon nipped by the ice, which imprisoned the Advance for nine months. While thus blocked in, the vessel drifted with the fields of ice for a distance of 1,060 miles. The opening of the mild season enabled the party to extricate themselves, and the expedition returned to this port on Tuesday, September 20, 1851, having been absent one year and four months. Both vessels suffered but little from their encounter with the ice, and the crew maintained excellent health and discipline. Dr. Kane prosecuted diligently his scientific researches during the time the expedition remained in the Arctic Sea, and on his return, embodied in a “Personal Narrative” the results of the cruise; Lieut. De Haven, his superior officer, having declined to make any other than an official report. This narrative was published by the Harpers (sic) in 1853. The results of this first expedition encouraged hopes that definite tidings would ultimately be received from Franklin’s expedition. Early in the year 1852, a letter was addressed by Lady Franklin to the President of the United States in which the highest commendation was bestowed upon the American Expedition, and the aid of our Government again solicited. The appeal was HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

not permitted to pass unheeded. The Government detailed Naval officers for the duty of a second exploration, and the Advance was now placed at the disposal of Dr. Kane himself. In December, 1852, he received orders to conduct the new Expedition, and sailed from this port on the 31st of May 1853. Through the munificent liberality of Mr. Henry Grinnell, aided largely by Mr. George Peabody, the brig received a perfect outfit. Her equipment was deficient in nothing that could qualify her to undergo the dangers of the cruise, and the behavior of the craft in the trying situations in which she was afterwards placed, showed the excellence of the preparations. The Expedition sailed out of the port, followed by the good wishes of all; but after the first tidings were received that it was spoken at sea, there was no intelligence of its movements. Dr. Kane, as it afterwards appeared, had pushed northward with great rapidity, and before he could extricate himself, was frozen up and compelled to Winter in the ice-peaks. On the 24th of May 1855, finding that it was impossible to clear the brig, the party came to the determination to forsake her; and did so, first taking out the necessary provisions, document, provisions &c., and placing them on sledges and in boats, which were dragged by the men over the ice, with incredible difficulty, for a distance of three hundred miles. Then, having reached the sea, the party took to the open boats and made the best of their way, for a distance of 1800 miles, to the Danish settlement of Upernavik, in Greenland, where they were hospitably received. Meanwhile, Dr. Kane had been given up for lost. Representations were made to Congress, urging the duty of instituting a search for the missing, the result of which was an appropriation of $150,000 and the detail of the Arctic and Release, under the command of Lieutenant Hartstene, for the prosecution of a search. This expedition sailed from New-York in April 1855, and on the thirteenth of the following September fell in with Dr. Kane’s party at Disko Island, 250 miles south of Upernavik. They had taken refuge on board a Danish trading-vessel, for the arrival of which they had waited at the port for several weeks. With a touching simplicity, Dr. Kane describes this meeting in the last volume of his Second Narrative-just published: “Presently we were alongside. An officer, whom I shall ever remember as a cherished friend, Capt. Hartstene, hailed a little man in a ragged flannel shirt, ‘Is that Dr. Kane?’- and with the ‘Yes’ that followed, the rigging was manned by our countrymen, and cheers welcomed us back to the social world of love which they represented.” This is the same Capt. Hartstene whose commission to restore the Resolute has brought him lately into notice in a new field. The return of Dr. Kane to New-York was the occasion of a wonderful excitement. On the evening of Thursday, Oct. 11, 1855, it was announced that the Searching Expedition had returned with Dr. Kane and his party. An eager throng assembled to greet them, and the familiar face of the Doctor, bronzed by exposure and adorned with a heavy beard, was looked upon like that of an old HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

friend. The Doctor made his report of the results of the cruise; the principal part of importance announced among his discoveries being that which established the existence of an open Polar Sea. Dr. Kane immediately commenced the preparation of his narrative- published a few weeks since under the title of Arctic Explorations. In November last, having completed this task, he sailed for Europe, and on arriving in England was at once received with a cordial British welcome. He, however, declined all public honors, and appeared but little in public. His health continuing to decline, he determined to try the effect of a change of climate, and in a very short time, sailed for Havana, where he ended his days, far too early. In character, Dr. Kane was peculiarly retiring and unostentatious; not distrustful of his abilities, but slow to obtrude them into notice; ambitious, yet prudent; energetic, amiable and upright. In person, he was scarcely of the average height, but his muscles were firmly knit; he had a finely developed head, remarkably full in the faculties which give artistic power and taste. His constitution, never strong, had succumbed beneath the burdens that his energetic nature imposed upon it. The Doctor’s published works are few. His two Arctic Narratives are comprised in three volumes, and he has issued some scientific treatises, besides preparing lectures on subjects connected with the Arctic Explorations. His labors, as a navigator and geographer, have been rewarded by a gold medal, presented by the Royal Geographic Society, and by other testimonials; but his best and most enduring record is found in the remarkable acts of a crowded life.

February 16, Monday: Dr. Elisha Kent Kane died.

Henry Thoreau was being written to by Ticknor & Fields in Boston. H. D. Thoreau Esq In a/c with Ticknor & FieldsCo. 1856 Dear Sir – By Copy’t. on 240 Walden – 36.00 " 12 Concord River 9.00 $45.00 1857 Dr. Febry 16 Cash Check $45.00

Boston Febry 16/57 Dear Sir Enclosed we beg to hand our check for Forty Five Dollars in accor- dance with above statement. Please acknowledge its receipt. And oblige Your obdt servants. Ticknor & Fields Clark HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

He made an entry in his journal that indicates that he had been reading in Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;... (Boston MA: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy, 1835).

Feb. 16. 8 A.M. —To Lee house site again. It was a rough-cast house when I first saw it. The fire still glowing among the bricks in the cellar. Richard Barrett says he remembers the inscription and the date 1650, but not the rest distinctly. I find that this recess was not in the cellar, but on the west side of the parlor, which was on the same level with the upper cellar at the west end of the house. It was on the back side of a cupboard (in that parlor), which was a few inches deep at the bottom and sloped back to a foot perhaps at top, or on the brick jog three inches at bottom and five and a half at top, and had shelves. The sitting-room of late was on the same level, the west side of this chimney. The old part of the chimney, judging from the clay and the size of the brick, was seven feet wide east and west and about ten north and south. There was the back side of an old oven visible on the south side (late the front of the house) under the stairs (that had been), which had been filled up with the large bricks in clay. The chimney above and behind the oven and this recess had been filled in with great stones, many much larger than one’s head, packed in clay mixed with the coarsest meadow-hay. Sometimes there were masses of pure clay and hay a foot in diameter. There was a very great proportion of the hay, consisting of cut-grass, three-sided carex, ferns, and still stouter woody sterns, apparently a piece of corn-husk one inch wide and several long. And impressions in the clay of various plants, — grasses, ferns, etc., — exactly like those in coal in character. These are perhaps the oldest pressed plants in Concord. I have a mass eight or nine inches in diameter which is apparently one third vegetable. About these stones there is generally only the width (four and one quarter inches) of one brick, so that the chimney was a mere shell. Though the inscription was in a coarse mortar mixed with straw, the sooty bricks over which it was spread were laid in a better mortar, without straw, and yet the mass of the bricks directly above this recess, in the chimney, were all laid in *clay*. Perhaps they had used plastering *there* instead of clay because it was a fireplace. A thin coating of whiter and finer mortar or plastering without straw had been spread over the sloping and rounded chimney above the recess and on each side and below it, and this covered many small bricks mingled with the large ones, and though this looked more modern, the straw-mixed mortar of the inscription overlapped at the top about a foot, proving the coarser mortar the more recent. The inscription, then, was made after the chimney was built, when some alteration was made, and a small brick had come to be used. Yet so long ago that straw was mixed with the mortar. If that recess was an old fireplace, then, apparently, the first house fronted east, for the oven was on the south side. A boy who was at the fire said to me, “This was the chimney in which the cat was burned up; she ran into a stove, and we heard her cries in the midst of the fire.” Parker says there was no cat; she was drowned. According CAT to Shattuck, Johnson, having the period 1615 to 1650 in view, says of Concord that it *had* been more populous. “The number of families at present are about 50. Their buildings are conveniently placed, chiefly in one straite street under a sunny banke in a low level,” etc. (History, page 18.) According to Shattuck (page 14), Governor Winthrop “selected (judiciously, I think) a lot in Concord [apparently in 1638], which ‘he intended to build upon,’ near where Captain Humphrey Hunt now lives.” I was contending some time ago that our meadows must have been wetter once than they now are, else the trees would have got up there more. I see that Shattuck says under 1654 (page 33), “The meadows were somewhat: drier, and ceased to be a subject of frequent complaint.” According to Wood’s “New England’s Prospect,” the first settlers of Concord for meat bought “venison or rockoons” of the Indians. The latter must have been common then. The wolves robbed them of their swine. A wonderfully warm day (the third one); about 2 P.M., thermometer in shade 58. I perceive that some, commonly talented, persons are enveloped and confined by a certain crust of manners, which, though it may sometimes be a fair and transparent enamel, yet only repels and saddens the beholder, since by its rigidity it seems to repress all further expansion. They are viewed as at a distance, or like an insect under a tumbler. They have, as it were, prematurely hardened both seed and shell, and this has severely taxed, if not put a period to, the life of the plant. This is to stand upon your dignity. Genius has evanescent boundaries, like an altar from which incense rises. The former are, after all, but hardened sinners in a mild sense. The pearl is a hardened sinner. Manners get to be human parchment, in which sensible books are often bound and honorable titles engrossed, though they may be very stiff and dry. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

February 23, Monday: News of the death of Elisha Kent Kane due to illness in Havana arrived by telegraph. Margaret Fox would assert that she had entered into a common-law marriage with him.

Henry Thoreau was being written to by John Burt of Bellvale, New York, a reader. Bellvale Feb 23/ 57

Dear Sir

If I was on a Lyceum Lecture Committee I would use my greatest efforts to engage you to deliver a Lecture as I perceive your name is among a list published a short time since. But as I do not occupy any such influential position in this community I suppose I will have to forego for the present a long cherished wish to see and hear you. To compensate however for this deprivation I would most respect- fully solicit your Autograph. I have read your Hermit Life and also a very appropriate Fourth of July Oration on Slavery in Massachusetts. To say that I greatly ad- mired both would be but an inadequate expression A compliance with the above request will be gratefully remembered by Yours Truly John Burt Bellvale Orange Co N.Y.

[obverse]

[ ] the or a reflection — those drivers heed them just as little as they did their shadows before. They pass over these bright colors on the ground but a day or 2 especially if it rains

I say in my thought to my neighbor, who was once my friend, “It is of no use to speak the truth to you, you will not hear it. What, then, shall I say to you?” At the instant that I seem to be saying farewell forever to one who has been my friend, I find myself unexpectedly near to him, and it is our very nearness and clearness to each other that gives depth and significance to that forever. Thus I am a help- less prisoner and these chains I have no skill to break. While I think I have broken one link, I have been forging another. I have not yet known a friendship to cease, I think. I fear I have experienced its decaying. Morning, noon, and night, I suffer a physical pain, an aching of the breast which unfits me for my tasks. It is perhaps most intense at evening. With respect to Friendship I feel like a wreck that is driving before the gale, with a crew suffering from hunger and thirst, not knowing, what shore, if any, they may reach, so long have I breasted (italics) the conflicting waves of this sentiment, my seams open, my timbers laid bare. I float on Friendships sea simply because my specific HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

gravity is less than its, but no longer that stanch and graceful vessel that careered so buoyantly over it. My planks and timbers are scattered. At most I hope to make a sort of raft of Friendship, on which, with a few of our treasures, we may float to some firm land. That aching of the breast, the grandest pain that man endures, which no ether can assuage. You cheat me. You keep me at a distance with your manners. I know of no other dishonesty, no other devil. Why this doubleness, these compliments? They are the worst of lies. A lie is not worse between traders than a compliment between friends. I would not, I cannot speak. I will let you feel (italics) my thought, my feeling. Friends! they are united for good and for evil. They can delight each other as none other can. They can distress each other as none other can. Lying on lower levels is but a trivial offense compared with civility and compliments on the level of Friendship. I visited my friend for joy, not for disturbance. If my coming hinders him in the least conceivable degree, I will exert myself to the utmost to stay away, I will get the Titans to help me to stand aloof, I will labor night and day to construct a rampart between us. If my coming casts but the shadow of a shadow before it, I will retreat swifter than the wind and more untrackable. I will be gone irrevocably, if possible, before he fears that I am coming. If the teeth ache, they can be pulled. If the heart aches, what then? Shall we pluck it out? Must friends then expect the fate of those oriental twins,--that one shall at last bear about the corpse of the other, by that same ligature that bound him to a living companion? Look before you leap. Let the isthmus be cut through, unless sea meets sea at exactly the same level, unless a perfect understanding and equilibrium has been established from the beginning around Cape Horn and the unnamed northern cape. What a tumult! It is Atlantic and Atlantic, or is it Atlantic and Pacific. What mean these turtles, these coins of the muddy mint issued in the early spring? The bright spots on their back are vain unless I behold them. The spots seem brighter than ever when first beheld in the spring, as does the bark of the willow. I have seen the signs of the spring. I have seen a frog swiftly sinking in a pool, or where he dimpled the surface as he lept in. I have seen the brilliant spotted tortoises stirring at the bottom of the ditches. I have seen the clear sap trickling from the red maple. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1858

William Elder’s BIOGRAPHY OF ELISHA KENT KANE was published in Philadelphia by Childs & Peterson.

Elder’s take on the man was that he had been something of a wunderkind in American scientific and exploring HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

circles during the 2nd quarter of the 19th century. Schooled as a doctor, he had joined the US Navy and on his first trip traveled through India, Ceylon, Luzon, Persia, Syria, Egypt, Greece, and parts of Europe. In 1846 he had been sent to the west coast of Africa where he had had his first bout with serious illness. In 1847 he had had some extraordinary adventures with the Army in Mexico, and in 1850 he had served as a surgeon and naturalist for the first Grinnell Arctic expedition in search of Franklin. In 1853 he had led another search expedition, attaining the northernmost point to be achieved for the next 16 years. He had died in Havana, Cuba at age 37 in the previous year. Here the marvelous Dr. Elisha Kent Kane lies in state at Independence Hall, Philadelphia:

July 8, Thursday: Henry Thoreau was on Mt. Washington:

July 8. Though a fair day, the sun did not rise clear. I started before my companions, wishing to secure a clear view from the summit, while they accompanied the collier and his assistant, who were conducting up to the summit for the first time his goats. He led the old one, and the rest followed. I noticed these plants this morning and the night before at and above the limit of trees: Oxalis Acetosella, abundant and in bloom near the shanty and further down the mountain, all over the woods; Cornus Canadenses, also abundantly in bloom about the shanty and far above and below it. At shanty, or limit of trees. began to find Alpine Grœnlandica abundant and in prime, the first mountain flower. [Durand in Kane puts it at 73° in Greenland.] Noticed one returning, in carriage-road more than half-way down the mountain. It extended to within a mile of summit along path, [Aye, to summit.] and grew about our camp at Hermit Lake. The second mountain plant I noticed was the ledum, [Loudon makes three (!) species, and says bees are very fond of the flower.] growing in dense continuous patches or fields, filling broad spaces between the rocks, but dwarfish compared with ours in Concord. It was still in bloom. It prevailed about two miles below the summit. At the same elevation I noticed the Vaccinium uliginosum, a prevailing plant from the ledge to perhaps one mile or more below summit, almost entirely out of bloom, a procumbent bilberry, growing well, not dwarfish, with peculiar glaucous roundish-obovate leaves. [According to Durand at 78° in Smith’s Sound.] About the same time and locality, Salix Uva-ursi, the prevailing willow of the alpine region, completely out of bloom and going or gone to seed, a flat, trailing, glossy-leaved willow with the habit of the bearberry, spreading in a close mat over the rocks or rocky surface. I saw one spreading flat for three or four feet over a rock in the ravine (as low as I saw it). [Durand in Kane places this at 65° N. in Greenland, but Kane (vol. i, p. 462) says that Morton and Hans saw it along the shore of Kennedy Channel, the furthest coast reached, and that with the southern Esquimaux it is reputed to cure scurvy.] Diapensia Lapponica (Menziesia cœrulea), [According to Durand at 78° N. in Greenland.] beginning about same time, or just over the ledge, reached yet higher, or to within last mile. Quite out of bloom; only one flower seen. It grows in close, firm, and dense rounded tufts, just like a moss but harder, between the rocks, the flowers considerably elevated above its surface. Empetrum nigrum, growing somewhat like Corema, with berries green and some turning black. [According to Durand, as far as Disco Island, 70° N.; “the ordinary food of deer and rabbits.”] Mountain cranberry was abundant and in bloom, a very pretty flower, with, say, the Vaccinium uliginosum and to within last mile. Gold-thread in bloom, was abundant to within last mile. As high as the above, on this side or that extended dwarf shrubby canoe birches and almost impassable thickets of dwarf fir and spruce. The latter when dead exhibited the appearance of deer’s horns, their hard, gnarled, slow-grown branches being twisted in every direction. Their roots were singularly knotted and HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

swollen from time to time, from the size of the finger into oval masses like a ship’s block, or a rabbit made of a handkerchief. Epigæa. [And after pretty high on Lafayette.] At this height, too, was a Lycopodium annotinum, a variety; and, probably, there, too, L. Selago, as at edge of ravine; [Both, according to Durand, at 64° N. in Greenland.] sedges, sorrel, moss, and lichens. Was surprised not to notice the Potentilla tridentata in bloom till quite high, though common on low mountains southward. [According to Durand at 79° N.] Here it was above the trailing spruce, answering to top of Monadnock, and with it came more sedge, i.e. a more grassy surface without many larger plants. (George Bradford says he has found this potentilla on Cape Ann, at Eastern Point, east side Gloucester Harbor.) [And Russell says in the college yard at Amherst.] About a mile below top, Geum radiatum var. Peckii in prime, and a little Silene acaulis (moss campion), still in bloom, a pretty little purplish flower growing like a moss in dense, hard tufts. [Durand says at 73° + in Greenland.] The rocks of the alpine portion are of about uniform size, not large nor precipitous. Generally there is nothing to prevent ascending in any direction, and there is no climbing necessary on the summit. For the last mile the rocks are generally smaller and more bare and the ascent easier, and there are some rather large level grassy spaces. The rocks are not large and flat enough to hold water, as on Monadnock. I saw but little water on this summit, though in many places, commonly in small holes on the grassy flats, and I think the rocky portion under your feet is less interesting than at Monadnock. I sweated in a thick coat as I ascended. About half a mile below top I noticed dew on the mossy, tufted surface, with mountain cranberry in the sedge. On the very summit I noticed moss, sedge (the kind I have tied together), [Carex rigida, with a black spike.] forming what is now to be called the Great Pasture there, they say; a little alsine and diapensia; a bright-green crustaceous lichen; [Is this Lecida geographica? Oakes (in “Scenery,” etc.) speaks of the geographic lichen as found on the summit; viz. “the yellow of the beautiful geographic lichen.”] and that small dark-brown umbilicaria-like one (of Monadnock), of which I have a specimen. The rocks, being small and not precipitous, have no such lichen-clad angles as at Monadnock, yet the general aspect of the rocks about you is dark-brown. All over the summit there is a great deal of that sedge grass, especially southeast and east amid the smallish rocks. There was a solidago (or aster) quite near summit (not out), perhaps S. Virgaurea. The only bird I had seen on the way up, above the limit of trees, was the Fringilla hyemalis. Willey says the swallow flies over the summit and that a bear has been seen there. I got up about half an hour before my party and enjoyed a good view, though it was hazy, but by the time the rest arrived a cloud invested us all, a cool driving mist, which wet you considerably, as you squatted behind a rock. As I looked downward over the rock surface, I saw tinges of blue sky and a light as of breaking away close to the rocky edge of the mountain far below me instead of above, showing that there was the edge of the cloud. It was surprising to look down thus under the cloud at an angle of thirty or forty degrees for the only evidences of a clear sky and breaking away. There was a ring of light encircling the summit, thus close to the rocks under the thick cloud, and the evidences of a blue sky in that direction were just as strong as ordinarily when you look upward. On our way up we had seen all the time, before us on the right, a large patch of snow on the southeast side of Mt. Adams, the first large summit north of Washington. I observed that the enduring snow-drifts were such as had lodged under the southeast cliffs, having been blown over the summit by the northwest wind. They lie up under such cliffs and at the head of the ravines on the southeast slopes. A Mr. White, an artist taking views from the summit, had just returned from the Gulf of Mexico with the pretty purple-flowered Phyllodoce taxifolia and Cassiope hypnoides. The landlords of the Tiptop and Summit Houses, Spaulding and Hall, assured me that my (Willey’s) map was wrong, both in the names and height of Adams and Jefferson, – that the order should be reversed, Adams being the sharp peak, the second large one north of Washington, – but Boardman’s map also calls this Jefferson. About 8.15 A.M., being still in a dense fog, we started direct for Tuckerman’s Ravine, I having taken the bearing of it before the fog, but Spaulding also went some ten rods with us and pointed toward the head of the ravine, which was about S. 15° W. Hoar tried to hire Page to go with us, carrying part of our baggage, –as he had already brought it up from the shanty, –and he professed to be acquainted with the mountain; but his brother, who lived at the summit, warned him not to go, lest he should not be able to find his way back again, and he declined. The landlords were rather anxious about us. I looked at my compass every four or five rods and then walked toward some rock in our course, but frequently after taking three or four steps, though the fog was no more dense, I would lose the rock I steered for. The fog was very bewildering. You would think that the rock you steered for was some large boulder twenty rods off, or perchance it looked like the brow of a distant spur, but a dozen steps would take you to it, and it would suddenly have sunk into the ground. I discovered this illusion. I said to my companions, “You see that boulder of a peculiar form, slanting over another. Well, that is in our course. How large do you think it is, and how far?” To my surprise, one answered three rods, but the other said nine. I guessed four, and we all thought it about eight feet high. We could not see beyond it, and it looked HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

like the highest part of a ridge before us. At the end of twenty-one paces or three and a half rods, I stepped upon it, –less than two feet high, –and I could not have distinguished it from the hundred similar ones around it, if I had not kept my eye on it all the while. It is unwise for one to ramble over these mountains at any time, unless he is prepared to move with as much certainty as if he were solving a geometrical problem. A cloud may at any moment settle around him, and unless he has a compass and knows which way to go, he will be lost at once. One lost on the summit of these mountains should remember that if he will travel due east or west eight or nine miles, or commonly much less, he will strike a public road. Or whatever direction he might take, the average distance would not be more than eight miles and the extreme distance twenty. Follow some water-course running easterly or westerly. If the weather were severe on the summit, so as to prevent searching for the summit houses or the path, I should at once take a westward course from the southern part of the range or an eastward one from the northern part. To travel there with security, a person must know his bearings at every step, be it fair weather or foul. An ordinary rock in a fog, being in the apparent horizon, is exaggerated to, perhaps, at least ten times its size and distance. You will think you have gone further than you have to get to it. Descending straight by compass through the cloud, toward the head of Tuckerman’s Ravine, we found it an easy descent over, for the most part, bare rocks, not very large, with at length moist springy places, green with sedge, etc., between little sloping shelves of green meadow, where the hellebore grew, within half a mile of top, and the Oldenlandia cœrulea was abundantly out (!) and very large and fresh, surpassing ours in the spring. And here, I think, Juncus trifidus (?), [Yes.] and Lycopodium Selago, and Lonicera cœrulea, or mountain fly- honeysuckle, in bloom, only two specimens; it is found in the western part of Massachusetts. [Oakes makes the plain above the ravine twelve hundred feet or more below summit.] Saw a few little ferns of a narrow triangular form, somewhat like the Woodsia Ilvensis, but less hairy and taller; small clintonias in bloom, and Viola palustris, in prime, from three quarters of a mile below summit down to snow; and a fine juncus or scirpus, caespitose-like, i.e. a single-headed or spiked rush; and trientalis, still in bloom, rather depauperate; and, I think, a few small narrow-leaved blueberry bushes; at least one minute mountain-ash. Also the Geum radiatum var. Peckii was conspicuous in prime hence down to the snow in the ravine. These chiefly in those peculiar moist and mossy sloping shelves on the mountain-side, on way to the ravine, or within a mile of the summit. Some twenty or thirty rods above the edge of the ravine, where it was more level and wet and grassy under low cliffs, grew the Phyllodoce taxifolia, not in tufts, under the jutting rocks and in moss, somewhat past prime. [According to Durand, at Disco, 70° N.] The Uvularia grandiflora apparently in prime, and, part way down into ravine, Loiseleuria (Azalca) procumbens, on rocks, still in bloom, and Cassiope hypnoides, about done. These four on a moist southeast slope. Also Rubus triflorus, reaching to camp, in prime. Just on the edge of the ravine I began to see the Heracleum lanatum in prime, and the common archangelica, not out; and as I descended into the ravine on the steep side moist with melted snows, Veronica alpina, apparently in prime, and Nabalus Boottii (?) budded, down to snow, and Epilobium alpinum in prime, and Platanthera dilatata in prime, and the common rue and the first Castilleja septentrionalis (Bartsia pallida), apparently not long, which was more common about our camp. I recollect seeing all the last eight (except the rue and veronica and nabalus, which I do not remember) about our camp and yet more flourishing there and Solidago Virgaurea var. alpina, not quite out, edge of ravine. Should have included Arnica mollis among those on side of ravine reaching to camp, and, according to Hoar, raspberry and Linnæa. We crossed a narrow portion of the snow, but found it unexpectedly hard and dangerous to traverse. I tore up my nails in my efforts to save myself from sliding down its steep surface. The snow-field now formed an irregular crescent on the steep slope at the head of the ravine, some sixty rods wide horizontally, or from north

to south, and twenty-five rods wide from upper to lower side. It may have been half a dozen feet thick in some places, but it diminished sensibly in the rain while we were there. Is said to be all gone commonly by end of August. The surface was hard, difficult to work your heels into, and a perfectly regular steep slope, steeper than an ordinary roof from top to bottom. A considerable stream, a source of the Saco, was flowing out from beneath it, where it had worn a low arch a rod or more wide. Here were the phenomena of winter and earliest spring, contrasted with summer. On the edge of and beneath the overarching snow, many plants were just pushing up HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

as in our spring. The great plaited elliptical buds of the hellebore had just pushed up there, even under the edge of the snow, and also bluets. Also, close to edge of snow, the bare upright twigs of a willow, with small silvery buds not yet expanded, of a satiny lustre, one to two feet high (apparently Salix repens), [Also apparently S. phylicifolia. Vide Sept. 21.] but not, as I noticed, procumbent, while a rod off on each side, where it had been melted some time, it was going to seed and fully leaved out. The surface of the snow was dirty, being covered with cinder-like rubbish of vegetation, which had blown on to it. Yet from the camp it looked quite white and pure. For thirty or forty rods, at least, down the stream, you could see the point where the snow had recently melted. It was a dirty-brown flattened stubble, not yet at all greened, covered with a blackish slimy dirt, the dust of the snow-crust. Looking closely, I saw that it was composed in great part of the stems and flowers apparently of last year’s goldenrods (if not asters), – perhaps large thyrsoidea, for they grew there on the slides,– now quite flattened, with other plants. A pretty large dense-catkined willow grew in the upper part of the ravine, q.v. Also, near edge of snow, vanilla grass, a vaccinium [This is apparently V. cæspitosum, for the anthers are two-awned, though I count but ten stamens in the flower I open, and I did not notice that the plant was tufted. Apparently the same, with thinner leaves, by Peabody River at base, but noticed no flowers there. Yet Gray refers it only to the alpine region!] budded, with broad obovate leaves (q.v.), Spiræa salicifolia (and on slides), and nabalus (Boottii?) leaves. From the edge of the ravine, I should have said that, having reached the lower edge of the cloud, we came into the sun again, much to our satisfaction, and discerned a little lake called Hermit Lake, about a mile off, at the bottom of the ravine, just within the limit of the trees. For this we steered, in order to camp by it for the sake of the protection of the wood. But following down the edge of the stream, the source of Ellis River, which was quite a brook within a stone’s throw of its head, we soon found it very bad walking in the scrubby fir and spruce, and therefore, when we had gone about two thirds the way to the lake, decided to camp in the midst of the dwarf firs, clearing away a space with our hatchets. Having cleared a space with some difficulty where thc trees were seven or eight feet high, Wentworth kindled a fire on the lee side, without –against my advice– removing the moss, which was especially dry on the rocks and directly ignited and set fire to the fir leaves, spreading off with great violence and crackling over the mountain, and making us jump for our baggage; but fortunately it did not burn a foot toward us, for we could not have run in that thicket. It spread particularly fast in the procumbent creeping spruce, scarcely a foot deep, and made a few acres of deer’s horns, thus leaving our mark on the mountainside. We thought at first it would run for miles, and W. said that it would do no harm, the more there was burned the better; but such was the direction of the wind that it soon reached the brow of a ridge east of us and then burned very slowly down its east side. Yet Willey says (page 23), speaking of the dead trees or “buck’s horns,” “Fire could not have caused the death of these trees; for fire will not spread here, in consequence of the humidity of the whole region at this elevation;” and he attributes their death to the cold of 1816. Yet it did spread above the limit of trees in the ravine. Finally we kept on, leaving the fire raging, down to the first little lake, walking in the stream, jumping from rock to rock with it. It may have fallen a thousand feet within a mile below the snow, and we camped on a slight rising ground between that first little lake and the stream, in a dense fir and spruce wood thirty feet high, though it was but the limit of trees there. On our way we found the Arnica mollis (recently begun to bloom), a very fragrant yellow-rayed flower, by the side of the brook (also half-way up the ravine). The Alnus viridis was a prevailing shrub all along this stream, seven or eight feet high near our camp near the snow. It was dwarfish and still in flower, but in fruit only below; had a glossy, roundish, wrinkled, green, sticky leaf. Also a little Ranunculus abortivus by the brook, in bloom. Close by our camp, the Heracleum lanatum, or cow parsnip, masterwort, grew quite rankly, its great leaves eighteen inches wide and umbels eight or nine inches wide; the petioles had inflated sheaths. I afterward saw it, I think in Campton, as much as seven feet high. It was quite common and conspicuous in the neighborhood of the mountains, especially in Franconia Notch. Our camp was opposite a great slide on the south, apparently a quarter of a mile wide, with the stream between us and it, and I resolved if a great storm should occur that we would flee to higher ground northeast. The little pond by our side was perfectly clear and cool, without weeds, and the meadow by it was dry enough to sit down in. When I looked up casually toward the crescent of snow I would mistake it for the sky, a white glowing sky or cloud, it was so high, while the dark earth on [the] mountainside above it passed for a dark cloud. In the course of the afternoon we heard, as we thought, a faint shout, and it occurred to me that Blake, for whom I had left a note at the Glen House, might possibly be looking for me; but soon Wentworth decided that it must be a bear, for they make a noise like a woman in distress. He has caught many of them. Nevertheless, we shouted in return and waved a light coat on the meadow. After an hour or two had elapsed, we heard the voice again, nearer, and saw two men, and I went up the stream to meet Blake and Brown, wet, ragged, and bloody with black flies. I had told Blake to look out for a smoke and a white tent, and we had made a smoke HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

sure enough. They were on the edge of the ravine when they shouted and heard us answer, or about a mile distant, – heard over all the roar of the stream!! You could hear one shout from Hermit Lake to the top of the ravine above snow, back and forth, which I should think was a mile. They also saw our coat waved and ourselves. We slept five in the tent that night, and it rained, putting out the fire we had set. It was quite warm at night in our tent. The wood thrush, which Wentforth called the nightingale, sang at evening and in the morning, and the same bird which I heard on Monadnock, I think, and then thought might be the Blackburnian warbler; also the veery. [Vide Apr. 15th, 1859, about going up a mountain.]

July 9, Friday: Henry Thoreaus was in Tuckerman’s Ravine.

July 9. Friday. Walked to the Hermit Lake, some forty rods northeast. Listera cordata abundant and in prime in the woods, with a little Platanthera obtusata, also apparently in prime. (The last also as far up as the head of the ravine sparingly.) This was a cold, clear lake with scarcely a plant in it, of perhaps half an acre, and from a low ridge east of it was a fine view up the ravine. Hoar tried in vain for trout here. The Vaccinium Canadense was the prevailing one here and by our camp. Heard a bullfrog in the lake, and afterward saw a large toad part way up the ravine. Our camp was about on the limit of trees here, and may have been from twenty- five hundred to three thousand feet below the summit. I was here surprised to discover, looking down through the fir-tops, a large, bright, downy fair-weather cloud covering the lower world far beneath us, and there it was the greater part of the time we were there, like a lake, while the snow and alpine summit were to be seen above us on the other side, at about the same angle. The pure white crescent of snow was our sky, and the dark mountainside above, our permanent cloud. We had the Fringilla hyemalis with its usual note about our camp, and Wentworth said it was common and bred about his house. I afterward saw it in the valleys about the mountains. I had seen the white-throated sparrow near his house. This also, he said, commonly bred there, on the ground. The wood we were in was fir and spruce. Along the brook grew the Alnus viridis, Salix Torreyana (?), canoe birch, red cherry, mountain-ash, etc., and prominent among lesser plants, Heracleum lanatum, Castilleja septentrionalis, the swamp gooseberry in flower and in green fruit, and a sort of Ribes Floridum without resinous-dotted leaves! The Hedyotis cœrulea was surprisingly large and fresh, in bloom, looking as much whiter than usual as late snows do. I thought they must be a variety. And on a sand-bar by the brook, Oxyria digyna, the very pretty mountain sorrel, apparently in prime. [Seen in Kane’s expedition by Hans, etc., at the furthest north point, or 80° +.] Apparently Viola blanda, as well as wool-grass, in the meadow, and apparently Aster prenanthes and Juncus filiformis; also rhodora, fetid currant, amelanchier (variety oligocarpa), trientalis, mountain maple, tree-cranberry with green fruit, Aster acuminatus, and Aralia nudicaulis a salix humilis-like, and Polystichum aculeatum (??), and Lycopodium annotinum (variety). I ascended the stream in the afternoon and got out of the ravine at its head, after dining on chiogenes tea, which plant I could gather without moving from my log seat. We liked it so well that Blake gathered a parcel to carry home. In most places it was scarcely practicable to get out of the ravine on either side on account of precipices. I judged it to be one thousand or fifteen hundred feet deep, but with care you could ascend by some slides. I found that we might have camped in the scrub firs above the edge of the ravine, though it would have been cold and windy and comparatively unpleasant there, for we should have been most of the time in a cloud. The dense patches of dwarf fir and spruce scarcely rose above the rocks which they concealed, and you would often think the trees not more than a foot or two deep, –as, indeed, they might not be generally,– but, searching within, you would find hollow places six or eight feet deep between the rocks, where they filled up all level, and by clearing a space here with your hatchet you could find a shelter for your tent, and also fuel, and water was close by above the head of the ravine. Nevertheless, at a glance, looking over, or even walking over, this dense shrubbery, you would have thought it nowhere more than a foot or two deep, and the trees at most only an inch or two in diameter; but by searching you would find deep hollow places in it, as I have said, where the firs were from six to ten inches in diameter. The strong wind and the snow are said to flatten these trees down thus. Such a shrubbery would begin with a thin and shallow but dense edge of spruce, not more than a foot thick, like moss upon a rock, on which you could walk, but in many places in the middle of it, though its surface was of a uniform slope, it would be found to be six or eight feet deep. So that these very thickets of which the traveller complains afford at the same time an indispensable shelter. I noticed that this shrubbery just above the ravine, as well as in it, was principally fir, while the yet more dwarfish and prostrate portion on the edge was spruce. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Returning, I sprained my ankle in jumping down the brook, so that I could not sleep that night, nor walk the next day. [EDITOR’S NOTE: He had found the Arnica mollis the day before (see ante, pp. 24 and 27), not at the time of spraining his foot, as Emerson has it in his Biographical Sketch. Channing’s account of the incident (p. 44) is correct.] We had commonly clouds above and below us, though it was clear where we were. These clouds commonly reached about down to the edge of the ravine. The black flies, which pestered us till into evening, were of various sizes, the largest more than an eighth of an inch long. There were scarcely any mosquitoes here, it was so cool. A small owl came in the evening and sat within twelve feet of us, turning its head this way and that and peering at us inquisitively. It was apparently a screech owl. [Or Acadica?? Saw-whet?]

July 19, Monday: Henry Thoreau returned to Concord after his trip to Mt. Washington.

July 19: 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 HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

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 without 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 loupe 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 BELKNAP shrubbery of hemlock [Here Thoreau inserted a question mark] 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 one6 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 [Here Thoreau inserted a question mark] 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.) Hardwoods 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 viridis (in moist ravines), red cherry, mountain maple, Salix (humilis-like and Torreyana-like, etc.), Vaccinium Canadense, Ribes lacustre, prostratum, and floridum (?), rhodora, Amelanchier oligocarpa, tree-cranberry, chiogenes, Cornus Canadensis, Oxalis Acetosella, clintonia, gold- thread, Listera cordata, Smilacina bifolia, Solidago thyrsoidea, Ranunculus abortivus, Platanthera obtusata and dilatata, Oxyria digyna, Viola blanda, Aster prenanthes (?), A. acuminatus, Aralia 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 uliginosum and Vitis-Idœa, Salix Uva-ursi, ledum, Empetrum nigrum, Oxalis Acetosella, Linnæa borealis, Cornus Canadensis, Alsine Grœnlandica, Diapensia Lapponica, gold-thread, epigæa, sorrel, Geum radiatum var. Peckii, Solidago Virgaurea var. alpina, S. thyrsoidea (not so high as last), hellebore, oldenlandia,

6. This is Oakes in his “Scenery,” etc. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

clintonia, Viola palustris, trientalis, a little Vaccinium angustifolium (?), ditto of Vaccinium caespitosum,7 Phyllodoce taxifolia, Uvularia grandiflora, Loiseleuria procumbens, Cassiope hypnoides, Rubus triflorus, Heracleum lanatum, archangelica, Rhododendron Lapponicum, Arctostaphylos alpina, Salix herbacea, Polygonum viviparum, Veronica alpina, Nabalus Boottii, Epilobium alpinum, Platanthera dilatata, common rue, Castilleja septentrionalis, Arnica mollis, Spiræa salicifolia, Salix repens,8 Solidago thyrsoidea, raspberry (Hoar), Lycopodium annotinum and Selago, small fern, grass, sedges, moss and lichens.9 (On Lafayette, Vaccinium Oxycoccus, Smilacina trifolia, Kalmia glauca, Andromeda calyculata, red cherry, yellow (water) lily, Eriophorum vaginatum.) 5th: Within one mile of top: Potentilla tridentata, a very little fir, spruce, and canoe birch, one mountain-ash, Alsine Grœnlandica, diapensia, Vaccinium Vitis-Idœa, gold-thread, Lycopodium annotinum and Selago, sorrel, Silene acaulis, Solidago Virgaurea var. alpina, hellebore, oldenlandia, Lonicera cœrulea, 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 Cinquefoil, 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 “Plantæ Labradoricæ” (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 al1nost 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.

7. Vide June 14,1859. 8. And apparently S. phylicifolia (?). Vide September 21. 9. Vide September 21. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1861

The expedition led by Isaac Israel Hayes returned from the frozen Arctic to announce that they had journeyed farther north than any white men had ever achieved before, to wit to the northern coast of Ellesmere Island at 81°35' North, 70°30' West, and there had viewed the Open Polar Sea that had been reported by Dr. Elisha Kent Kane in 1855 (it would later be realized that these GPS readings are actually for an inland location not close to the coast, that the farthest north they had actually traveled was Cape Collinson, less than 10 miles north of 80°, and that their mapping of Ellesmere north of 80° North is inaccurate — and it would come to be speculated that they had achieved these false or inaccurate results by recording as being taken at noon some sextant observations of the Sun that must actually have been made well into the afternoon). HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1862

This lithograph of Dr. Elisha Kent Kane was made by Fry: HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1865

Margaret Fox published Dr. Elisha Kent Kane’s letters to her, possibly somewhat altered, as THE LOVE-LIFE OF DR. KANE; CONTAINING THE CORRESPONDENCE, AND A HISTORY OF THE ACQUAINTANCE, ENGAGEMENT, AND SECRET MARRIAGE BETWEEN ELISHA K. KANE AND MARGARET FOX, WITH FACSIMILES OF LETTERS, AND HER PORTRAIT. THE LOVE-LIFE OF DR. KANE

(By this point both Mrs. Margaret Fox-Kane and Kate Fox had become heavy consumers of alcohol.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1986

Henry Petroski’s BEYOND ENGINEERING: ESSAYS AND OTHER ATTEMPTS TO FIGURE WITHOUT EQUATIONS.

A postage stamp depicted Dr. Elisha Kent Kane’s route through the Arctic ice.

THE FROZEN NORTH

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Walden: Dr. Elisha Kent Kane HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2015. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: March 4, 2015 HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: DR. ELISHA KENT KANE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with . Arrgh.