A: “PART OF THE NATURAL LANDSCAPE.”
Q: “WHAZZA MIDDLESEX CANAL?”
On page 74 of WALKING TOWARDS WALDEN: A PILGRIMAGE IN SEARCH OF PLACE (Reading MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995), John Hanson Mitchell asserts that the Concord River flows northward into the Merrimack because of the glacial phenomenon known as “rebound.” “The ice of the last great glacier was so heavy it compressed the very earth, and when the glacier departed (for the time being — we are in an interglacial period), the land rose behind it, creating a general north-running slope.” Of course, the reason why the Concord River empties into the Merrimack is that it empties into the Middlesex Canal and the Middlesex Canal connects to the Merrimack. Had rebound been the case, as the land sprang back upward after the weight of the ice was taken off of it the rivers would gradually have etched deep river gorges into the landscape and the landforms in the vicinity of Boston would be considerably different from what they are today, perhaps not nearly the magnitude of the Grand Canyon but impressive nonetheless. The vicinity of Concord would definitely not be meadow land but would consist of high dry plateaus.1
The 27¼-mile Middlesex Canal connected Boston to the Merrimack River at Lowell. The canal played an important role in the development of the region north of Boston as far as Concord, New Hampshire. Freight and passengers were carried up and down the canal from 1803 to 1853 — but then it was superseded by the Boston & Lowell Railroad.
Dimensions: 30½ feet at the waterline, 20 feet at the bottom, and 3½ feet in depth
Facilities: 20 locks, 8 aqueducts, 48 bridges
Sources of water: Concord River, Horn Pond
Route: generally, the pre-glacial course of the Merrimack River
Speed limit: passenger boats 4 mph, barges 2½ mph, rafts 1½ mph
Surveyors: Samuel Thompson (Woburn), William Weston (England)
1.This is not the only factual error in Mitchell’s book. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
1745
January 10, Thursday (1744, Old Style): The canal engineer Loammi Baldwin was born in Woburn MA. (He would be an officer in the Revolution, would become the discoverer of the Baldwin apple, and, in addition, in the 1794-to-1804 time frame, would supervise the digging of the Middlesex Canal.)
Volume I of William Richard Cutter’s HISTORIC HOMES AND PLACES AND GENEALOGICAL AND PERSONAL MEMOIRS RELATING TO THE FAMILIES OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS (NY: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1908): “In early life he discovered a strong desire for acquiring knowledge, and attended the grammar school in Woburn under the instruction of Master John Fowle, a noted teacher of that time, the school being a moveable one being kept at successive periods first in the centre of the town and secondly at the precinct, or the part of Woburn now incorporated in the town of Burlington. At a more advanced period of life, with the intention of obtaining a thorough acquaintance with natural and experimental philosophy, he would walk from North Woburn to Cambridge, in company with his schoolmate, Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, and attend the lectures of Professor John Winthrop at Harvard College, for which liberty had been given, and upon their return home on foot they were in the habit of illustrating the principles they had heard enunciated in the lecture room by making rude instruments for themselves to pursue their experiments.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
Middlesex Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
1793
Construction began on the Dismal Swamp Canal and on South Carolina’s Santee and Cooper Canal.
The first canal inclined plane was built, on Massachusetts’s Middlesex Canal, to bypass the falls at South Hadley MA.
Construction begins on the Little Falls Canal.
“HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE” BEING A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN TIME (JUST AS THE PERSPECTIVE IN A PAINTING IS A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN SPACE), TO “LOOK AT THE COURSE OF HISTORY MORE GENERALLY” WOULD BE TO SACRIFICE PERSPECTIVE ALTOGETHER. THIS IS FANTASY-LAND, YOU’RE FOOLING YOURSELF. THERE CANNOT BE ANY SUCH THINGIE, AS SUCH A PERSPECTIVE.
Middlesex Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL June: Governor John Hancock signed his big name on the project for a “Middlesex Canal,” making that project a paper reality. The inland region that had been open only by way of going out onto the open ocean around Cape Ann would be connected directly from the Merrimack River to the Mystic River and thus the port of Boston by a safe and easy inland waterway. Note that this project, for a canal to connect the port of Boston with the waterway of the Merrimack, was to be the 1st great work of engineering on the North American continent since the building of the last of the mounds in time immemorial, and note that of course because it was the 1st, the job was to be unclear in the concept and badly botched in its execution. This would in fact destroy the hopes of Newburyport at the mouth of the Merrimack by making of that municipality a backwater through which nobody would ever need to ship cargo (although some of the money that created the canal was coming from investors in the city of Newburyport!) — and yet the canal itself would be usable for only a few decades before railroads would render it likewise technologically quite obsolescent except perhaps for the movement of water from one location to another location. MIDDLESEX CANAL
THE TASK OF THE HISTORIAN IS TO CREATE HINDSIGHT WHILE INTERCEPTING ANY ILLUSION OF FORESIGHT. NOTHING A HUMAN CAN SEE CAN EVER BE SEEN AS IF THROUGH THE EYE OF GOD. THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO’S CENTER OF THE AMERICAN WEST HAS AS ITS OFFICIAL MOTTO “TURNING HINDSIGHT INTO FORESIGHT” — WHICH INDICATES THAT ONLY PANDERERS ARE WELCOME THERE. IN A BOOK THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT HISTORY, ISSUED BY RANDOM HOUSE IN 2016, I FIND THE PHRASE “LOOKED UPON FROM THE BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF HISTORY, ....” ONLY A MERE STORYTELLER, NEVER A HISTORIAN, COULD HAVE PENNED SUCH A PHRASE — BECAUSE NO BIRD HAS EVER FLOWN OVER HISTORY.
Middlesex Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
1794
As a candidate for congress, Colonel Loammi Baldwin received all but one of the votes cast in Woburn MA. From this year into 1804 he would be the civil engineer responsible for the construction of the Middlesex Canal.
NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE
March 25, Tuesday: The Richardson mill that had come into possession of the original gristmill privilege obtained by Christopher Osgood at the Billerica Falls in the Concord River in 1704 sold that water-power entitlement to the proprietors of the Middlesex Canal Company.
Middlesex Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL September 10, Wednesday: First excavation, symbolic, in the Middlesex Canal project to create a waterway between the Merrimack River above its first falls at Pawtucket and the port of Boston.
“May Providence give eternal prosperity to this canal.”
Into 1804, Loammi Baldwin would be civil engineer for the construction of this new waterway:
NEVER READ AHEAD! TO APPRECIATE SEPTEMBER 10TH, 1794 AT ALL ONE MUST APPRECIATE IT AS A TODAY (THE FOLLOWING DAY, TOMORROW, IS BUT A PORTION OF THE UNREALIZED FUTURE AND IFFY HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL AT BEST).
Middlesex Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
1797
November: The 6-mile section of the Middlesex Canal project from the Billerica millpond on the Concord River to the Merrimack above the falls at Pawtucket was opened by a couple of horse-drawn canal barges laden with dignitaries. Laborers armed with spades as insignia of their calling and accompanied by their families were marshaled along the banks to cheer and sing –the officials floated by in their dignity –and a good time was had by all.
A wooden dam was being created across the Concord River in North Billerica. This dam is still there but now holds no water back; it is just downstream of the present dam. There is an exhibit about the dam in the Middlesex Canal Museum and Visitor Center in the Faulkner Mill building across the street.
NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
Middlesex Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
A WEEK: Shad are still taken in the basin of Concord River at Lowell, where they are said to be a month earlier than the Merrimack shad, on account of the warmth of the water. Still patiently, almost pathetically, with instinct not to be discouraged, not to be reasoned with, revisiting their old haunts, as if their stern fates would relent, and still met by the Corporation with its dam. Poor shad! where is thy redress? When Nature gave thee instinct, gave she thee the heart to bear thy fate? Still wandering the sea in thy scaly armor to inquire humbly at the mouths of rivers if man has perchance left them free for thee to enter. By countless shoals loitering uncertain meanwhile, merely stemming the tide there, in danger from sea foes in spite of thy bright armor, awaiting new instructions, until the sands, until the water itself, tell thee if it be so or not. Thus by whole migrating nations, full of instinct, which is thy faith, in this backward spring, turned adrift, and perchance knowest not where men do not dwell, where there are not factories, in these days. Armed with no sword, no electric shock, but mere Shad, armed only with innocence and a just cause, with tender dumb mouth only forward, and scales easy to be detached. I for one am with thee, and who knows what may avail a crow- bar against that Billerica dam? — Not despairing when whole myriads have gone to feed those sea monsters during thy suspense, but still brave, indifferent, on easy fin there, like shad reserved for higher destinies. Willing to be decimated for man’s behoof after the spawning season. Away with the superficial and selfish phil-anthropy of men, — who knows what admirable virtue of fishes may be below low-water-mark, bearing up against a hard destiny, not admired by that fellow-creature who alone can appreciate it! Who hears the fishes when they cry? It will not be forgotten by some memory that we were contemporaries. Thou shalt erelong have thy way up the rivers, up all the rivers of the globe, if I am not mistaken. Yea, even thy dull watery dream shall be more than realized. If it were not so, but thou wert to be overlooked at first and at last, then would not I take their heaven. Yes, I say so, who think I know better than thou canst. Keep a stiff fin then, and stem all the tides thou mayst meet. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
1798
There was a church revival in Carlisle which significantly increased the congregation. (However, the number of original communicants, as of 1781, had been 34, and by 1829, the number would have dropped to 27.)
The raising of the wooden dam at the falls of the Concord River in Billerica, a full foot higher in order to hold back sufficient water to enable barge travel on the new Middlesex Canal, was completed. This dam is still there but now holds no water back; it is just downstream of the present dam. There is an exhibit about the dam in the Middlesex Canal Museum and Visitor Center in the Faulkner Mill building across the street.
In Concord, ??????????, Reuben Hunt, and Roger Brown were Selectmen.
Ephraim Wood was Concord’s deputy and representative to the General Court.
William Jones practiced law in Concord.
A daughter was born to Brister Freeman’s daughter Nancy and her husband Jacob Freeman. We do not know this child’s name. She would survive only until age 5.
Cyrus Hosmer was born in Concord to Cyrus Hosmer and Patty Barrett. He would be an older brother of George Washington Hosmer. He would get married with Lydia Parkman Wheeler and there would be 5 children: Lydia Hosmer, Sarah Parkman Hosmer, Joseph Henry Hosmer, Martha Hosmer, and Cyrus Hosmer. He would become a deacon of the church of the Reverend Daniel Bliss in Concord on March 3d, 1827. He would die on December 19th, 1833 in Concord.
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
1800
The Middlesex Canal reached Chelmsford, Massachusetts.
CANALS
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.
Middlesex Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
1801
The Middlesex Canal was completed through to Wilmington.
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
Middlesex Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
1802
April 22, Thursday: The 1st boats ran on the Middlesex Canal, which at this point was being completed through to Woburn — and the waterway would actually be declared open for business in 1803.
CANALS
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
Summer: From an early age John Leonard Knapp had taken an interest in natural history, going on long summer botanical excursions. One summer, probably about this year, he visited Scotland with General Sir George Don and collected several of the rarest species of British grasses.
The Middlesex Canal was completed through to Medford. CANALS
Middlesex Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
1803
December 31, Saturday: Gaspare Spontini made his debut at the Théâtre-Italien de Paris.
Straightening the Concord River and diverting its waters into the Merrimack, the new Middlesex Canal became open also to barge traffic through to the Charles River leading into Boston Harbor, with the local expectation that Concord could proceed to become something of a port for inland traffic (one is reminded of the later point of time in which some Concordians would convince themselves that the headquarters of the United Nations was destined to be constructed in their little town).
WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF
Middlesex Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
1804
The Middlesex Canal was completed.
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
Middlesex Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
1807
October 20, Tuesday: Civil engineer Loammi Baldwin –who had in the 1794-to-1804 timeframe built the ill- fated Middlesex Canal– died and was immortalized in our language as the person to have noticed, hanging on a wild apple tree near Woburn MA, the “Baldwin” apple, an excellent tasty tangy winter-keeping apple.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3 day 20 of 10 M / As yesterday, much engaged in buisness, but it has not passed with entire forgetfulness of the right & all important Object, - RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
Middlesex Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
1808
Amos Lawrence took on his brother Abbott Lawrence as chief clerk in the family’s Boston dry-goods establishment.
In about this year Stephen Wood was appointed as a justice of the peace in Concord.
Landholders along the Concord River and the Sudbury River had begun to complain about the waters held back at the newly-raised-by-a-full-foot Billerica dam for use in the Middlesex Canal. Their meadows were soggy and their meadow hay was being damaged. Meanwhile the proprietors of the canal were scheming to raise that dam by fully a “foot and a quarter more, making two feet and a quarter in all, being five inches more than the entire fall of the River between us and the Dam.” “Everything was about control.”
— Professor Robert M. Thorson
Daniel Munroe relocated from Concord to Boston. The partnership of the Munroe brothers Nathaniel and William and Daniel had dissolved, perhaps even as early as 1804. Nathanael Munroe moved the clock-making business from the old L-portion of the house of William Whiting to a 2-story building in the Milldam area of Concord, took on as a new partner Samuel Whiting, and changed the name of the business to “Munroe and Whiting.” The business had 7 or 8 apprentices who mostly hand-made clocks with 8-day movements. It had a small brass foundry, situated on the far side of the dam.
At about this point, in Concord, with John Thoreau having reached the age of about 21, and with his having for about 4 years worked in Salem for a merchant named Hathaway while learning the dry-goods business, he was opening a store for himself. He borrowed $1,500.00 of his stepmother Mrs. Rebecca Kettell Thoreau to set up in this business,2 providing as security for the business loan a $1,000.00 mortgage on his eighth share of the old house at Number 57 in Prince Street in Boston’s North End, a structure which was then worth on the market approximately $10,000.00. A yellow building on the corner where the Thoreau town house would stand in later years, this store would eventually be altered and moved and would become the residence of John Keyes.3
HENRY’S RELATIVES
2. Who would his son Henry borrow from? • In 1840 he borrowed at least $41.73 from his father • In 1842 he borrowed Mrs. Hawthorne’s fine music box • In 1843 he borrowed $17.00 from Emerson • In 1847 he borrowed $15.00 from Emerson • In 1849 he in effect borrowed an unspecified amount from publisher James Munroe for 1,000 copies of A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS • It could be said that he borrowed the cabin site at Walden Pond (although it could also be said that he rented it at the price of his labor clearing brush and stumps from the area that became the beanfield), and he did indeed borrow an ax. 3. In Thoreau’s journal: “When about twenty-one, [Father] opened a store for himself on the corner where the town house stands of late years, a yellow building, now moved and altered into John Keyes’s house.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
1809
Landholders along the Concord River and the Sudbury River, who had been complaining about the waters held back at the Billerica dam that had been raised by a full foot to provide water for the barges in the Middlesex Canal, were further enraged when that dam was raised by fully a “foot and a quarter more, making two feet and a quarter in all, being five inches more than the entire fall of the River between us and the Dam ... then they put a sill atop of the crest, and flash boards atop of that.” Their meadows were soggy, their meadow hay was unsaleable, and they were being compensated in no way. A lawsuit was threatened.
Nathan Brooks graduated from Harvard College. He would gain his knowledge of law in Concord under the tutelage of Samuel Hoar and Thomas Heald, and be admitted to the Middlesex Bar in 1813.
In Concord, Nathan Wood was a Selectman.
John L. Tuttle of Concord was a Senator.
John L. Tuttle of Concord was Middlesex County Treasurer.
General William Hildreth was Sheriff of Concord.
For a year, Benjamin Willard, hired from elsewhere, would be teaching Concord’s grammar students.
1785 Nathaniel Bridge 9 months 1812 Isaac Warren 1 year
1786 JOSEPH HUNT 2½ years 1813 JOHN BROWN 1 year
1788 William A. Barron 3 years 1814 Oliver Patten 1 year
1791 Amos Bancroft 1 year 1815 Stevens Everett 9 months
1792 Heber Chase 1 year 1815 Silas Holman 3 months
1793 WILLIAM JONES 1 year 1816 George F. Farley 1 year
1794 Samuel Thatcher 1 year 1817 James Howe 1 year
1795 JAMES TEMPLE 2 years 1818 Samuel Barrett 1 year
1797 Thomas O. Selfridge 1 year 1819 BENJAMIN BARRETT 1 year
1798 THOMAS WHITING 4 years 1820 Abner Forbes 2 years
1802 Levi Frisbie 1 year 1822 Othniel Dinsmore 3 years
1803 Silas Warren 4 years 1825 James Furbish 1 year
1807 Wyman Richardson 1 year 1826 EDWARD JARVIS 1 year
1808 Ralph Sanger 1 year 1827 Horatio Wood 1 year
1809 Benjamin Willard 1 year 1828 David J. Merrill 1 year
1810 Elijah F. Paige 1 year 1829 John Graham 1 year
1811 Simeon Putnam 1 year 1831 John Brown HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL Representatives of Lincoln4
Chambers Russell ’54-57, ’59, ’62, ’63, ’5. Joshua Brooks 1809-1811.
Samuel Farrer 1766-1768. Leonard Hoar 1812-1814.
Eleazer Brooks ’74-’78, ’80, ’5, ’7, ’90-’2. William Hayden 1815, 1816.
Chambers Russell 1788. Elijah Fiske 1820-1822.
Samuel Hoar ’94, ’95, ’97, ’98, 1801, ’3-’8. Joel Smith 1824.
Samuel Farrar, Jr. 1800. Silas P. Tarbell 1827, 1828.
Not represented 1758, ’60, ’62, ’69-’73, ’79, ’81, ’82, ’86, ’89, ’93, ’96, ’99, 1802, ’17, ’23, ’25, ’26.
Town Clerks of Carlisle
Zebulon Spaulding 1780-1784
Asa Parlin 1785-1802; 1806-1808
John Jacobs 1803, 1809-1812, 1826
Jonathan Heald 1804-1805
Jonathan Heald, Jr. 1813-1814, 1818-1820
John Heald 1815-1817, 1821-1825, 1827-1829
Cyrus Heald 1829-——
4. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston MA: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy, 1835 (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
1810
April: David Baldwin, who owned large meadows adjoining on the Sudbury River near East Sudbury, Massachusetts, filed a lawsuit on behalf of all meadow owners against the proprietors of the Middlesex Canal, for destroying their meadow hay.
General Henry Dearborn left Washington DC for Boston, hoping to raise a citizens’ army to attack Canada via a Lake Champlain route. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
1811
Abel Bowen, already active as an engraver on wood, moved to Boston.
Colonel Loammi Baldwin was hired to accomplish a leveling survey of the valley of the Concord River and Sudbury River. David Heard would describe the results of this survey as so good that “both parties relied upon it; and there were no objections to it from any quarter.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
1815
October 9, Monday: The Merrimack River had finally been made navigable all the way from Boston to Concord, New Hampshire. Barges of 60 to 75-foot length, with sails for when the wind was in the right direction, could be poled along by boatmen who would plant their 20-foot, iron shod poles in the river bottom at the bow and then walk the length of the boat to the stern, pushing it along. Using such means it was taking
7 to 10 days to get a barge of produce down the river from Concord to Boston, part of the reason being that in HISTORY OF CONCORD NH
the 6-mile stretch between the Merrimack and the Billerica, Massachusetts millpond on the Concord River, the boatmen had to push the load against the mild current.5 It took considerably longer, of course, to get the barge back up against the current of the swift Merrimack River to Concord NH. But all of this new transportation and freightage activity was utterly bypassing Newburyport MA — the difficult bar of Plum Island and its associated shallows across the mouth of the Merrimack had proved to be this port’s kiss of death. That city would become a backwater through which nobody would ever again ship cargo, despite the fact that some of the money that had created the Middlesex Canal had come from this city’s investors. —And yet, this new canal which was forever destroying Newburyport’s prospects would be usable for only a few decades before
5. Initially it had been presumed that the waters of the Merrimack River would flow south through this section of the canal, but it had been discovered during construction of the canal that the Concord River was at that point 25 feet higher than the Merrimack. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL railroads would render it quite useless for anything except the relocation of water from one place to another! HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL At the extreme right of this 1917 illustration of the major rivers of this globe with their lengths and tributaries, we find the Merrimack River of New England to have been the very shortest considered worth mentioning:
On this date the Garrison family (the mother, Lloyd and his acting-out elder brother James, and their little sister) became part of the general exodus out of this failed dream of a metropolis, by sailing out of Salem harbor on the brig Edward, bound for better opportunities in Baltimore. William Lloyd Garrison was a “leftie” who was being punished in public school until he became able to write with his right hand:
JOB FEELS THE ROD YET BLESSES GOD.
Lloyd would endure fourteen seasick days before they reached their destination, and then the firm which was going to employ his mother would quickly fail and collapse, stranding the family there in the midst of a slave/ slavemaster culture. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL THE FALLACY OF MOMENTISM: THIS STARRY UNIVERSE DOES NOT CONSIST OF A SEQUENCE OF MOMENTS. THAT IS A FIGMENT, ONE WE HAVE RECOURSE TO IN ORDER TO PRIVILEGE TIME OVER CHANGE, APRIVILEGING THAT MAKES CHANGE SEEM UNREAL, DERIVATIVE, AMERE APPEARANCE. IN FACT IT IS CHANGE AND ONLY CHANGE WHICH WE EXPERIENCE AS REALITY, TIME BEING BY WAY OF RADICAL CONTRAST UNEXPERIENCED — A MERE INTELLECTUAL CONSTRUCT. THERE EXISTS NO SUCH THING AS A MOMENT. NO “INSTANT” HAS EVER FOR AN INSTANT EXISTED.
Middlesex Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
1817
Shubael Bell noted that Chelmsford granite was being brought down the Middlesex Canal to the prison in Charlestown, Massachusetts, and that there the labor of convicts was being used to dress the blocks before they were set in place in the walls by the masons — evidently the conundrum “Who shall imprison the prisoners” has a readier answer than the conundrum “Who shall guard the guardians?”
BETWEEN ANY TWO MOMENTS ARE AN INFINITE NUMBER OF MOMENTS, AND BETWEEN THESE OTHER MOMENTS LIKEWISE AN INFINITE NUMBER, THERE BEING NO ATOMIC MOMENT JUST AS THERE IS NO ATOMIC POINT ALONG A LINE. MOMENTS ARE THEREFORE FIGMENTS. THE PRESENT MOMENT IS A MOMENT AND AS SUCH IS A FIGMENT, A FLIGHT OF THE IMAGINATION TO WHICH NOTHING REAL CORRESPONDS. SINCE PAST MOMENTS HAVE PASSED OUT OF EXISTENCE AND FUTURE MOMENTS HAVE YET TO ARRIVE, WE NOTE THAT THE PRESENT MOMENT IS ALL THAT EVER EXISTS — AND YET THE PRESENT MOMENT BEING A MOMENT IS A FIGMENT TO WHICH NOTHING IN REALITY CORRESPONDS.
Middlesex Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
1825
May 4, Wednesday: Henry Huxley was born.
The opera season opened on this night in Palermo under its new director, Gaetano Donizetti (the orchestra performed so poorly that Donizetti would be called to account by the Superintendant of Public Spectacles).
The Middlesex Canal Company was in such a dire financial predicament that it made a desperation move, selling off for $2,500 to Francis Faulkner, Jr.’s “Canal Mills” in Billerica, Massachusetts a portion of the flow. The Faulkner deed specified that he would be obliged to maintain the water behind the dam at a high level: “[T]he water in the mill-pond when on a still level [must be maintained] at or within three-fourths of an inch of the top of the dam or flash boards as the same now exists on the main dam across the Concord River” (this of course would make him a natural adversary of the farmers attempting to mow meadow hay upriver).
In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day Our Select Meeting was a season of favor - Meeting for Sufferings & Trustees Meeting also met which consumed the Day. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
1826
A New-York guidebook, THE NORTHERN TRAVELER, informed travelers that “there is a boat on the MIDDLESEX CANAL, which leaves the upper lock at Charleston (2 miles from Boston,) three times a week, and goes to Chelmsford MA in about nine hours: 28 miles passage 75¢.” However, the guidebook continued, “This mode is not particularly recommended.”
FIGURING OUT WHAT AMOUNTS TO A “HISTORICAL CONTEXT” IS WHAT THE CRAFT OF HISTORICIZING AMOUNTS TO, AND THIS NECESSITATES DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN THE SET OF EVENTS THAT MUST HAVE TAKEN PLACE BEFORE EVENT E COULD BECOME POSSIBLE, AND MOST CAREFULLY DISTINGUISHING THEM FROM ANOTHER SET OF EVENTS THAT COULD NOT POSSIBLY OCCUR UNTIL SUBSEQUENT TO EVENT E.
Middlesex Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
1828
September: The new masonry dam at the Billerica falls of the Concord River was completed, where Faulkner Street crosses the river. It was about 140 feet across and about 10 feet high and stretched across just upriver of the 1798 wooden dam that would no longer hold water back. There is an exhibit about the dam in the Middlesex Canal Museum and Visitor Center in the Faulkner Mill building across the street. The masonry dam was a major source of water for the Middlesex Canal between Lowell and Boston. The river water powered one or both of the mills on the downstream side of the dam.
The Middlesex Cattle Show, which Henry Thoreau usually would visit (and in 1860 he would be its principal speaker, with his “SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES”).
WALDEN: Bankruptcy and repudiation are the spring-boards from which much of our civilization vaults and turns its somersets, but the savage stands on the unelastic plank of famine. Yet the Middlesex Cattle Show goes off here with éclat annually, as if all the joints of the agricultural machine were suent. The farmer is endeavoring to solve the problem of a livelihood by a formula more complicated than the problem itself. To get his shoestrings he speculates in herds of cattle. With consummate skill he has set his trap with a hair spring to catch comfort and independence, and then, as he turned away, got his own leg into it. This is the reason he is poor; and for a similar reason we are all poor in respect to a thousand savage comforts, though surrounded by luxuries.
WALDEN: Ancient poetry and mythology suggest, at least, that husbandry was once a sacred art; but it is pursued with irreverent haste and heedlessness by us, our object being to have large farms and large crops merely. We have no festival, nor procession, nor ceremony, not excepting our Cattle-shows and so called Thanksgivings, by which the farmer expresses a sense of the sacredness of his calling, or is reminded of its sacred origin. It is the premium and the feast which tempt him. He sacrifices not to Ceres and the Terrestrial Jove, but to the infernal Plutus rather. By avarice and selfishness, and a grovelling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
A WEEK: As I pass along the streets of our village of Concord on the day of our annual Cattle-Show, when it usually happens that the leaves of the elms and buttonwoods begin first to strew the ground under the breath of the October wind, the lively spirits in their sap seem to mount as high as any plough-boy’s let loose that day; and they lead my thoughts away to the rustling woods, where the trees are preparing for their winter campaign. This autumnal festival, when men are gathered in crowds in the streets as regularly and by as natural a law as the leaves cluster and rustle by the wayside, is naturally associated in my mind with the fall of the year. The low of cattle in the streets sounds like a hoarse symphony or running bass to the rustling of the leaves. The wind goes hurrying down the country, gleaning every loose straw that is left in the fields, while every farmer lad too appears to scud before it, — having donned his best pea-jacket and pepper-and- salt waistcoat, his unbent trousers, outstanding rigging of duck or kerseymere or corduroy, and his furry hat withal, — to country fairs and cattle-shows, to that Rome among the villages where the treasures of the year are gathered. All the land over they go leaping the fences with their tough, idle palms, which have never learned to hang by their sides, amid the low of calves and the bleating of sheep, — Amos, Abner, Elnathan, Elbridge, — “From steep pine-bearing mountains to the plain.” I love these sons of earth every mother’s son of them, with their great hearty hearts rushing tumultuously in herds from spectacle to spectacle, as if fearful lest there should not be time between sun and sun to see them all, and the sun does not wait more than in haying-time. “Wise Nature’s darlings, they live in the world Perplexing not themselves how it is hurled.” Running hither and thither with appetite for the coarse pastimes of the day, now with boisterous speed at the heels of the inspired negro from whose larynx the melodies of all Congo and Guinea Coast have broke loose into our streets; now to see the procession of a hundred yoke of oxen, all as august and grave as Osiris, or the droves of neat cattle and milch cows as unspotted as Isis or Io. Such as had no love for Nature “at all, Came lovers home from this great festival.” They may bring their fattest cattle and richest fruits to the fair, but they are all eclipsed by the show of men. These are stirring autumn days, when men sweep by in crowds, amid the rustle of leaves, like migrating finches; this is the true harvest of the year, when the air is but the breath of men, and the rustling of leaves is as the trampling of the crowd. We read now-a-days of the ancient festivals, games, and processions of the Greeks and Etruscans, with a little incredulity, or at least with little sympathy; but how natural and irrepressible in every people is some hearty and palpable greeting of Nature. The Corybantes, the Bacchantes, the rude primitive tragedians with their procession and goat-song, and the whole paraphernalia of the Panathenaea, which appear so antiquated and peculiar, have their parallel now. The husbandman is always a better HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
Greek than the scholar is prepared to appreciate, and the old custom still survives, while antiquarians and scholars grow gray in commemorating it. The farmers crowd to the fair to-day in obedience to the same ancient law, which Solon or Lycurgus did not enact, as naturally as bees swarm and follow their queen. It is worth the while to see the country’s people, how they pour into the town, the sober farmer folk, now all agog, their very shirt and coat-collars pointing forward, — collars so broad as if they had put their shirts on wrong end upward, for the fashions always tend to superfluity, — and with an unusual springiness in their gait, jabbering earnestly to one another. The more supple vagabond, too, is sure to appear on the least rumor of such a gathering, and the next day to disappear, and go into his hole like the seventeen-year locust, in an ever-shabby coat, though finer than the farmer’s best, yet never dressed; come to see the sport, and have a hand in what is going, — to know “what’s the row,” if there is any; to be where some men are drunk, some horses race, some cockerels fight; anxious to be shaking props under a table, and above all to see the “striped pig.” He especially is the creature of the occasion. He empties both his pockets and his character into the stream, and swims in such a day. He dearly loves the social slush. There is no reserve of soberness in him. I love to see the herd of men feeding heartily on coarse and succulent pleasures, as cattle on the husks and stalks of vegetables. Though there are many crooked and crabbled specimens of humanity among them, run all to thorn and rind, and crowded out of shape by adverse circumstances, like the third chestnut in the burr, so that you wonder to see some heads wear a whole hat, yet fear not that the race will fail or waver in them; like the crabs which grow in hedges, they furnish the stocks of sweet and thrifty fruits still. Thus is nature recruited from age to age, while the fair and palatable varieties die out, and have their period. This is that mankind. How cheap must be the material of which so many men are made. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
1829
The Worcester County Gazette declared itself in opposition to the scheme to build a railroad from Boston west into the interior. What they feared was “25-cent corn,” the idea that cheaper bulk transportation would permit
the farmers of the interior, where land was cheaper, to transport their cheaper grains to market in a form other than that of distilled spirits, and would thus start a price war which would be the ruin of local agriculture on more expensive farmlands. The turnpike companies were quick to agree with this reasoning because railroads would come to constitute the most radical form of technological competition, and the mill companies quick to disagree because railroads would improve the economic situation by at least an order of magnitude, cutting down the two days required to bring a barge of agricultural product down the Middlesex Canal from Lowell and Haverhill to an hour and a half by “burthen” railcar, and cutting transportation costs from hundreds of dollars per ton to tens of dollars per ton. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
1834
May: Loammi Baldwin II prepared his 2d map of the Concord River and Sudbury River, on behalf of the Middlesex Canal Corporation, from East Sudbury to Billerica.6
6. The map was actually drawn by B.F. Perham. This was the map which would be checked by Thoreau in July 1859 and then used in January 1860 in the preparation of the River Meadow Association’s lawsuit against the Middlesex Canal Corporation before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, for elevating the waters of the river system above the dams which fed water into the canal in such manner as to damage the river meadows. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL May 31, Saturday: The Liberator.
Joel Stone of Lowell, Massachusetts and J.P. Simpson of Boston had had constructed for them, in the cooperage shop of Amos Whitney at Pawtucket Falls on the Merrimack River, a steamboat 90 feet long and 20 feet wide, that drew three feet of water. On this day the new steamboat, the Herald, offered its first rides between Lowell, Massachusetts and Nashua, New Hampshire on the Merrimack River, at $0.50 the head. Yes, it was possible for an engineering project to be more ill-conceived and more poorly timed than the Middlesex Canal, barely possible — but that would take some doing. The nearby railroad, with which this steamboat could not conceivably compete, had almost completed construction, and would reach Nashua by 1838.
The probable supposed date of Anthony Burns’s birth as reported on his tombstone. He was the youngest of his mother’s 13 children, by her 3d husband. Their master, John Suttle, had a limestone quarry from which he obtained an inferior grade of stone, that had been used for the Executive Mansion and in the U.S. Capitol building: HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1835
Reformers in Northampton began a local antislavery society, and soon ran afoul of the town’s summer tourist trade, which catered to, among others, vacationing Southerner slaveholders — accompanied of course, it need hardly be mentioned, by their personal servants. One of the town’s two newspapers would lead a violent opposition to this antislavery society, nor was the other newspaper at all friendly toward them. Just to make certain that they understood that their racial attitudes were not welcome among neighbors, their meetings would periodically be disrupted.
The death knell was rung for the recently dug Blackstone Canal, as a railroad began to connect the town to other towns.
Construction of a couple of America’s 1st railroad stations, a small Doric temple carrying the track through a colonnade in Lowell, Massachusetts, and, in Boston, the terminus of the Boston & Lowell RR. Boston’s 1st powered railroad was the Boston and Worcester, a 45-mile track with 4 trains pulling “burthen” carriages per day each way (these “burthen” cars tolling that knell, of course, for the Middlesex Canal), plus each noon one mixed train containing passenger coaches as well.
The selectmen of Mendon, Massachusetts were instructed by the townspeople to withhold their approbation for licenses for the sale of intoxicating liquors.
Eli Thayer left the family farm in Mendon, journeying to Worcester. It was in the year 1835 when he packed his few clothes and placed his trunk on board a boat on the Blackstone Canal, bound for Worcester, and himself walked the entire distance. Such was his first entry into the city whose best interests he was so soon afterwards to subserve. In Worcester, he entered the “Manual Labor School,” an institution that furnished indigent young men, who might be so inclined, with a chance to pay for their schooling in work, as they went along. In this school young HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL Thayer fitted himself for College, never having known a syllable either of Latin or Greek previous to coming here. After a year’s hard labor and study, pursued night and day with restless energy, he presented himself for admission into Brown University, at Providence. In mathematical attainments he was found deficient, not coming up to the standard; but on his solemn promise, that, by persevering labor, he would “catch up” and hold his place, under the circumstances of the case, was admitted; and the promise was remembered with pride by his instructor when he came to leave the walls of his honored alma mater, for Thayer was the best in mathematics of his class. Eli Thayer entered college with nothing, and graduated with distinguished honors, and a few hundred dollars in his pocket. That is more than many of our college graduates can say. While in the University, he defrayed his expenses by teaching district schools during the intervals of vacations, and by similar labors, from time to time, to those which sustained him at the school in Worcester. He played the carpenter, the wood-sawyer, and the landscape gardener; and there is a piece of embankment before one of the Professors’ residences to-day, the green sods of which he placed with his own hands; and they were well placed, too. Such a young man cannot fail to make his mark in the world of men in time, the supply being yet too scanty not to quicken the demand, when they do appear.
September: In Concord, Nathan Barrett, who owned land near the conflux of the Assabet River with the Sudbury River that marked the Egg Rock beginning of what we term the “Concord River,” was approached by a man from Billerica with a request that he put some of his farmhands to work at “dredging” what was known as “Barrett’s Bar.” He had them plough and scrape for some 3 or 4 days to make a channel in the river bed along the south side that would allow the barges on the Middlesex Canal to get on up the Sudbury River without their bottoms scraping. “And soon after that, the boating was given up, so that it was not necessary to plough it out again.”
This description suggests the following sequence: a river that was easily navigable in the 1820s had become choked with sediment, which required dredging in 1835, and which refilled with sediment after that. Almost certainly the source of this sediment was the spasm of erosion in the lower Assabet associated with the building of the Union Turnpike Bridge [along with Eddy Bridge over the Sudbury] in 1827. This was a case of one transportation technology slapping the face of another. — Professor Robert M. Thorson, THE BOATMAN, page 75
As William Whiting (Junior) began to attend the Harvard Law School, his replacement as preceptor in the Concord Academy would be Charles C. Shackford, who had just graduated there as the top scholar in the class and would go on to become a professor of Rhetoric at Cornell University. NEW “HARVARD MEN”
John Shepard Keyes, one of the pupils, would report: Mr. C.C. Shackford the first scholar in the class of 1835, HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL succeeded in September of that year Mr Whiting, who began then the study of law Mr S was a very different man, as bright and keen, but without ambition, and bilious, moody, and very unequal in his instruction, at times thrilling and inspiriting and at others sour and cross and depressing Our training under the first teacher and the impulse carried the older scholars through the second year, but the newcomers of whom there were several didnt have that help and the school so far ran down that it closed with Mr Shuckfords twelve month. He was a strange compound, and rather an exciting mystery to the older girls, to whom he paid great deference, and soon became blindly in love first with my charmer and then when rejected, by her, with the next prettiest but most wayward of them all. How he fared in this pursuit was the theme of endless discussion of the older scholars and took much time from our studies to watch the traces of success or despair. Some of us thought them engaged definitely others that she refused, and it ended in smoke if there was ever more to it. And he has been married twice, and is a Professor at Cornell, and she a matron of a large family and high position in Concord, of course like a dutiful pupil and the oldest boy in the school I was bound to follow such an example, and did my utmost to plague his life, and make him feel the jealousy from which I suffered, as much as he did. But alas how time cures all wounds.— J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY
David Henry Thoreau was back at Harvard College for his Junior year as of the age of eighteen, living in 31 Hollis Hall. This month his assigned composition was on classroom discipline, “The comparative moral policy of severe and mild punishments.” The end of all punishment is the welfare of the state — the good of community at large — not the suffering of an individual. It matters not to the lawgiver what a man deserves, for to say nothing of the impossibility of settling this point, it would be absurd to pass laws against prodigality, want of charity, and many other faults of the same nature, as if man was to be frightened into a virtuous life, though these in a great measure constitute a vicious one. We leave this to a higher tribunal. So far only as public interest is concerned, is punishment justifiable — if we overstep this bound our own conduct becomes criminal. Let us observe in the first place the effects of severity. Does the rigor of the punishment increase the dread operating upon the mind to dissuade us from the act? It certainly does if it be unavoidable. But where death is a general punishment, though some advantage may seem to arise from the severity, yet this will invariably be more than counterbalanced by the uncertainty attending the execution of the law. We find that in England, for instance, where, in Blackstone’s day,7 160 offences were considered capital, between the years 1805 and 1817 of 655 who were indicted for stealing, 113 being capitally convicted, not one was executed; and yet no blame could attach to the conduct of the juries, the fault was in the law. Had death, on the other hand, been certain, the law could have existed but a very short time. Feelings of natural justice, together with public sentiment, would have concurred to abolish it altogether. 7. Sir William Blackstone’s 1765-1769 COMMENTARIES ON THE LAWS OF ENGLAND. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL In fact wherever those crimes which are made capital form a numerous class, and petty thefts and forgeries are raised to a level with murder, burglary, and the like, the law seems to defeat its own ends. The injured influenced, perhaps, by compassion, forbear to prosecute, and thus are numerous frauds allowed to escape with impunity, for want of a penalty proportionate to the offense. Juries too, actuated by the same motives, adopt the course pointed out by their feelings. As long as one crime is more heinous and more offensive than another, it is absolutely necessary that a corresponding distinction be made in punishing them. Otherwise, if the penalty be the same, men will come to regard the guilt as equal in each case. It is enough that the evil attending conviction exceed the expected advantage. This I say is sufficient, provided the consequences be certain, and the expected benefit be not obtained. For it is the hope of escaping punishment — a hope which never deserts the rogue as long as life itself remains, that renders him blind to the consequences, and enables him to look despair in the face. Take from him this hope, and you will find that certainty is more effectual than severity of punishment. No man will deliberately cut his own fingers. The vicious are often led on from one crime to another still more atrocious by the very fault of the law, the penalty being no greater, but the certainty of escaping detection being very much increased. In this case they act up to the old saying, that “one may as well be hung for stealing an old sheep as a lamb.” Some have asked, “cannot reward be substituted for punishment? Is hope a less powerful incentive to action than fear? When a political pharmacopoeia has the command of both ingredients, wherefore employ the bitter instead of the sweet?” This reasoning is absurd. Does a man deserve to be rewarded for refraining from murder? Is the greatest virtue merely negative, or does it rather consist in the performance of a thousand everyday duties, hidden from the eye of the world? Would it be good policy to make the most exalted virtue even, a subject of reward here? Nevertheless, I question whether a pardon has not a more salutary effect, on the minds of those not immediately affected by it, vicious as well as honest, than a public execution. It would seem then, that the welfare of society calls for a certain degree of severity; but this degree must bear some proportion to the offence. If this distinction be lost sight of, punishment becomes unjust as well as useless — we are not to act upon the principle that crime is to be prevented at any rate, cost what it may; this is obviously erroneous. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
1838
Fall: The railroad from Boston reached Nashua, New Hampshire, rendering steam travel along the Merrimack River totally unnecessary. The steamboat Herald sank near the entrance of the Middlesex Canal into the Merrimack at Wicasee Falls near Tyng’s Island.
Winter: The steamboat Herald which had sunk in the Merrimack River was raised in the ice and skidded to the shore, where it was enlarged and refitted as a side-wheel excursion steamer capable of taking 500 passengers on an outing along waterways that would never again be used for bulk cargo. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
1839
August 31-September 13: The trip that would be described in A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS: Henry Thoreau kept a brief log. TIMELINE OF A WEEK
This log, however brief, must have included some records of bird sightings, for in regard to the American Passenger Pigeon Ectopistes migratorius we find the material on the following screen: HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
A WEEK: During the heat of the day, we rested on a large island a mile above the mouth of this river, pastured by a herd of cattle, with steep banks and scattered elms and oaks, and a sufficient channel for canal-boats on each side. When we made a fire to boil some rice for our dinner, the flames spreading amid the dry grass, and the smoke curling silently upward and casting grotesque shadows on the ground, seemed phenomena of the noon, and we fancied that we progressed up the stream without effort, and as naturally as the wind and tide went down, not outraging the calm days by unworthy bustle or impatience. The woods on the neighboring shore were alive with pigeons, which were moving south, looking for mast, but now, like ourselves, spending their noon in the shade. We could hear the slight, wiry, winnowing sound of their wings as they changed their roosts from time to time, and their gentle and tremulous cooing. They sojourned with us during the noontide, greater travellers far than we. You may frequently discover a single pair sitting upon the lower branches of the white-pine in the depths of the wood, at this hour of the day, so silent and solitary, and with such a hermit-like appearance, as if they had never strayed beyond its skirts, while the acorn which was gathered in the forests of Maine is still undigested in their crops. We obtained one of these handsome birds, which lingered too long upon its perch, and plucked and broiled it here with some other game, to be carried along for our supper; for, beside the provisions which we carried with us, we depended mainly on the river and forest for our supply. It is true, it did not seem to be putting this bird to its right use to pluck off its feathers, and extract its entrails, and broil its carcass on the coals; but we heroically persevered, nevertheless, waiting for further information. The same regard for Nature which excited our sympathy for her creatures nerved our hands to carry through what we had begun. For we would be honorable to the party we deserted; we would fulfil fate, and so at length, perhaps, detect the secret innocence of these incessant tragedies which Heaven allows. “Too quick resolves do resolution wrong, What, part so soon to be divorced so long? Things to be done are long to be debated; Heaven is not day’d, Repentance is not dated.” We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke straps our vice. Where is the skilful swordsman who can give clean wounds, and not rip up his work with the other edge? Nature herself has not provided the most graceful end for her creatures. What becomes of all these birds that people the air and forest for our solacement? The sparrows seem always chipper, never infirm. We do not see their bodies lie about. Yet there is a tragedy at the end of each one of their lives. They must perish miserably; not one of them is translated. True, “not a sparrow falleth to the ground without our Heavenly Father’s knowledge,” but they do fall, nevertheless. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL September 2, Monday: A progressive Spanish Cortes opened, but would dissolve in 2 months.
Fromental Halevy’s opera comique Le sherif, to words of Scribe after Balzac was performed for the initial time, at the Theatre de la Bourse, Paris. It was a failure.
“Camped in Merrimack, on the west bank, by a deep ravine.”
A WEEK: (September 2, Monday, 1839) We had found a safe harbor for our boat, and as the sun was setting carried up our furniture, and soon arranged our house upon the bank, and while the kettle steamed at the tent door, we chatted of distant friends and of the sights which we were to behold, and wondered which way the towns lay from us. Our cocoa was soon boiled, and supper set upon our chest, and we lengthened out this meal, like old voyageurs, with our talk. Meanwhile we spread the map on the ground, and read in the Gazetteer when the first settlers came here and got a township granted.
COCOA
A WEEK: (September 2, Monday, 1839) The bass, Tilia Americana, also called the lime or linden, which was a new tree to us, overhung the water with its broad and rounded leaf, interspersed with clusters of small hard berries now nearly ripe, and made an agreeable shade for us sailors. The inner bark of this genus is the bast, the material of the fisherman’s matting, and the ropes and peasant’s shoes of which the Russians make so much use, and also of nets and a coarse cloth in some places. According to poets, this was once Philyra, one of the Oceanides. The ancients are said to have used its bark for the roofs of cottages, for baskets, and for a kind of paper called Philyra. They also made bucklers of its wood, “on account of its flexibility, lightness, and resiliency.” It was once much used for carving, and is still in demand for sounding-boards of piano-fortes and panels of carriages, and for various uses for which toughness and flexibility are required. Baskets and cradles are made of the twigs. Its sap affords sugar, and the honey made from its flowers is said to be preferred to any other. Its leaves are in some countries given to cattle, a kind of chocolate has been made of its fruit, a medicine has been prepared from an infusion of its flowers, and finally, the charcoal made of its wood is greatly valued for gunpowder.
CHOCOLATE LINDEN TREE HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL Although the following is an entry in Henry Thoreau’s JOURNAL of June 13, 1851, Thoreau ascribed this remark, while working on his A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS manuscript, to the night of his mystic experience, September 2, 1839: “I heard partridges drumming to-night as late as 9 o’clock. What singularly space penetrating and filling sound! Why am I never nearer to its source? We do not commonly live our life out and full; we do not fill all our pores with our blood; we do not inspire and expire fully and entirely enough, so that the wave, the comber, of each inspiration shall break upon our extremest shores, rolling till it meets the sand which bounds us, and the sound of the surf come back to us. Might not a bellows assist us to breathe? That our breathing should create a wind on a calm day! We live but a fraction of our life. Why do we not let on the flood, 8raise the gates, and set all our wheels in motion? He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. Employ your senses.” TIMELINE OF A WEEK
8. However, when he had copied the penciled events of Sept. 2nd 1839 into his journal on June 21, 1840, the only reference Thoreau had copied was “Sept. 2nd Camped in Merrimack, on the west bank, by a deep ravine.…” Presumably, then, he first heard these famous partridges drumming and thought these famous thoughts when they were camped near Penichook Brook and Nashville, on the west bank of the Merrimack River in the vicinity of a deep ravine and a pine wood, on September 2, 1839 as described on pages 171-7 of A WEEK. Possibly, when young Thoreau lay on his pine branches, and then wrote as above of “some tyro beating a drum incessantly, preparing for a country muster,” he was mistaking the sound of a ruffed grouse for the sound of some boy in a nearby village, practicing incessantly on a drum. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
A WEEK: Far in the night as we were falling asleep on the bank of the Merrimack, we heard some tyro beating a drum incessantly, in preparation for a country muster, as we learned, and we thought of the line,— “When the drum beat at dead of night.” CAMPBELL We could have assured him that his beat would be answered, and the forces be mustered. Fear not, thou drummer of the night, we too will be there. And still he drummed on in the silence and the dark. This stray sound from a far-off sphere came to our ears from time to time, far, sweet, and significant, and we listened with such an unprejudiced sense as if for the first time we heard at all. No doubt he was an insignificant drummer enough, but his music afforded us a prime and leisure hour, and we felt that we were in season wholly. These simple sounds related us to the stars. Ay, there was a logic in them so convincing that the combined sense of mankind could never make me doubt their conclusions. I stop my habitual thinking, as if the plough had suddenly run deeper in its furrow through the crust of the world. How can I go on, who have just stepped over such a bottomless skylight in the bog of my life. Suddenly old Time winked at me, — Ah, you know me, you rogue, — and news had come that IT was well. That ancient universe is in such capital health, I think undoubtedly it will never die. Heal yourselves, doctors; by God, I live. Then idle Time ran gadding by And left me with Eternity alone; I hear beyond the range of sound, I see beyond the verge of sight, — I see, smell, taste, hear, feel, that everlasting Something to which we are allied, at once our maker, our abode, our destiny, our very Selves; the one historic truth, the most remarkable fact which can become the distinct and uninvited subject of our thought, the actual glory of the universe; the only fact which a human being cannot avoid recognizing, or in some way forget or dispense with. It doth expand my privacies To all, and leave me single in the crowd. I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid, and I have not the least doubt that it will stand a good while. Now chiefly is my natal hour, And only now my prime of life. I will not doubt the love untold, Which not my worth nor want hath bought, Which wooed me young and wooes me old, And to this evening hath me brought. What are ears? what is time? that this particular series of sounds called a strain of music, an invisible and fairy troop which never brushed the dew from any mead, can be wafted down through the centuries from Homer to me, and he have been conversant with that same aerial and mysterious charm which now so tingles my ears? What a fine communication from age to age, of the fairest and noblest thoughts, the aspirations of ancient men, even such as were never communicated by speech, is music! It is the flower of language, thought colored and curved, fluent and flexible, its crystal fountain tinged with the sun’s rays, and its purling ripples reflecting the grass and the clouds. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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A strain of music reminds me of a passage of the Vedas, and I associate with it the idea of infinite remoteness, as well as of beauty and serenity, for to the senses that is farthest from us which addresses the greatest depth within us. It teaches us again and again to trust the remotest and finest as the divinest instinct, and makes a dream our only real experience. We feel a sad cheer when we hear it, perchance because we that hear are not one with that which is heard. Therefore a torrent of sadness deep, Through the strains of thy triumph is heard to sweep. The sadness is ours. The Indian poet Calidas says in the Sacontala: “Perhaps the sadness of men on seeing beautiful forms and hearing sweet music arises from some faint remembrance of past joys, and the traces of connections in a former state of existence.” As polishing expresses the vein in marble, and grain in wood, so music brings out what of heroic lurks anywhere. The hero is the sole patron of music. That harmony which exists naturally between the hero’s moods and the universe the soldier would fain imitate with drum and trumpet. When we are in health all sounds fife and drum for us; we hear the notes of music in the air, or catch its echoes dying away when we awake in the dawn. Marching is when the pulse of the hero beats in unison with the pulse of Nature, and he steps to the measure of the universe; then there is true courage and invincible strength.
Continuing with this material about the drumming of the ruffed grouse that night, Thoreau modernized the spelling of a snippet from Book II of the Reverend John Milton’s PARADISE LOST: HDT WHAT? INDEX
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A WEEK: Still the drum rolled on, and stirred our blood to fresh PEOPLE OF extravagance that night. The clarion sound and clang of corselet and buckler were heard from many a hamlet of the soul, and many A WEEK a knight was arming for the fight behind the encamped stars. “Before each van Prick forth the aery knights, and couch their spears Till thickest legions close; with feats of arms MILTON From either end of Heaven the welkin burns.” ______Away! away! away! away! Ye have not kept your secret well, I will abide that other day, Those other lands ye tell. Has time no leisure left for these, The acts that ye rehearse? Is not eternity a lease For better deeds than verse? ’T is sweet to hear of heroes dead, To know them still alive, But sweeter if we earn their bread, And in us they survive. Our life should feed the springs of fame With a perennial wave, As ocean feeds the babbling founts Which find in it their grave. Ye skies drop gently round my breast, And be my corselet blue, Ye earth receive my lance in rest, My faithful charger you; Ye stars my spear-heads in the sky, My arrow-tips ye are; I see the routed foemen fly, My bright spears fixed are. Give me an angel for a foe, Fix now the place and time, And straight to meet him I will go Above the starry chime. And with our clashing bucklers’ clang The heavenly spheres shall ring, While bright the northern lights shall hang Beside our tourneying. And if she lose her champion true, Tell Heaven not despair, For I will be her champion new, Her fame I will repair.
Monday 2nd At noon we rested under the shade of a willow or maple which hung over the water, and drew forth a melon from our repast — and contemplated at our leisure the lapse of the river and of human life. The still unravelled fate of men ministered to the entertainment of our chance hours. As that current with its floating twigs and leaves so did all things pass in review before us– Far away in cities and marts and on this very stream the old routine was proceeding still– At length we would throw our rinds into the water for the fishes to nibble — and add our breath to the life of living men. Our melons lay at home on the sands of the merrimack, and our potatoes in the sun and water on the bottom of the boat — looked like a fruit of the country. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL Monday Sep 2nd Now & then we scared up a king-fisher or a summer duck.
“On Monday afternoon the Thoreaus saw their first basswood, a tree new to them. This reminded them that they had reached a strange land quite unlike Concord. Thoreau speculated on the wonderful variety of nature’s creations. The selection which follows cannot be called good science as far as the origin of species is concerned. If food chains are considered, a different light may be thrown on Thoreau’s remarks. Leaves may be eaten by insects, which in turn are consumed by song birds, and the song birds may be devoured by a hawk. Thus the leaves may truly become a hawk.”
[Monday of WEEK] In all her products, Nature only develops her simplest germs. One would say that it was no great stretch of invention to create birds. The hawk which now takes his flight over the top of the wood was at first, perchance, only a leaf which fluttered in its aisles. From the rustling leaves she came in the course of ages to the loftier flight and clear carol of the bird.
During the year that Henry and John boated down the Concord River, the high water that made their trip possible was being challenged in court. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts had recently established a special adjudication procedure for claims against dam owners and canal operators who caused flowage on private lands. Taking advantage of this new legislation, which allowed more than one year after a change to make claims, the meadowland owners “commenced a fresh suit at Common Law” against the Middlesex Canal for the years 1799, one year after the dam was built, and 1829, one year after it was raised. Their case was dismissed. — Professor Robert M. Thorson, THE BOATMAN, page 78 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL September 3, Tuesday: Clara Wieck moved in with her mother in Berlin.
The 1st anniversary of Frederick Douglass’s freedom, which we may well elect to celebrate in lieu of an unknown slave birthday.
“It has been a source of great annoyance to me, never to have a birthday.”
Edmund Quincy Sewall, Jr. wrote in his diary (per the Sewall Family Papers at the American Antiquarian Society): Tuesday September 3d. I have shamefully neglected my Journal lately, and have let several weeks pass unnoticed. Uncle Henry came with his son John who was about to enter college. He went to meeting in the forenoon and went off to Cohasset in a hired chaise in the afternoon. I staid at home to see them off.
September 3: Tuesday We passed a boat before sunrise, and though we could not distinguish it for the fog, the few dull sounds we heard, carried with them a sense of weight and irresistible motion which was impressive. {Four-fifths page blank} If ever our idea of a friends is realised it will be in some broad and generous natural person — as frank as the daylight — in whose presence our behavior will be as simple and unconstrained, as the wanderer amid the recesses of the hills. The language of excitement is picturesque merely — but not so with enthusiasm You must be calm before you can utter oracles– What was the excitement of the Delphic priestess compared with the calm wisdom of Socrates! God is calm Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity. {Two-fifths page blank} Rivers are the natural highways of all nations, not only levelling and removing obstacles from the path of the traveller — quenching his thirst — and bearing him on their bosom, but conducting him through the most interesting scenery of a country most rich in natural phenomena, through the most populous portions of the globe where the animal and vegetable kingdoms attain the greatest perfection. {Three-fifths page blank} We passed a man on the shore fishing with a long birch pole and a dog at his side — standing like caryatides HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL under the cope of heaven– We passed so near as to agitate his float with our oars, and drive luck away for an indefinite term — but when we had rowed a mile as straight as an arrow with our faces toward him, he still stood with the proverbial patience of a fisherman the only object to relieve the eye in the extended meadow — under the other side of heaven — and there would stand abiding his luck — till he took his way home at evening with his fish — — He and his dog! (it was a superior contemplative dog) may they fare well. I trust we shall meet again. He was no chimera or vision to me. When we had passed the bridge we saw men haying far off in the meadows, their heads moving like the herds grass. In the distance the wind seemed to bend all alike.9
Plum Island, at the mouth of this river [The Merrimack] to whose formation, perhaps, these very banks have sent their contribution, is a similar desert of drifting sand, of various colors, blown into graceful curves by the wind. It is a mere sand-bar exposed, stretching nine miles parallel to the coast, and, exclusive of the marsh on the inside, rarely more than half a mile wide. There are but half a dozen houses on it, and it is almost without a tree, or a sod, or any green thing with which a country-man is familiar. The thin vegetation stands half buried in sand as in drifting snow. The only shrub, the beach plum, which gives the island its name, grows but a few feet high; but this is so abundant that parties of a hundred at once come from the mainland and down the Merrimack, in September, pitch their tents, and gather the plums, which are good to eat raw and to preserve. The graceful and delicate beach pea, too, grows abundantly amid the sand, and several strange moss-like and succulent plants. The island for its whole length is scalloped into low hills, not more than twenty feet high, by the wind, and, excepting a faint trail on the edge of the marsh, is as trackless as Sahara. There are dreary bluffs of sand and valleys plowed by the wind, where you might expect to discover the bones of a caravan. Schooners come from Boston to load with the sand for masons’ uses, and in a few hours the wind obliterates all traces of their work. Yet you have only to dig a foot or two anywhere to come to fresh water; and you are surprised to learn that woodchucks abound here, and foxes are found, though you see not where they can burrow or hide themselves. I have walked down the whole length of its broad beach at low tide, at which time alone you can find a firm ground to walk on, and probably Massachusetts does not furnish a more grand and dreary walk. On the seaside there are only a distant sail and a few coots to break the grand monotony. A solitary stake stuck up, or a sharper sand-hill than usual, is remarkable as a landmark for miles; while for music you hear only the ceaseless sound of the surf, and the dreary peep of the beach-birds. BEACH PLUM PLUM ISLAND
9.The poet W.H. Auden has in 1962 brought forward a snippet from this day’s entry as:
THE VIKING BOOK OF APHORISMS, A PERSONAL SELECTION BY W.H. AUDEN…
Pg Topic Aphorism Selected by Auden out of Thoreau
6 7 The Talker The language of excitement is picturesque merely — but not so with enthusiasm You must be calm before you can utter oracles. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Near Litchfield, Thoreau saw an extensive desert area where sand had blown into dunes ten and twelve feet high. This recalled to his mind Plum Island, which he had visited in the past, for he thought some of this desert sand might well be borne down the Merrimack to its mouth not far from Newburyport, and there form part of that island so well known to the birding clan. Of course, Thoreau did not come nearer to Plum Island on this river trip than the junction of the Concord and Merrimack, some thirty miles away. But Thoreau’s description of Plum Island is especially interesting to bird watchers. In his GUIDE TO BIRD FINDING, Dr. Olin Sewall Pettingill, Jr., calls this one of the most famous ornithological areas of the eastern United States. Birds traveling north or south along the Atlantic coast funnel over this area, and multitudes drop down to rest and feed there. A trip to this island is particularly rewarding during the peak of shorebird migration in spring and fall. The half-dozen houses of Thoreau’s day have multiplied many times over. Nevertheless, ripe beach plums may still be picked there in September. Untracked sand, particularly in winter or after storms, may still be found. The fact that Thoreau mentioned only a few beach birds running on the sand and some coots (scoters) riding the waves behind the surf reveals clearly that his interest in birds was dormant when he visited Plum Island. C. Russell Mason, then Executive Director of the Massachusetts Audubon Society, after an early September visit to Plum Island with Dr. Roger Tory Peterson, wrote, “Every shore-bird in the book can be found on Plum Island, and as for gulls, if rare species appear on the north-east coast, they will almost surely be spotted at Plum Island.” Plum Island is one of the most important areas covered by the Newburyport Christmas Bird Count. This Count is made at a time when weather is severe and one would expect bird life in that bleak area to be at a low ebb. Yet on the 1962 Count when winds blew off the ocean and the temperature scarcely rose into the thirties, when snow covered the ground and all the ponds were frozen, eighty-eight species and about twenty-eight thousand individual birds were seen. -Cruickshank, Helen Gere. THOREAU ON BIRDS (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1964) HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL September 3: Tuesday The banks of the Merrimack are steep and clayey for the most part and trickling with water — and where a spring oozes out a few feet above the level of the river, the boatmen cut a trough out of a slab with their axes and place it so as to receive the water, and fill their jugs conveniently. Bursting out from under the root of a pine or a rock, sometimes this purer and cooler water is collected into a little basin close to the edge of and level with the river — a fountain head of the Merrimack.– so near along lifes stream lie the fountains of innocence and youth — making fertile the margin of its turbid stream. Let the voyageur replenish his vessel at these uncontaminated sources.– Some youthful spring perchance still empties with tinkling music into the oldest river, even when it is falling into the sea. I imagine that its music is distinguished by the river gods from the general lapse of the stream and falls sweeter upon their ears in proportion as it is nearer the sea. As thus the evaporations of the river feed these unsuspected springs which filter through its banks so our aspirations fall back again in springs upon the margin of our life’s stream to refresh and purify it. The routine of these boatmen’s lives suggests to me how indifferent all employments are, and how any may be infinitely noble and poetic in the eyes of men, if pursued with sufficient boyancy and freedom. For the most part they carry down wood and bring back stores for the country, piling the wood so as to leave a little shelter in one part where they may sleep, or retire from the rain if they choose. I can hardly imagine a more healthy employment, or more favorable to contemplation, or the observation of nature.– In no weather subject to great exposure — as the lumberers of Maine — and in summer inhaling the healthfullest breezes. But slightly encumbered with clothing — frequently with the head and feet bare. From morning till night the boatman walks backwards and forwards on the side of his boat, now stooping with his shoulder to the pole, then drawing it back slowly to set it again — meanwhile moving steadily and majestically forward through an endless valley, amid an ever changing scenery, — now distinguishing his course for a mile or two — and now finding himself shut in by a sudden turn of the river, in a small woodland lake. All the phenomena which surround him are simple and grand– The graceful majestic motion of his craft, must communicate something of the same to his character. So will he over forward to his objects on land. There is something impressive and stately in this motion which he assists. He feels the slow irresistible motion under him with pride as if it were the impetus of his own energy. At noon his horn is heard echoing from shore to shore to give notice of his approach — to the farmer’s wife with whom he is to take his dinner — frequently in such retired scenes that only muskrats and king fisher’s seem to hear.
Tuesday sep 3d About noon we passed the village of Merrimac were some carpenters were at work mending a scow on the shore. The strokes of their mallets echoed from shore to shore and up and down the river, and their tools gleamed in the sun a quarter of a mile from us, which made boat building seem as ancient and honorable as agriculture, and we realized how there might be a naval as well as pastoral life– We thought of a traveller building his boat on the banks of the stream under the heavens– As we glided past at a distance these out-door workmen seemed to have added some dignity to their labor by its publickness — it seemed a part of the industry of nature like the work of hornets and mud wasps The whole history of commerce was made plain in this scow turned bottom upward on the shore. Thus men begin to go down upon the sea in ships. There was Iolchos and the launching of the Argo. ——
The waves slowly beat Just to keep the noon sweet And no sound is floated oer Save the mallet on shore Which echoing on high Seems a caulking the sky We passed some shag-bark trees on the opposite shore skirting the waters edge. The first I had ever seen On the sandy shore of the Merrimack opposite to Tyngsboro, we first discovered the blue bell– A pleasant sight it must be to the Scotchman in Lowell mills. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL The moon now rises to her absolute rule, And the husbandman and hunter Acknowledge her for their mistress. Asters and golden reign in the fields And the life everlasting withers not. The fields are reaped and shorn of their pride But an inward verdure still crowns them The thistle scatters its down on the pool And yellow leaves clothe the vine– And nought disturbs the serious life of men. But behind the sheaves and under the sod There lurks a ripe fruit which the reapers have not gathered The true harvest of the year Which it bears forever. With fondness annually watering and maturing it. But man never severs the stalk Which bears this palatable fruit.
Mills of Lowell The hardest material obeys the same law with the most fluid. Trees are but rivers of sap and woody fibre flowing from the atmosphere and emptying in to the earth by their trunks — as their roots flow upward to the surface. And in the heavens there are rivers of stars and milky ways– There are rivers of rock on the surface and rivers of ore in the bowels of the earth. From this point the river runs perfectly straight for a mile or more to Carlisle bridge — which consists of 20 piers — and in the distance its surface looks like a cobweb gleaming in the sun. {Two-fifths page blank} In the morning the whole river and adjacent country was covered by a dense fog — through which the smoke of our fire curled up like a subtler mist. But before we had rowed many rods the fog dispersed as by magic and only a slight steam curled up from the surface of the water.– We reached the falls in Billerica before noon, where we left the river for the canal, which runs six miles through the woods to the Merrimack at Middlesex. As we did not care to loitre in this part of our voyage while one ran along the tow path drawing the boat by a cord, the other kept it off from the shore with a pole, so that we accomplished the whole distance in little more than an hour. There is some abruptness and want of harmony in this scenery since the canal is not of equal date with the forests and meadows it runs through. You miss the conciliatory influence of time on land and water. In the lapse of ages no doubt nature will recover and idemnify herself. Gradually fit shrubs and flowers will be planted along the borders Already the king-fisher sits on a pine over the water, and the dace and pickerel swim below. All works pass directly out of the hands of the architect. and though he has bungled she will perfect them at last. Her own fish-hawks hover over our fish-ponds HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL were pleased to find that our boat would float in M. water By noon we were fairly launched upon the bosom of the merrimack — having passed through the locks at Middlesex — and felt as if we were on the ocean stream itself. Beaver river comes in a little lower down draining the meadows of Pelham, Windham, and Londonderry, the Irish settlers of which latter town were the first to introduce the potatoe into N.E. {One-fourth page blank} POTATO Two men called out from the steep and wooded banks to be taken as far as Nashua but we were too deeply laden– As we glided away from them with even sweeps while the fates scattered oil in our course — as the sun was sinking behind the willows of the distant shore, — we could see them far off over the water — running along the shore and climbing over the rocks and fallen trees like ants till they reached a spot where a broad stream poured its placid tribute into the Merrimack– When a mile distant we could see them preparing to ford the stream– But whether they got safely through or went round by the source, we never learned. Thus nature puts the busiest merchant to pilgrim’s shifts. She soon drives us to staff and scrip and scallop shell. The Mississippi the Nile the Ganges can their personality be denied? have they not a personal history in the annals of the world– These journeying atoms from the andes and ural and mountains of the moon — by villas — villages — and mists — with the moccasined tread of an Indian warrior. Their sources not yet drained. The mountains of the moon send their tribute to the pasha as they did to Pharoah without fail. though he most collect the rest of his revenue at the point of the bayonnette Consider the phenomena of morn — or eve — and you will say that Nature has perfected herself by an eternity of practice– Evening stealing over the fields– The stars come to bathe in retired waters The shadows of the trees creeping farther and farther into the meadows. And a myriad phenomena beside. Occasionally a canal boat with its large white sail glided around a promontory a quarter of a mile before us and changed the scene in an instant– Occasionally attaching ourselves to its side we would float back in company awhile — interchanging a word with the voyageurs and obtaining a draught of cooler water from their stores. Occasionally we had to muster all our energy to get round a point where the river broke rippling over rocks and the maples trailed their branches in the stream. The rain had pattered all night And now the whole country wept, the drops falling in the river, and on the alder, and in the pastures, but instead of any bow in the heavens there was the trill of the tree sparrow all the morning. The cheery faith of this little bird atoned for the silence of the whole woodland quire. MIDDLESEX CANAL
Tuesday– At intervals when there was a suitable reach in the river — we caught sight of the Goffstown mountain — the Indian Un-can-nu-nuc rising before us, on the left of the river– “The far blue mountain.” {One-fourth page blank} We soon after saw the Piscataquoag emptying in on our left — and heard the falls of Amoskieg above. It was here according to tradition that the sachem Wonolanset resided, and when at war with the mohawks his tribe are said to have concealed their provisions in the cavities of the rocks in the upper part of the falls The descent is 54 feet in half a mile. The manchester manufacturing company have constructed a canal here — through which we passed. Above the falls the river spreads out into a lake — stretching up toward Hooksett– We could see several canal boats at intervals of a mile or more standing up to Hooksett with a light breeze. With their broad sails set they moved slowly up the stream in the sluggish and fitful breeze — as if impelled by some mysterious counter current — like Antediluvian birds. A grand motion so slow and steady. For the most part they were returning empty, or at most with a few passengers aboard. As we rowed near to one which was just getting under way, the steers man offered to take us in tow — but when we came along side we found that he intended to take us on board, as otherwise we should retard his own voyage too much — but as we were too heavy to be lifted aboard — we left him and proceeded up the stream a half a mile to the shade of some maples to spend our noon In the course of half an hour several boats passed up the river at intervals of half a mile — and among them came the boat we have mentioned, keeping the middle of the stream and when within speaking distance the steers man called out if we would come along side now he would take us in tow. But not heeding their taunts we made no haste to give chase until our preparations were made — by which time they were a quarter of a mile ahead. Then with our own sails set — and plying our four oars, we were soon along side of them — and we glided close under their side, we quietly promised if they would throw us a rope that we would take them in tow. And then we gradually overhauled each boat in succession untill we had the river to ourselves again. No man was ever party to a secure and settled friendship — it is no more a constant phenomenon than meteors and lightning– It is a war of positions of silent tactics. With a fair wind and the current in our favor we commenced our return voyage, sitting at ease in our boat and conversing, or in silence watching, for the last sign of each reach in the river, as a bend concealed it from view. The lumbermen who were throwing down wood from the top of the high bank, 30 or 40 feet above the water, that it might be sent down the river — paused in their work to watch our retreating sail. {One-fifth page blank} In summer I live out of doors and have only impulses and feelings which are all for action– And must wait for the quiet & stillness and longer nights of Autumn and Winter, before any thought will subside. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL ______I mark the summer’s swift decline The springing sward its grave clothes weaves Oh could I catch the sounds remote Could I but tell to human ear The strains which on the breezes float And sing the requiem of the dying year. None of the feathered race have yet realized my conception of the woodland depths. I had fancied that their plumage would assume stronger and more dazzling colors, like the brighter tints of evening, in proportion as I advanced farther into the darkness and solitude of the forest. The red election, brought from their depth, did in some degree answer my expectation — gleaming like a coal of fire amid the pines. In Autumn what may be termed the dry colors preponderate in Summer the moist. The Asters and golden rod are the livery which nature wears at present. The golden rod alone seem to express all the ripeness of the autumn, and sheds its mellow lustre on the fields as if the now declining summer sun had bequeathed its hues to it. Asters everywhere spot the fields like so many fallen stars.
Thoreau shot a Passenger Pigeon, one of a large flock near the mouth of the Souhegan River, and broiled it for supper. Scientists are not sure why these birds, once fantastically abundant, became extinct. Some attribute it to excessive slaughter on the breeding grounds and throughout the year. Some believe the destruction of the beech and oak forests was largely responsible. Some believe that the numbers having been severely reduced by overshooting, the species was no longer able to reproduce. Thoreau’s concern about the dead pigeon was philosophical. Did he have a right to kill such a beautiful bird? Having killed it, he decided it should be eaten and not wasted.? Though Thoreau seldom saw a dead bird in the woods or fields, had he visited a nesting place of colonial birds, or walked along the drift of an ocean beach, he would have seen many dead birds. Probably the majority of song birds are finally caught and eaten by other creatures. Most of those that do die of disease or age, being quite small, are eaten by insects, mice, or even snakes, for the latter have been seen eating birds killed on highways. Certainly birds are never translated, as some of the Old Testament prophets were said to have been, being taken directly from earth to heaven without dying. –Cruickshank, Helen Gere. THOREAU ON BIRDS (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1964)
[Tuesday of WEEK. American Passenger Pigeon Ectopistes migratorius near the mouth of the Souhegan River.] During the heat of the day, we rested on a large island a mile above the mouth of this river, pastured by a herd of cattle, with steep banks and scattered elms and oaks, and a sufficient channel for canal- boats on each side. When we made a fire to boil some rice for our dinner, the flames spreading amid the dry grass, and the smoke curling silently upward and casting grotesque shadows on the ground, seemed phenomena of the noon, and we fancied that we progressed up the stream without effort, and as naturally as the wind and tide went down, not outraging the calm days by unworthy bustle or impatience. The woods on the neighboring shore were alive with pigeons, which were moving south, looking for mast, but now, like ourselves, spending their noon in the shade. We could hear the slight, wiry, winnowing sound of their wings as they changed their roosts from time to time, and their gentle and tremulous cooing. They sojourned with us during the noon-tide, greater travellers far than we. You may frequently discover a single pair sitting upon the lower branches of the white pine in the depths of the woods, at this hour of the day, so silent and solitary, and with such a hermit-like HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL appearance, as if they had never strayed beyond its skirts, while the acorn which was gathered in the forests of Maine is still undigested in their crops. We obtained one of these handsome birds, which lingered too long upon its perch, and plucked and broiled it here with some other game, to be carried along for our supper; for, beside provisions which we carried with us, we depended mainly on the river and forest for our supply. It is true, it did not seem to be putting this bird to its right use to pluck off its feathers, and extract its entrails, and broil its carcass on the coals; but we heroically persevered, nevertheless, waiting for further information. The same regard for Nature which excited our sympathy for her creatures nerved our hands to carry through what we had begun. For we would be honorable to the party we deserted; we would fulfill fate, and so at length, perhaps, detect the secret innocence of these incessant tragedies which Heaven allows. Nature herself has not provided the most graceful end for her creatures. What becomes of all these birds that people the air and forest for our solacement? The sparrows seem always chipper, never infirm. We do not see their bodies lie about. Yet there is a tragedy at the end of each one of their lives. They must perish miserably, not one of them is translated. True, “not a sparrow falleth to the ground without our Heavenly Father’s knowledge,” but they do fall, nevertheless. That night the Thoreau brothers camped “In [the township of] Bedford, on the west bank [of the Merrimack River], opposite a large rock, above Coos Falls.” Did they, due to rainy weather, completely miss the northern lights display of that night? The next morning, as they shoved off, they would see a Green-backed Heron Butorides striatus. Ross/Adams commentary
TIMELINE OF A WEEK HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL September 13, Friday: At the annual convention of the Middlesex County education Association, in Concord, Horace Mann, Sr. was orating about “the modern gloomy view of our democratical institutions,” and drawing out some obvious inferences about “the importance of Schools.” Waldo Emerson sat there ruminating on the fact that the dreary evening of oratory was emblematic of the dreary daytime learning experiences being provided by these people to their charges, and contrasting this in his mind with the sort of learning experiences which he fancied that the adventurous Thoreau brothers were currently providing themselves with in their boat upon the waters of the Concord River and the Middlesex Canal and the Merrimack River.
It was on this day that the adventurous Thoreau brothers began to retrace their path, back toward their family’s home in Concord, Massachusetts. Why would you suppose Henry would spend so many of the pages in Week describing the journey out, and so few describing the return trip? It seems this is a known characteristic of all exploration literature: TIMELINE OF A WEEK Coming back is not only essential to the traveller’s personal survival: it is also essential to his historic future. For, in so far as the journey has to become a journal, a map or a drawing in order to enter spatial history, going back is the traveller’s opportunity to check his facts. It is analogous to the process of revision. Indeed, these two processes are very closely related. If, for instance, we look at the journals of Sturt or Stuart or Mitchell, all of which recount double journeys, outwards and backwards, we find that a very small proportion of the text is given over to describing the return journey. The larger part of their journals is taken up with a narrative of the journey out. If, as I have suggested, the journal is not primarily a description of the country, but a symbolic representation of track-making, this is understandable. But it does not mean that the return journey has been left out: rather, it has been incorporated into the account of the outward journey as a series of marginal interpolations, erasures and name changes which, at a yet later stage of revision, can be woven into the narrative to increase its dramatic interest. The seamlessness of the journals is a literary illusion. Unfortunately, though, it has too often been taken at face value, with the result that the reflective attitude the explorer and settler literature embodies has been overlooked. Instead, the historical experience it records has been subjected to an “I came, I saw, I conquered” mythologizing, as if the explorers did not ride in elaborate circles, taking hours and sometimes days to get back where they had last begun; as if pioneers did not reconnoitre, did not go back to town, stake legal claims, take out loans, buy supplies and (perhaps only after half a dozen journeys, and even perhaps after rejecting half a dozen other places) eventually set about the business of making a home for themselves. And not only have the backtrackings implicit in such spatial experiences been ironed out, but the order of them has been linearized, subjected to a one-way imperial chronology. But spatial history does not advance. Or, better, it only advances by reflection, by going back and looking again at already trodden ground. The ground is not virgin: it already has a history. It is not a question of correcting what is already there, of replacing it with a better route. It is a question of interpretation, of attempting to recapture and evoke more fully “the world of the text” — not just the HDT WHAT? INDEX
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biographical and stylistic history of the journals, but the “world” they refer to. If this process is not to become a tyranny, effacing what it attempts to describe, if it is to avoid falling into the positivist fallacy of supposing its own account of event decisively replaces the original one, then it is essential that it respect the difference of the historical tests it deals with. We can illustrate this by the journey analogy: however many times an explorer’s biographer takes the route first taken by the explorer, he can never take it for the first time. The route has already been constituted for him. In this sense, his journey is always a return journey; and, if he ignores this, imagining himself in the explorer’s place, the result may be good fiction, but not good history. For, by a too zealous and unreflective imitation, the explorer’s experience has been rendered infinitely repeatable. It has been translated into an experience anyone can have: it is but a matter of time before the television crews and the motorcyclists will be there. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL September 13, Friday: Rowed and sailed to Concord — about 50 miles. I shall not soon forget my first DOG night in a tent — how the distant barking of dogs for so many still hours revealed to me the riches of the night. — Who would not be a dog and bay the moon? —
September 13th we sailed along as gently and steadily as the clouds through the atmosphere over our heads — watching the receding shores and the motions of our sails. The north wind stepped readily into the harness we had provided for it — and pulled us along with good will– We were not tired of watching the motions of our sail — so thin and yet so full of life, now bending to some generous impulse of the breeze. And then fluttering and flapping with a kind of human suspense. We watched the play of its pulse as if it were our own blood beating there. It was a scale on which the varying temperature of distant atmospheres was graduated. It was some attraction that the breeze it played with had been out of doors so long. Our lives are much like a sail alternately steady and fluttering — and always at the mercy of the breeze.
We had gone to bed in summer, and we awoke in autumn; for summer passes into autumn in some unimaginable point of time, like the turning of a leaf.... As the mist gradually rolled away, and we were relieved from the trouble of watching for rocks, we saw by the flitting clouds, by the first russet tinge on the hills, by the rushing river, the cottages on shore, and the shore itself, so coolly fresh and shining with dew, and later in the day, by the hue of the grape-vine, the goldfinch on the willow, the flickers flying in flocks, and when we passed near enough to the shore, as we fancied, by the faces of men, that the fall had commenced....
Friday We skimmed lightly over the water before a smacking breeze with all sails set– The wind in the horizon seemed to roll in a flood over valley and plain — and every tree bent to the blast, and the mountains — like school-boys turned their cheeks to the blast. {One-fifth page blank} We lay listening to the sound of the current We already knew — before we had looked abroad — by the fresh wind that was blowing, the rustling of the leaves and the rippling of the water that there was a change in the weather. The mist gradually rolled away, and we were relieved from the trouble of watching for rocks. We soon passed the mouth of the Souhegan with a fair wind, and the village of Merrimack.
Friday When we awoke the face of nature seemed to have undergone a change– We heard the sigh of the first autumnal wind, and saw the first tinge of russet on the hills — even the water seemed to have got a grayer hue. We saw by the flitting clouds, by the rushing river, and the lights in the cottages on shore– We saw by the faces of men that the fall had commenced. The grape vine — the goldfinch in the willow — the flickers flying in flocks, and the piping of the plover — all repeated the tale. Cottages looked more snug and comfortable, and their tapers told more tales– We looked in vain for the south wind. It proved a cool breezy autumn day, and by the time we reached Nashua we were obliged to sit muffled in our cloaks, while the wind and current carried us along. The inhabitants left their houses to gaze at us from the banks. I who sail now in a boat, have I not sailed in a thought? V chaucer Shad Salmon and bass are still taken in this river as well as at the mouth of the Concord.
[Return to Concord, Friday evening of WEEK] The sun was just setting behind the edge of a wooded hill, so rich a sunset as would never have ended but for some reason unknown to men, and to be marked with brighter colors than ordinary in the scroll of time. Though the shadows of the hills were beginning to steal over the stream, the whole valley undulated with mild light, purer and more memorable than the noon. For so the day bids farewell even to solitary vales uninhabited by man. Two herons (Ardea herodias), with their long and slender limbs relieved against the sky, were seen traveling high over our heads, -their lofty and silent flight, as they were wending their way at evening, surely not to alight in any marsh on the earth’s surface, but, perchance, on the other side of our atmosphere, a symbol for the ages to study, whether impressed upon the sky or sculptured amid the hieroglyphics of Egypt. Bound for some northern meadow, they held their stately, stationary flight, like the storks in the picture, and disappeared at length behind the clouds. Dense flocks of blackbirds were winging their way along the river’s course, as if on a short evening pilgrimage to some shrine of theirs, or to celebrate so fair a sunset. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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September 14, Saturday: With the Thoreau brothers back in town, Waldo Emerson heard of their great summer adventure down the Concord River and up the Middlesex Canal and the Merrimack River, possibly from Dr. Josiah Bartlett, and considered that it must truly have been a learning experience, of a class with being able to grow up as a farm boy rather than a city boy:
An education in things is not: we are all involved in the condemnation of words, an Age of words. We are shut up in schools & college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years & come out at last with a bellyfull of words & do not know a thing. We cannot use our hands or our legs or our eyes or our arms. We do not know an edible root in the woods. We cannot tell our course by the stars nor the hour of the day by the sun. It is well if we can swim & skate. We are afraid of a horse, of a cow, of a dog, of a cat, of a spider. Far better was the Roman rule to teach a boy nothing that he could not learn standing. Now here are my wise young neighbors who instead of getting like the wordmen into a railroad-car where they have not even the activity of holding the reins, have got into a boat which they have built with their own hands, with sails which they have contrived to serve as a tent by night, & gone up the river Merrimack to live by their wits on the fish of the stream & the berries of the wood. My worthy neighbor Dr Bartlett expressed a true parental instinct when he desired to send his boy with them to learn something. the farm, the farm is the right school. The reason of my deep respect for the farmer is that he is a realist & not a dictionary. The farm is a piece of the world, the School house is not. The farm by training the physical rectifies & invigorates the metaphysical & moral nature.
Between this day and the 17th, Waldo Emerson manifested to his journal that his readings about the Peace Testimony of the Religious Society of Friends had left him in the approximate state of awareness of a 9-year- old boy playing with a sabre made out of a stick:
I do not like to speak to the Peace Society if so I am to restrain me in so extreme a privilege as the use of the sword & bullet. For the peace of the man who has forsworn the use of the bullet seems to me not quite peace, but a canting impotence: but with knife & pistol in my hands, if I, from greater bravery & honor, cast them aside, then I know the glory of peace. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1840
Spring: The steamboat Herald which had sunk in the Merrimack River and been refitted as a side-wheel excursion steamer capable of taking 500 passengers on an outing was carried overland down and around Pawtucket Falls, and when the water rose in the spring it was floated down to Newburyport and sailed to New-York harbor — where it became a ferry.10
THE FERRY AT BROOKLYN PIER IN 1840
10. We may wonder whether it was one of the ferries that Walt Whitman rode between Manhattan and Brooklyn: “Specimen Days”
MY PASSION FOR FERRIES Living in Brooklyn or New York city from this time forward, my life, then, and still more the following years, was curiously identified with Fulton ferry, already becoming the greatest of its sort in the world for general importance, volume, variety, rapidity, and picturesqueness. Almost daily, [Page 701] later, (’50 to ’60,) I cross’d on the boats, often up in the pilot-houses where I could get a full sweep, absorbing shows, accompaniments, surroundings. What oceanic currents, eddies, underneath — the great tides of humanity also, with ever-shifting movements. Indeed, I have always had a passion for ferries; to me they afford inimitable, streaming, never-failing, living poems. The river and bay scenery, all about New York island, any time of a fine day — the hurrying, splashing sea-tides — the changing panorama of steamers, all sizes, often a string of big ones outward bound to distant ports — the myriads of white-sail’d schooners, sloops, skiffs, and the marvelously beautiful yachts — the majestic sound boats as they rounded the Battery and came along towards 5, afternoon, eastward bound — the prospect off towards Staten island, or down the Narrows, or the other way up the Hudson — what refreshment of spirit such sights and experiences gave me years ago (and many a time since.) My old pilot friends, the Balsirs, Johnny Cole, Ira Smith, William White, and my young ferry friend, Tom Gere — how well I remember them all. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL Steamboat service was established between Norwich CT and New-York harbor. At Norwich the steamboatSTEAMBOAT passengers would be able to connect with the Worcester-Norwich RR, and at Worcester with the Boston-Worcester RR. –But the river ice would prove not to be manageable this far upstream.
When the Cunard Steamship Line selected Boston as its North American terminus, Boston became a major US port for immigrants during the decade of the 1840s.11
When Herman Melville’s brother’s business, which was his source of employment, went bankrupt in this year,
11. Until, that is, lack of good rail connections to the interior caused it to lose out to other ports. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL he would be traveling to Illinois to seek opportunities there, part of the way on a Mississippi steamboat.
The Fort Snelling surgeon, Dr. John Emerson, was at his own request and for the benefit of his health transferred from the Minnesota Territory to a post in Florida — where a war upon the Seminole natives HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL was at the moment taking place. (Dr. Emerson would find Florida also to be bad for his health. He had a delicate constitution, seemingly fitted only for travel from post to post.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1843
The Middlesex Canal officially closed (although boat traffic would continue until 1852). HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1845
An inclined plane was introduced on the Morris Canal, but failed to work properly.
John Jervis did consulting work on the Boston Aqueduct.
William Roberts became canal engineer and Trustee’s Agent for Ohio’s Sandy and Beaver Canal.
Charles Ellet became a publicity agent for the Schuylkill Navigation Company.
The wooden Pittsburgh Aqueduct on the Pennsylvania Main Line Canal was replaced by John Roebling’s cable-suspension version.
Canada’s Beauharnois Canal was completed, avoiding rapids in the St. Lawrence River above Montreal.
The enlarged Welland Canal opened with 27 stone locks replacing 40 of wood.
Full-scale work on the Illinois and Michigan Canal resumed.
Estimates were published for locks on Maine’s Georges River. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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A.&A. Lawrence and Company, with Amos Lawrence’s brother Abbott Lawrence at its head, began to establish the industrial town of Lawrence, Massachusetts, naming this collection of immigrant tenement structures and factory buildings huddled alongside waterfalls in honor of Abbott Lawrence, who as a director of the Essex Company was in control of the town’s enormous millrace constructed on the north side of the riverbed of the Merrimack River at its conjunction with the Shawsheen River, which provided the power for its factories, and who afterward would become president of this town’s Atlantic Cotton Mills and Pacific Mills.
In recognition of the significant generosity of the Lawrence family, Groton Academy petitioned the Massachusetts legislature to change their school’s name to “Lawrence Academy at Groton” (it was the least they could do). HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1847
May 22, Saturday: Dam construction proceeded on the Merrimack River, for water power for the mills of Lawrence:
George Douglas Brewerton joined the US Army as a 2d Lieutenant. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1850
April 19, Friday: Lexington and Concord staged a joint celebration at the site of the former Old North Bridge. There were special trains from Boston, and an enormous pavilion had been erected in the center of Concord. The orator Robert Rantoul reminded the attenders at this celebration “how delightful is the duty which devolves on us to guard the beacon-fire of liberty whose flames our fathers kindled” in the process of “occupying such a continent.” PATRIOTS’ DAY
Amos Baker was celebrated as the “last surviving” veteran of this fateful skirmish (of course, no-one has ever thought to ask whether at this point there still remained any survivors, in England).
In the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty Convention Between the United States and Her Britannic Majesty, Great Britain and the United States of America agreed that they would not obtain exclusive control of any Central American ship canal between the two oceans. READ THE FULL TEXT
(They had consulted with no Central Americans about this. In the initial phase US investors would begin the construction of a single-track railroad across the isthmus, and this would require 5 years for completion and occasion the deaths of approximately 6,000 workers.) AMANAPLANACANALPANAMA
19th April Gathered May-Flowers in Acton Dry leaf flowers singularly concealed under the leaves. Our earliest flower. The Jenny Dugan quarter produces May flowers –Mountain Cranberries & yellow violets The time when the peach trees are in blossom is well marked. In April the turtle dove is again met in the woodland path–barely getting out of your way. It is the best way to go across the fields. The smallest hill is worth climbing It is worth the while to know the names of the brooks & ponds and hills – a name enriches your associations wonderfully A man can never say of any landscape that he has exhausted it. When you can put up at a private house not at a tavern. Walk in the morning. The pleasantest part of a winter day is the fore part. A few spruce trees there are in the swamps –with which the shop-keepers decoratd their shops on gala days – with evergreen For which purpose methinks we can ill afford them The pagoda hemlocks which stand here and there a pyramid of verdure. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL View of a pond as Heywoods pond through its outlet –a low light –fallen sky in the woods,– You can do anything with water. The epigaea repens would be better called the April-flower than the May since it is remarkable for blooming in April –earlier than any other flower.– Creeping on the ground– Its lilack scent In the spring of the year June the high grounds in Lincoln–Sudbury and acton around Concord tinted with the peach blossoms–the delicate pink blossom. In April the pigeons are seen again –flying express in small flocks–
THE TASK OF THE HISTORIAN IS TO CREATE HINDSIGHT WHILE INTERCEPTING ANY ILLUSION OF FORESIGHT. NOTHING A HUMAN CAN SEE CAN EVER BE SEEN AS IF THROUGH THE EYE OF GOD. IN A BOOK THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT HISTORY, ISSUED BY RANDOM HOUSE IN 2016, I FIND THE PHRASE “LOOKED UPON FROM THE BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF HISTORY, ....” ONLY A MERE STORYTELLER, NEVER A HISTORIAN, COULD HAVE PENNED SUCH A PHRASE — BECAUSE NO BIRD HAS EVER FLOWN OVER HISTORY.
Middlesex Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1851
October: The Middlesex Canal Corporation, that had not since 1843 collected tolls from any barges that might from time to time attempt to use its waterways, at this point sold to “Charles P. Talbot of Lowell, and Thomas Talbot, of Billerica ... Manufacturers and Copartners ... eleven pieces or parcels of land ... the use of the waters of Concord River, and the mill privileges thereto,” and “voluntarily relinquished the use of, and closed, their said Canal, as a public accommodation.”
One condition of the sale was to maintain high water behind the dam by never letting its surface fall more than three-quarters of an inch below the dam spillway. Using this closed-door legal maneuver, the Commonwealth let a private shareholder corporation convert the flow of the Concord River from a public good to a private source of wealth. By unanimous vote, they later [21 October 1859] requested of the Senate and House of Representatives that they “be discharged from the obligations to keep the canal open for navigable purposes,” and to “surrender the franchise of the corporation.” In legal-speak, they “voluntarily memorialized the Legislature to release the said Proprietors from any further obligation.” — Professor Robert M. Thorson, THE BOATMAN, page 96 HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1852
In Pennsylvania, as part of a canal project, an earthen dam was built on a stream above the town of Johnstown. MORE
Although the Middlesex Canal had officially closed in 1843, it wasn’t until this year that all boat traffic abandoned it.
US canal engineer Nathan S. Roberts died in Lenox, New York.
E.H. Gill left off canal work to become superintendent of the Virginia Central Railroad.
The St. Mary’s Falls Ship Canal Company received a grant of 750,000 acres of US Government land. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1853
Unable to compete with the Boston and Lowell Railroad, the Middlesex Canal ceased operation and began to lay somewhat abandoned upon the landscape. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1858
October 19, Tuesday: From the diary of the family of John C. Darr, originating in North Carolina and crossing the continent on a thousand-mile trek to new lands in Arkansas: “Resumed our journey crossed Clinch river at Lee Ford, dodged another ferry trap, passed Oliver and Robertsville at the Salt works, broke down a wagon, camped near the coal fields, days drive 13 ½ miles.”
The diary recorded the rules of this wagon train: 1. Allow 5 days for each one hundred miles. Bad days, what you can make, or stay in camp if agreed on by all. Real good days, and ground, makes it easy pulling 25 to 30 miles per day, if camp sites come right. 2. Take plenty of guns and ammunition. 3. Recommended — shave your head — Indians have no interest in bald heads. 4. Do not drink whisky or alcohol in freezing weather, or you are liable to freeze to death. 5. Do not fire rifles, only when absolutely necessary. 6. Do not stay up late — get your sleep. Guards are on duty all night. 7. Do not smoke strong pipes and cigars in close places where women and children are. 8. Keep your politics and preaching to yourself. Let the preacher do the preaching. 9. In case of a runaway of teams to wagons, get down and try to ride it out. If you jump, you are liable to get killed, or hurt badly. The horse men will pick the team up, maybe not too far off. 10. All people — young, married, or not, stay inside the circle of wagons in Indian country, or you are liable to lose your scalps. 11. The wagon master will try to pick spots so men and women and children can bathe, clean up, and wash clothes, when possible. 12. Be courteous and help others. 13. Do not be noisy, even with your musical instruments; only when it is safe. 14. When (we) can, we will have recreation and dances. 15. Do your part by all means. Church services will be held when it is considered safe from Indians, and other hazardous conditions.
October 19. A remarkably warm day. I have not been more troubled by the heat this year, being a little more thickly clad than in summer. I walk in the middle of the street for air. The thermometer says 74 at 1 P.M. This must be Indian summer.
P. M.–Ride to Sam Barrett’s mill. Am pleased again to see the cobweb drapery of the mill. Each fine line hanging in festoons from the timbers overhead and on the sides, and on the discarded machinery lying about, is covered and greatly enlarged by a coating of meal, by which its curve is revealed, like the twigs under their ridges of snow in winter. It is like the tassels and tapestry of counterpane and dimity in a lady’s bedchamber, and I pray that the cobwebs may not have been brushed away from the mills which I visit. It is as if I were aboard a man-of-war, and this were the fine “rigging” of the mill, the sails being taken in. All things in the mill wear the same livery or drapery, down to the miller’s hat and coat. I knew Barrett forty rods off in the cranberry meadow by the meal on his hat. Barrett’s apprentice, it seems, makes trays of black birch and of red maple, in a dark room under the mill. I was pleased to see this work done here, a wooden tray is so handsome. You could count the circles of growth on the end of the tray, and the dark heart of the tree was seen at each end above, producing a semicircular ornament. It was a satisfaction to be reminded that we may so easily make our own trenchers as well as fill them. To see the tree reappear on the table, instead of going to the fire or some equally coarse use, is some compensation for having it cut down. The wooden tray is still in demand to chop meat in, at least. If taken from the bench to the kitchen, they are pretty sure to crack, being made green. They should be placed to season for three months on the beams in a barn, said the miller. Hosmer says that the rill between him and Simon Brown generally runs all night and in the fore part of the day, but then dries up, or stops, and runs again at night, or it will run all day in cloudy weather. This is perhaps because there is less evaporation then. It would be interesting to study the phenomena of this rill, so slight that it does not commonly run all day at this season, nor quite run across the road. In the scale of rivers it is at the opposite extreme to the Mississippi, which overflows so widely and makes “crevasses, “and yet it interests out of proportion to its size, and I have no doubt that I might learn some of the laws of the Mississippi more easily by attending to it. Standing on Hunt’s Bridge at 5 o’clock, the sun just ready to set, I notice that its light on my note-book is quite rosy or purple, though the sun itself and its halo are merely yellow, and there is no purple in the western sky. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL Perhaps I might have detected a purple tinge already in the eastern sky, had I looked, and I was exactly at that distance this side the sunset where the foremost of the rosy waves of light roll in the wake of the sun, and the white page was the most suitable surface to reflect it. [Vide September 24, 1851.] The lit river, purling and eddying onward, was spotted with recently fallen leaves, some of which were being carried round by eddies. Leaves are now falling all the country over: some in the swamps, concealing the water; some in woods and on hillsides, where perhaps Vulcan may find them in the spring; some by the wayside, gathered into heaps, where children are playing with them; and some are being conveyed silently seaward on rivers; concealing the water in swamps, where at length they flat out and sink to the bottom, and we never hear of them again, unless we shall see their impressions on the coal of a future geological period. Some add them to their manure-heaps; others consume them with fire. The trees repay the earth with interest for what they have taken from it. The trees are discounting. Standing on the east of the maples on the Common I see that their yellow, compared with the pale lemon-yellow of the elms close by, amounts to a scarlet, without noticing the bright-scarlet cheeks. Some Chenopodium album are purple-stemmed now, like poke long ago; some handsomely striped, purple and green. There is no handsomer shingling and paint than the woodbine at present, covering a whole side of some houses, viz. the house near the almshouse and the brick house. I was the more pleased with the sight of the trays because the tools used were so simple, and they were made by hand, not by machinery. They may make equally good pails, and cheaper as well as faster, at the pail-factory with the home-made ones, but that interests me less, because the man is turned partly into a machine there himself. In this case, the workman’s relation to his work is more poetic, he also shows more dexterity and is more of a man. You come away from the great factory saddened, as if the chief end of man were to make pails; but, in the case of the countryman who makes a few by hand, rainy days, the relative importance of human life and of pails is preserved, and you come away thinking of the simple and helpful life of the man, – you do not turn pale at the thought, – and would fain go to making pails yourself. We admire more the man who can use an axe or adze skillfully than him who can merely tend a machine. When labor is reduced to turning a crank it is no longer amusing nor truly profitable; but let this business become very profitable in a pecuniary sense, and so be “driven,” as the phrase is, and carried on on a large scale, and the man is sunk in it, while only the pail or tray floats; we are interested in it only in the same way as the proprietor or company is. Walked along the dam and the broad bank of the canal with Hosmer. He thought this bank proved that there were strong men here a hundred years ago or more, and that probably they used wooden shovels edged with iron, and perchance home-made, to make that bank with, for he remembered and had used them. Thus rapidly we skip back to the implements of the savage. Some call them “shod shovels.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1859
Henry Thoreau was asked by the River Meadow Association to survey the Concord River from East Sudbury to Billerica, a distance of 22.15 miles, and provide an account of the building of all the bridges on it. The facts obtained would be used at the Supreme Judicial Court trial against the Middlesex Canal during January 1860 (Thoreau made his annotations on a copy of Loammi Baldwin’s 2d map of May 1834, surveyed and drawn originally by B.F. Perham).
Henry Francis Walling’s large 1857 map of Boston and vicinity was revised and reissued in this year.
John Avery, Jr. surveyed the Billerica Mills section of the Concord River, and provided a cross-section of the Fordway Bar and Rapids there. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL October 21, Friday: Henry Thoreau continued writing in his journal about Captain John Brown. In February Thoreau had overheard some local chit-chat about the milk business, and at this point as an explanatory trope he would have reason to compare and contrast the selling of cow’s milk by the quart to the selling of human blood by the quart.
Evidently there had been some remarks in the local newspapers about the speech that John Beeson had delivered earlier that month at Faneuil Hall about the racial horrors that were taking place on the West Coast, for Thoreau remarked upon the reported fact that “In California and Oregon, if not nearer home, it is common to treat men exactly like deer which are hunted, and I read from time to time in Christian newspapers how many ‘bucks,’ that is, Indian men, their sportsmen have killed.”
The Middlesex Canal Corporation, that had not since 1843 collected tolls from any barges that might from time to time attempt to use its waterways, and that had in 1851 sold off its riverside land and water rights and mill privileges on the Concord River, and abandoned all use of its canal as a public accommodation, at this point obtained from the Massachusetts Legislature final dismissal of any and all further responsibility.
One condition of the sale was to maintain high water behind the dam by never letting its surface fall more than three-quarters of an inch below the dam spillway. Using this closed-door legal maneuver, the Commonwealth let a private shareholder corporation convert the flow of the Concord River from a public good to a private source of wealth. By unanimous vote, they later [21 October 1859] requested of the Senate and House of Representatives that they “be discharged from the obligations to keep the canal open for navigable purposes,” and to “surrender the franchise of the corporation.” In legal-speak, they “voluntarily memorialized the Legislature to release the said Proprietors from any further obligation.” — Professor Robert M. Thorson, THE BOATMAN, page 96
October 21. P.M.–To Mason’s pasture. The brook between John Flint’s house and the river is half frozen over. The clump of mountain laurel in Mason’s pasture is of a triangular form, about six rods long by a base of two HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL and a third rods, –or seven or eight square rods, –beside some separate clumps. It is very cold and blustering to-day. It is the breath of winter, which is encamped not far off to the north. A great many shrub oak acorns hold on, and are a darker brown than ever. Insane! A father and seven sons, and several more men besides, –as many, at least, as twelve disciples, –all struck with insanity at once; while the sane tyrant holds with a firmer gripe than ever his four millions of slaves, and a thousand sane editors. his abettors, are saving their country and their bacon! Just as insane as were their efforts in Kansas. Ask the tyrant who is his most dangerous foe, the sane man or the insane. If some Captain Ingraham threatens to fire into an Austrian vessel, we clap our hands all along the shore. It won’t hit us; it won’t disturb our tyranny. But let a far braver than he attack the Austria within us, we turn, we actually fire those same guns upon him, and cry “Insane.” The government, its salary being insured, withdraws into the back shop, taking the Constitution with it, as farmers in the winter contrive to turn a penny by following the coopering business. When the reporter to the Herald (!) reports the conversation “verbatim,” he does not know of what undying words he is made the vehicle. Read his admirable answers to Mason and others. How they are dwarfed and defeated by the contrast! On the one side half-brutish, half-timid questioning; on the other, truth, clear as lightning, crashing into their obscene temples. They are made to stand with Pilate, and Gessler, and the Inquisition. How ineffectual their speech and action! and what a void their silence! I speak to the stupid and timid chattels of the north, pretending to read history and their Bibles, desecrating every house and every day they breathe in! True, like the clods of the valley, they are incapable of perceiving the light, but I would fain arouse them by any stimulus to an intelligent life. Throughout the land they, not of equal magnanimity, talk of vengeance and insanity. Away with your broad and flat churches, and your narrow and tall churches! Take a step forward and invent a new style of outhouses. Invent a salt that will save you and defend our nostrils. The slave-ship is on her way, crowded with its dying hundreds; a small crew of slaveholders is smothering four millions under the hatches; and yet the politician asserts that the only proper way by which deliverance is to be obtained is by “the quiet diffusion of sentiments of humanity,” without any “outbreak”! And in the same breath they tell us that all is quiet now at Harper’s Ferry. What is that that I hear cast overboard? The bodies of the dead, who have found deliverance. That is the way we are diffusing humanity, and all its sentiments with it. Prominent and influential editors, accustomed to deal with politicians, men of an infinitely lower grade, say, in their ignorance, that he acted “on the principle of revenge.” They do not know the man. They must enlarge themselves to conceive of him. I have no doubt that, if that is of any importance, the time will come when they will begin to see him as he was. They have got to conceive of a man of ideas and of principle, hard as it may be for them, and not a politician or an Indian; of a man who did not wait till he was personally interfered with or thwarted in some harmless business before he gave his life to the cause of the oppressed. I know that there have been a few heroes in the land, but no man has ever stood up in America for the dignity of human nature so devotedly, persistently, and so effectively as this man. Ye need not trouble yourselves, Republican or any other party, to wash your skirts of him. No intelligent person will ever be convinced that he was any creature of yours. He went and came, as he informs us, “under the auspices of John Brown, and nobody else.” Ethan Allen and Stark, though worthy soldiers in their day, were rangers in a far lower field and in a less important cause. Insane! Do the thousands who knew him best, who have rejoiced at his deeds in Kansas and have afforded him material aid, think him insane? It costs us nothing to be just. It enriches us infinitely to recognize greater qualities than we possess in another. We can at least express our sympathy with, and admiration for, John Brown and his companions, and this is what I now propose to do. What has Massachusetts and the North sent a few sane senators to Congress for of late years? –to declare with effect what kind of sentiments? All their speeches put together and boiled down–and probably they themselves will allow it–do not match for simple and manly directness, force, and effectiveness the few casual remarks of insane John Brown on the floor of the Harper’s Ferry engine-house. To be sure, he was not our representative. He is too fair a specimen of a man to represent the like of us. In his case there is no idle eloquence, no made speech. Truth is his inspirer, and earnestness his critic and polisher of his sentences. He could afford to lose his Sharp’s rifles, while he retained his faculty of speech, –a Sharp’s rifle of infinitely surer and longer range. “But he won’t gain anything.” Well, no! I don’t suppose he could get four-and-sixpence a day for being hung, take the year round. But then he stands a chance to save a considerable part of his soul, –and such a soul! –when you do not. No doubt you can get more in your market for a quart of milk than for a quart of blood, but that is not the market that heroes carry their blood to. So ye write in your easy-chairs, and thus he, wounded, responds from the door of the Harper’s Ferry engine- house: “No man sent me here; it was my own prompting and that of my Maker. I acknowledge no master in human form.” And in what a sweet, kindly strain he proceeds, addressing those who held him prisoner: “I think, my friends, you are guilty of a great wrong against God and humanity, and it would be perfectly right for any one to interfere with you so far as to free those you willfully and wickedly hold in bondage.” And, referring to his movement: “It is, in my opinion, the greatest service a man can render to God!” HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL “I pity the poor in bondage that have none to help them; that is why I am here; not to gratify any personal animosity, revenge, or vindictive spirit. It is my sympathy with the oppressed and the wronged, that are as good as you, and as precious in the sight of God.” “I want you to understand that I respect the rights of the poorest and weakest of colored people, oppressed by the slave system, just as much as I do those of the most wealthy and powerful.” Thus the insane man preaches, while the representatives of so-called Christians (I refer to the Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions), who pretend to be interested in the heathen, dare not so much as protest against the foreign slave-trade! “I wish to say, furthermore, that you had better, all you people at the South, prepare yourselves for a settlement of that question, that must come up for settlement sooner than you are prepared for it. The sooner you are prepared the better. You may dispose of me very easily. I am nearly disposed of now; but this question is still to be settled, –this negro question, I mean; the end of that is not yet.” You will perceive that not a single forcible or noticeable word is uttered by his questioners; they stand there the helpless tools in this great work. It was no human power that gathered them about this preacher. What should we think of the Oriental Cadi behind whom worked in secret a Vigilance Committee? What shall we think of a government to which all the truly brave and just men in the land are enemies, standing between it JOHN BUNYAN and those whom it oppresses? Do not we Protestants know the likeness of Luther, Fox, Bunyan, when we see it? Shall we still be put to bed with our story-books, not knowing day from night? We talk about a representative government, but what a monster of a government is that where the noblest faculties of the mind and the whole heart are not represented. A semihuman tiger or ox stalking over the earth, with its heart taken out and the top of its brain shot away. In California and Oregon, if not nearer home, it is common to treat men exactly like deer which are hunted, and I read from time to time in Christian newspapers how many “bucks,” that is, Indian men, their sportsmen have killed. Who is here so base, that would be a bondman? Who is here so vile, that will not love his country? If any, speak; for him have I offended. I pause for a reply. We dream of foreign countries, of other times and races of men, placing them at a distance in history or in space; but let some significant event like the present occur in our midst, and we discover, often, this distance and this strangeness between us and our nearest neighbors. They are our Austrias, and Chinas, and South Sea Islands. Our crowded society becomes well spaced all at once, clean and handsome to the eye, –a city of magnificent distances. We discover why it was that we never got beyond compliments and surfaces with them before; we become aware of as many versts between us and them as there are between a wandering Tartar or Pawnee and a Chinese or American town. The thoughtful man becomes a hermit in the thoroughfares of the market-place. Impassable seas suddenly find their level between us, or dumb steppes stretch themselves out there. I do not complain of any tactics that are effective of good, whether one wields the quill or the sword, but I shall not think him mistaken who quickest succeeds to liberate the slave. I will judge of the tactics by the fruits. It is the difference of constitution, of intelligence, and faith, and not streams and mountains, that makes the true and impassable boundaries between individuals and states. None but the like-minded can come plenipotentiary to our court. They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others. Such will be more shocked by his life than by his death. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
1860
January 29, Sunday: In Rome, Pope Pius IX established the American College.
The sermon of the Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway celebrated the birthday of Thomas Paine (this would be distributed in the form of a pamphlet by the Office of THE DIAL: A MONTHLY MAGAZINE FOR LITERATURE, PHILOSOPHY, AND RELIGION in Cincinnati, Ohio). READ THIS PAMPHLET
In order to obtain evidence, that the River Meadow Association needed for use against the Middlesex Canal Corporation in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (they were accused of having deliberately elevated the waters of the river system above the dams which fed water into their canal, in such manner as to have caused damage to river meadows belonging to others),12 Thoreau made a chart of all the bridges along 22.15 miles of the Concord River and Sudbury River from East Sudbury to Billerica. He utilized Loammi Baldwin’s 2d map, of May 1834, which had been surveyed and drawn originally by B.F. Perham and which Thoreau had analyzed and brought up to date during his July 1859 river soundings.
Jan. 29. Colder than before, and not a cloud in the sky to-day.
P.M. — To Fair Haven Pond and return via Andromeda Ponds and railroad. Half an inch or more of snow fell last night, the ground being half bare before. It was a snow of small flakes not star-shaped. As usual, I now see, walking on the river and river-meadow ice, thus thinly covered with the fresh snow, that conical rainbow, or parabola of rainbow-colored reflections, from the myriad reflecting crystals of the snow, i.e., as I walk toward the sun,—
always a little in advance of me, of course, angle of reflection being equal to that of incidence. To-day I see quite a flock of the lesser redpolls eating the seeds of the alder, picking them out of the cones just as they do the larch, often head downward; and I see, under the alders, where they have run and picked up the fallen seeds, making chain-like tracks, two parallel lines.
Not only the Indian, but many wild birds and quadrupeds and insects, welcomed the apple tree to these shores. As it grew apace, the bluebird, robin, cherrybird, kingbird, and many more came with a rush and built their nests in it, and so became orchard-birds. The woodpecker found such a savory morsel under its bark that he perforated it in a ring quite round the tree, a thing he had never done before. It did not take the partridge [Ruffed Grouse Bonasa umbellus (Partridge)] long to find out how sweet its buds were, and every winter day she flew and still flies from the wood to pluck them, much to the farmer’s sorrow. The rabbit too was not slow to learn the taste of its twigs and bark. The owl crept into the first one that became hollow, and fairly hooted with delight, finding it just the place for him. He settled down into it, and has remained there ever since. The lackey caterpillar saddled her eggs on the very first twig that was formed, and it has since divided her affections with the wild cherry; and the canker-worm also in a measure abandoned the elm to feed on it. And when the fruit was 12. Note that the Middlesex Canal itself had had to be abandoned in 1853 due to its inability to compete economically with the new rail system, and that whatever business this shell corporation was doing was in the genre of water supply for power, water level regulation, etc. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL ripe, the squirrel half carried, half rolled, it to his hole, and even the musquash crept up the bank and greedily devoured it; and when it was frozen and thawed, the crow and jay did not disdain to peck it. And the beautiful wood duck, having made up her mind to stay a while longer with us, has concluded that there is no better place for her too. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL
1999
July 3, Saturday: History having become amusement, the following article about the Middlesex Canal by Michael Kenney appeared in the Boston Globe: On June 22, 1793 John Hancock, then Governor of Massachusetts, approved and signed a handwritten parchment document measuring nearly two by three feet, “incorporating James Sullivan, Esquire & others by the name and stile of ‘The Proprietors of the Middlesex Canal’ ... for the purpose of cutting a Canal from the waters of Merrimack River into the waters of Medford River.” On that same date Samuel Phillips for the Senate, and William Tudor for the House of Representatives, noted on the bill that it had been “passed to be Enacted” by those legislative bodies comprising the General Court of Massachusetts. Such was the official beginning of the Middlesex Canal, which for fifty years provided safe, economical water transportation between Charlestown and Middlesex Village in what is now Lowell, and linked Boston Harbor with the Merrimack River. With that stream and its canals, continuous water passage was possible from Boston, the capital of Massachusetts, to Concord, the capital of New Hampshire. Twenty-seven and one-quarter miles in length, with twenty locks and eight aqueducts, the Middlesex Canal was hailed as a triumph of engineering for its day. Albert Gallatin in 1808 called it “the greatest work of the kind which has been completed in the United States.” Writers of the nineteenth century extolled the beauty, comfort, and cleanliness of travel on the canal; businessmen, farmers, and lumbermen praised the low cost and efficiency of its transport; land owners rejoiced that neighboring land and timber increased in value; and a new and growing group of men known as civil engineers looked to the Middlesex for practical answers to the problems involved in constructing public works. In the early nineteenth century the Middlesex served as the prototype for many inland waterways constructed in other parts of the United States. In 1816 the Commissioners of the Erie Canal sent a committee to Massachusetts to study the Middlesex Canal in order that they might incorporate some of its elements and avoid some of its drawbacks in the lengthy waterway to be cut across New York State. Once completed, the Middlesex Canal became a busy, lively thoroughfare. Freight boats laden with fresh produce, coal, salt, slates, pearl-ash, potash, raw cotton, stone, wood, manufactured and imported goods, moved smoothly along. Each boat was drawn by one horse, the towing line being attached to a short mast placed a little ahead of the center. The crew consisted of one man to drive and one to steer, except in the case of HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL boats running up the Merrimack River which had one man to steer and two to pole. Rafts of lumber and ships timber floated along linked together in bands or shots of four or more, with a rude shelter set up on the last section for the raftsmen. Rafts were generally drawn by a single yoke of oxen, which in some rare instances had a horse leader. A horse could draw on the canal 25 tons of coal as easily as one ton on the roads. A yoke of oxen could draw as much as 100 tons, a load which would have required eighty teams on land. With tolls of 6 1/4 cents per mile for every ton of goods carried in the boats, and the same or less for every ton of timber floating in rafts, the canal became the cheapest and most popular method of transit in Massachusetts in the early 1800s. From the breakup of ice in the spring until the freezing of the channel in the winter, there was a steady flow over the inland waterway of both freight and passenger traffic. The gaudily painted passenger boats had a style all their own. Their drivers whipped the horses to a smart pace, although keeping within the four-mile-an-hour limit. The steersman blew his horn with a flourish of high notes, and the people lining the deck called out and waved their handkerchiefs as they passed taverns and houses. People wishing to travel by packet from Boston to Middlesex Village (Chelmsford to 1826, Lowell thereafter) or any of the towns along the route, must first cross the Charles River to the passenger terminal in Charlestown, which was located at the corner of the present Rutherford Avenue and Essex Street. Stages ran regularly from Boston to Charlestown to connect with the canal boats. Passenger boats left each morning for the trip to the Merrimack River, and it a traveler were early, and perhaps a bit hungry as might be the case had he come a considerable distance from his home, he could stop for a second breakfast at the Bunker Hill Tavern, then at the intersection of Essex and Main Streets. After going aboard, the passenger could settle back and enjoy the view as the packet was towed away from Beachum’s Landing and started on the journey. Swinging around the base of Mt. Benedict, or Ploughed Hill as it was called in post-Revolutionary days, the canal turned toward the Mystic River at a location now marked by a stone slab in Foss Park, Somerville, then wound between the Mystic marshes and the ten hills of the former Governor Winthrop estate toward Medford Square. Just below the Cradock Bridge the canal was connected by the Medford Branch Canal with the Mystic River, where the Medford shipyards were situated. A mile beyond the branch canal was an aqueduct 135 feet long over the Mystic River, supported by two stone abutments and three stone piers. The present Boston Avenue bridge is located on the site of the aqueduct. The abutments of the bridge are said to contain stone previously used in the aqueduct piers. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL Just beyond the aqueduct was Gilson’s Lock, where the canal boat was raised to a higher level. Here also was situated a tavern, later divided and moved in two sections to Canal Street. later divided and moved in two sections to Canal Street. A short distance farther on, the canal passed through the estate of Peter C. Brooks, one of the original shareholders. Here a well-proportioned and attractive elliptical stone arch bridge designed by Loammi Baldwin’s son George Rumford Baldwin, was built in 1821 and razed in 1911. (Note: Loammi Baldwin (1740-1807) was the first superintendent of the Canal) Running along the shore of the Mystic Lakes, Winchester, where the route is presently marked by a bronze plaque set into the flat side of a huge granite boulder, the canal next crossed the Symmes or Aberjona River by means of an aqueduct with abutments 127 feet apart and three intervening stone piers. On the northern side of the aqueduct was a set of double locks called Gardner’s Locks, nearby was the Gardner Tavern. After passing between Wedge Pond and Winter Pond, the canal proceeded to Horn Pond Brook, near the southern end of Horn Pond, where boats were raised a distance of nine feet in a stone lock. Here, at the crossing of Horn Pond Brook, on the present Middlesex Avenue, water was taken from the brook to supplement the main supply from the Concord River. At Horn Pond in Woburn canal boats had to effect a rise of fifty feet through the three double locks, often called the Stoddard Locks for the man who superintended the locks and two nearby taverns. Arlington Street now covers the locks. A short distance farther on, behind the Woburn Public Library, the route led across the Town Meadows by means of embankments, and continued on to Newbridge (North Woburn) where it passed by the mansion of Loammi Baldwin. The mansion stands today beside the canal to the north of Route 128 at the junction of Route 38. A few miles beyond North Woburn, just past the Woburn Wilmington town line, the canal came to the abrupt bend known as the Ox-Bow in the present Wilmington Town Forest Park, where boulders still bear the grooves cut by towlines of barges and boats rounding the curve. The Maple Meadow Aqueduct gave passage over Maple Meadow Brook, and then the canal flowed between long and often high embankments across the meadow. The canal waters took another step upward at Gillis’ Lock, where there was a small aqueduct and nearby a tavern and lock tender’s house which stands today on the same site. After about a mile, a small aqueduct carried the canal over Lubber’s Brook, and a short distance farther on, Nichols’ lock provided the last rise to the summit level, an elevation of 107 feet. A half mile more, and the traveler came to one of the most imposing sights on the canal, the aqueduct over the Shawsheen River. The approach was by means of high embankments, and the River. The approach was by means HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL of high embankments, and the aqueduct itself was originally 188 feet long. It was shortened to 40 feet, and two of the three piers removed or buried when it was rebuilt for the second time in 1841-42. It must have been quite a thrill to sail along between the lofty banks’ and to cross the river at a dizzying height of 30 to 35 feet, peering down at the water below. Still standing beside Route 129 in Billerica are the massive granite blocks of the central pier and abutments, designated in 1967 a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. For the next few miles the canal proceeded with no change in level, passing through a half mile of deeply cut ledge into the waters of the Concord River millpond, where another amazing accomplishment, a floating towpath built of wood, provided passage for horses or oxen across the water to the opposite shore. An opening could be made in the floating towpath when required to allow rafts of timber to pass through and to the mills downriver. On the western side of the millpond, the descent to the Merrimack River started by passing through a stone guard lock which still exists under a platform of the present Talbot Mill yard. Except exists under a platform of the present Talbot Mill yard. Except for possible delays in traversing the aqueducts at River Meadow Brook and Black Brook, the last lap of the journey, nearly six miles, could now be accomplished without impediment, since this portion of the canal made no ascents or descents until it reached the Merrimack River at Middlesex Village. There, by means of three stone locks, boats were lowered thirty feet into the river. The locks, now covered by railroad tracks, were situated near the corner of the present Baldwin and Middlesex Streets in Lowell. The old Middlesex Tavern was located near the locks. The Middlesex Canal packets went no farther than Middlesex Village. There the boats remained for the night, and the next morning started the return trip to Charlestown. Soon after its opening the Middlesex Canal became a popular means of transportation, and was used for pleasure as well as business. To escape summer’s heat, families often left their homes in the city and journeyed by packet to one of the taverns in the cool countryside where they might spend a few days resting, fishing, or strolling along the canal banks. Limited in operation by the severity of New England winters, subject to cessation of traffic and loss of revenue during major repairs, and by its nature unable to adhere to strict timetables, the canal struggled along beside the railroad for a few years. Gradually those who had utilized the canal’s boats for transportation, transferred their business to the railroad, which operated with speed and dependability throughout all the months of the year. As prophesied, the infant railroad had grown to giant HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL form, and was rapidly swallowing the canal. In 1843 Caleb Eddy, agent of the corporation, wrote: “From the year 1819 to the time the Lowell Railroad went into operation, the receipts regularly increased, and no doubt in a few years, without competition, they would have given a handsome interest on the original cost. The year that road went into full operation, the receipts of the canal were reduced one-third; when the Nashua and Lowell went into operation they were reduced another third. Those of the last year and the present will not be sufficient to cover the expenditures for repairs and current expenses. The future has but a gloomy prospect.... The inventions and ingenuity of man are ever onward, and a new cheap and more expeditious mode of transportation by steam power has been devised which seems destined to destroy that which was once considered invulnerable. What is to be done?” Eddy went on to propose a plan to use the canal to augment Boston’s diminishing supply of water. “...If the canal cannot put out the fire of the locomotive, it may be made to stop the ravages of that element in the city of Boston should the proprietors deem it for their interest so to devote it as a water supply for Boston.” Boston’s wells were going dry, and the water in them becoming contaminated, Eddy wrote. “One specimen which gave 3% animal and vegetable putrescent matter, was publicly sold as a mineral water; it was believed that water having such a remarkable fetid odor and nauseous taste could be no other than that of a sulfur spring; but its medicinal powers vanished with the discovery that the spring arose from a neighboring drain.” He went on to say that the Concord River water had been analyzed by “four of the most distinguished and able chemists in the country, all of whom agree that it is in every respect of the requisite purity for drinking and for culinary and for all other purposes.” On January 16, 1844 the proprietors voted that the treasurer be authorized to present a petition to the legislature for an alteration in the charter for a new act authorizing the use of the water of the canal for the supply of the inhabitants of Boston and the surrounding towns. Despite the efforts of its proponents, the aqueduct proposition failed, and the canal faced failure. Revenues continued to decrease with disheartening finality. After 1851 there was no recorded data on toll receipts. Evidently they were so negligible as to be not HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL worthy of record.
“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
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 2018. 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: September 14, 2018
Middlesex Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL 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.
Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL 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