“Old Curious”
1786
January 5, Thursday: Thomas Nuttall was born in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THOMAS NUTTALL “Old Curious”
1811
Henry Marie Brackenridge was a member of an overland expedition to Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River organized by the Missouri Fur Company and led by Manuel Lisa.1
While Brackenridge was accompanying Lisa, the English botanists John Bradbury and Thomas Nuttall were staying at his trading post in the Mandan country.
The voyagers of the Astor Expedition were amazed when they discovered dirt in the barrel of botanist Nuttall’s gun. He had been digging plants with it — what manner of man was this, who was so oblivious to his own personal safety? (Richard Henry Dana, Jr. would refer to this botanist as “Old Curious.”) 1. La Compagny des fourures du Missoury dans une adventure conduit par Manuel Lisa dans deux barge partits l’une le 2 May et l’autre le 6, 1812, Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, Kansas. 2 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX
“Old Curious” THOMAS NUTTALL
The company’s barges, heading up the Missouri River, would overtake and travel for some distance in the company of a rival expedition organized by John Jacob Astor of the Southwest Fur Company and led by Wilson P. Hunt, that had set out three weeks earlier with 70 men aboard three barges.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 3 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THOMAS NUTTALL “Old Curious”
1818
Thomas Nuttall’s GENERA OF NORTH AMERICAN PLANTS, the first generic plant list for North America, was published in Philadelphia (American and English books on plant hunting were naturally emphasizing the United States and China/Japan because these are partly temperate lands with plants that can also be grown in the eastern United States and England).
BOTANIZING
4 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX
“Old Curious” THOMAS NUTTALL
Fall: The farmhouse on Virginia Road in which Henry Thoreau had been born, and the some 30 acres still associated with it, was sold at auction. Eventually this unfortunate parcel would fall to the ownership of Colburn Hadlock, who would feed pigs there on the garbage from his Middlesex House in Concord. Consequently the pigfield near the house would acquire so many pieces of shattered hotel refuse that Thoreau would christen it “Crockery Field.”
At age 13 William Lloyd Garrison contracted for a 7-year apprenticeship as a printer at the Newburyport MA Herald, a Federalist paper. He soon learned to typeset at the rate of a thousand “emms” an hour and became foreman in the shop.
Thomas Nuttall set out from Philadelphia to botanize on the southern plains all the way to the Rocky Mountains.
1819
April: Having descended the Ohio River and then the Mississippi River, and ascended the Arkansas River botanizing, Thomas Nuttall arrived at Fort Smith.
May: As an opportunity to botanize, Thomas Nuttall joined a military expedition to the Red River.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 5 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THOMAS NUTTALL “Old Curious”
June: The engineer Major Stephen Long departed from Pittsburgh with an expedition authorized by US Secretary of War John Caldwell Calhoun into the territory south of the Missouri River. (Suppose we decide to kill some people there — how are we going to find our way around?)
Having become separated as he botanized from the military expedition at the Red River, Thomas Nuttall returned to Fort Smith in the company of a band of adventurers.
July: Thomas Nuttall set out from Fort Smith by pirogue to botanize up the Arkansas River. Reaching the Three Forks (present site of Fort Gibson), he explored the Verdigris River and made extensive observations of the local Osage natives — not because he wanted to kill anyone, just because he was curious.
August 11, Wednesday: Martin Johnson Heed (Martin Johnson Heade) was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. At an early age he would be placed under the instruction of a neighbor who painted coaches and signs, Friend Edward Hicks.
Thomas Nuttall and a trapper guide set out from Three Forks across the Oklahoma prairie, on horseback. The guide, Mr. Lee, said he had trapped in and about the Oklahoma wilderness for about a decade interacting extensively with the Cherokee and Osage, and had ascended the Canadian, Cimarron, and Arkansas rivers nearly to their western sources.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 11th of 8 M / Attended the funeral of John Goddards child he & his wife are attenders of our Meeting & bury in our Ground. -She was once a member & daughter of the late Daniel Gould of Middletown. - Oh that those who know the Truth may be obedient to its dictates, thereby they would know their Stakes Strengthened & cord lengthened Disobedience make a long Wilderness, but Obedience make the Work Short. — We took tea at Father Rodmans in company with a couple of young men from Wilmington Delaware RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
6 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX
“Old Curious” THOMAS NUTTALL
September: Upon returning to Harvard College for his Junior year, Ralph Waldo Emerson dropped his Ralph, becoming plain Waldo Emerson.
(Do you suppose that Ralph Waldo Emerson may have chosen to be known as Waldo Emerson at least in part in order to avoid confusion with his more advanced cousin the Reverend Ralph Emerson of Norfolk, Connecticut?)
About the middle of this month, Thomas Nuttall arrived back at the Three Forks settlement only barely alive. He had drunk some water from a spring that had made him terribly ill (exacerbating his ongoing struggle with malaria). As he and the trapper “Mr. Lee” had crossed central Oklahoma, he had been delirious. When the voyagers had come upon the Cimarron River, therefore, they had descended to the Arkansas River to get back to their starting point, Three Forks.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 7 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THOMAS NUTTALL “Old Curious”
(A couple of years later the botanist would publish A JOURNAL OF TRAVELS INTO THE ARKANSAS TERRITORY, DURING THE YEAR 1819. WITH OCCASIONAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE MANNERS OF THE ABORIGINES. ILLUSTRATED BY A MAP AND OTHER ENGRAVINGS.)
TRAVELING IN ARKANSAS
1820
January 4, Tuesday: Salma Hale got married with Sarah Kellogg King, daughter of Seth King and Susan King of Suffield, Connecticut.
In the diary of Thomas Nuttall we find: “On the 4th of January, 1820, after waiting about a month for an opportunity of descending, I now embraced the favourable advantage of proceeding in the boat of Mr. Barber, a merchant of New Orleans, to whose friendship and civility I am indebted for many favours.”
8 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX
“Old Curious” THOMAS NUTTALL
January 5, Wednesday: Seyyid Ali Pasha replaced Dervis Mehmed Pasha as Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire.
In the diary of Thomas Nuttall we find: “This morning we again passed the outlet of the river called La Feve’s Fork, coming in on our right. It sources with the Pottoe, the Kiamesha, Little river of Red river, and with the Petit John forms an irregular and acute triangle, affording a large body of good land, and, as well as the latter, is said to be navigable near 200 miles, including its meanders. Its entrance is marked by a concomitant chain of hills and cliffs, which border the Arkansa, and proceed in a north-westerly direction. For about a mile and a half, these hills, of grauwacke slate, present the appearance of an even wall coming up to the margin of the river, and owe this singular aspect to their almost vertical stratification. Their summits are tufted with pine, and the opposite alluvial point, which was sandy, and to appearance scarcely elevated above inundation, possessed also a forest of similar trees.”
January 6, Thursday: In the diary of Thomas Nuttall we find: “This evening we arrived at Mr. Daniel’s, an industrious farmer, and provided with a rough-looking, but comfortable winter cabin. About two miles from hence, Mr. D., who lives upon a confirmed Spanish right, had erected a grist mill. Saw-mills were also about to be built at the Cadron, and two or three other places. The establishment of a town was now contemplated also at the Little Rock, by colonel Hogan, and some others. They had not, however, sufficient capital, and no doubt expected to derive some adventitious wealth from those speculators who were viewing various parts of the newlyformed territory.”
In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 6th of 1st M / Sat meeting under solemn reflections, arising from the Circumstance of the Sudden exit of Gilbert Chase who Died this morning about 2 OC after laying about 33 hours in an Apoplective Fit. - Daniel Swinbourne also Died suddenly this morning, he had been complaining some Months, but rose & ate his breakfast as well as for some time, but in a few minutes after expired. — Last evening died at Portsmouth Phebe Barber she was a member of Society & a relation in the Mott family RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
January 7, Friday: Documentation of the international slave trade, per W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: “Letter from the Secretary of the Navy, transmitting information in relation to the Introduction of Slaves into the United States.” –HOUSE DOCUMENT, 16 Cong. 1 sess. III, No. 36.
Ludwig van Beethoven appealed to the Imperial Royal Court of Appeal of Lower Austria to reverse the decision of the lower court of September 17, 1819, that his nephew Karl be cared for by his mother under a court-appointed guardian.
In the diary of Thomas Nuttall we find: “We again arrived at the lower end of the Eagle’s-nest bend, from whence commenced the uninhabited tract of 60 or 70 miles.”
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 9 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THOMAS NUTTALL “Old Curious” January 8, Saturday: In the diary of Thomas Nuttall we find: “To-day we passed seven bends, making about 28 miles. The water at this, its lowest stage, appears to be perfectly navigable for the larger boats from the Little Rock to the Mississippi. By the cane which occurs in all the bends, and indeed by the apparent elevation, there are here great bodies of good land, free from inundation. The soil in some of the banks consists of an uncommonly rich dark Spanish brown loam.”
In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day 8th of 1st M / This day has been a day of seriousness, having to feel in carious subjects, which now seem to be pending. - how do I feel the force of the language “Have Salt in yourselves” RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
January 9, Sunday: Heinrich August Marschner got married for the 2d time, with Eugenie Franziska Jaeggi, an accomplished pianist, daughter of a valet, in Pressburg.
In the diary of Thomas Nuttall we find: “This forenoon we passed the fourth Pine Bluff, at the base of which we observed abundance of earthy iron ore, in flattened, contorted, and cellular masses, scattered about in profusion; much of it appeared to be pyrites, other masses more or less argillaccous and siliceous. Here, on the portions of the high bank which had sunk down by the undermining of the current, we saw the wax-myrtle of the Atlantic sea-coast.”
In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 10th [?] of 1st M / At the hour appointed the funeral of Gilbert Chase met at His House & proceeded to the Meeting House, the gathering was large & D Buffum & H Dennis were engaged in solemn & impressive testimonys. — In the Afternoon Meeting Father Rodman was engaged in a rather short, but lively & to my mind pertinent testimony. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
January 10, Monday: In the diary of Thomas Nuttall we find: “This evening we arrived near to the termination of the second Pine Bluffs, which continue along the river for nearly two miles. We passed through seven bends of the river, and came about 27 miles. The frost was now succeeded by mild and showery weather, and the bald eagles [Falco Leucocephalus] were already nestling, chusing the loftiest poplars for their eyries.”
In Lawrenceburg, Indiana, this had been planned as Palmer Warren’s wedding day but his fiancée (whose name is not of record) had renounced another suitor, Amasa Fuller, in favor of him. The jilted suitor came to the office of bridegroom-to-be Palmer Warren with a pair of dueling pistols, charged with four balls each, and confronted him with a note he was to sign to the effect that in the presence of the Almighty God, he renounced all pretensions to the young lady and acknowledged that he was a base liar and scoundrel. When the favored suitor declined to sign said note and refused to participate in a demanded duel of honor, the jilted suitor shot and killed him there in his office. Amasa Fuller would hang for the murder of Palmer Warren on August 14th and the result would be a ballad, “Fuller and Warren,” a variant of which has been recorded as follows: Ye sons of Columbia, attention all I’ll pray, And listen to a story I’m going to tell: It happened here of late in an Indiana State,
10 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX
“Old Curious” THOMAS NUTTALL Of a hero who but a few could excel....
It seems clear why the name of the bride-to-be in question is not on the record! — how must that Hoosier lass have reacted to the contemporary singing of such a ballad?
January 11, Tuesday: In the early morning a fire began on a lot in Baptist Church square in Savannah and spread with the winds (gunpowder illegally stored in the City Market on Ellis Square became part of the problem) to destroy 463 buildings for losses totaling $776,000. The Savannah Republican would report that “the whole of the town north of Broughton Street to the Bay” was reduced to ashes, along with Savannah’s Branch Bank of the United States. Two-thirds of the city’s population had become suddenly homeless. Nothing was left standing from Bay to Broughton streets and Jefferson to Abercorn streets. Richard Wylly Habersham, the US District Attorney for Georgia, would write a poem about the disaster. The nation would respond with gifts totalling $99,000 but since the city of New-York had placed an odious stipulation on its gift of $12,000, the city of Savannah would refuse to accept New-York’s charity (the stipulation had been that Savannah pledge to distribute New-York’s donation “without distinction of color” — what an outrageous requirement!). The
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 11 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THOMAS NUTTALL “Old Curious” city would be rebuilt, as Boston had once been after a similar major urban conflagration, in brick.
In the diary of Thomas Nuttall we find: “Soon after breakfast we came again in sight of the houses of the French hunters Cusot and Bartolemé, and found also two families from Curran’s settlement encamped here, and about to settle. I here obtained two fragments of fossil shells, apparently some species of oyster, one of which was traversed with illinitions of crystallized carbonate of lime, and contained specks of bovey coal, from which I concluded them to have been washed out of the Bluffs above. Besides these I was also shewn a small conch-shell, not apparently altered from its natural state, and probably disinterred from some tumulus. Some time after dark we arrived at Mr. Boun’s, a metif or half Quapaw, and interpreter to the nation, who lived at the first of the Pine Bluffs. Two or three other metif families resided also in the neighbourhood.”
January 12, Wednesday: The Royal Astronomical Society was founded.
In the diary of Thomas Nuttall we find: “We arrived at Monsieur Dardennes’, and to-day experienced a keen north-western wind. Water froze the instant it touched the ground.”
January 13, Thursday: Documentation of the international slave trade, per W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: “Letter from the Secretary of the Treasury, transmitting ... Information in relation to the Illicit Introduction of Slaves into the United States, etc.,” –HOUSE DOCUMENT, 16 Cong. 1 sess. III, No. 42.
In the diary of Thomas Nuttall we find: “The weather still freezing. In the evening we passed Mr. Harrington’s, a farmer in very comfortable circumstances. Betwixt Morrison’s and this place, the river makes two cuts, through two bends of about eight miles each.”
In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 13th of 1st M 1820 / Our first meeting was silent but to my feelings was attended with a good degree of solemnity In the last which was our Select Meeting, so held according to a conclusion at the last, the usual buisness was transacted & to my feelings a goodly concern was manifested for the right ordering & managing the Affairs of Society in general, but perhaps less solid weight experienced than at some other times. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
January 14, Friday: J. Dickinson of Nash Mill in the parish of Abbots Laughley was granted a patent for a machine that could cut paper and other materials into single sheets or pieces.
US Secretary of War John Caldwell Calhoun authorized the governor of the Michigan Territory, General Lewis Cass, to lead a party of scientists, soldiers, Canadian voyageurs to manage the canoes, and native American guides and hunters into the wilderness, to survey the western portion of the Michigan Territory (present-day Minnesota)’s geography and topography for purposes of a new map clarifying a border dispute between the United States of America and Canada, evaluate the flora and fauna, ascertain the numbers of the tribes of natives and their customs (and their loyalties, whether to the United States or to Great Britain), search for commercially valuable deposits of minerals, discover the true source of the Mississippi River (Cass Lake
12 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX
“Old Curious” THOMAS NUTTALL would be determined, erroneously, to be that northern source), and select and purchase sites for forts (especially at the important strait of Sault Ste. Marie). The expedition would consist of 42 men. The geologist would be Henry Rowe Schoolcraft who would in 1821 issue A NARRATIVE JOURNAL OF TRAVELS … FROM DETROIT THROUGH THE GREAT CHAIN OF AMERICAN LAKES TO THE SOURCES OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER, and then in 1832 correctly identify the source of the great river as Lake Itasca.
In the diary of Thomas Nuttall we find: “This evening we arrived at the residence of the late Mr. Mosely, and about 20 miles below Harrington’s. His estates were said to be worth not less than 20,000 dollars, which had all been acquired during his residence in this territory. A proof that there is here also scope for industry, and the acquisition of wealth.”
January 15, Saturday: In the diary of Thomas Nuttall we find: “On the 15th we again arrived at the post of Osark, or as it is now not very intelligibly called, Arkansas, a name by far too easily confounded with that of the river, while the name Osark, still assumed by the lower villagers of the Quapaws, and in memory of whom this place was first so called, would have been perfectly intelligible and original. In the evening we had a storm of melting snow and hail, which, on the following morning was succeeded by a northwest wind, accompanied by a severe frost. The river was now, however, beginning to rise and assume a muddy tinge from the influx of the lagoons, and lower rivulets. A more extensive fresh cannot now be expected before the commencement of milder weather, and the thawing of the river towards its sources. The oldest settlers affirm, that the Arkansa had not, during their knowledge of it, ever been so low as before the present rise. The Ohio and Mississippi also continued too low for the navigation of the steam-boats.”
January 16, Sunday: Johannes Rebmann was born at Gerlingen near Stuttgart, Germany. He would become the initial European to sight the snows of Mount Kilimanjaro — and be ridiculed.
Commodore James Barron wrote a duel challenge letter to Commodore Stephen “Our Country Right or Wrong” Decatur: “Sir: Your letter of the 29th ultimo, I have received. In it you say that you have now to inform me that you shall pay no further attention to any communications that I may make to you, other than a direct call to the field; in answer to which I have only to reply that whenever you will consent to meet me on fair and equal grounds, that is, such as two honorable men may consider just and proper, you are at liberty to view this as that call. The whole tenor of your conduct to me justifies this course of proceeding on my part. As for your charges and remarks, I regard them not, particularly your sympathy. You know no such feeling. I cannot be suspected of making the attempt to excite it. I am, sir, yours, etc., James Barron.”
Two Russian vessels, the Vostok and the Mirny, Captain Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev, in expedition led by Thaddeus von Bellingshausen, reached 69° 25 minutes South and 1° 11 minutes [West?] and were halted by the Fimbul Ice Shelf. They sighted the Antarctic continent on their horizon, the 1st human beings to do so.
In the diary of Thomas Nuttall we find: “Interest, curiosity, and speculation, had drawn the attention of men of education and wealth toward this country, since its separation into a territory; we now see an additional number of lawyers, doctors, and mechanics. The retinue and friends of the governor, together with the officers of justice, added also essential importance to the...”
In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 17 [?] of 1 M / The Morning meeting was silent till near the close of it when our friend D Buffum was engaged in a short & very lively testimony & the meeting closed under a good savor. —Silent in the Afternoon. — Anne Dennis came home with is & took
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 13 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THOMAS NUTTALL “Old Curious”
NO
YES
14 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX
“Old Curious” THOMAS NUTTALL tea & set the evening, her company was very pleasant. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
January 17, Monday: Anne Brontë, youngest of the sisters, was born: “I would not send a poor girl into the world ... ignorant of the snares that beset her path; nor would I watch and guard her, till, deprived of self- respect and self-reliance, she lost the power or the will to watch and guard herself.”
Judith Hope’s petition to remain among her relatives and friends in the state of Virginia after gaining her freedom was rejected by the General Assembly.
In the diary of Thomas Nuttall for this and the following day we find: “I again paid a visit to the prairie, which, as well as the immediate neighbourhood of the town, is in winter extremely wet, in consequence of the dead level, and argillaceous nature of the soil. The interesting plants and flowers which I had seen last year, at this time, were now so completely locked up in the bosom of winter, as to be no longer discernible, and nearly disappointed me in the hopes of collecting their roots, and transplanting them for the gratification of the curious.”
January 19, Wednesday: In the diary of Thomas Nuttall we find: “On the 19th I bid farewell to Arkansas, and proceeded towards the Mississippi, in the barge of Mons. Notrebé, a merchant of this place, and the day following, without any material occurrence, arrived at the confluence of the Arkansa, a distance of about 60 miles. The bayou, through which I came in the spring, now ran with as much velocity towards White river, as it had done before into the Arkansa, its current and course depending entirely upon the relative elevation of the waters of the two rivers with which it communicates. The large island, thus produced, possesses extensive tracts of cane land, sufficiently elevated, as I am told, above inundation, as does also the opposite bank of the Arkansa. About 12 miles above the mouth, the site first chosen for the Spanish garrison, and which was evacuated in consequence of inundation, was pointed out to me. A house now also stands on the otherwise deserted spot, where once were garrisoned the troops of France, at the terminating point of the river. We now found ourselves again upon the bosom of one of the most magnificent of rivers, which appeared in an unbroken and meandering sheet, stretching over an extended view of more than 12 miles, and decorated with a pervading forest, only terminated by the distant horizon.”
The US House of Representatives again considered the possibility of registering all slaves, but again without any appreciable consequences. “On motion of Mr. Cuthbert, “Resolved, That the Committee on the Slave Trade be instructed to enquire into the expediency of establishing a registry of slaves, more effectually to prevent the importation of slaves into the United States, or the territories thereof.” HOUSE JOURNAL, 16th Congress, 1st session, page 150. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE
January 21, Friday: The Russian expedition to the antarctic led by Thaddeus von Bellinghausen discovered Peter I Island.
In the diary of Thomas Nuttall we find: “I now embarked for New Orleans in a flat boat, as the steam boats, for want of water, were not yet in operation. Not far from this place, a few days ago were encamped, the miserable remnant of what are called the Pilgrims, a band of fanatics, originally about 60 in number. They commenced their pilgrimage from the borders of Canada, and wandered about with their wives and children through the vast wilderness of the western states, like vagabonds, without ever fixing upon any residence. They looked up to accident and charity alone for support; imposed upon themselves rigid fasts, never washed their skin, or cut or combed their hair, and like the Dunkards wore their beards. Settling no where, they were
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 15 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THOMAS NUTTALL “Old Curious” consequently deprived of every comfort which arises from the efforts of industry. Desertion, famine, and sickness, soon reduced their numbers, and they were every where treated with harshness and neglect, as the gypsies of civilized society. Passing through Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, they at length found their way down the Mississippi to the outlet of White river and the Arkansa. Thus ever flying from society by whom they were despised, and by whom they had been punished as vagabonds, blinded by fanatic zeal, they lingered out their miserable lives in famine and wretchedness, and have now nearly all perished or disappeared. Two days after my arrival in the territory, one of them was found dead in the road which leads from the Mississippi to Arkansas. If I am correctly informed, there now exists of them only one man, three women, and two children. Two other children were taken from them in compassion for their miserable situation, and the man was but the other day seized by a boat’s crew descending the river, and forcibly shaved, washed, and dressed. Down to the year 1811, there existed on the banks of the Mississippi, a very formidable gang of swindling robbers, usually stationed in two parties at the mouth of the Arkansa, and at Stack island. They were about 80 in number, and under the direction of two captains. Amongst other predatory means of obtaining property, was that of purchasing produce from boats descending the river, with counterfeit money. Clary and his gang of the Arkansa, had, some time in the autumn of 1811, purchased in this way some property from a descending flat boat. The owner, however, before leaving the shore, discovered the fraud, and demanded restitution, but was denied with insolence; and they proceeded, at length, so far as to fire upon his boat. These circumstances being related to the companies of several other flats who very opportunely came up at this time, and 12 of them being now collected, they made up a party to apprehend this nest of pirates. It was nearly night when they landed, and were instantly fired upon by the robbers. They at last arrived at the house which they occupied, broke it open, and secured Clary and two others who had attempted to hide themselves. A court martial was held over them, which sentenced Clary to receive a number of lashes from the crew of each boat, and the two other delinquents were condemned to confinement, and to work the boat in the place of two of the boatmen who were wounded. These men, on arriving at Natchez, were committed to prison, but no one appearing against them, they were of course acquitted. Clary confessed, that he and his crew had, within the week previous to his apprehension, bought and transmitted up the Arkansa, with counterfeit money, 1800 dollars worth of produce. It was also known that he had been a murderer, and had fled to the banks of the Mississippi from justice. The Stack island banditti have never been routed, and some of their character were still found skulking around Point Chicot and the neighbouring island, always well supplied with counterfeit money.”
16 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX
“Old Curious” THOMAS NUTTALL January 22, Saturday: William Francis Channing was born, a son of the Reverend William Ellery Channing.
Edward Bransfield, on a Royal Navy expedition aboard the Williams, landed on King George Island in the South Shetlands and claimed it for Britain.
In the diary of Thomas Nuttall we find: “This morning we were visited by three Choctaws in quest of whiskey. Their complexions were much fairer than most of the Indians we meet with on the Mississippi. Two of them were boys of about 18 or 19, and possessed the handsomest features I have ever seen among the natives, though rather too effeminate. About 20 miles below the Arkansa, in the Cypress bend, we saw the first appearance of Tillandsia or Long moss.”
January 24, Monday: Commodore Stephen “Our Country Right or Wrong” Decatur responded to Commodore James Barron’s duel challenge letter of the 16th, “Sir: I have received your communication of the 16th, and am at a loss to know what your intention is. If you intend it as a challenge, I accept it, and refer you to my friend, Commodore Bainbridge, who is fully authorized to make any arrangements he pleases as regards weapons, mode, or distance. Your obedient servant, Stephen Decatur.”
In the diary of Thomas Nuttall we find: “On the 24th bodies of cane appear, indicative of an elevation above the usual inundations; it is, however, probable that these tracts are narrow, and flanked at no great distance by lagoons and cypress marshes subject to the floods. Many bends indeed presented nothing but cypress and black ash. From the Chicasaw Bluffs downward, along the banks of the Mississippi, we perceive no more of the Tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera), and but little of the Platanus, greatly reduced in magnitude, compared with what it attains along the Ohio. The largest tree of the forest here is that which is of the quickest growth, the Cotton-wood poplar (Populus angulata).”
January 27, Thursday: While making its 2d circumnavigation of the globe at high southern latitudes, the Russian expedition led by Thaddeus von Bellinghausen first sighted the Antarctic mainland.
Le bergère châtelaine, an opéra comique by Daniel-François-Esprit Auber to words of Planard, was performed for the initial time, in the Théâtre Feydeau, Paris.
On the island of St. Helena, Napoléon Bonaparte, who had been shooting chickens that invaded his garden, shot a goat that turned out to be Mme. Bertrand’s favorite goat.
In the diary of Thomas Nuttall we find: “The whole country, generally speaking, along the river, appears uninhabited, though vast tracts of cane land occur in the bends. I am, however, informed that the cane will withstand a partial inundation. Since we left Point Chicot the river presents us with several magnificent views, “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 17 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THOMAS NUTTALL “Old Curious” some of 8, some of 12, and even 15 miles extent; but the absence of variety, even amidst objects of the utmost grandeur, soon becomes tiresome by familiarity. As above the Arkansa, the river still continues meandering. The curves, at all seasons washed by a rapid current, present crumbling banks of friable soil more or less mixed with vegetable matter. By the continued undermining and removal of the earth, the bends are at length worn through, the former tongue of land then becomes transformed into an island, and the stagnation and partial filling of the old channel, now deserted, in time produces a lake. Some idea of the singular caprice of the Mississippi current may be formed, by taking for a moment into view the extraordinary extent of its alluvial valley, which below the Ohio is from 30 to 40 miles in width, through all which space it has from time to time meandered, and over which it will never cease to hold occasional possession. On the opposite side of all the bends there are what are called bars, being platforms of sand formed by the deposition of the siliceous matter washed out of the opposite banks by the force of the current. These sand flats, sometimes near a mile in width, are uniformly flanked by thick groves of willows and poplars, the only kind of trees which survive the effects of the inundation to which these bars are perpetually subject.” THOMAS NUTTALL
In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 27th of 1st M 1820 / Our first meeting was silent in the last (Monthly) I served as scribe to my mortification -buisness however I thought was conducted with as much weight as usual - Several of our friends Dined with us While at meeting My old mistress Mary Williams wife of David Williams departed this life after a protracted illness of a very distressing Nature of seven or eight months continuance. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
January 28, Friday: The Russian expedition to the antarctic led by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev discovered the Alexander Coast.
In the diary of Thomas Nuttall we find: “This morning we passed the settlement called the Walnut Hills, a situation somewhat similar to that of Natchez, consisting, however, of a cluster of hills of 150 or 200 feet elevation, laid out in a chain of agreeable farms. The banks, along the river, though not near so elevated as those of the Chicasaw Bluffs, are still far enough above the reach of inundation, and present a stratification and materials entirely similar: the same friable ferruginous clays, and also one or two beds of lignite, the lower about a foot in thickness, very distinct at this low stage of the water, and about three feet from its margin. The declivity for near half a mile back presents innumerable slips parallel with the river, and in one of the ravines large masses of sandstone were washed out towards the river. ...below the town. Out of its small quota of population, 37 individuals last summer died of the yellow-fever, said to have been introduced by the steam- boat Alabama. The gloomy mantling of the forest communicated by the Tillandsia usneoides or long moss, which every where prevails, is a never-failing proof of the presence of an unhealthy humidity in the atmosphere. The stagnating lagoons and bodies of refluent water also largely contribute to the unhealthiness of the climate. The vast extent and depth of this inundation is sufficiently evident by the marks along the banks of the river, which in places exhibited a rise of 50 feet above the present level!” THOMAS NUTTALL
January 31, Monday: In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd day 31st of 1 M / Have debated in my own mind pretty much all day about Quarterly Meeting & finally conceded this eveng to go. —it seems as if I am now able to go tho’ exceedingly inconvenient & we know not how long we will be held in the way
18 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX
“Old Curious” THOMAS NUTTALL of our duty. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
In the diary of Thomas Nuttall we find: “The cliffs of Natchez appear more elevated than those of the Petit Gulf. The lands, of an inferior soil, are also remarkably broken and deeply undulated. The crumbling precipice, of about 150 feet elevation, is continually breaking, by the action of springs and rain-water, into gullies and frightful ravines; the whole visible matter which composes the hills consisting of clays, ferruginous sand, and quartzy gravel. A few years ago, the undermining of the current swept down a considerable part of the bank with several houses upon it. From the irregularity in the thickness of this ancient maritime alluvion, arises the great difference of depth at which water is here obtained. In the same vicinity water has been found at 35, and then again at 110 feet from the surface.” THOMAS NUTTALL
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 19 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THOMAS NUTTALL “Old Curious”
1832
Professor Thomas Nuttall reported in the initial volume, on land birds, of his A MANUAL OF THE ORNITHOLOGY OF THE UNITED STATES AND OF CANADA (Cambridge: Hilliard and Brown; Boston: Hilliard, Gray), that according to Governor Winthrop, the “Pinnated Grous” [Heath Hen Tympanuchus cupido cupido] had been “so common on the ancient brushy site of Boston, that laboring people or servants stipulated with their employers not to have the Heath-Hen brought to table oftener than a few times in the week!”
NUTTALL’S LAND BIRDS
John James Audubon traveled to Florida. Meanwhile, in Edinburgh, the firm of A. Black was issuing the initial volume of the 5-volume ORNITHOLOGICAL BIOGRAPHY, OR AN ACCOUNT OF THE HABITS OF THE BIRDS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA; ACCOMPANIED BY DESCRIPTIONS OF THE OBJECTS REPRESENTED IN THE WORK ENTITLED THE BIRDS OF AMERICA, AND INTERSPERSED WITH DELINEATIONS OF AMERICAN SCENERY AND MANNERS. BY JOHN JAMES AUDUBON.... I feel pleasure in here acknowledging the assistance ...
20 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX
“Old Curious” THOMAS NUTTALL
received from ... Mr. William Macgillivray ... in completing the scientific details ... of my ornithological biographies. — Author’s “Introductory address,” pages xviii-xix2
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 21 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THOMAS NUTTALL “Old Curious”
Here is a review of this initial volume, which appeared during May: REVIEW OF THE BOOK
And here is this initial Audubon volume, in its entirety: ORNITHO. BIOG. VOL. I
Volumes 2 through 5 would be published in Edinburgh by A. & C. Black, Volume 2 in 1834, Volume 3 in 1835, Volume 4 in 1838 (the title of this 4th volume would be ORNITHOLOGICAL BIOGRAPHY, OR AN ACCOUNT OF THE HABITS OF THE BIRDS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ACCOMPANIED BY DESCRIPTIONS OF THE OBJECTS REPRESENTED IN THE WORK ENTITLED BIRDS OF AMERICA, TOGETHER WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE DIGESTIVE ORGANS OF MANY OF THE SPECIES, ILLUSTRATED BY ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD....), and Volume 5 in 1839.
The initial folio edition of THE BIRDS OF AMERICA was being published meanwhile, made up of the images only without text. This initial volume of ORNITHOLOGICAL BIOGRAPHY describing plates I-C, Volume 2 describing plates CI-CC, Volume 3 describing plates CCI-CCC, Volume 4 describing plates CCCI- CCCLXXXVII, and Volume 5 describing plates CCCLXXXVIII-CCCCXXXV and in addition containing, on pages 305-336, “Descriptions of species found in North America, but not figured in the BIRDS OF AMERICA,” and, on pages 337-646, “Appendix: comprising additional observations on the habits, geographical distribution, and anatomical structure of the birds described in this work; together with corrections of errors relative to the species.”
(Later, in followup editions entitled THE BIRDS OF AMERICA, FROM DRAWINGS MADE IN THE UNITED STATES AND THEIR TERRITORIES, Audubon would marry text with images.)
1834
Horatio Cook Meriam received his A.M. degree from Harvard College: Horatio Cook Meriam; LL.B. 1831; A.M. 1834 1872
2. Later on, better situated ornithologists would be able to charge that this upstart was plagiarizing from Audubon’s famous ORNITHOLOGICAL BIOGRAPHY when the passages in question had in fact originated as his own writing (so goes the world). 22 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX
“Old Curious” THOMAS NUTTALL
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 23 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THOMAS NUTTALL “Old Curious”
NEW “HARVARD MEN”
James Russell Lowell matriculated at Harvard.
The Reverend Professor Jared Sparks of Harvard began the long-term task of editing a 10-volume series (Boston: Hilliard, Gray; London: Kennett) –and then a 15-volume series– of THE LIBRARY OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.
LIBRARY OF AM. BIOG. I
The 2d volume, on water birds, of Professor Thomas Nuttall’s A MANUAL OF THE ORNITHOLOGY OF THE UNITED STATES AND OF CANADA (Cambridge: Hilliard and Brown; Boston: Hilliard, Gray). He resigned as curator of the Botanical Garden of Harvard in order to accompany the Wyeth Expedition to the Pacific coast. NUTTALL’S WATER BIRDS
24 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX
“Old Curious” THOMAS NUTTALL
1835
In this year and the next, Professor Thomas Nuttall, having taken leave from Harvard College, would explore the flora of the California coast. Richard Henry Dana, Jr. would meet up with him out there.
BOTANIZING
1836
May 8, Sunday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 8 of 5 M 1836 / Attended meetings & I must say they were seasons of much dryness to me but I have no doubt the fault was
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 25 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THOMAS NUTTALL “Old Curious” my own Father had short Service in both. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and the Alert sailed out of San Diego harbor, headed south. Aboard the vessel was Professor Thomas Nuttall of Harvard College, returning to Boston from his botanical expedition to the California coast: This passenger ... was no one else than a gentleman whom I had known in my better days; and the last person I should have expected to have seen on the coast of California– Professor N______, of Cambridge [Thomas Nuttall]. I had left him quietly seated in the chair of Botany and Ornithology, in Harvard University; and the next I saw of him, was strolling about San Diego beach, in a sailor’s pea-jacket, with a wide straw hat, and barefooted, with his trowsers rolled up to his knees, picking up stones and shells. He had travelled overland to the North-west Coast, and come down in a small vessel to Monterey. There he learned that there was a ship at the leeward, about to sail for Boston; and, taking passage in the Pilgrim, which was then at Monterey, he came slowly down, visiting the intermediate ports, and examining the trees, plants, earths, birds, etc., and joined us at San Diego shortly before we sailed. The second mate of the Pilgrim told me that they had an old gentleman on board who knew me, and came from the college that I had been in. He could not recollect his name, but said he was a “sort of an oldish man,” with white hair, and spent all his time in the bush, and along the beach, picking up flowers and shells, and such truck, and had a dozen boxes and barrels, full of them. I thought over everybody who would be likely to be there, but could fix upon no one; when, the next day, just as we were about to shove off from the beach, he came down to the boat, in the rig I have described, with his shoes in his hand, and his pockets full of specimens. I knew him at once, though I should not have been more surprised to have seen the Old South steeple shoot up from the hide-house. He probably had no less difficulty in recognizing me. As we left home about the same time, we had nothing to tell one another; and, owing to our different situations on board, I saw but little of him on the passage home. Sometimes, when I was at the wheel of a calm night, and the steering required no attention, and the officer of the watch was forward, he would come aft and hold a short yarn with me; but this was against the rules of the ship, as is, in fact, all intercourse between passengers and the crew.… The Pilgrim’s crew christened Mr. N. “Old Curious,” from his zeal for curiosities, and some of them said that he was crazy, and that his friends let him go about and amuse himself in this way. Why else a rich man (sailors call every man rich who does not work with his hands, and wears a long coat and cravat) should leave a Christian country, and come to such a place as California, to pick up shells and stones, they could not understand. One of them, however, an old salt, who had seen something more of the world ashore, set all to rights, as he thoughts– “Oh, ’vast there!– You don’t know anything about them craft. I’ve seen them colleges, and know the ropes. They keep all such things for curiosities, and study ’em, and have men a’ purpose to go and get ’em. This old chap knows what he’s about. He a’n’t the child you take him for. He’ll carry all these things to the college, and if they are better than any that they have had before, he’ll be head of the college. Then, by-and-by, somebody else will go after some more, and if they beat him, he’ll have to go again, or else give up his berth. That’s the way they do it. This old covey knows the ropes. He has worked a traverse over ’em, and come ’way out here, where nobody’s ever been afore, and where they’ll never think of coming.” This explanation satisfied Jack; and as it raised Mr. N.’s credit for capacity, and was near enough to the truth for common purposes, I did not disturb it.
26 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX
“Old Curious” THOMAS NUTTALL
The Alert, for its homeward journey, was carrying in addition to the hides and its passenger a small quantity of gold dust which had been brought down to the ports from the interior by various persons, something not at all unusual which at that time was attracting little attention.3
3.Not until 1841 would the first notable gold discovery be made in California, in San Feliciano Canyon near the Mission San Fernando. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 27 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THOMAS NUTTALL “Old Curious” AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Sunday, May 8th. This promised to be our last day in California. Our forty thousand hides, thirty thousand horns, besides several barrels of otter and beaver skins, were all stowed below, and the hatches calked down. All our spare spars were taken on board and lashed; our water-casks secured; and our live stock, consisting of four bullocks, a dozen sheep, a dozen or more pigs, and three or four dozen of poultry, were all stowed away in their different quarters: the bullocks in the long-boat, the sheep in a pen on the fore-hatch, and the pigs in a sty under the bows of the long-boat, and the poultry in their proper coop; and the jolly-boat was full of hay for the sheep and bullocks. Our unusually large cargo, together with the stores for a five months’ voyage, brought the ship channels down into the water. In addition to this, she had been steeved so thoroughly, and was so bound by the compression of her cargo, forced into her by so powerful machinery, that she was like a man in a straight-jacket, and would be but a dull sailer, until she had worked herself loose. The California had finished discharging her cargo, and was to get under weigh at the same time with us. Having washed down decks and got our breakfast, the two vessels lay side by side, in complete readiness for sea, our ensigns hanging from the peaks, and our tall spars reflected from the glassy surface of the river, which, since sunrise, had been unbroken by a ripple. At length, a few whiffs came across the water, and, by eleven o’clock, the regular north-west wind set steadily in. There was no need of calling all hands, for we had all been hanging about the forecastle the whole forenoon, and were ready for a start upon the first sign of a breeze. All eyes were aft upon the captain, who was walking the deck, with, every now and then, a look to windward. He made a sign to the mate, who came forward, took his station, deliberately between the knight-heads, cast a glance aloft, and called out, “All hands, lay aloft and loose the sails!” We were half in the rigging before the order came, and never since we left Boston were the gaskets off the yards, and the rigging overhauled, in a shorter time. “All ready forward, sir!”– “All ready the main!”– “Cross-jack yards all ready, sir!”– “Lay down, all hands but one on each yard!” The yard-arm and bunt gaskets were cast off; and each sail hung by the jigger, with one man standing by the tie to let it go. At the same moment that we sprang aloft, a dozen hands sprang into the rigging of the California, and in an instant were all over her yards; and her sails, too, were ready to be dropped at the word. In the mean time our bow gun had been loaded and run out, and its discharge was to be the signal for dropping sails. A cloud of smoke came out of our bows; the echoes of the gun rattled our farewell among the hills of California; and the two ships were covered, from head to foot, with their white canvas. For a few minutes, all was uproar and apparent confusion: men flying about like monkeys in the rigging; ropes and blocks flying; orders given and answered, and the confused noises of men singing out at the ropes. The top-sails came to the mast-heads with “Cheerily, men!” and, in a few minutes, every sail was set; for the wind was light. The head sails were backed, the windlass came round “slip– slap” to the cry of the sailors;– “Hove short, sir,” said the mate;– “Up with him!”– “Aye, aye, sir.”– A few hearty and long heaves, and the anchor showed its head. “Hook cat!”– The fall was stretched along the decks; all hands laid hold;– “Hurrah, for the last time,” said the mate; and the anchor came to the cat-head to the tune of “Time for us to go,” with a loud chorus. Everything was done quick, as though it were for the last time. The head yards were filled away, and our ship began to move through the water on her homeward-bound course. The California had got under weigh at the same moment; and we sailed down the narrow bay abreast and were just off the mouth, and finding ourselves gradually shooting ahead of her, were on the point of giving her three parting cheers, when, suddenly, we found ourselves stopped short, and the California ranging fast ahead of us. A bar stretches across the mouth of the harbor, with water enough to float common vessels, but, being low in the water, and having kept well to leeward, as we were bound to the southward, we had stuck fast, while the California, being light, had floated over.
28 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX
“Old Curious” THOMAS NUTTALL THE REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR DANA, CONTINUED: We kept all sail on, in the hope of forcing over, but failing in this, we hove aback, and lay waiting for the tide, which was on the flood, to take us back into the channel. This was somewhat of a damper to us, and the captain looked not a little mortified and vexed. “This is the same place where the Rosa got ashore,” observed the redheaded second mate, most mal-a-propos. A malediction on the Rosa, and him too, was all the answer he got, and he slunk off to leeward. In a few minutes, the force of the wind and the rising of the tide backed us into the stream, and we were on our way to our old anchoring-place, the tide setting swiftly up, and the ship barely manageable, in the light breeze. We came-to, in our old berth, opposite the hide-house, whose inmates were not a little surprised to see us return. We felt as though we were tied to California; and some of the crew swore that they never should get clear of the bloody coast. In about half an hour, which was near high water, the order was given to man the windlass, and again the anchor was catted; but not a word was said about the last time. The California had come back on finding that we had returned, and was hove-to, waiting for us, off the point. This time we passed the bar safely, and were soon up with the California, who filled away, and kept us company. She seemed desirous of a trial of speed, and our captain accepted the challenge, although we were loaded down to the bolts of our chain plates, as deep as a sand-barge, and bound so taught with our cargo that we were no more fit for a race than a man in fetters;– while our antagonist was in her best trim. Being clear of the point, the breeze became stiff, and the royal masts bent under our sails, but we would not take them in until we saw three boys spring aloft into the rigging of the California; when they were all furled at once, but with orders to stay aloft at the top-gallant mastheads, and loose them again at the word. It was my duty to furl the fore royal; and while standing by to loose it again, I had a fine view of the scene. From where I stood, the two vessels seemed nothing but spars and sails, while their narrow decks, far below, slanting over by the force of the wind aloft, appeared hardly capable of supporting the great fabrics raised upon them. The California was to windward of us, and had every advantage; yet, while the breeze was stiff, we held our own. As soon as it began to slacken, she ranged a little ahead, and the order was given to loose the royals. In an instant the gaskets were off and the bunt dropped. “Sheet home the fore royal!– Weather sheet’s home!”– “Hoist away, sir!” is bawled from aloft. “Overhaul your clew-lines!” shouts the mate. “Aye, aye, sir, all clear!”– “Taught leech! belay! Well the lee brace; haul taught to windward”– and the royals are set. These brought us up again; but the wind continuing light, the California set hers, and it was soon evident that she was walking away from us. Our captain then hailed, and said that he should6 keep off to his course; adding– “She isn’t the Alert now. If I had her in your trim, she would have been out of sight by this time.” This was good-naturedly answered from the California, and she braced sharp up, and stood close upon the wind up the coast; while we squared away our yards, and stood before the wind to the south-southwest. The California’s crew manned her weather rigging, waved their hats in the air, and gave up three hearty cheers, which we answered as heartily, and the customary single cheer came back to us from over the water. She stood on her way, doomed to eighteen months’ or two years’ hard service upon that hated coast, while we were making our way to our home, to which every hour and every mile was bringing us nearer. As soon as we parted company with the California, all hands were sent aloft to set the studding-sails. Booms were rigged out, tacks and halyards rove, sail after sail packed upon her, until every available inch of canvas was spread, that we might not lose a breath of the fair wind. We could now see how much she was cramped and deadened by her cargo; for with a good breeze on her quarter, and every stitch of canvas spread, we could not get more than six knots out of her. She had no more life in her than if she were water-logged. The log was hove several times; but she was doing her best. We had hardly patience with her, but the older sailors said– “Stand by! you’ll see her work herself loose in a week or two, and then she’ll walk up to Cape Horn like a race-horse.” When all sail had been set, and the decks cleared up, the California was a speck in the horizon, and the coast lay like a low cloud along the north-east. At sunset they were both out of sight, and we were once more upon the ocean where sky and water meet. At eight o’clock all hands were called aft, and the watches set for the voyage. Some changes were made; but I was glad to find myself still in the larboard watch. Our crew was somewhat diminished; for a man and a boy had gone in the Pilgrim; another was second mate of the Ayacucho; and a third, the oldest man of the crew, had broken down under the hard work and constant exposure on the coast, and, having had a stroke of the palsy, was left behind at the hide-house under the charge of Captain Arthur.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 29 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THOMAS NUTTALL “Old Curious” THE REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR DANA, CONCLUDED: The poor fellow wished very much to come home in the ship; and he ought to have been brought home in her. But a live dog is better than a dead lion, and a sick sailor belongs to nobody’s mess; so he was sent ashore with the rest of the lumber, which was only in the way. By these diminutions, we were shorthanded for a voyage round Cape Horn in the dead of winter. Besides S______and myself, there were only five in the forecastle; who, together with four boys in the steerage, the sailmaker, carpenter, etc., composed the whole crew. In addition to this, we were only three or four days out, when the sailmaker, who was the oldest and best seaman on board, was taken with the palsy, and was useless for the rest of the voyage. The constant wading in the water, in all weathers, to take off hides, together with the other labors, is too much for old men, and for any who have not good constitutions. Beside these two men of ours, the second officer of the California and the carpenter of the Pilgrim broke down under the work, and the latter died at Santa Barbara. The young man, too, who came out with us from Boston in the Pilgrim, had to be taken from his berth before the mast and made clerk, on account of a fit of rheumatism which attacked him soon after he came upon the coast. By the loss of the sailmaker, our watch was reduced to five, of whom two were boys, who never steered but in fine weather, so that the other two and myself had to stand at the wheel four hours apiece out of every twenty-four; and the other watch had only four helmsmen. “Never mind– we’re homeward bound!” was the answer to everything; and we should not have minded this, were it not for the thought that we should be off Cape Horn in the very dead of winter. It was now the first part of May; and two months would bring us off the cape in July, which is the worst month in the year there; when the sun rises at nine and sets at three, giving eighteen hours night, and there is snow and rain, gales and high seas, in abundance. The prospect of meeting this in a ship half manned, and loaded so deep that every heavy sea must wash her fore and aft, was by no means pleasant. The Alert, in her passage out, doubled the Cape in the month of February, which is midsummer; and we came round in the Pilgrim in the latter part of October, which we thought was bad enough. There was only one of our crew who had been off there in the winter, and that was in a whaleship, much lighter and higher than our ship; yet he said they had man- killing weather for twenty days without intermission, and their decks were swept twice, and they were all glad enough to see the last of it. The Brandywine frigate, also, in her passage round, had sixty days off the Cape, and lost several boats by the heavy sea. All this was for our comfort; yet pass it we must; and all hands agreed to make the best of it. During our watches below we overhauled our clothes, and made and mended everything for bad weather. Each of us had made for himself a suit of oil-cloth or tarpaulin, and these we got out, and gave thorough coatings of oil or tar, and hung upon the stays to dry. Our stout boots, too, we covered over with a thick mixture of melted grease and tar, and hung out to dry. Thus we took advantage of the warm sun and fine weather of the Pacific to prepare for its other face. In the forenoon watches below, our forecastle looked like the workshop of what a sailor is– a Jack at all trades. Thick stockings and drawers were darned and patched; mittens dragged from the bottom of the chest and mended; comforters made for the neck and ears; old flannel shirts cut up to line monkey jackets; southwesters lined with flannel, and a pot of paint smuggled forward to give them a coat on the outside; and everything turned to hand; so that, although two years had left us but a scanty wardrobe, yet the economy and invention which necessity teaches a sailor, soon put each of us in pretty good trim for bad weather, even before we had seen the last of the fine. Even the cobbler’s art was not out of place. Several old shoes were very decently repaired, and with waxed ends, an awl, and the top of an old boot, I made me quite a respectable sheath for my knife. There was one difficulty, however, which nothing that we could do would remedy; and that was the leaking of the forecastle, which made it very uncomfortable in bad weather, rendered half of the berths tenantless. The tightest ships, in long voyage, from the constant strain which is upon the bowsprit, will leak, more or less, round the heel of the bowsprit, and the bitts, which come down into the forecastle; but, in addition to this, we this, we had an unaccountable leak on the starboard bow, near the cat-head, which drove us from the forward berths on that side, and, indeed, when she was on the starboard tack, from all the forward berths. One of the after berths, too, leaked in very bad weather; so that in a ship which was in other respects as tight as a bottle, and brought her cargo to Boston perfectly dry, we had, after every effort made to prevent it, in the way of caulking and leading, a forecastle with only three dry berths for seven of us. However, as there is never but one watch below at a time, by ‘turning in and out,’ we did pretty well. And there being, in our watch, but three of us who lived forward, we generally had a dry berth apiece in bad weather.1 All this, however, was but anticipation. We were still in fine weather in the North Pacific, running down the north-east trades, which we took on the second day after leaving San Diego.
1. On removing the cat-head, after the ship arrived at Boston, it was found that there were two holes under it which had been bored for the purpose o driving treenails, and which, accidentally, had not been plugged up when the cat-head was placed over them. This was sufficient to account for the l and for our not having been able to discover and stop it.
30 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX
“Old Curious” THOMAS NUTTALL
1840
1840s, 1850s: In this timeframe several scientists were glimpsing chromosomes under the microscope, but not having the slightest clue what it was that they were looking at.
Laura Dassow Walls has pointed out in SEEING NEW WORLDS: THOREAU AND HUMBOLDTIAN SCIENCE that to enact the agenda of exploration and investigation being recommended by Alexander von Humboldt would require an army of workers — which on the continent of North America was indeed created, in the form of the tax-funded Corps of Topographical Engineers established by the federal government of the United States of America.
There were in the first half of the 19th Century a multitude of Congress-sponsored scientific expeditions and the control of our new federal government was extended in this manner over much of North America. Geological or natural history surveys funded by state governments had begun in North Carolina in 1823, and by the end of the 1830s such surveys had been initiated by 13 states. In addition the federal government had been funding or assisting with exploration since the expedition of Lewis and Clark, but throughout the 1840s and 1850s the great reconnaissance of the American West was being conducted by Army officers. Lieutenant John Charles Frémont led only three of these numerous expeditions across the western regions of the North
American continent. Between 1840 and 1860, the US government published 60 enormously expensive multi- volume double-folio or oversize treatises on the American West, in addition to 15 treatises on global naval expeditions and uncounted reports of the Coast and Geodetic Survey. Very little of our incessant contemporary dialog about the “free enterprise system” dates back to that era, and the cost of all this seems to have amounted 1 1 to from /4th to /3d of the annual federal budget without having in any way set off alarm bells in the minds of the ideologs of the right of the political spectrum!4 Since Humboldt was very much in touch with these activities, a number of the explorers, scientists, and artists of the period may safely be characterized as “Humboldt’s Children”:5 personages such as Karl Bodmer, George Catlin, Frederic Edwin Church, John Charles Frémont, and Professor Thomas Nuttall. However, Louis Agassiz would also need to be characterized as having been a protégé of Humboldt, and Charles Darwin, Professor Asa Gray, and Arnold Henri Guyot. Humboldt corresponded with and was visited by American scientists such as vice-president of the Boston 4. NASA, eat your heart out. 5. Goetzmann, William H. NEW LANDS, NEW MEN, AMERICA AND THE SECOND GREAT AGE OF DISCOVERY. NY: Viking, 1986 “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 31 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THOMAS NUTTALL “Old Curious”
Society of Natural History Charles T. Jackson, academic scholars such as Harvard professor George Ticknor, and popular writers such as Washington Irving (to whom in this year we were offering the position of Secretary of the Navy).
Dr. Augustus Addison Gould of Massachusetts General Hospital became a corresponding member of the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia, of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, of the National Institute in Washington DC, and of the American Statistical Association. He published a pioneering work in the United States on the geographical distribution of species, “Results of an Examination of the Shells of Massachusetts and their Geographical Distribution,” in the Boston Journal of Natural History (Volume 3, Art. xviii, pp. 483-494).
James Ellsworth De Kay became First Vice-President of the Lyceum of Natural History of New York. His CATALOGUE OF THE ANIMALS BELONGING TO THE STATE OF N.Y. AS FAR AS THEY HAVE BEEN FIGURED AND DESCRIBED (made May 7, 1839) appeared on pages 7-14 of the FOURTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE STATE MADE JANUARY 24, 1840 (484 pages, New York Assembly Document #50) and was reviewed in the American Journal of Science (Volume 40:73-85). (His “Report of the zoological dept” appeared on pages 15-36 of that same document.)
1842
July: Henry Thoreau contributed poems and NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS to THE DIAL. Nathaniel Hawthorne liked this review of the nature literature — but Waldo Emerson disliked it. “Entomology extends the limits of being in a new direction, so that I walk in nature with a sense of greater space and freedom. It suggests besides, that the universe is not rough-hewn, but perfect in its details. Nature will bear the closest inspection; she invites us to lay our eye level with the smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain. She has no interstices; every part is full of life. I explore, too, with pleasure, the sources of the myriad sounds which crowd the summer noon, and which seem the very grain and stuff of which eternity is made. Who does not remember the shrill roll-call of the harvest fly? ANACREON There were ears for these sounds in Greece long ago, as Anacreon’s ode will show” — Henry David Thoreau “Natural History of Massachusetts” July 1842 issue of The Dial6
6. Franklin Benjamin Sanborn reported that “one of Harvard College’s natural historians” (we may presume this to have been Dr. Thaddeus William Harris, Thoreau’s teacher in natural science in his senior year) had remarked to Bronson Alcott that “if Emerson had not spoiled him, Thoreau would have made a good entomologist.” 32 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX
“Old Curious” THOMAS NUTTALL
Anacreon’s Ode to the Cicada
We pronounce thee happy, cicada, For on the tops of the trees, Sipping a little dew Like any king thou singest. For thine are they all, Whatever thou seest in the fields, And whatever the woods bear. Thou art the friend of the husbandmen. In no respect injuring any one; And thou art honored among men, Sweet prophet of summer. The muses love thee, And Phoebus himself loves thee, And has given thee a shrill song; Age does not wrack thee, Thou skilful – earth-born – song-loving, Unsuffering – bloodless one; Almost thou art like the gods.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 33 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THOMAS NUTTALL “Old Curious”
NUTTALL ARISTOTLE
NUTTALL
In this issue of THE DIAL appeared Thoreau’s translation of one of Anacreon’s odes in CARMINUM POETARUM NOUEM, under the title “Return of Spring”: “the works of men shine,” etc.
In this issue of THE DIAL, in the context of an article “Prayers” by Waldo, a poem appeared in quotation without any attribution and without title. We suspect this sarcastic comment in the form of a prayer to have been contributed by Thoreau:
34 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX
“Old Curious” THOMAS NUTTALL
Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelf Than that I may not disappoint myself, That in my action I may soar as high As I can now discern with this clear eye. And next in value, which thy kindness lends, That I may greatly disappoint my friends, Howe’er they think or hope that it may be, They may not dream how thou’st distinguished me. That my weak hand may equal my firm faith, And my life practice what my tongue saith; That my low conduct may not show, Nor my relenting lines, That I thy purpose did not know, Or overrated thy designs.
This issue of THE DIAL also contained portions selected by Waldo out of Sir William Jones’s and Charles Wilkins’s translations of the THE HEETOPADES OF VEESHNOO-SARMA, IN A SERIES OF CONNECTED FABLES, INTERSPERSED WITH MORAL, PRUDENTIAL, AND POLITICAL MAXIMS.7
A WEEK: It is always singular, but encouraging, to meet with common sense in very old books, as the Heetopades of Veeshnoo Sarma; a playful wisdom which has eyes behind as well as before, and oversees itself.
WALDEN: Why do precisely these objects which we behold make a HITOPADESA world? Why has man just these species of animals for his neighbors; as if nothing but a mouse could have filled this ÆSOP crevice? I suspect that Pilpay & Co. have put animals to their XENOPHANES best use, for they are all beasts of burden, in a sense, made to carry some portion of our thoughts. PEOPLE OF WALDEN THE DIAL, JULY 1842
We commence in the present number the printing of a series of selections from the oldest ethical and religious writings of men, exclusive of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. Each nation has its bible more or less pure; none has yet been willing or able in a wise and devout spirit to collate its own with those of other nations, and sinking the civil-historical and the ritual portions to bring together the grand expressions of the moral sentiment in different ages and races, the rules for the guidance of life, the bursts of piety and of abandonment to the Invisible and Eternal; — a work inevitable sooner or later, and 7. The HITOPADESA or “Salutary Instructions” is a very ancient collection and is also familiarly known to us as “THE FABLES OF PILPAY.” Many of these tales are condensations of material to be found in the PANCHATANTRA, which consists of five apologues recited by a Brahmin teacher name of Vishnu Sarma for the instruction of his class of Indian princes in the principles of their princeship. Since this collection emphasizes worldly-wiseness, it has been exceedingly popular, indeed even more popular than Machiavelli’s THE PRINCE: we presently know of over 200 different editions in at least 50 languages around the world. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 35 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THOMAS NUTTALL “Old Curious”
which we hope is to be done by religion and not by literature. The following sentences are taken from Charles Wilkins's translation of the Heetopades or Amicable Instructions of Veeshnoo Sarma, according to Sir William Jones, the most beautiful, if not the most ancient collection of apologues in the world, and the original source of the book, which passes in the modern languages of Europe and America, under the false name of Pilpay.
EXTRACTS FROM THE HEETOPADES OF VEESHNOO SARMA.
Whatsoever cometh to pass, either good or evil, is the consequence of a man's own actions, and descendeth from the power of the Supreme Ruler. Our lives are for the purposes of religion, labor, love, and salvation. If these are destroyed, what is not lost? If these are preserved, what is not preserves? A wise man should relinquish both his wealth and his life for another. All is to be surrendered for a just man when he is reduced to the brink of destruction. Why dost thou hesitate over this perishable body composed of flesh, bones, and excrements? O my friend, [my body,] support my reputation! If constancy is to be obtained by inconstancy, purity by impurity, reputation by the body, then what is there which may not be obtained? The difference between the body and the qualities is infinite; the body is a thing to be destroyed in a moment, whilst the qualities endure to the end of the creation. Is this one of us, or is he a stranger is the enumeration of the ungenerous; but to those by whom liberality is practised, the whole world is but as one family. Fortune attendeth that lion amongst men who exerteth himself. They are weak men who declare Fate the sole cause. It is said, Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a former state of existence; wherefore it behoveth a man vigilantly to exert the powers he is possessed of. The stranger, who turneth away from a house with disappointed hopes, leaveth there his own offences and departeth, taking with him all the good actions of the owner. Hospitality is to be exercised even towards an enemy when he cometh to thine house. The tree does not withdraw its shade even from the wood-cutter. Of all men thy guest is the superior. The mind of a good man does not alter when he is in distress; the waters of the ocean are not to be heated by a torch of straw. Nor bathing with cool water, nor a necklace of pearls, nor anointing with sanders, yieldeth such comfort to the body oppressed with heat, as the language of a good man cheerfully uttered doth to the mind. Good men extend their pity even unto the most despicable animals. The moon doth not withhold the light, even from the cottage of a Chandala. Those who have forsaken the killing of all; those who are helpmates to all; those who are a sanctuary to all; those men are in the way of heaven.
36 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX
“Old Curious” THOMAS NUTTALL
Behold the difference between the one who eateth flesh, and him to whom it belonged. The first hath a momentary enjoyment, whilst the latter is deprived of existence. Who would commit so great a crime against a poor animal, who is fed only by the herbs which grow wild in the woods, and whose belly is burnt up with hunger? Every book of knowledge, which is known to Oosana or to Vreehaspatee, is by nature planted in the understanding of women. The beauty of the Kokeela is his voice; the beauty of a wife is constancy to her husband; the beauty of the ill-favored is science; the beauty of the penitent is patience. What is too great a load for those who have strength? What is distance to the indefatigable? What is a foreign country to those who have science? Who is a stranger to those who have the habit of speaking kindly? Time drinketh up the essence of every great and noble action, which ought to be performed and is delayed in the execution. When Nature is forsaken by her lord, be she ever so great, she doth not survive. Suppose thyself a river, and a holy pilgrimage in the land of Bharata, of which truth is the water, good actions the banks, and compassion the current; and then, O son of Pandoo, wash thyself therein, for the inward soul is not to be purified by common water. As frogs to the pool, as birds to a lake full of water, so doth every species of wealth flow to the hands of him who exerteth himself. If we are rich with the riches which we neither give nor enjoy, we are rich with the riches which are buried in the caverns of the earth. He whose mind is at ease is possessed of all riches. is it not the same to one whose foot is enclosed in a shoe, as if the whole surface of the earth were covered with leather? Where have they, who are running here and there in search of riches, such happiness as those placid spirits enjoy who are gratified at the immortal fountain of happiness? All hath been read, all hath been heard, and all hath been followed by him who, having put hope behind him, dependeth not upon expectation. What is religion? Compassion for all things which have life. What is happiness? To animals in this world, health. What is kindness? A principle in the goode. What is philosophy? An entire separation from the world. To a hero of sound mind, what is his own, and what a foreign country? Wherever he halteth, that place is acquired by the splendor of his arms. When pleasure is arrived, it is worthy of attention; when trouble presenteth itself, the same; pains and pleasures have their revolutions like a wheel. One, although not possessed of a mine of gold, may find the offspring of his own nature, that noble ardor which hath for its object the accomplishment of the whole assemblage of virtues. Man should not be over-anxious for a subsistence, for it is provided by the Creator. The infant no sooner droppeth from the womb, than the breasts of the mother begin to stream. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 37 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THOMAS NUTTALL “Old Curious”
He, by whom geese were made white, parrots are stained green, and peacocks painted of various hues, — even he will provide for their support. He, whose inclination turneth away from an object, may be said to have obtained it.
[Wilkins, Sir Charles. THE BHAGVAT-GETA, transl. 1785. THE HEETOPADES, transl. Bath, 1787. THE STORY OF … SAKOONTALA, TRANSL. FROM THE MAHÄBHÄRATA. 1795. GRAMMAR OF THE SANSKRITA LANGUAGE. 1808.
Horace Hayman Wilson. THE MÉGHA DUTA: OR, CLOUD MESSENGER: A POEM IN THE SANSKRIT LANGUAGE BY KALIDASA, WITH TRANSL. IN ENGLISH VERSE. Calcutta, 1814, etc. SANSCRIT-ENGLISH DICTIONARY. Calcutta, 1819; 2nd edn., 1832. HINDU THEATRE. 3 vols. Calcutta, 1827, etc. THE VISHNU PURANA, transl. 1840; new edn., 1867-1870. ARIANA ANTIQUA, A DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF THE ANTIQUITIES AND COINS OF AFGHANISTAN. 1841. INTRODUCTION TO SANSKRIT GRAMMAR. 1841. RIG-VEDA SANHITA, translated: Volume 1, 1850; New Edition, 1868, II, 1854, III, 1857; completed by E.B. Cowell; IV, 1866, V–VI, 1870. Collective edn. of WORKS. 12 vols. 1862-1871]
38 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX
“Old Curious” THOMAS NUTTALL
1853
June 1: Marietta Alboni sailed for France, where she would marry an Italian count. By 1863 she would have abandoned her singing career, except for special appearances at which she would apologize for both her growing obesity and her somewhat diminishing vocal talents by making the smiling comment “I am the shadow of my former self.”
In Pest, two works for piano and orchestra by Franz Liszt were performed for the initial time: Fantasie über Motive aus Beethovens Ruinen von Athen and Fantasie über Ungarische Volksmelodien.
Arthur Buckminster Fuller, pastor of the Unitarian Society in Manchester, New Hampshire, was installed to
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 39 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THOMAS NUTTALL “Old Curious”
minister over the New North Church in Boston.
June 1. Walking up this side-hill, I disturbed a nighthawk [Common Nighthawk Chordeiles minor] eight or ten feet from me, which went, half-fluttering, half hopping, the mottled creature, like a winged toad, as Nuttall says the French of Louisiana(?) call them, down the hill as far as I could see. Without moving, I looked about and saw its two eggs on the bare ground, on a slight shelf of the hill, on the dead pine-needles and sand, without any cavity or nest whatever, very obvious when once you had detected them, but not easily detected from their color, a coarse gray formed of white spotted with a bluish or slaty brown, or umber, –a stone – granite- color, like the places it selects. I advanced and put my hand on them, and while I stooped, seeing a shadow on the ground, looked up and saw the bird, which had fluttered down the hill so blind and helpless, circling low and swiftly past over my head, showing the white spot on each wing in true nighthawk fashion. When I had gone a dozen rods, it appeared again higher in the air, with its peculiar flitting, limping kind of flight, all the while noiseless, and suddenly descending, it dashed at me within ten feet of my head, like an imp of darkness, then swept away high over the pond, dashing now to this side, now to that, on different tacks, as if, in pursuit of its prey, it had already forgotten its eggs on the earth. I can see how it might easily come to be regarded with superstitious awe.
40 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX
“Old Curious” THOMAS NUTTALL
1855
April 6: Charles Eliot Norton wrote James Russell Lowell endorsing free-soil politics because this would “confine the Negro within the South.” This Harvard College professor wasn’t against slavery, rather, he was against the enslavable race, which for obvious reasons shouldn’t be allowed to exist, or at the very least, shouldn’t be allowed to exist here.
Get this: he was antislavery because of his racism.
April 6 [1855]. It clears up at 8 P.M. warm and pleasant, leaving flitting clouds and a little wind, and I go up the Assabet in my boat. The blackbirds have now begun to frequent the water's edge in the meadow, the ice being sufficiently out. The April waters, smooth and commonly high, before many flowers (none yet) or any leafing, while the landscape is still russet and frogs are just awakening, is [sic] peculiar. It began yesterday. A very few white maple stamens stand out already loosely enough to blow in the wind, and some alder catkins look almost ready to shed pollen. On the hillsides I smell the dried leaves and hear a few flies buzzing over them. The banks of the river are alive with song sparrows and tree sparrows. They now sing in advance of vegetation, as the flowers will blossom, — those slight tinkling, twittering sounds called the singing of birds; they have come to enliven the bare twigs before the buds show any signs of starting. I see a large wood tortoise just crawled out upon the bank, with three oval, low, bug-like leeches on its sternum. You can hear all day, from time to time, in any part of the village, the sound of a gun fired at ducks. Yesterday I was wishing that I could find a dead duck floating on the water, as I had found muskrats, and a hare, and now I see something bright and reflecting the light from the edge of the alders, five or six rods off. Can it be a duck? I can hardly believe my eyes. I am near enough to see its green head and neck. I am delighted to find a perfect specimen of the Mergus merganser, or goosander [Common Merganser Mergus merganser], undoubtedly shot yesterday by the Fast-Day sportsmen, and I take a small flattened shot from its wing, –flattened against the wing-bone apparently. The wing is broken, and it is shot through the head.8 It is a perfectly fresh and very beautiful bird, and as I raise it, I get sight of its long, slender vermillion bill (color of red sealing-wax) and its clean, bright-orange legs and feet, and then of its perfectly smooth and spotlessly pure white breast and belly tinged with a faint salmon (or tinged with a delicate buff inclining to salmon). This, according to Wilson,9 is one of the mergansers, or fisher ducks, of which there are nine or ten species and we have four in America. It is the largest of these four; feeds almost entirely on fin and shell fish; called water pheasant, sheldrake, fisherman diver, dun diver, sparkling fowl, harle, etc., as well as goosander. Go in April, 8. The chief wound was in a wing, which was broken. I afterward took three small shot from it, which were flattened against the bill’s base and perhaps (?) the quills’ shafts. 9. Alexander Wilson, AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY, BY WILSON; WITH NOTES, BY JARDINE: TO WHICH IS ADDED, A SYNOPSIS OF AMERICAN BIRDS; INCLUDING THOSE DESCRIBED BY BONAPARTE, AUDUBON, NUTTALL, AND RICHARDSON, BY T.M. [Thomas Mayo] BREWER. WITH 29 PAGES OF STEEL PLATES OF NEARLY 400 BIRDS. 8vo. New York: H.S. Samuels, 1852. AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 41 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THOMAS NUTTALL “Old Curious”
return in November. Jardine has found seven trout in one female. Nuttall10 says they breed in the Russian Empire and are seen in Mississippi and Missouri in winter. He found a young brood in Pennsylvania. Yarrell11 says they are called also saw-bill and jack-saw; are sometimes sold in London market. Nest, according to Selby,12 on ground; according to others, in a hollow tree also. Found on the continent of Europe, northern Asia, and even in Japan(?). Some breed in the Orkneys and thereabouts. My bird is 25 7/8 inches long and 35 in alar extent; from point of wing to end of primaries, 11 inches. It is a great diver and does not mind the cold. It appears admirably fitted for diving and swimming. Its body is flat, and its tail short, flat, compact, and wedge-shaped; its eyes peer out a slight slit or semicircle in the skin of the head; and its legs are flat and thin in one direction, and the toes shut up compactly so as to create the least friction when drawing them forward, but their broad webs spread them three and a half inches when they take a stroke. The web is extended three eighths of an inch beyond the inner toe of each foot. There are very conspicuous black teeth-like serrations along the edges of its bill, and this also is roughened so that it may hold its prey securely. The breast appeared quite dry when I raised it from the water. The head and neck are, as Wilson says, black glossed with green, but the lower part of the neck pure white, and these colors bound on each other so abruptly that one appears to be sewed on to the other. It is a perfect wedge from the middle of its body to the end of its tail, and it is only three and a quarter inches deep from back to breast at the thickest part, while the greatest breadth horizontally (at the root of the legs) is five and a half inches. In these respects it reminds me of an otter, which however I have never seen. I suspect that I have seen near a hundred of these birds this spring, but I never got so near one before. In Yarrell’s plate the depth of the male goosander is to its length (i.e. from tip of tail to most forward part of breast) as thirty- seven to one hundred and three, or the depth is more than one third. This length in Yarrell’s bird, calling the distance from the point of the wing to the end of the primaries eleven inches, is about fourteen and a half inches of which my three and a quarter is not one fourth. In Nuttall’s plate the proportion is thirty-two to ninety-one, also more than one third. I think they have not represented the bird flat enough. Yarrell says it is the largest of the British mergansers; is a winter visitor, though a few breed in the north of Britain; are rare in the southern countries. But, according to Yarrell, a Mr. Low in his Natural History of Orkney says they breed there, and, after breeding, the sexes separate; and Y. quotes Selby as saying that their nest is near the edge of the water, of grass, roots, etc., lined with down, sometimes among stones, in long grass, under bushes, or in a stump or hollow tree. Y. continues, egg “a uniform buff white,” two and a half inches long. Sometimes carry their young on their backs in the water. It is common in Sweden and, according to the traveller Acerbi, in Lapland they give it a hollow tree to build in and then steal its eggs. The mother, he adds, carries her young to the water in her bill. Y. says it is well known in Russia and is found in Germany, Holland, France, Switzerland, Provence, and Italy. Has been seen near the Caucasus (and is found in Japan, according to one
10. Professor Thomas Nuttall, AMANUAL OF THE ORNITHOLOGY OF THE UNITED STATES AND OF CANADA, Cam bridge: Hilliard and Brown; Boston: Hilliard, Gray, 1832-1834. NUTTALL’S LAND BIRDS NUTTALL’S WATER BIRDS 11. William Yarrell, AHISTORY OF BRITISH BIRDS, 3 volumes, London: J. Van Voorst, 1843. 12. Prideaux John Selby, ILLUSTRATIONS OF BRITISH ORNITHOLOGY, Volume II, Water Birds (Edinburgh: W.H. Lizars, 1833). VOLUME II, WATER BIRDS
42 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX
“Old Curious” THOMAS NUTTALL
authority). Also in North America, Hudson’s Bay, Greenland, and Iceland.
Prideaux John Selby’s Goosander
1856
April 24, Thursday: A treaty was proclaimed between the United States of America and the Menominee tribe of Wisconsin in regard to reservation lands for the Stockbridge and Munsee tribes that were currently being removed west of the Mississippi River at government expense, that had been entered into on February 11th and ratified by the federal Senate on April 18th. The Menominee would receive 60 cents an acre for land taken from their reservation to provide an isolated locale within which the Stockbridge and Munsee might now subsist.
April 24. A rain-threatening April day. Sprinkles a little in the forenoon.
P. M. — To mayflower. The yellow willow peels fairly, probably for several days. Its buds are bursting and showing a little green. at end of railroad bridge. On Money-Diggers’ Shore, much large yellow lily root washed up; that white root with white fibres and yellowish leaf-buds. I doubt if I have seen any pontederia this year. I find, on the southeast side of Lupine Hill, nearly four rods from the water and a dozen feet above its level, a young Emys picta, one and five eighths inches long and one and a half wide. I think it must have been hatched year before last. It was headed up-hill. Its rear above was already covered with some kind of green moss (?) or the like, which probably had adhered or grown to it in its winter quarters. Warren Miles at his new mill tells me that he found a mud turtle of middling size in his brook there last Monday, or the 21st. I saw a wood tortoise there. He has noticed several dead trout, the young man says, and eels, about
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 43 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THOMAS NUTTALL “Old Curious”
the shore of the pond, which had apparently died in the winter, washed up about his mill, some that would weigh a pound, and thought that they had been killed by that strong-scented stagnant water of his pond. They could not get down. Also they can’t get above his mill now, in the spring. He says that at his mill near the factory, where he used a small undershot wheel, eighteen inches in diameter, for grinding lead, he was prevented from grinding at night by the eels stopping the wheel. It was in August, and they were going down-stream. They never ran till about dark, nor after daylight, but at that season one would get under the wheel every five minutes and stop it, and it had to be taken out. There was not width enough beneath the wheel, a small undershot one, i.e. between the wheel and the apron, to allow an eel of ordinary size to pass, and they were washed in sidewise so as to shut this space up completely. They were never troubled by them when going up, which he thought was in April. At the factory they can sometimes catch a bushel in a night at the same time in the box of wire in which they wash wool. Said that they had a wheel at the paper-mills above which killed every eel that tried to go through. A Garfield (I judge from his face) confirmed the story of sheldrakes killed in an open place in the river between the factory and Harrington’s, just after the first great snow-storm (which must have been early in January), when the river was all frozen elsewhere. There were three, and they persisted in staying and fishing there. He killed one. The epigæa on the upper edge of the bank shows a good deal of the pink, and may open in two or three days if it is pleasant. Equisetum arvense, by path beyond second brook, probably yesterday. As usual, am struck with the forwardness of the dark patch of slender rush at the cowslip place. Returning, in the low wood just this side the first Second Division Brook, near the meadow, see a brown bird flit, and behold my hermit thrush, with one companion, flitting silently through the birches. I saw the fox-color on his tail-coverts, as well as the brown streaks on the breast. Both kept up a constant jerking of the tail as they sat on their perches. This season of rain and superabundant moisture makes attractive many an unsightly hollow and recess. I see some roadside lakes, where the grass and clover had already sprung, owing to previous rain or melted snow, now filled with perfectly transparent April rain-water, through which I see to their emerald bottoms, — paved with emerald. In the pasture beyond Nut Meadow Brook Crossing, the unsightly holes where rocks have been dug and blasted out are now converted into perfect jewels. They are filled with water of crystalline transparency, paved with the same emerald, with a few hardhacks and meadow-sweets standing in them, and jagged points of rock, and a few skaters gliding over them. Even these furnish goblets and vases of perfect purity to hold the dews and rains, and what more agreeable bottom can we look to than this which the earliest moisture and sun had tinged green? We do not object to see dry leaves and withered grass at the bottom of the goblet when we drink, if these manifestly do not affect the purity of the water. What wells can be more charming? If I see an early grasshopper drowning in one, it looks like a fate to be envied. Here is no dark unexplored bottom, with its imagined monsters and mud, but perfect sincerity, setting off all that it reveals. Through this medium we admire even the decaying leaves and sticks at the bottom. The brook had risen so, owing to Miles’s running his mill, that I could not get over where I did going. April wells, call them, vases clean as if enamelled. There is a slight sea-turn. I saw it like a smoke beyond Concord from Brown’s high land, and felt the cool fresh east wind. Is it not common thus early? The old caterpillar-nests which now lie on the ground under wild cherry trees, and which the birds may use, are a quite light-colored cottony web, close and thick-matted, together with the dried excrement of caterpillars, etc., on the inside. See a dog’s-bane with two pods open and partially curved backward on each side, but a third not yet open. This soon opens and scatters its down and seeds in my chamber. The outside is a dull reddish or mahogany-color, but
the inside is a singularly polished very pale brown. The inner bark of this makes a strong twine like that of the milkweed, but there is not so much of it. What is that now ancient and decayed fungus by the first mayflowers,
44 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX
“Old Curious” THOMAS NUTTALL
— trumpet-shaped with a very broad mouth, the chief inner part green, the outer dark brown?
The earliest gooseberry leaf has spread a third of an inch or more. Goodwin shot, about 6 P.M., and brought to me a cinereous coot (Fulica Americana) which was flying over the willows at Willow Bay, where the water now runs up. It measures fourteen inches to end of tail; eighteen and one half to end of legs. Tail projects a half-inch beyond closed wings. Alar extent twenty-six inches. (These dimensions are somewhat stretched.) Above it is a bluish slate, passing into olive behind the wings, the primaries more brownish. Beneath, ash-color or pale slate. Head and neck, uniform deep black. Legs, clear green in front, passing into lead-color behind and on the lobes. Edging of wings, white; also the tips of the secondaries for one fourth of an inch, and a small space under the tail. Wings beneath, very light, almost silvery, slate. Vent, for a small space, black. Bill, bluish-white, with a chestnut bar near tip, and corresponding chestnut spot on each side of lower mandible and a somewhat diamond-shaped chestnut spot at base in front. No noticeable yellow on bill. Irides, reddish. No noticeable whitish spot beneath eyes; only bare lid. Legs and feet are very neat; talons very slender, curving, and sharp, the middle ones ½ inch + long. Lobes chiefly on the inner side of the toes. Legs bare half an inch above the joint. From its fresh and tender look I judge it to be a last year’s bird. It is quite lousy. According to Nuttall, they range from 55° north latitude to Florida and Jamaica and west to Oregon (?) and Mexico. Probably breed in every part of North America, — even in Fresh Pond, be would imply, — But their nests, eggs, and breeding-habits are yet unknown. Nocturnal, hiding by day. In Florida in the winter. Come to Fresh Pond in September. A pair there in April, and seen with young birds in June. When alarmed utter a “hoarse kruk.” Called “flusterers” in Carolina, according to Lawson, because they fly trailing their legs or pattering with them over the water. Food: vegetables, also small shellfish, insects, gravel, etc. Leave the Northern States in November.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 45 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THOMAS NUTTALL “Old Curious”
1859
September 10, Saturday: Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, John Gerard’s THE HERBALL: OR, GENERALL HISTORIE OF PLANTES ... (2d edition, London, revised by Thomas Johnson from the 1597 edition: Printed by Adam Islip, Joice Norton and Richard Whitakers, 1633).
Thomas Nuttall died at St Helens in Lancashire, England (the body would be placed in the burial ground of Christ Church in nearby Eccleston).
September 10. See wasps, collected in the sun on a wall, at 9 A.M.
46 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX
“Old Curious” THOMAS NUTTALL
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 2013. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at
“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Prepared: March 8, 2013
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 47 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THOMAS NUTTALL “Old Curious”
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, upon someone’s request we have pulled it out of the hat of a pirate that has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (depicted above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of data modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture. This is data mining. To respond to such a request for information, we merely push a button.
48 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX
“Old Curious” THOMAS NUTTALL
Commonly, the first output of the program has obvious deficiencies and so we need to go back into the data modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and do a recompile of the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process which 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 your requests with
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 49