“Come, come, my lovely fair, and let us try
Those rural delicacies.”
_Christ’s Invitation to the Soul._ QUARLES
At length, on Saturday, the last day of August, 1839, we two, brothers,
and natives of Concord, weighed anchor in this river port; for Concord,
too, lies under the sun, a port of entry and departure for the bodies
as well as the souls of men; one shore at least exempted from all
duties but such as an honest man will gladly discharge. A warm
drizzling rain had obscured the morning, and threatened to delay our
voyage, but at length the leaves and grass were dried, and it came out
a mild afternoon, as serene and fresh as if Nature were maturing some
greater scheme of her own. After this long dripping and oozing from
every pore, she began to respire again more healthily than ever. So
with a vigorous shove we launched our boat from the bank, while the
flags and bulrushes courtesied a God-speed, and dropped silently down
the stream.
Our boat, which had cost us a week’s labor in the spring, was in form
like a fisherman’s dory, fifteen feet long by three and a half in
breadth at the widest part, painted green below, with a border of blue,
with reference to the two elements in which it was to spend its
existence. It had been loaded the evening before at our door, half a
mile from the river, with potatoes and melons from a patch which we had
cultivated, and a few utensils, and was provided with wheels in order
to be rolled around falls, as well as with two sets of oars, and
several slender poles for shoving in shallow places, and also two
masts, one of which served for a tent-pole at night; for a buffalo-skin
was to be our bed, and a tent of cotton cloth our roof. It was strongly
built, but heavy, and hardly of better model than usual. If rightly
made, a boat would be a sort of amphibious animal, a creature of two
elements, related by one half its structure to some swift and shapely
fish, and by the other to some strong-winged and graceful bird. The
fish shows where there should be the greatest breadth of beam and depth
in the hold; its fins direct where to set the oars, and the tail gives
some hint for the form and position of the rudder. The bird shows how
to rig and trim the sails, and what form to give to the prow that it
may balance the boat, and divide the air and water best. These hints we
had but partially obeyed. But the eyes, though they are no sailors,
will never be satisfied with any model, however fashionable, which does
not answer all the requisitions of art. However, as art is all of a
ship but the wood, and yet the wood alone will rudely serve the purpose
of a ship, so our boat, being of wood, gladly availed itself of the old
law that the heavier shall float the lighter, and though a dull
water-fowl, proved a sufficient buoy for our purpose.
“Were it the will of Heaven, an osier bough
Were vessel safe enough the seas to plough.”
Some village friends stood upon a promontory lower down the stream to
wave us a last farewell; but we, having already performed these shore
rites, with excusable reserve, as befits those who are embarked on
unusual enterprises, who behold but speak not, silently glided past the
firm lands of Concord, both peopled cape and lonely summer meadow, with
steady sweeps. And yet we did unbend so far as to let our guns speak
for us, when at length we had swept out of sight, and thus left the
woods to ring again with their echoes; and it may be many russet-clad
children, lurking in those broad meadows, with the bittern and the
woodcock and the rail, though wholly concealed by brakes and hardhack
and meadow-sweet, heard our salute that afternoon.
We were soon floating past the first regular battle ground of the
Revolution, resting on our oars between the still visible abutments of
that “North Bridge,” over which in April, 1775, rolled the first faint
tide of that war, which ceased not, till, as we read on the stone on
our right, it “gave peace to these United States.” As a Concord poet
has sung:—
“By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
“The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.”
Our reflections had already acquired a historical remoteness from the
scenes we had left, and we ourselves essayed to sing.
Ah, ’t is in vain the peaceful din
That wakes the ignoble town,
Not thus did braver spirits win
A patriot’s renown.
There is one field beside this stream,
Wherein no foot does fall,
But yet it beareth in my dream
A richer crop than all.
Let me believe a dream so dear,
Some heart beat high that day,
Above the petty Province here,
And Britain far away;
Some hero of the ancient mould,
Some arm of knightly worth,
Of strength unbought, and faith unsold,
Honored this spot of earth;
Who sought the prize his heart described,
And did not ask release,
Whose free-born valor was not bribed
By prospect of a peace.
The men who stood on yonder height
That day are long since gone;
Not the same hand directs the fight
And monumental stone.
Ye were the Grecian cities then,
The Romes of modern birth,
Where the New England husbandmen
Have shown a Roman worth.
In vain I search a foreign land
To find our Bunker Hill,
And Lexington and Concord stand
By no Laconian rill.
With such thoughts we swept gently by this now peaceful pasture-ground,
on waves of Concord, in which was long since drowned the din of war.
But since we sailed
Some things have failed,
And many a dream
Gone down the stream.
Here then an aged shepherd dwelt,
Who to his flock his substance dealt,
And ruled them with a vigorous crook,
By precept of the sacred Book;
But he the pierless bridge passed o’er,
And solitary left the shore.
Anon a youthful pastor came,
Whose crook was not unknown to fame,
His lambs he viewed with gentle glance,
Spread o’er the country’s wide expanse,
And fed with “Mosses from the Manse.”
Here was our Hawthorne in the dale,
And here the shepherd told his tale.
That slight shaft had now sunk behind the hills, and we had floated
round the neighboring bend, and under the new North Bridge between
Ponkawtasset and the Poplar Hill, into the Great Meadows, which, like a
broad moccason print, have levelled a fertile and juicy place in
nature.
On Ponkawtasset, since, we took our way,
Down this still stream to far Billericay,
A poet wise has settled, whose fine ray
Doth often shine on Concord’s twilight day.
Like those first stars, whose silver beams on high,
Shining more brightly as the day goes by,
Most travellers cannot at first descry,
But eyes that wont to range the evening sky,
And know celestial lights, do plainly see,
And gladly hail them, numbering two or three;
For lore that’s deep must deeply studied be,
As from deep wells men read star-poetry.
These stars are never paled, though out of sight,
But like the sun they shine forever bright;
Ay, _they_ are suns, though earth must in its flight
Put out its eyes that it may see their light.
Who would neglect the least celestial sound,
Or faintest light that falls on earthly ground,
If he could know it one day would be found
That star in Cygnus whither we are bound,
And pale our sun with heavenly radiance round?
Gradually the village murmur subsided, and we seemed to be embarked on
the placid current of our dreams, floating from past to future as
silently as one awakes to fresh morning or evening thoughts. We glided
noiselessly down the stream, occasionally driving a pickerel or a bream
from the covert of the pads, and the smaller bittern now and then
sailed away on sluggish wings from some recess in the shore, or the
larger lifted itself out of the long grass at our approach, and carried
its precious legs away to deposit them in a place of safety. The
tortoises also rapidly dropped into the water, as our boat ruffled the
surface amid the willows, breaking the reflections of the trees. The
banks had passed the height of their beauty, and some of the brighter
flowers showed by their faded tints that the season was verging towards
the afternoon of the year; but this sombre tinge enhanced their
sincerity, and in the still unabated heats they seemed like the mossy
brink of some cool well. The narrow-leaved willow (_Salix Purshiana_)
lay along the surface of the water in masses of light green foliage,
interspersed with the large balls of the button-bush. The small
rose-colored polygonum raised its head proudly above the water on
either hand, and flowering at this season and in these localities, in
front of dense fields of the white species which skirted the sides of
the stream, its little streak of red looked very rare and precious. The
pure white blossoms of the arrow-head stood in the shallower parts, and
a few cardinals on the margin still proudly surveyed themselves
reflected in the water, though the latter, as well as the
pickerel-weed, was now nearly out of blossom. The snake-head, _Chelone
glabra_, grew close to the shore, while a kind of coreopsis, turning
its brazen face to the sun, full and rank, and a tall dull red flower,
_Eupatorium purpureum_, or trumpet-weed, formed the rear rank of the
fluvial array. The bright blue flowers of the soap-wort gentian were
sprinkled here and there in the adjacent meadows, like flowers which
Proserpine had dropped, and still farther in the fields or higher on
the bank were seen the purple Gerardia, the Virginian rhexia, and
drooping neottia or ladies’-tresses; while from the more distant
waysides which we occasionally passed, and banks where the sun had
lodged, was reflected still a dull yellow beam from the ranks of tansy,
now past its prime. In short, Nature seemed to have adorned herself for
our departure with a profusion of fringes and curls, mingled with the
bright tints of flowers, reflected in the water. But we missed the
white water-lily, which is the queen of river flowers, its reign being
over for this season. He makes his voyage too late, perhaps, by a true
water clock who delays so long. Many of this species inhabit our
Concord water. I have passed down the river before sunrise on a summer
morning between fields of lilies still shut in sleep; and when, at
length, the flakes of sunlight from over the bank fell on the surface
of the water, whole fields of white blossoms seemed to flash open
before me, as I floated along, like the unfolding of a banner, so
sensible is this flower to the influence of the sun’s rays.
As we were floating through the last of these familiar meadows, we
observed the large and conspicuous flowers of the hibiscus, covering
the dwarf willows, and mingled with the leaves of the grape, and wished
that we could inform one of our friends behind of the locality of this
somewhat rare and inaccessible flower before it was too late to pluck
it; but we were just gliding out of sight of the village spire before
it occurred to us that the farmer in the adjacent meadow would go to
church on the morrow, and would carry this news for us; and so by the
Monday, while we should be floating on the Merrimack, our friend would
be reaching to pluck this blossom on the bank of the Concord.
After a pause at Ball’s Hill, the St. Ann’s of Concord voyageurs, not
to say any prayer for the success of our voyage, but to gather the few
berries which were still left on the hills, hanging by very slender
threads, we weighed anchor again, and were soon out of sight of our
native village. The land seemed to grow fairer as we withdrew from it.
Far away to the southwest lay the quiet village, left alone under its
elms and buttonwoods in mid afternoon; and the hills, notwithstanding
their blue, ethereal faces, seemed to cast a saddened eye on their old
playfellows; but, turning short to the north, we bade adieu to their
familiar outlines, and addressed ourselves to new scenes and
adventures. Naught was familiar but the heavens, from under whose roof
the voyageur never passes; but with their countenance, and the
acquaintance we had with river and wood, we trusted to fare well under
any circumstances.
From this point, the river runs perfectly straight for a mile or more
to Carlisle Bridge, which consists of twenty wooden piers, and when we
looked back over it, its surface was reduced to a line’s breadth, and
appeared like a cobweb gleaming in the sun. Here and there might be
seen a pole sticking up, to mark the place where some fisherman had
enjoyed unusual luck, and in return had consecrated his rod to the
deities who preside over these shallows. It was full twice as broad as
before, deep and tranquil, with a muddy bottom, and bordered with
willows, beyond which spread broad lagoons covered with pads,
bulrushes, and flags.
Late in the afternoon we passed a man on the shore fishing with a long
birch pole, its silvery bark left on, and a dog at his side, rowing so
near as to agitate his cork with our oars, and drive away luck for a
season; and when we had rowed a mile as straight as an arrow, with our
faces turned towards him, and the bubbles in our wake still visible on
the tranquil surface, there stood the fisher still with his dog, like
statues under the other side of the heavens, the only objects to
relieve the eye in the extended meadow; and there would he stand
abiding his luck, till he took his way home through the fields at
evening with his fish. Thus, by one bait or another, Nature allures
inhabitants into all her recesses. This man was the last of our
townsmen whom we saw, and we silently through him bade adieu to our
friends.
The characteristics and pursuits of various ages and races of men are
always existing in epitome in every neighborhood. The pleasures of my
earliest youth have become the inheritance of other men. This man is
still a fisher, and belongs to an era in which I myself have lived.
Perchance he is not confounded by many knowledges, and has not sought
out many inventions, but how to take many fishes before the sun sets,
with his slender birchen pole and flaxen line, that is invention enough
for him. It is good even to be a fisherman in summer and in winter.
Some men are judges these August days, sitting on benches, even till
the court rises; they sit judging there honorably, between the seasons
and between meals, leading a civil politic life, arbitrating in the
case of Spaulding _versus_ Cummings, it may be, from highest noon till
the red vesper sinks into the west. The fisherman, meanwhile, stands in
three feet of water, under the same summer’s sun, arbitrating in other
cases between muckworm and shiner, amid the fragrance of water-lilies,
mint, and pontederia, leading his life many rods from the dry land,
within a pole’s length of where the larger fishes swim. Human life is
to him very much like a river,
—“renning aie downward to the sea.”
This was his observation. His honor made a great discovery in
bailments.
I can just remember an old brown-coated man who was the Walton of this
stream, who had come over from Newcastle, England, with his son,—the
latter a stout and hearty man who had lifted an anchor in his day. A
straight old man he was who took his way in silence through the
meadows, having passed the period of communication with his fellows;
his old experienced coat, hanging long and straight and brown as the
yellow-pine bark, glittering with so much smothered sunlight, if you
stood near enough, no work of art but naturalized at length. I often
discovered him unexpectedly amid the pads and the gray willows when he
moved, fishing in some old country method,—for youth and age then went
a fishing together,—full of incommunicable thoughts, perchance about
his own Tyne and Northumberland. He was always to be seen in serene
afternoons haunting the river, and almost rustling with the sedge; so
many sunny hours in an old man’s life, entrapping silly fish; almost
grown to be the sun’s familiar; what need had he of hat or raiment any,
having served out his time, and seen through such thin disguises? I
have seen how his coeval fates rewarded him with the yellow perch, and
yet I thought his luck was not in proportion to his years; and I have
seen when, with slow steps and weighed down with aged thoughts, he
disappeared with his fish under his low-roofed house on the skirts of
the village. I think nobody else saw him; nobody else remembers him
now, for he soon after died, and migrated to new Tyne streams. His
fishing was not a sport, nor solely a means of subsistence, but a sort
of solemn sacrament and withdrawal from the world, just as the aged
read their Bibles.
Whether we live by the seaside, or by the lakes and rivers, or on the
prairie, it concerns us to attend to the nature of fishes, since they
are not phenomena confined to certain localities only, but forms and
phases of the life in nature universally dispersed. The countless
shoals which annually coast the shores of Europe and America are not so
interesting to the student of nature, as the more fertile law itself,
which deposits their spawn on the tops of mountains, and on the
interior plains; the fish principle in nature, from which it results
that they may be found in water in so many places, in greater or less
numbers. The natural historian is not a fisherman, who prays for cloudy
days and good luck merely, but as fishing has been styled “a
contemplative man’s recreation,” introducing him profitably to woods
and water, so the fruit of the naturalist’s observations is not in new
genera or species, but in new contemplations still, and science is only
a more contemplative man’s recreation. The seeds of the life of fishes
are everywhere disseminated, whether the winds waft them, or the waters
float them, or the deep earth holds them; wherever a pond is dug,
straightway it is stocked with this vivacious race. They have a lease
of nature, and it is not yet out. The Chinese are bribed to carry their
ova from province to province in jars or in hollow reeds, or the
water-birds to transport them to the mountain tarns and interior lakes.
There are fishes wherever there is a fluid medium, and even in clouds
and in melted metals we detect their semblance. Think how in winter you
can sink a line down straight in a pasture through snow and through
ice, and pull up a bright, slippery, dumb, subterranean silver or
golden fish! It is curious, also, to reflect how they make one family,
from the largest to the smallest. The least minnow that lies on the ice
as bait for pickerel, looks like a huge sea-fish cast up on the shore.
In the waters of this town there are about a dozen distinct species,
though the inexperienced would expect many more.
It enhances our sense of the grand security and serenity of nature, to
observe the still undisturbed economy and content of the fishes of this
century, their happiness a regular fruit of the summer. The Fresh-Water
Sun-Fish, Bream, or Ruff, _Pomotis vulgaris_, as it were, without
ancestry, without posterity, still represents the Fresh-Water Sun-Fish
in nature. It is the most common of all, and seen on every urchin’s
string; a simple and inoffensive fish, whose nests are visible all
along the shore, hollowed in the sand, over which it is steadily poised
through the summer hours on waving fin. Sometimes there are twenty or
thirty nests in the space of a few rods, two feet wide by half a foot
in depth, and made with no little labor, the weeds being removed, and
the sand shoved up on the sides, like a bowl. Here it may be seen early
in summer assiduously brooding, and driving away minnows and larger
fishes, even its own species, which would disturb its ova, pursuing
them a few feet, and circling round swiftly to its nest again: the
minnows, like young sharks, instantly entering the empty nests,
meanwhile, and swallowing the spawn, which is attached to the weeds and
to the bottom, on the sunny side. The spawn is exposed to so many
dangers, that a very small proportion can ever become fishes, for
beside being the constant prey of birds and fishes, a great many nests
are made so near the shore, in shallow water, that they are left dry in
a few days, as the river goes down. These and the lamprey’s are the
only fishes’ nests that I have observed, though the ova of some species
may be seen floating on the surface. The breams are so careful of their
charge that you may stand close by in the water and examine them at
your leisure. I have thus stood over them half an hour at a time, and
stroked them familiarly without frightening them, suffering them to
nibble my fingers harmlessly, and seen them erect their dorsal fins in
anger when my hand approached their ova, and have even taken them
gently out of the water with my hand; though this cannot be
accomplished by a sudden movement, however dexterous, for instant
warning is conveyed to them through their denser element, but only by
letting the fingers gradually close about them as they are poised over
the palm, and with the utmost gentleness raising them slowly to the
surface. Though stationary, they keep up a constant sculling or waving
motion with their fins, which is exceedingly graceful, and expressive
of their humble happiness; for unlike ours, the element in which they
live is a stream which must be constantly resisted. From time to time
they nibble the weeds at the bottom or overhanging their nests, or dart
after a fly or a worm. The dorsal fin, besides answering the purpose of
a keel, with the anal, serves to keep the fish upright, for in shallow
water, where this is not covered, they fall on their sides. As you
stand thus stooping over the bream in its nest, the edges of the dorsal
and caudal fins have a singular dusty golden reflection, and its eyes,
which stand out from the head, are transparent and colorless. Seen in
its native element, it is a very beautiful and compact fish, perfect in
all its parts, and looks like a brilliant coin fresh from the mint. It
is a perfect jewel of the river, the green, red, coppery, and golden
reflections of its mottled sides being the concentration of such rays
as struggle through the floating pads and flowers to the sandy bottom,
and in harmony with the sunlit brown and yellow pebbles. Behind its
watery shield it dwells far from many accidents inevitable to human
life.
There is also another species of bream found in our river, without the
red spot on the operculum, which, according to M. Agassiz, is
undescribed.
The Common Perch, _Perca flavescens_, which name describes well the
gleaming, golden reflections of its scales as it is drawn out of the
water, its red gills standing out in vain in the thin element, is one
of the handsomest and most regularly formed of our fishes, and at such
a moment as this reminds us of the fish in the picture which wished to
be restored to its native element until it had grown larger; and indeed
most of this species that are caught are not half grown. In the ponds
there is a light-colored and slender kind, which swim in shoals of many
hundreds in the sunny water, in company with the shiner, averaging not
more than six or seven inches in length, while only a few larger
specimens are found in the deepest water, which prey upon their weaker
brethren. I have often attracted these small perch to the shore at
evening, by rippling the water with my fingers, and they may sometimes
be caught while attempting to pass inside your hands. It is a tough and
heedless fish, biting from impulse, without nibbling, and from impulse
refraining to bite, and sculling indifferently past. It rather prefers
the clear water and sandy bottoms, though here it has not much choice.
It is a true fish, such as the angler loves to put into his basket or
hang at the top of his willow twig, in shady afternoons along the banks
of the stream. So many unquestionable fishes he counts, and so many
shiners, which he counts and then throws away. Old Josselyn in his “New
England’s Rarities,” published in 1672, mentions the Perch or River
Partridge.
The Chivin, Dace, Roach, Cousin Trout, or whatever else it is called,
_Leuciscus pulchellus_, white and red, always an unexpected prize,
which, however, any angler is glad to hook for its rarity. A name that
reminds us of many an unsuccessful ramble by swift streams, when the
wind rose to disappoint the fisher. It is commonly a silvery
soft-scaled fish, of graceful, scholarlike, and classical look, like
many a picture in an English book. It loves a swift current and a sandy
bottom, and bites inadvertently, yet not without appetite for the bait.
The minnows are used as bait for pickerel in the winter. The red
chivin, according to some, is still the same fish, only older, or with
its tints deepened as they think by the darker water it inhabits, as
the red clouds swim in the twilight atmosphere. He who has not hooked
the red chivin is not yet a complete angler. Other fishes, methinks,
are slightly amphibious, but this is a denizen of the water wholly. The
cork goes dancing down the swift-rushing stream, amid the weeds and
sands, when suddenly, by a coincidence never to be remembered, emerges
this fabulous inhabitant of another element, a thing heard of but not
seen, as if it were the instant creation of an eddy, a true product of
the running stream. And this bright cupreous dolphin was spawned and
has passed its life beneath the level of your feet in your native
fields. Fishes too, as well as birds and clouds, derive their armor
from the mine. I have heard of mackerel visiting the copper banks at a
particular season; this fish, perchance, has its habitat in the
Coppermine River. I have caught white chivin of great size in the
Aboljacknagesic, where it empties into the Penobscot, at the base of
Mount Ktaadn, but no red ones there. The latter variety seems not to
have been sufficiently observed.
The Dace, _Leuciscus argenteus_, is a slight silvery minnow, found
generally in the middle of the stream, where the current is most rapid,
and frequently confounded with the last named.
The Shiner, _Leuciscus crysoleucas_, is a soft-scaled and tender fish,
the victim of its stronger neighbors, found in all places, deep and
shallow, clear and turbid; generally the first nibbler at the bait,
but, with its small mouth and nibbling propensities, not easily caught.
It is a gold or silver bit that passes current in the river, its limber
tail dimpling the surface in sport or flight. I have seen the fry, when
frightened by something thrown into the water, leap out by dozens,
together with the dace, and wreck themselves upon a floating plank. It
is the little light-infant of the river, with body armor of gold or
silver spangles, slipping, gliding its life through with a quirk of the
tail, half in the water, half in the air, upward and ever upward with
flitting fin to more crystalline tides, yet still abreast of us
dwellers on the bank. It is almost dissolved by the summer heats. A
slighter and lighter colored shiner is found in one of our ponds.
The Pickerel, _Esox reticulatus_, the swiftest, wariest, and most
ravenous of fishes, which Josselyn calls the Fresh-Water or River Wolf,
is very common in the shallow and weedy lagoons along the sides of the
stream. It is a solemn, stately, ruminant fish, lurking under the
shadow of a pad at noon, with still, circumspect, voracious eye,
motionless as a jewel set in water, or moving slowly along to take up
its position, darting from time to time at such unlucky fish or frog or
insect as comes within its range, and swallowing it at a gulp. I have
caught one which had swallowed a brother pickerel half as large as
itself, with the tail still visible in its mouth, while the head was
already digested in its stomach. Sometimes a striped snake, bound to
greener meadows across the stream, ends its undulatory progress in the
same receptacle. They are so greedy and impetuous that they are
frequently caught by being entangled in the line the moment it is cast.
Fishermen also distinguish the brook pickerel, a shorter and thicker
fish than the former.
The Horned Pout, _Pimelodus nebulosus_, sometimes called Minister, from
the peculiar squeaking noise it makes when drawn out of the water, is a
dull and blundering fellow, and like the eel vespertinal in his habits,
and fond of the mud. It bites deliberately as if about its business.
They are taken at night with a mass of worms strung on a thread, which
catches in their teeth, sometimes three or four, with an eel, at one
pull. They are extremely tenacious of life, opening and shutting their
mouths for half an hour after their heads have been cut off. A
bloodthirsty and bullying race of rangers, inhabiting the fertile river
bottoms, with ever a lance in rest, and ready to do battle with their
nearest neighbor. I have observed them in summer, when every other one
had a long and bloody scar upon his back, where the skin was gone, the
mark, perhaps, of some fierce encounter. Sometimes the fry, not an inch
long, are seen darkening the shore with their myriads.
The Suckers, _Catostomi Bostonienses_ and _tuberculati_, Common and
Horned, perhaps on an average the largest of our fishes, may be seen in
shoals of a hundred or more, stemming the current in the sun, on their
mysterious migrations, and sometimes sucking in the bait which the
fisherman suffers to float toward them. The former, which sometimes
grow to a large size, are frequently caught by the hand in the brooks,
or like the red chivin, are jerked out by a hook fastened firmly to the
end of a stick, and placed under their jaws. They are hardly known to
the mere angler, however, not often biting at his baits, though the
spearer carries home many a mess in the spring. To our village eyes,
these shoals have a foreign and imposing aspect, realizing the
fertility of the seas.
The Common Eel, too, _Muraena Bostoniensis_, the only species of eel
known in the State, a slimy, squirming creature, informed of mud, still
squirming in the pan, is speared and hooked up with various success.
Methinks it too occurs in picture, left after the deluge, in many a
meadow high and dry.
In the shallow parts of the river, where the current is rapid, and the
bottom pebbly, you may sometimes see the curious circular nests of the
Lamprey Eel, _Petromyzon Americanus_, the American Stone-Sucker, as
large as a cart-wheel, a foot or two in height, and sometimes rising
half a foot above the surface of the water. They collect these stones,
of the size of a hen’s egg, with their mouths, as their name implies,
and are said to fashion them into circles with their tails. They ascend
falls by clinging to the stones, which may sometimes be raised, by
lifting the fish by the tail. As they are not seen on their way down
the streams, it is thought by fishermen that they never return, but
waste away and die, clinging to rocks and stumps of trees for an
indefinite period; a tragic feature in the scenery of the river bottoms
worthy to be remembered with Shakespeare’s description of the
sea-floor. They are rarely seen in our waters at present, on account of
the dams, though they are taken in great quantities at the mouth of the
river in Lowell. Their nests, which are very conspicuous, look more
like art than anything in the river.
If we had leisure this afternoon, we might turn our prow up the brooks
in quest of the classical trout and the minnows. Of the last alone,
according to M. Agassiz, several of the species found in this town are
yet undescribed. These would, perhaps, complete the list of our finny
contemporaries in the Concord waters.
Salmon, Shad, and Alewives were formerly abundant here, and taken in
weirs by the Indians, who taught this method to the whites, by whom
they were used as food and as manure, until the dam, and afterward the
canal at Billerica, and the factories at Lowell, put an end to their
migrations hitherward; though it is thought that a few more
enterprising shad may still occasionally be seen in this part of the
river. It is said, to account for the destruction of the fishery, that
those who at that time represented the interests of the fishermen and
the fishes, remembering between what dates they were accustomed to take
the grown shad, stipulated, that the dams should be left open for that
season only, and the fry, which go down a month later, were
consequently stopped and destroyed by myriads. Others say that the
fish-ways were not properly constructed. Perchance, after a few
thousands of years, if the fishes will be patient, and pass their
summers elsewhere, meanwhile, nature will have levelled the Billerica
dam, and the Lowell factories, and the Grass-ground River run clear
again, to be explored by new migratory shoals, even as far as the
Hopkinton pond and Westborough swamp.
One would like to know more of that race, now extinct, whose seines lie
rotting in the garrets of their children, who openly professed the
trade of fishermen, and even fed their townsmen creditably, not
skulking through the meadows to a rainy afternoon sport. Dim visions we
still get of miraculous draughts of fishes, and heaps uncountable by
the river-side, from the tales of our seniors sent on horseback in
their childhood from the neighboring towns, perched on saddle-bags,
with instructions to get the one bag filled with shad, the other with
alewives. At least one memento of those days may still exist in the
memory of this generation, in the familiar appellation of a celebrated
train-band of this town, whose untrained ancestors stood creditably at
Concord North Bridge. Their captain, a man of piscatory tastes, having
duly warned his company to turn out on a certain day, they, like
obedient soldiers, appeared promptly on parade at the appointed time,
but, unfortunately, they went undrilled, except in the manœuvres of a
soldier’s wit and unlicensed jesting, that May day; for their captain,
forgetting his own appointment, and warned only by the favorable aspect
of the heavens, as he had often done before, went a-fishing that
afternoon, and his company thenceforth was known to old and young,
grave and gay, as “The Shad,” and by the youths of this vicinity this
was long regarded as the proper name of all the irregular militia in
Christendom. But, alas! no record of these fishers’ lives remains that
we know, unless it be one brief page of hard but unquestionable
history, which occurs in Day Book No. 4, of an old trader of this town,
long since dead, which shows pretty plainly what constituted a
fisherman’s stock in trade in those days. It purports to be a
Fisherman’s Account Current, probably for the fishing season of the
year 1805, during which months he purchased daily rum and sugar, sugar
and rum, N. E. and W. I., “one cod line,” “one brown mug,” and “a line
for the seine”; rum and sugar, sugar and rum, “good loaf sugar,” and
“good brown,” W. I. and N. E., in short and uniform entries to the
bottom of the page, all carried out in pounds, shillings, and pence,
from March 25th to June 5th, and promptly settled by receiving “cash in
full” at the last date. But perhaps not so settled altogether. These
were the necessaries of life in those days; with salmon, shad, and
alewives, fresh and pickled, he was thereafter independent on the
groceries. Rather a preponderance of the fluid elements; but such is
the fisherman’s nature. I can faintly remember to have seen this same
fisher in my earliest youth, still as near the river as he could get,
with uncertain undulatory step, after so many things had gone down
stream, swinging a scythe in the meadow, his bottle like a serpent hid
in the grass; himself as yet not cut down by the Great Mower.
Surely the fates are forever kind, though Nature’s laws are more
immutable than any despot’s, yet to man’s daily life they rarely seem
rigid, but permit him to relax with license in summer weather. He is
not harshly reminded of the things he may not do. She is very kind and
liberal to all men of vicious habits, and certainly does not deny them
quarter; they do not die without priest. Still they maintain life along
the way, keeping this side the Styx, still hearty, still resolute,
“never better in their lives”; and again, after a dozen years have
elapsed, they start up from behind a hedge, asking for work and wages
for able-bodied men. Who has not met such
“a beggar on the way,
Who sturdily could gang? ….
Who cared neither for wind nor wet,
In lands where’er he past?”
“That bold adopts each house he views, his own;
Makes every pulse his checquer, and, at pleasure,
Walks forth, and taxes all the world, like Cæsar”;—
As if consistency were the secret of health, while the poor
inconsistent aspirant man, seeking to live a pure life, feeding on air,
divided against himself, cannot stand, but pines and dies after a life
of sickness, on beds of down.
The unwise are accustomed to speak as if some were not sick; but
methinks the difference between men in respect to health is not great
enough to lay much stress upon. Some are reputed sick and some are not.
It often happens that the sicker man is the nurse to the sounder.
Shad are still taken in the basin of Concord River at Lowell, where
they are said to be a month earlier than the Merrimack shad, on account
of the warmth of the water. Still patiently, almost pathetically, with
instinct not to be discouraged, not to be _reasoned_ with, revisiting
their old haunts, as if their stern fates would relent, and still met
by the Corporation with its dam. Poor shad! where is thy redress? When
Nature gave thee instinct, gave she thee the heart to bear thy fate?
Still wandering the sea in thy scaly armor to inquire humbly at the
mouths of rivers if man has perchance left them free for thee to enter.
By countless shoals loitering uncertain meanwhile, merely stemming the
tide there, in danger from sea foes in spite of thy bright armor,
awaiting new instructions, until the sands, until the water itself,
tell thee if it be so or not. Thus by whole migrating nations, full of
instinct, which is thy faith, in this backward spring, turned adrift,
and perchance knowest not where men do _not_ dwell, where there are
_not_ factories, in these days. Armed with no sword, no electric shock,
but mere Shad, armed only with innocence and a just cause, with tender
dumb mouth only forward, and scales easy to be detached. I for one am
with thee, and who knows what may avail a crow-bar against that
Billerica dam?—Not despairing when whole myriads have gone to feed
those sea monsters during thy suspense, but still brave, indifferent,
on easy fin there, like shad reserved for higher destinies. Willing to
be decimated for man’s behoof after the spawning season. Away with the
superficial and selfish phil-_anthropy_ of men,—who knows what
admirable virtue of fishes may be below low-water-mark, bearing up
against a hard destiny, not admired by that fellow-creature who alone
can appreciate it! Who hears the fishes when they cry? It will not be
forgotten by some memory that we were contemporaries. Thou shalt
erelong have thy way up the rivers, up all the rivers of the globe, if
I am not mistaken. Yea, even thy dull watery dream shall be more than
realized. If it were not so, but thou wert to be overlooked at first
and at last, then would not I take their heaven. Yes, I say so, who
think I know better than thou canst. Keep a stiff fin then, and stem
all the tides thou mayst meet.
At length it would seem that the interests, not of the fishes only, but
of the men of Wayland, of Sudbury, of Concord, demand the levelling of
that dam. Innumerable acres of meadow are waiting to be made dry land,
wild native grass to give place to English. The farmers stand with
scythes whet, waiting the subsiding of the waters, by gravitation, by
evaporation or otherwise, but sometimes their eyes do not rest, their
wheels do not roll, on the quaking meadow ground during the haying
season at all. So many sources of wealth inaccessible. They rate the
loss hereby incurred in the single town of Wayland alone as equal to
the expense of keeping a hundred yoke of oxen the year round. One year,
as I learn, not long ago, the farmers standing ready to drive their
teams afield as usual, the water gave no signs of falling; without new
attraction in the heavens, without freshet or visible cause, still
standing stagnant at an unprecedented height. All hydrometers were at
fault; some trembled for their English even. But speedy emissaries
revealed the unnatural secret, in the new float-board, wholly a foot in
width, added to their already too high privileges by the dam
proprietors. The hundred yoke of oxen, meanwhile, standing patient,
gazing wishfully meadowward, at that inaccessible waving native grass,
uncut but by the great mower Time, who cuts so broad a swathe, without
so much as a wisp to wind about their horns.
That was a long pull from Ball’s Hill to Carlisle Bridge, sitting with
our faces to the south, a slight breeze rising from the north, but
nevertheless water still runs and grass grows, for now, having passed
the bridge between Carlisle and Bedford, we see men haying far off in
the meadow, their heads waving like the grass which they cut. In the
distance the wind seemed to bend all alike. As the night stole over,
such a freshness was wafted across the meadow that every blade of cut
grass seemed to teem with life. Faint purple clouds began to be
reflected in the water, and the cow-bells tinkled louder along the
banks, while, like sly water-rats, we stole along nearer the shore,
looking for a place to pitch our camp.
At length, when we had made about seven miles, as far as Billerica, we
moored our boat on the west side of a little rising ground which in the
spring forms an island in the river. Here we found huckleberries still
hanging upon the bushes, where they seemed to have slowly ripened for
our especial use. Bread and sugar, and cocoa boiled in river water,
made our repast, and as we had drank in the fluvial prospect all day,
so now we took a draft of the water with our evening meal to propitiate
the river gods, and whet our vision for the sights it was to behold.
The sun was setting on the one hand, while our eminence was
contributing its shadow to the night, on the other. It seemed
insensibly to grow lighter as the night shut in, and a distant and
solitary farm-house was revealed, which before lurked in the shadows of
the noon. There was no other house in sight, nor any cultivated field.
To the right and left, as far as the horizon, were straggling pine
woods with their plumes against the sky, and across the river were
rugged hills, covered with shrub oaks, tangled with grape-vines and
ivy, with here and there a gray rock jutting out from the maze. The
sides of these cliffs, though a quarter of a mile distant, were almost
heard to rustle while we looked at them, it was such a leafy
wilderness; a place for fauns and satyrs, and where bats hung all day
to the rocks, and at evening flitted over the water, and fire-flies
husbanded their light under the grass and leaves against the night.
When we had pitched our tent on the hillside, a few rods from the
shore, we sat looking through its triangular door in the twilight at
our lonely mast on the shore, just seen above the alders, and hardly
yet come to a stand-still from the swaying of the stream; the first
encroachment of commerce on this land. There was our port, our Ostia.
That straight geometrical line against the water and the sky stood for
the last refinements of civilized life, and what of sublimity there is
in history was there symbolized.
For the most part, there was no recognition of human life in the night,
no human breathing was heard, only the breathing of the wind. As we sat
up, kept awake by the novelty of our situation, we heard at intervals
foxes stepping about over the dead leaves, and brushing the dewy grass
close to our tent, and once a musquash fumbling among the potatoes and
melons in our boat, but when we hastened to the shore we could detect
only a ripple in the water ruffling the disk of a star. At intervals we
were serenaded by the song of a dreaming sparrow or the throttled cry
of an owl, but after each sound which near at hand broke the stillness
of the night, each crackling of the twigs, or rustling among the
leaves, there was a sudden pause, and deeper and more conscious
silence, as if the intruder were aware that no life was rightfully
abroad at that hour. There was a fire in Lowell, as we judged, this
night, and we saw the horizon blazing, and heard the distant
alarm-bells, as it were a faint tinkling music borne to these woods.
But the most constant and memorable sound of a summer’s night, which we
did not fail to hear every night afterward, though at no time so
incessantly and so favorably as now, was the barking of the house-dogs,
from the loudest and hoarsest bark to the faintest aerial palpitation
under the eaves of heaven, from the patient but anxious mastiff to the
timid and wakeful terrier, at first loud and rapid, then faint and
slow, to be imitated only in a whisper; wow-wow-wow-wow—wo—wo—w—w. Even
in a retired and uninhabited district like this, it was a sufficiency
of sound for the ear of night, and more impressive than any music. I
have heard the voice of a hound, just before daylight, while the stars
were shining, from over the woods and river, far in the horizon, when
it sounded as sweet and melodious as an instrument. The hounding of a
dog pursuing a fox or other animal in the horizon, may have first
suggested the notes of the hunting-horn to alternate with and relieve
the lungs of the dog. This natural bugle long resounded in the woods of
the ancient world before the horn was invented. The very dogs that
sullenly bay the moon from farm-yards in these nights excite more
heroism in our breasts than all the civil exhortations or war sermons
of the age. “I would rather be a dog, and bay the moon,” than many a
Roman that I know. The night is equally indebted to the clarion of the
cock, with wakeful hope, from the very setting of the sun, prematurely
ushering in the dawn. All these sounds, the crowing of cocks, the
baying of dogs, and the hum of insects at noon, are the evidence of
nature’s health or _sound_ state. Such is the never-failing beauty and
accuracy of language, the most perfect art in the world; the chisel of
a thousand years retouches it.
At length the antepenultimate and drowsy hours drew on, and all sounds
were denied entrance to our ears.
Who sleeps by day and walks by night,
Will meet no spirit but some sprite.