This Sand Was Indeed Somewhat Impressive And
Beautiful To Us.
A very old inhabitant, who was at work in a
field on the Nashua side, told us that he remembered when corn
and grain grew there, and it was a cultivated field.
But at
length the fishermen, for this was a fishing place, pulled up the
bushes on the shore, for greater convenience in hauling their
seines, and when the bank was thus broken, the wind began to blow
up the sand from the shore, until at length it had covered about
fifteen acres several feet deep. We saw near the river, where
the sand was blown off down to some ancient surface, the
foundation of an Indian wigwam exposed, a perfect circle of burnt
stones, four or five feet in diameter, mingled with fine
charcoal, and the bones of small animals which had been preserved
in the sand. The surrounding sand was sprinkled with other burnt
stones on which their fires had been built, as well as with
flakes of arrow-head stone, and we found one perfect arrow-head.
In one place we noticed where an Indian had sat to manufacture
arrow-heads out of quartz, and the sand was sprinkled with a
quart of small glass-like chips about as big as a fourpence,
which he had broken off in his work. Here, then, the Indians
must have fished before the whites arrived. There was another
similar sandy tract about half a mile above this.
Still the noon prevailed, and we turned the prow aside to bathe,
and recline ourselves under some buttonwoods, by a ledge of
rocks, in a retired pasture sloping to the water's edge, and
skirted with pines and hazels, in the town of Hudson.
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