And There Stand All Around The Alders,
And Birches, And Oaks, And Maples Full Of Glee And Sap, Holding
In Their Buds Until The Waters Subside.
You shall perhaps run
aground on Cranberry Island, only some spires of last year's
pipe-grass above water, to show where the danger is, and get as
good a freezing there as anywhere on the Northwest Coast.
I never
voyaged so far in all my life. You shall see men you never heard
of before, whose names you don't know, going away down through
the meadows with long ducking-guns, with water-tight boots wading
through the fowl-meadow grass, on bleak, wintry, distant shores,
with guns at half-cock, and they shall see teal, blue-winged,
green-winged, shelldrakes, whistlers, black ducks, ospreys, and
many other wild and noble sights before night, such as they who
sit in parlors never dream of. You shall see rude and sturdy,
experienced and wise men, keeping their castles, or teaming up
their summer's wood, or chopping alone in the woods, men fuller
of talk and rare adventure in the sun and wind and rain, than a
chestnut is of meat; who were out not only in '75 and 1812, but
have been out every day of their lives; greater men than Homer,
or Chaucer, or Shakespeare, only they never got time to say so;
they never took to the way of writing. Look at their fields, and
imagine what they might write, if ever they should put pen to
paper. Or what have they not written on the face of the earth
already, clearing, and burning, and scratching, and harrowing,
and ploughing, and subsoiling, in and in, and out and out, and
over and over, again and again, erasing what they had already
written for want of parchment.
As yesterday and the historical ages are past, as the work of
to-day is present, so some flitting perspectives, and
demi-experiences of the life that is in nature are in time
veritably future, or rather outside to time, perennial, young,
divine, in the wind and rain which never die.
The respectable folks, -
Where dwell they?
They whisper in the oaks,
And they sigh in the hay;
Summer and winter, night and day,
Out on the meadow, there dwell they.
They never die,
Nor snivel, nor cry,
Nor ask our pity
With a wet eye.
A sound estate they ever mend
To every asker readily lend;
To the ocean wealth,
To the meadow health,
To Time his length,
To the rocks strength,
To the stars light,
To the weary night,
To the busy day,
To the idle play;
And so their good cheer never ends,
For all are their debtors, and all their friends.
Concord River is remarkable for the gentleness of its current,
which is scarcely perceptible, and some have referred to its
influence the proverbial moderation of the inhabitants of
Concord, as exhibited in the Revolution, and on later occasions.
It has been proposed, that the town should adopt for its coat of
arms a field verdant, with the Concord circling nine times round.
I have read that a descent of an eighth of an inch in a mile is
sufficient to produce a flow. Our river has, probably, very near
the smallest allowance. The story is current, at any rate,
though I believe that strict history will not bear it out, that
the only bridge ever carried away on the main branch, within the
limits of the town, was driven up stream by the wind. But
wherever it makes a sudden bend it is shallower and swifter, and
asserts its title to be called a river. Compared with the other
tributaries of the Merrimack, it appears to have been properly
named Musketaquid, or Meadow River, by the Indians. For the most
part, it creeps through broad meadows, adorned with scattered
oaks, where the cranberry is found in abundance, covering the
ground like a moss-bed. A row of sunken dwarf willows borders
the stream on one or both sides, while at a greater distance the
meadow is skirted with maples, alders, and other fluviatile
trees, overrun with the grape-vine, which bears fruit in its
season, purple, red, white, and other grapes. Still farther from
the stream, on the edge of the firm land, are seen the gray and
white dwellings of the inhabitants. According to the valuation
of 1831, there were in Concord two thousand one hundred and
eleven acres, or about one seventh of the whole territory in
meadow; this standing next in the list after pasturage and
unimproved lands, and, judging from the returns of previous
years, the meadow is not reclaimed so fast as the woods are
cleared.
Let us here read what old Johnson says of these meadows in his
"Wonder-working Providence," which gives the account of New
England from 1628 to 1652, and see how matters looked to him. He
says of the Twelfth Church of Christ gathered at Concord: "This
town is seated upon a fair fresh river, whose rivulets are filled
with fresh marsh, and her streams with fish, it being a branch of
that large river of Merrimack. Allwifes and shad in their season
come up to this town, but salmon and dace cannot come up, by
reason of the rocky falls, which causeth their meadows to lie
much covered with water, the which these people, together with
their neighbor town, have several times essayed to cut through
but cannot, yet it may be turned another way with an hundred
pound charge as it appeared." As to their farming he says:
"Having laid out their estate upon cattle at 5 to 20 pound a cow,
when they came to winter them with inland hay, and feed upon such
wild fother as was never cut before, they could not hold out the
winter, but, ordinarily the first or second year after their
coming up to a new plantation, many of their cattle died." And
this from the same author "Of the Planting of the 19th Church in
the Mattachusets' Government, called Sudbury": "This year [does
he mean 1654] the town and church of Christ at Sudbury began to
have the first foundation stones laid, taking up her station in
the inland country, as her elder sister Concord had formerly
done, lying further up the same river, being furnished with great
plenty of fresh marsh, but, it lying very low is much indamaged
with land floods, insomuch that when the summer proves wet they
lose part of their hay; yet are they so sufficiently provided
that they take in cattle of other towns to winter."
The sluggish artery of the Concord meadows steals thus unobserved
through the town, without a murmur or a pulse-beat, its general
course from southwest to northeast, and its length about fifty
miles; a huge volume of matter, ceaselessly rolling through the
plains and valleys of the substantial earth with the moccasoned
tread of an Indian warrior, making haste from the high places of
the earth to its ancient reservoir.
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