The Farm-Houses Along The Sudbury Shore, Which
Rises Gently To A Considerable Height, Command Fine Water
Prospects At This Season.
The shore is more flat on the Wayland
side, and this town is the greatest loser by the flood.
Its
farmers tell me that thousands of acres are flooded now, since
the dams have been erected, where they remember to have seen the
white honeysuckle or clover growing once, and they could go dry
with shoes only in summer. Now there is nothing but blue-joint
and sedge and cut-grass there, standing in water all the year
round. For a long time, they made the most of the driest season
to get their hay, working sometimes till nine o'clock at night,
sedulously paring with their scythes in the twilight round the
hummocks left by the ice; but now it is not worth the getting
when they can come at it, and they look sadly round to their
wood-lots and upland as a last resource.
It is worth the while to make a voyage up this stream, if you go
no farther than Sudbury, only to see how much country there is in
the rear of us; great hills, and a hundred brooks, and
farm-houses, and barns, and haystacks, you never saw before, and
men everywhere, Sudbury, that is Southborough men, and Wayland,
and Nine-Acre-Corner men, and Bound Rock, where four towns bound
on a rock in the river, Lincoln, Wayland, Sudbury, Concord. Many
waves are there agitated by the wind, keeping nature fresh, the
spray blowing in your face, reeds and rushes waving; ducks by the
hundred, all uneasy in the surf, in the raw wind, just ready to
rise, and now going off with a clatter and a whistling like
riggers straight for Labrador, flying against the stiff gale with
reefed wings, or else circling round first, with all their
paddles briskly moving, just over the surf, to reconnoitre you
before they leave these parts; gulls wheeling overhead, muskrats
swimming for dear life, wet and cold, with no fire to warm them
by that you know of; their labored homes rising here and there
like haystacks; and countless mice and moles and winged titmice
along the sunny windy shore; cranberries tossed on the waves and
heaving up on the beach, their little red skiffs beating about
among the alders; - such healthy natural tumult as proves the last
day is not yet at hand.
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