The Like Urgency Has
Caused Many Things To Be Remembered Which Never Transpired.
The
truth is, there is money buried everywhere, and you have only to
go to work to find it.
Not far from these falls stands an oak-tree, on the interval,
about a quarter of a mile from the river, on the farm of a
Mr. Lund, which was pointed out to us as the spot where French,
the leader of the party which went in pursuit of the Indians from
Dunstable, was killed. Farwell dodged them in the thick woods
near. It did not look as if men had ever had to run for their
lives on this now open and peaceful interval.
Here too was another extensive desert by the side of the road in
Litchfield, visible from the bank of the river. The sand was
blown off in some places to the depth of ten or twelve feet,
leaving small grotesque hillocks of that height, where there was
a clump of bushes firmly rooted. Thirty or forty years ago, as
we were told, it was a sheep-pasture, but the sheep, being
worried by the fleas, began to paw the ground, till they broke
the sod, and so the sand began to blow, till now it had extended
over forty or fifty acres. This evil might easily have been
remedied, at first, by spreading birches with their leaves on
over the sand, and fastening them down with stakes, to break the
wind. The fleas bit the sheep, and the sheep bit the ground, and
the sore had spread to this extent. It is astonishing what a
great sore a little scratch breedeth. Who knows but Sahara,
where caravans and cities are buried, began with the bite of an
African flea? This poor globe, how it must itch in many places!
Will no god be kind enough to spread a salve of birches over its
sores? Here too we noticed where the Indians had gathered a heap
of stones, perhaps for their council-fire, which, by their weight
having prevented the sand under them from blowing away, were left
on the summit of a mound. They told us that arrow-heads, and
also bullets of lead and iron, had been found here. We noticed
several other sandy tracts in our voyage; and the course of the
Merrimack can be traced from the nearest mountain by its yellow
sandbanks, though the river itself is for the most part invisible.
Lawsuits, as we hear, have in some cases grown out of these causes.
Railroads have been made through certain irritable districts,
breaking their sod, and so have set the sand to blowing, till it
has converted fertile farms into deserts, and the company has had
to pay the damages.
This sand seemed to us the connecting link between land and
water. It was a kind of water on which you could walk, and you
could see the ripple-marks on its surface, produced by the winds,
precisely like those at the bottom of a brook or lake. We had
read that Mussulmen are permitted by the Koran to perform their
ablutions in sand when they cannot get water, a necessary
indulgence in Arabia, and we now understood the propriety of this
provision.
Plum Island, at the mouth of this river, to whose formation,
perhaps, these very banks have sent their contribution, is a
similar desert of drifting sand, of various colors, blown into
graceful curves by the wind. It is a mere sand-bar exposed,
stretching nine miles parallel to the coast, and, exclusive of
the marsh on the inside, rarely more than half a mile wide.
There are but half a dozen houses on it, and it is almost without
a tree, or a sod, or any green thing with which a countryman is
familiar. The thin vegetation stands half buried in sand, as in
drifting snow. The only shrub, the beach-plum, which gives the
island its name, grows but a few feet high; but this is so
abundant that parties of a hundred at once come from the
main-land and down the Merrimack, in September, pitch their
tents, and gather the plums, which are good to eat raw and to
preserve. The graceful and delicate beach-pea, too, grows
abundantly amid the sand, and several strange, moss-like and
succulent plants. The island for its whole length is scalloped
into low hills, not more than twenty feet high, by the wind, and,
excepting a faint trail on the edge of the marsh, is as trackless
as Sahara. There are dreary bluffs of sand and valleys ploughed
by the wind, where you might expect to discover the bones of a
caravan. Schooners come from Boston to load with the sand for
masons' uses, and in a few hours the wind obliterates all traces
of their work. Yet you have only to dig a foot or two anywhere
to come to fresh water; and you are surprised to learn that
woodchucks abound here, and foxes are found, though you see not
where they can burrow or hide themselves. I have walked down the
whole length of its broad beach at low tide, at which time alone
you can find a firm ground to walk on, and probably Massachusetts
does not furnish a more grand and dreary walk. On the seaside
there are only a distant sail and a few coots to break the grand
monotony. A solitary stake stuck up, or a sharper sand-hill than
usual, is remarkable as a landmark for miles; while for music you
hear only the ceaseless sound of the surf, and the dreary peep of
the beach-birds.
There were several canal-boats at Cromwell's Falls passing
through the locks, for which we waited. In the forward part of
one stood a brawny New Hampshire man, leaning on his pole,
bareheaded and in shirt and trousers only, a rude Apollo of a
man, coming down from that "vast uplandish country" to the main;
of nameless age, with flaxen hair, and vigorous, weather-bleached
countenance, in whose wrinkles the sun still lodged, as little
touched by the heats and frosts and withering cares of life as a
maple of the mountain; an undressed, unkempt, uncivil man, with
whom we parleyed awhile, and parted not without a sincere
interest in one another.
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