It appears that I saw about a dozen plants which had accompanied man as far into the woods as Chesuncook, and had naturalized them...selves there, in 1853. Plants begin thus early to spring by the side of a logging-path,--a mere vista through the woods, which can only be used in the winter, on account of the stumps and fallen trees,--which are at length are the roadside plants in old settlements. The pioneers of such are planted in part by the first cattle, which cannot be summered in the woods.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We saw many straggling white pines, commonly unsound trees, which had therefore been skipped by the choppers; these were the large...st trees we saw; and we occasionally passed a small wood in which this was the prevailing tree; but I did not notice nearly so many of these trees as I can see in a single walk in Concord.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We noticed several other sandy tracts in our voyage; and the course of the Merrimack can be traced from the nearest mountain by it...s yellow sand-banks, 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.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Salmon, shad, and alewives were formerly abundant here, and taken in weirs by the Indians ... until the dam and afterward the cana...l 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.... Perchance, after a few thousands of years, if the fishes will be patient, and pass their summers elsewhere meanwhile, nature will have leveled the Billerica dam, and the Lowell factories, and the Grass-ground River run clear again, to be explored by new migratory shoals.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Such were the first rude beginnings of a town. They spoke of the practicability of a winter road to the Moosehead Carry, which wou...ld not cost much, and would connect them with steam and staging and all the busy world. I almost doubted if the lake would be there,--the self-same lake,--preserve its form and identity, when the shores should be cleared and settled; as if these lakes and streams which explorers report never awaited the advent of the citizen.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its ...life than destroy it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The moose will, perhaps, one day become extinct; but how naturally then, when it exists only as a fossil relic, and unseen as that..., may the poet or sculptor invent a fabulous animal with similar branching and leafy horns ... to be the inhabitant of such a forest as this!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The woods were as fresh and full of vegetable life as a lichen in wet weather, and contained many interesting plants; but unless t...hey are of white pine, they are treated with as little respect here as a mildew, and in the other case they are only the more quickly cut down.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »