Henry David Thoreau - The Greatest Works of Henry David Thoreau – 92+ Titles in One Illustrated Edition

Far away from here, in Lancaster, with another companion, I have crossed the broad valley of the Nashua, over which we had so long looked westward from the Concord hills without seeing it to the blue mountains in the horizon. So many streams, so many meadows and woods and quiet dwellings of men had lain concealed between us and those Delectable Mountains;—from yonder hill on the road to Tyngsborough you may get a good view of them. There where it seemed uninterrupted forest to our youthful eyes, between two neighboring pines in the horizon, lay the valley of the Nashua, and this very stream was even then winding at its bottom, and then, as now, it was here silently mingling its waters with the Merrimack. The clouds which floated over its meadows and were born there, seen far in the west, gilded by the rays of the setting sun, had adorned a thousand evening skies for us. But as it were, by a turf wall this valley was concealed, and in our journey to those hills it was first gradually revealed to us. Summer and winter our eyes had rested on the dim outline of the mountains, to which distance and indistinctness lent a grandeur not their own, so that they served to interpret all the allusions of poets and travellers. Standing on the Concord Cliffs we thus spoke our mind to them:—

With frontier strength ye stand your ground,

With grand content ye circle round,

Tumultuous silence for all sound,

Ye distant nursery of rills,

Monadnock and the Peterborough Hills;—

Firm argument that never stirs,

Outcircling the philosophers,—

Like some vast fleet,

Sailing through rain and sleet,

Through winter's cold and summer's heat;

Still holding on upon your high emprise,

Until ye find a shore amid the skies;

Not skulking close to land,

With cargo contraband,

For they who sent a venture out by ye

Have set the Sun to see

Their honesty.

Ships of the line, each one,

Ye westward run,

Convoying clouds,

Which cluster in your shrouds,

Always before the gale,

Under a press of sail,

With weight of metal all untold,—

I seem to feel ye in my firm seat here,

Immeasurable depth of hold,

And breadth of beam, and length of running gear

Methinks ye take luxurious pleasure

In your novel western leisure;

So cool your brows and freshly blue,

As Time had naught for ye to do;

For ye lie at your length,

An unappropriated strength,

Unhewn primeval timber,

For knees so stiff, for masts so limber;

The stock of which new earths are made,

One day to be our western trade, Fit for the stanchions of a world Which through the seas of space is hurled.

While we enjoy a lingering ray,

Ye still o'ertop the western day,

Reposing yonder on God's croft

Like solid stacks of hay;

So bold a line as ne'er was writ

On any page by human wit;

The forest glows as if

An enemy's camp-fires shone

Along the horizon,

Or the day's funeral pyre

Were lighted there;

Edged with silver and with gold,

The clouds hang o'er in damask fold,

And with such depth of amber light

The west is dight,

Where still a few rays slant,

That even Heaven seems extravagant.

Watatic Hill

Lies on the horizon's sill

Like a child's toy left overnight,

And other duds to left and right,

On the earth's edge, mountains and trees

Stand as they were on air graven,

Or as the vessels in a haven

Await the morning breeze.

I fancy even

Through your defiles windeth the way to heaven;

And yonder still, in spite of history's page,

Linger the golden and the silver age;

Upon the laboring gale

The news of future centuries is brought,

And of new dynasties of thought,

From your remotest vale.

But special I remember thee,

Wachusett, who like me

Standest alone without society.

Thy far blue eye,

A remnant of the sky,

Seen through the clearing or the gorge,

Or from the windows of the forge,

Doth leaven all it passes by.

Nothing is true

But stands 'tween me and you,

Thou western pioneer,

Who know'st not shame nor fear,

By venturous spirit driven

Under the eaves of heaven;

And canst expand thee there,

And breathe enough of air?

Even beyond the West

Thou migratest,

Into unclouded tracts,

Without a pilgrim's axe,

Cleaving thy road on high

With thy well-tempered brow,

And mak'st thyself a clearing in the sky.

Upholding heaven, holding down earth,

Thy pastime from thy birth;

Not steadied by the one, nor leaning on the other,

May I approve myself thy worthy brother!

At length, like Rasselas and other inhabitants of happy valleys, we had resolved to scale the blue wall which bounded the western horizon, though not without misgivings that thereafter no visible fairy-land would exist for us. But it would be long to tell of our adventures, and we have no time this afternoon, transporting ourselves in imagination up this hazy Nashua valley, to go over again that pilgrimage. We have since made many similar excursions to the principal mountains of New England and New York, and even far in the wilderness, and have passed a night on the summit of many of them. And now, when we look again westward from our native hills, Wachusett and Monadnock have retreated once more among the blue and fabulous mountains in the horizon, though our eyes rest on the very rocks on both of them, where we have pitched our tent for a night, and boiled our hasty-pudding amid the clouds.

As late as 1724 there was no house on the north side of the Nashua, but only scattered wigwams and grisly forests between this frontier and Canada. In September of that year, two men who were engaged in making turpentine on that side, for such were the first enterprises in the wilderness, were taken captive and carried to Canada by a party of thirty Indians. Ten of the inhabitants of Dunstable, going to look for them, found the hoops of their barrel cut, and the turpentine spread on the ground. I have been told by an inhabitant of Tyngsborough, who had the story from his ancestors, that one of these captives, when the Indians were about to upset his barrel of turpentine, seized a pine knot and flourishing it, swore so resolutely that he would kill the first who touched it, that they refrained, and when at length he returned from Canada he found it still standing. Perhaps there was more than one barrel. However this may have been, the scouts knew by marks on the trees, made with coal mixed with grease, that the men were not killed, but taken prisoners. One of the company, named Farwell, perceiving that the turpentine had not done spreading, concluded that the Indians had been gone but a short time, and they accordingly went in instant pursuit. Contrary to the advice of Farwell, following directly on their trail up the Merrimack, they fell into an ambuscade near Thornton's Ferry, in the present town of Merrimack, and nine were killed, only one, Farwell, escaping after a vigorous pursuit. The men of Dunstable went out and picked up their bodies, and carried them all down to Dunstable and buried them. It is almost word for word as in the Robin Hood ballad:—

"They carried these foresters into fair Nottingham,

As many there did know,

They digged them graves in their churchyard,

And they buried them all a-row."

Nottingham is only the other side of the river, and they were not exactly all a-row. You may read in the churchyard at Dunstable, under the "Memento Mori," and the name of one of them, how they "departed this life," and

"This man with seven more that lies in

this grave was slew all in a day by