Sunday, April 30, 2017

100 REFLECTIONS: The Sages of Concord #21

Thoreau made this trip to Montreal through Burlington, VT one hundred years To The Day before I was born. I lived in Burlington for nearly 20 years!

"You are in the midst of the Green Mountains. A few more elevated blue peaks are seen from the neighborhood of Mount Holly, perhaps Killington Peak is one. Sometimes, as on the Western rail-road, you are whirled over mountainous embankments . . . All the hills blush. I think that autumn must be the best season to journey over even the Green Mountains. You frequently exclaim to yourself, What red maples! "
Image result for trains in vermont 1850
Summit Cut, Killington, Vermont


I FEAR THAT I have not got much to say about Canada, not having seen much; what I got by going to Canada was a cold. I left Concord, Massachusetts, Wednesday morning Sep. 25th 1850, for Quebec. Fare seven dollars there and back; distance from Boston five hundred and ten miles; being obliged to leave Montreal on the return as soon as Friday Oct. 4th, or within ten days. I will not stop to tell the reader the names of my fellow travellers; there were said to be fifteen hundred of them. I wished only to be set down in Canada, and take one honest walk there, as I might in Concord woods for an afternoon.
[2]       . . .In Ludlow, Mount Holly, and beyond, there is interesting mountain scenery, not rugged and stupendous, but such as you could easily ramble over, long narrow mountain vales through which to see the horizon. You are in the midst of the Green Mountains. A few more elevated blue peaks are seen from the neighborhood of Mount Holly, perhaps Killington Peak is one. Sometimes, as on the Western rail-road, you are whirled over mountainous embankments, from which the scared horses in the valleys appear diminished to hounds. All the hills blush. I think that autumn must be the best season to journey over even the Green Mountains. You frequently exclaim to yourself, What red maples! The sugar-maple is not so red. You see some of the latter with rosy spots or cheeks only, blushing on one side like fruit, while all the rest of the tree is green, proving either some partiality in the light or frosts, or some prematurity in particular branches. Tall and slender ash trees whose foliage is turned to a dark mulberry color, are frequent. The butter-nut which is a remarkably spreading tree, is turned completely yellow, thus proving its relation to the hickories. I was also struck by the bright yellow tints of the yellow-birch. The sugar-maple is remarkable for its clean ankle. The groves of these trees looked like vast forest sheds, their branches stopping short at a uniform height, four or five feet from the ground, like eaves, as if they had been trimmed by art, so that you could look under and through the whole grove with its leafy canopy, as under a tent whose curtain is raised.
[4]       As you approach Lake Champlain you begin to see the New York mountains. The first view of the lake at Vergennes is impressive, but rather from association than from any peculiarity in the scenery. It lies there so small (not appearing in that proportion to the width of the state that it does on the map,) but beautifully quiet, like a picture of the Lake of Lucerne on a music box, where you trace the name of Lucerne among the foliage; far more ideal than ever it looked on the map. It does not say, "Here I am, Lake Champlain," as the conductor might for it, but having studied the geography thirty years, you crossed over a hill one afternoon and beheld it. But it is only a glimpse that you get here. At Burlington you rush to a wharf and go on board a steamboat two hundred and thirty-two miles from Boston. We left Concord at twenty minutes before eight in the morning, and were in Burlington about six at night, but too late to see the lake. We got our first fair view of the lake at dawn, just before reaching Plattsburg, and saw blue ranges of mountains on either hand, in New York and in Vermont, the former especially grand. A few white schooners like gulls were seen in the distance, for it is not waste and solitary like a lake in Tartary, but it was such a view as leaves not much to be said; indeed I have postponed Lake Champlain to another day.

[5]       The oldest reference to these waters that I have met with is in the account of Cartier's (5) discovery and exploration of the St. Lawrence in 1535. Samuel Champlain(6) actually discovered and paddled up the lake in July, 1609, eleven years before the settlement of Plymouth, accompanying a war party of the Canadian Indians against the Iroquois. He describes the islands in it as not inhabited although they are pleasant, on account of the continual wars of the Indians, in consequence of which they withdraw from the rivers and lakes into the depths of the land, that they may not be surprised. "Continuing our course", says he "in this lake, on the western side, viewing the country, I saw on the eastern side very high mountains, where there was snow on the summit. I inquired of the savages if those places were inhabited. They replied that they were, and that they were Hiroquois, and that in those places there were beautiful valleys and plains fertile in corn, such as I have eaten in this country, with an infinity of other fruits." This is the earliest account of what is now Vermont.

from http://thoreau.eserver.org/Canada1.html

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