Thoreau writes in his journal:
Above Hubbard Bridge we see coming from the south in loose array some twenty apparently black ducks . . .
Brought home quite a boat-load of fuel,—one oak rail, on which fishers had stood in wet ground at Bittern Cliff, a white pine rider (?) with a square hole in [it] made by a woodpecker anciently, so wasted the sap as to leave the knots projecting, several chestnut rails; and I obtained behind Cardinal Shore a large oak stump which I know to have been bleaching there for more than thirty years, with three great gray prongs sprinkled with lichens . . .