Concord, Mass. Thoreau writes in his journal:
To New Bedford via Cambridge. I think that I never saw a denser growth than the young white cedar in swamps on the Taunton & New Bedford Railroad . . . (Journal, 7:89-90).
Cambridge, Mass. Thoreau checks out New England’s prospect by William Wood and Le grand voyage du pays des Hurons by Gabriel Sagard from Harvard College Library (Companion to Thoreau’s Correspondence, 291).
New Bedford, Mass. Daniel Ricketson writes in his journal:
H. D. Thoreau arrived this P.M., spent evening conversing upon various matters, the climate, &c., of England and America, &c. (Daniel Ricketson and His Friends, 281).
Ricketson later recalls meeting Thoreau:
My first personal interview with him was in December of this year (1854) He was bound to Nantucket to deliver a lecture and I had invited him to be my guest on his way thither. I had expected him at noon, but as he did not arrive, I had given him up for the day. In the latter part of the afternoon, I was engaged in cleaning off the snow which had fallen during the day, from my front steps, when upon looking up I saw a man walking up the carriage road carrying a portmanteau in one hand and an umbrella in the other – He was dressed in a long overcoat of dark color, and wore a dark soft hat. I had no suspicion it was Thoreau, and rather supposed it was a pedlar of small wares. As he came near me he stopped and as I did not speak, he said, “You do not know me.” It at once flashed on my mind that the person before me was my correspondent whom I had expected in the morning, and who in my imagination I had figured as a stout and robust person, instead of the small and rather inferior looking man before me. However, I concealed my disappointment and at once replied, “I presume this is Mr Thoreau,” and taking his portmanteau conducted him to the house & to his room already awaiting him.
(MS, Abernethy manuscripts, Middlebury College; see also Daniel Ricketson and His Friends, 11-12)
Ricketson also sketches Thoreau in the flyleaf of his copy of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (The Raymond Adams Collection in The Thoreau Society Collections at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods).
