Thoreau writes in his journal:
To-day, May 31st, a red and white cow, being uneasy, broke out of the steam-mill pasture and crossed the bridge and broke into Elijah Wood’s grounds. When he endeavored to drive her out by the bars, she boldly took to the water, wading first through the meadows full of ditches, and swam across the river, about forty rods wide at this time, and landed in her own pasture again. She was a buffalo crossing her Mississippi. This exploit conferred some dignity on the herd in my eyes, already dignified, and reflectedly on the river, which I looked on as a kind of Bosphorus.
I love to see the domestic animals reassert their native rights,—any evidence that they have not lost their original wild habits and vigor. . .
I visited a retired, now almost unused, graveyard in Lincoln today, where five British soldiers lie buried who fell on the 19th April, ’75. Edmund Wheeler, grandfather of William, who lived in the old house now pulled down near the present went over the next day and carted them to this ground. . .
The water was over the turnpike below Master Cheney’s when I returned (May 31st, 1850).
