Concord, Mass. Thoreau writes in his journal:
When I got out of the cars at Porter’s, Cambridge, this morning, I was pleased to see the handsome blue flowers of the succory or endive (Cichorium Intybus), which reminded me that within the hour I had been whirled into a new botanical region . . . Visited the Observatory. Bond said they were cataloguing the stars at Washington (?), or trying to . . . Coming out of town,—willingly as usual,—when I saw that reach of Charles River just above the depot, the fair, still water this cloudy evening suggesting the way to eternal peace and beauty, whence it flows, the placid, lake-like fresh water, so unlike the salt brine, affected me not a little… And just then I saw an encampment of Penobscots, their wigwams appearing above the railroad fence, they, too, looking up the river as they sat on the ground, and enjoying the scene. Haunt of waterfowl. This was above the factories,—all that I saw.
Boston, Mass. Thoreau checks out Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, new series volume 2, and Observations at the Magnetic and Meteorological Observatory, at the Girard College, Philadelphia, volumes 1, 2, and 3, and plates, from the Boston Society of Natural History.
(Emerson Society Quarterly, no. 24 (March 1952):24)
