160 Head: Sir Francis Bond Head (1793-1875). In February 1852 Thoreau read his book The Emigrant (London: J. Murray, 1847); the following citation comes from page 47.
160 Buffon: Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788), celebrated French naturalist. Buffon’s encyclopedic Natural History (published in forty-four volumes beginning in 1749) had famously announced that nature in the Old World was superior to nature in the New. Compared with the Old World lion, for example, the American lion, or puma, not only has no mane, “it is … much smaller, weaker, and more cowardly than the real lion.” The Americas have no rhinoceroses, no hippopotamuses, no camels, no giraffes. “Elephants belong to the Old Continent and are not found in the New … . One cannot even find there any animal that can be compared to the elephant for size or shape.” Buffon suspected that the land and climate caused such diminution, claiming that European domestic animals transported to America become smaller as they acclimate. Finally, he claimed that the natives themselves lack vivacity and liveliness of soul. “The savage is feeble and small in his organs of generation; he has neither body hair nor beard, and no ardor for the female of his kind.” Thomas Jefferson dined with Count Buffon while in Paris serving as American minister and, when the conversation turned to the relative degeneracy of the New World, suggested that the diners rise. The Americans each stood over six feet tall, while the Frenchmen averaged just over five. The count was still not convinced, however, and Jefferson later mounted expeditions to send him antlers, bones, and skins in an effort to correct his misconception.
For a full account of Buffon’s ideas and the arguments that followed, see Antonello Gerbi’s The Dispute of the New World (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973). Thoreau knew Buffon through his reading of Joseph Adrien Lelarge de Lignac’s Lettres à un Amériquain sur l’histoire naturelle, générale et particuliere de Monsieur de Buffon (Hamburg, 1751-1756).
160 Linnæus: Carolus Linnaeus, Swedish naturalist. See the note for page 6 of “Natural History of Massachusetts.”
161 “Westward the star of empire”: first line of a poem by George Berkeley (1685-1753), “On the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America.” Thoreau substitutes “star” for the original “course.” Berkeley was an Anglo-Irish clergyman and philosopher who once traveled to Rhode Island in hopes of establishing a college. Thoreau’s source may actually be John Quincy Adams, whose 1802 “Oration at Plymouth” also cites Berkeley and substitutes “star” for “course.”
161 their inheritance: Under a system of primogeniture, where the eldest son inherits, the younger sons must travel for their fortunes.
161 panorama: a painting on a canvas too long to be viewed at once, and so exhibited by being unrolled and made to pass continuously before the viewer. The “panorama of the Mississippi” that Thoreau mentions below was probably the one painted by either Sam Stockwell or John Banvard (1815-1891). At twelve feet high and perhaps five thousand feet long, Banvard’s panorama was considered the largest oil painting ever completed. He exhibited it all over the United States and England. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow saw it in Boston in December 1846, just as he was beginning to write Evangeline. For more information. see John Francis McDermott, The Lost Panoramas of the Mississippi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958).
162 Ehrenbreitstein, Rolandseck, Coblentz: German cities on the Rhine. Coblentz is also spelled Koblenz.
162 Nauvoo: an Illinois town on the Mississippi River. In the early 1840s it was the largest city in the state, ten thousand Mormons having settled there after being driven out of Missouri. In 1846 they were driven farther west, and Nauvoo was abandoned.
162 Moselle: river flowing into the Rhine at Koblenz.
162 Dubuque: a city on the Mississippi River in northeastern Iowa; also the French-Canadian explorer after whom it is named, Julien Dubuque (1762-1810).
162 Wenona’s Cliff: Winona, Minnesota, on the Mississippi River, is surrounded by high bluffs.
162 the Wild: Thoreau’s journal for January 27, 1853, records his reaction to the etymology of this word as given by Trench in On the Study of Words, p. 203: “Trench says a wild man is a willed man. Well, then, a man of will who does what he wills or wishes, a man of hope and of the future tense, for not only the obstinate is willed, but far more the constant and persevering. The obstinate man, properly speaking, is one who will not. The perseverance of the saints is positive willedness, not a mere passive willingness. The fates are wild, for they will; and the Almighty is wild above all.” A recent writer on wilderness, Roderick Nash, agrees on the origins if not the tone: “In the early Teutonic and Norse languages … , the root seems to have been ‘will’ with a descriptive meaning of self-willed, willful, or uncontrollable. From ‘willed’ came the adjective ‘wild’ used to convey the idea of being lost, unruly, disordered, or confused.” See Wilderness and the American Mind, 3rd ed. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982), p. 1.
162 Romulus and Remus: in Greek mythology, twin sons of Mars. Abandoned, they were rescued by a she-wolf, then raised by shepherds. Romulus was the legendary founder of Rome.
162 Hottentots: aboriginal South African language group, now known as Khoikhoi.
163 stolen a march: gained an advantage; anticipated.
163 Cumming: Roualeyn George Gordon-Cumming (1820-1866), Scottish sportsman who lived in South Africa in the 1840s. In December 1850 Thoreau read his account Five Years of a Hunter’s Life in the Far Interior of South Africa, 2 vols. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1850). Thoreau refers to vol. 1, p. 218.
163 “A white man bathing”: from chapter 18, “Tahiti and New Zealand,” of Charles Darwin’s Voyage of the “Beagle” (1839).
163 “How near to good”: line 296 from a masque, Love Freed from Ignorance and Folly (1611), by the English dramatist and poet Ben Jonson (1572-1637).
164 parterres: ornamental flower gardens with beds and paths arranged in a pattern.
164 Dismal Swamp: the actual one lies on the Virginia-North Carolina border, just southwest, of Norfolk.
164 Burton: Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890). Thoreau read two of Burton’s books: Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El Medinah and Meccah (New York: G. P. Putnam & Co., 1856) and The Lake Region of Central Africa (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1860). The citation is from the first of these, p. 101.
165 Tartary: western China and Tibet. See the note for “Tartars,” page 340 above. The citation is from Father Huc’s Recollections of a Journey through Tartary.
165 sanctum sanctorum: the holy of holies (often used in reference to the innermost chamber of the old Temple of Jerusalem, where the Ark of the Covenant was kept).
165 the Reformer: St. John the Baptist, whose desert food was locusts and wild honey (Matthew 3:3-4).
165 they sold bark: as a source of tannic acid, used in tanning hides.
165 “to work the virgin soil”: from Guyot, The Earth and Man, p. 236, as above.
166 bushwhack: a short, heavy scythe for cutting bushes.
166 mallard: The Oxford English Dictionary reports the conjecture that the English “mallard” derives from the Old High German Madelhart, which in turn may have been the name for the wild duck in a Germanic beast-epic, now lost. Thoreau’s source for the etymological link is not known.
166 ’mid falling dews: paraphrase of the opening line of “To a Waterfowl” by William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878).
166 Lake Poets: the English Romantics, especially Wordsworth and Coleridge.
167 Augustan … Elizabethan age: figuratively, golden ages or expansive times, both Augustus Caesar (63 B.C.—A.D. 14) in Rome and Elizabeth I (1533 1603) in England having ruled during periods of high cultural achievement.
167 dragon-tree of the Western Isles: a huge tree, Dracaena draco, of the Canary Islands that yields a resin called dragon’s blood. Thoreau read of the great age of the dragon tree in Alexander von Humboldt’s Views of Nature (London: H. G. Bohn, 1849), p. 269.
168 “indicate a
faint”: from Robert Hunt, The Poetry of Science, or Studies of the Physical Phenomena of Nature (Boston: Gould, Kendall, & Lincoln, 1850), p. 269.
168 fossil tortoise: “Although the idea of an elephant standing on the hack of a tortoise was often laughed at as an absurdity, Captain Cautley and Dr. Falconer at length discovered in the hills of Asia the remains of a tortoise in a fossil state of such a size that an elephant could easily have performed the feat” (Hunt, Poetry of Science, p. 270).
168 partridge loves peas: a Wolof proverb, Wolof being the dominant language of those living in the Senegal-Gambia region of western Africa. Thoreau’s source for the proverb is not known.
169 Confucius: The Analects 12.8. See the note for page 136 of “Civil Disobedience.” This remark about animal skins is from Pauthier, vol. 1, p. 140.
171 heating manures: a reference to the use of the composted manure, warmed by its own decay, that served as the bottom layer of a hotbed for forcing plants in early spring.
171 Niepce: In 1826 the French inventor Joseph-Nicéphore Niépce (1765-1833) made the first permanent photographic images using a bitumen-coated plate exposed in a camera obscura. Thoreau’s citations come from Hunt, Poetry of Science, pp. 133-34. The language belongs to Hunt, not to Niépce.
171 Cadmus: In Greek mythology Cadmus brings the initial letters of the alphabet from Phoenicia to Greece.
171 Gramática parda: Gramática means grammar or knowledge, and parda means dun colored or brownish gray, but the phrase gramática parda means native wit, horse sense, worldly wisdom, instinctive knowledge.
171 Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge: Founded in London in 1826, the society’s aim was to “impart useful information to all classes of the community, particularly to such as are unable to avail themselves of experienced teachers, or may prefer learning by themselves.” It published books, maps, and a journal, The Penny Magazine (1832-1845). A Boston Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was organized in 1828; its first president was Daniel Webster.
172 more things in heaven and earth: Shakespeare, Hamlet I.v. 166.
172 Chaldean Oracles: A recent commentary tells us that “the Chaldean Oracles are a collection of abstruse, hexameter verses purported to have been ‘handed down by the gods’ … to a certain Julian the Chaldean and/or his son, Julian the Theurgist, who flourished during the late second century C.E.” No full text survives from antiquity, only fragments cited by various ancient authors. Rather than referring to ancient Chaldea, “Chaldean” means metaphorically that the author was adept in magic or was associated with the wisdom of the East. In a modern translation, the line that Thoreau cites reads, in its context: “For there exists a certain Intelligible which you must perceive by the flower of mind. For if you should incline your mind toward it and perceive it as a specific thing, you would not perceive it.” See Ruth Majercik, The Chaldean Oracles (Leiden and New York: E. J. Brill, 1989), especially pp. 48-49. Thoreau’s source is not known.
172 Vishnu Purana: the best known of the eighteen Puranas, a group of Sanskrit scriptures. Thoreau quotes from Vishnupurna. The Vishu Puráa: A System of Hindu Mythology and Tradition (London: J. Murray, 1840).
173 Dante, Bunyan: Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), author of The Divine Comedy, and John Bunyan (1628-1688), author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, a religious allegory.
173 Mahomet: or Muhammad (570?-632), the prophet of Islam. Thoreau’s knowledge of Islam came from Washington Irving’s Mahomet and His Successors, 2 vols. (New York: George P. Putnam, 1850), and from travel narratives such as Burton’s Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to E/ Medinah and Meccah.
173 “Gentle breeze”: lines 2-5 of “Ca-Lodin,” in Patrick Macgregor, The Genuine Remains of Ossian, Literally Translated (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1841), p. 121. “Loira” is the name of a stream. Ossian is a legendary Gaelic hero and bard of the third century A.D. In the late eighteenth century the Scottish poet James Macpherson (1736-1796) published The Poems of Ossian, which purported to be translations of the ancient bard but which were actually a creative mixture of translations from surviving Gaelic texts and imaginative additions by Macpherson himself. The Ossian that Thoreau knew was not Macpherson’s, however, but Patrick Macgregor’s later translations from Gaelic.
For a good explanation of the Ossian-Macpherson story, see Fiona Stafford’s introduction to The Poems of Ossian, ed. Howard Gaskill (Edinburgh: Edin burgh University Press, 1996). In Macpherson’s version of Ossian, the poem Thoreau cites is titled “Cath-loda.”
173 moss-trooper: one who ranges over mosses or bogs; in the seventeenth century a marauder inhabiting the borderlands of England and Scotland.
174 Spaulding’s Farm: an invented site.
174 not as in knots and excrescences embayed: that is, not manifested or made obvious, “embayed” being a poetic way of saying “bathed” or “steeped.”
175 mast: food, especially acorns, beechnuts, and such.
175 Shanghai and Cochin-China: breeds of poultry imported from China.
177 Elysium: the paradise of Homeric Greek mythology, lying at the westernmost edge of the world.
SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS
Prompted by the affair of the fugitive slave Anthony Burns (1834-1862), described below, Thoreau first delivered a portion of this essay as a lecture in Framingham, Massachusetts, on July 4, 1854. The entire essay was then published in William Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator, July 21, 1854. At the time, proofs for Walden had arrived, but Walden itself was not published until August.
181 meeting of the citizens of Concord: Emerson and Samuel Hoar called a meeting on June 22, 1854, to condemn the Kansas-Nebraska Act, to urge the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law, and to begin organizing a new antislavery party. The Republican Party came into being through this and other meetings held that summer in Massachusetts.
181 destiny of Nebraska: The Kansas-Nebraska Act had been passed by Congress on May 24, 1854, the same day that the fugitive slave Anthony Burns was arrested in Boston. The act left the question of slavery up to the settlers in Kansas and Nebraska, and thus repealed the Missouri Compromise, which had forbidden slavery in the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase. For a fuller discussion, see Section IV of the Introduction.
181 citizens of Massachusetts are now in prison: Abolitionists attacked the Boston Court House, attempting (and failing) to free the fugitive slave Burns. A deputy U.S. marshal, James Batchelder, was killed in the attack, and twelve of the men who led the assault were being held, charged variously with riot, assault, interfering with a federal officer, and murder. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a friend of Thoreau’s, was one of those being held.
181 their own bridges: The key event of the 1775 Battle of Concord was the successful defense of the town’s North Bridge against the advancing British.
181 Buttricks, and Davises, and Hosmers: Major John Buttrick, Captain Isaac Davis, and Abner Hosmer took part in the defense of the North Bridge in the Battle of Concord. Davis and Hosmer were killed.
181 Lexington Common: British redcoats met Massachusetts militia on the common early in the morning of April 19, 1775. This was the first battle of the Revolutionary War, followed the same day by the Battle of Concord.
181 Fugitive Slave Law: a federal law passed in 1850 that made it much more difficult for fugitive slaves to find refuge in the North. See Section IV of the Introduction.
181 compromise compact of 1820: the Missouri Compromise. See Section IV of the Introduction.
182 full of armed men: Federal and state troops had secured the Boston Court House after the attempt to free Burns.
182 Loring: Edward Greely Loring, Boston judge of probate and U.S. commissioner under the Fugitive Slave Law. Loring had written several articles in defense of that law.
182 Governor: Emory Washburn (1800-1877). Washburn, a Whig attorney, and his party were handily defeated in the next election as a consequence of their handling of the Burns affair. Thoreau’s scorn of “the Gove
rnor” appears in his 1851 journal entries on the Sims case (see below), and the target then would have been Governor George S. Boutwell (1818-1905). In fact, Thoreau never mentions Boutwell or Washburn by name, and neither man played much of a public role in the fugitive-slave cases. Thus it is the generic term Thoreau intends, for he wants to cast the conflict in terms of morals (there can be no real “governor” without conscience) and in terms of states’ rights (the executive officer should act if state and federal laws are at odds).
182 Simm’s: In April 1851 the fugitive slave Thomas Simms (or Sims) was captured in Boston and sent back to Savannah, Georgia, where he was given a nearly fatal public whipping.
183 speech to his accomplices: Five days after Burns was sent back to Virginia, Governor Washburn spoke at a dinner honoring one of the militia units that had helped secure the courthouse.
183 recent law: Massachusetts’s 1843 “Latimer Law” (named in honor of a fugitive slave, George Latimer). One of a series of Personal Liberty Laws, this statute sought to nullify the federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 by making it illegal for the state of Massachusetts to aid in the capture and remanding of slaves.
183 replevin: Two lawyers prepared writs of personal replevin in the Burns case. Like a writ of habeas corpus, a writ of replevin is meant to force a hearing to decide if a prisoner is being legally held. Provisions for such writs had been added to the Massachusetts code as part of the Personal Liberty Law of 1837, intended to help fugitive slaves. These writs had no standing in federal courts, and in this case one of them was denied, the other ignored.
183 Anthony Burns: a fugitive slave, arrested in Boston in May and sent back to Virginia on June 2, 1854. See the Introduction, p. xxxiv.
183 military force of the State: After the abolitionist assault on the courthouse, the mayor of Boston called out two companies of Massachusetts militia to guard the building. A few days later, when Commissioner Loring remanded Burns, the mayor put the city under martial law. Federal troops were also involved (with the express approval of President Franklin Pierce), and by the time martial law was declared, the state’s militia had effectively been federalized. All these things were illegal under the state’s “Latimer Law.”
The Essays of Henry D. Thoreau Page 46