Page:A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.djvu/214

208 when he was questioned, did not give a satisfactory account of the matter;—how few alas, could! This caused his hired man to remember, that one day as they were plowing together the plow struck something, and his employer going back to look, concluded not to go round again, saying that the sky looked rather louring, and so put up his team. The like urgency has caused many things to be remembered which never transpired. The truth is, there is money buried every where, and you have only to go work to find it.

Not far from these falls stands an oak tree on the interval, about a quarter of a mile from the river, on the farm of a Mr. Lund, which was pointed out to us as the spot where French, the leader of the party which went in pursuit of the Indians from Dunstable, was killed. Farwell dodged them in the thick woods near. It did not look as if men had ever had to run for their lives on this now open and peaceful interval.

Here too was another extensive desert by the side of the road in Litchfield, visible from the bank of the river. The sand was blown off in some places to the depth of ten or twelve feet, leaving small grotesque hillocks of that height where there was a clump of bushes firmly rooted. Thirty or forty years ago, as we were told, it was a sheep pasture, but the sheep being worried by the fleas, began to paw the ground, till they broke the sod, and so the sand began to blow, till now it had extended over forty or fifty acres. This evil might easily have been remedied at first, by spreading birches with their leaves on over the sand, and fastening them down with stakes, to break the wind. The flies bit the sheep, and the sheep bit the ground, and the sore had spread to this extent. It is astonishing what a great sore a little scratch breedeth. Who knows