Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/269

Rh March 28, 1859. Paddle to the Bedford line. It is now high time to look for arrowheads, etc. I spend many hours every spring gathering the crop which the melting snow and rain have washed bare. When at length some island in the meadow or some sandy field elsewhere has been plowed, perhaps for rye, in the fall, I take note of it, and do not fail to repair thither as soon as the earth begins to be dry in the spring. If the spot chances never to have been cultivated before, I am the first to gather a crop from it. The farmer little thinks that another reaps a harvest which is the fruit of his toil. As much ground is turned up in a day by the plow as Indian implements could not have turned over in a month, and my eyes rest on the evidences of an aboriginal life which passed here a thousand years ago, perchance. Especially if the knolls in the meadows are washed by a freshet where they have been plowed the previous fall, the soil will be taken away lower down and the stones left, the arrow-heads, etc., and soapstone pottery amid them, somewhat as gold is washed in a dish or torn. I landed on two spots this and picked up a dozen arrowheads. It is one of the regular pursuits of the spring. As sportsmen go in pursuit of ducks and musquash, and scholars of rare books, and travelers of adventures, and poets of ideas,