Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/138

 114 YEARS OF DISCIPLINE. [1843,

lived, and found the present occupant, one Mr. Davenport, formerly from Massachusetts, with three or four men to help him, raising sweet potatoes and tomatoes by the acre. It seemed a cool and pleasant retreat, but a hungry soil. As I was coming away, I took my toll out of the soil in the shape of arrow-heads, which may after all be the surest crop, certainly not affected by drought.

I am well enough situated here to observe one aspect of the modern world at least. I mean the migratory, the Western movement. Six teen hundred immigrants arrived at quarantine ground on the 4th of July, and more or less every day since I have been here. I see them occasionally washing their persons and clothes : OP men, women, and children gathered on an isolated quay near the shore, stretching their limbs and taking the air ; the children running races and swinging on this artificial piece of the land of liberty, while their vessels are under going purification. They are detained but a day or two, and then go up to the city, for the most part without having landed here.

In the city, I have seen, since I wrote last, W. H. Channing, at whose home, in Fifteenth Street, I spent a few pleasant hours, discussing the all-absorbing question &quot; what to do for the race.&quot; (He is sadly in earnest about going up