swamp,--possibly knowing that you could never find it again, yet willing
to take his risks.

No college ever offered him a diploma, or a professor's chair; no academy
made him its corresponding secretary, its discoverer, or even its member.
Whether these learned bodies feared the satire of his presence. Yet so
much knowledge of Nature's secret and genius few others possessed, none in
a more large and religious synthesis. For not a particle of respect had he
to the opinions of any man or body of men, but homage solely to the truth
itself; and as he discovered everywhere among doctors some leaning of
courtesy, it discredited them. He grew to be revered and admired by his
townsmen, who had at first known him only as an oddity. The farmers who
employed him as a surveyor soon discovered his rare accuracy and skill,
his knowledge of their lands, of trees, of birds, of Indian remains, and
the like, which enabled him to tell every farmer more than he knew before
of his own farm; so that he began to feel as if Mr. Thoreau had better
rights in his land than he. They felt, too, the superiority of character
which addressed all men with a native authority.

Indian relics abound in Concord,--arrow-heads, stone chisels, pestles, and
fragments of pottery; and on the river-bank, large heaps of clam-shells
and ashes mark spots which the savages frequented. These, and every
circumstance touching the Indian, were important in his eyes. His visits
to Maine were chiefly for love of the Indian. He had the satisfaction of
seeing the manufacture of the bark-canoe, as well as of trying his hand in
its management on the rapids. He was inquisitive about the making of the
stone arrow-head, and in his last days charged a youth setting out for the
Rocky Mountains to find an Indian who could tell him that: "It was well
worth a visit to California to learn it." Occasionally, a small party of
Penobscot Indians would visit Concord, and pitch their tents for a few