Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/31

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Merrimac, but in New Boston not far away, and when Ellery Channing was his companion, perhaps in 1846. In the second draft before me is a passage omitted in printing, which relates to the same journey, as follows:

"On the rocky shore in front of Moore’s Falls I have since prepared a rather sumptuous but somewhat more innocent repast than our last, when travelling this way one summer's day with another companion. It was composed of crusts of bread which the farmers had refused, hens' eggs, for one of which we waited till it was laid, and a hasty pudding boiled on the rocks, amidst the roar of the rapids, and almost sprinkled with the foam. For our means were small, though our appetites were great, and we studied economy as well as the landscape. We saw a raft of logs, sixty or seventy feet long, go down these rocky rapids, which are a hundred rods in length. It was managed by two men, one at each end, with an oar fixed into the logs; and they were obliged to exert all their strength to incline it to the right or left, and avoid the rocks,—all the while half

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