Cascade and Bellows-Pipe 219 



to a muddy place in the road ' ' where the water stood 

 in the tracks of the horses which had carried travellers 

 up." He drank these dry, one after the other, by lying 

 flat on the earth. He was not able to fill his dipper, 

 and in a place above dug a well about two feet deep, 

 using his hands and sharp stones as spade and hoe. It 

 soon filled with pure cold water, from which he filled 

 his tin cup; and he says: *' The birds, too, came and 

 drank at it." He then proceeded to the rude wooden 

 observatory originally erected by Williams College, for 

 the construction of which Piatt — "a friend of mine," 

 writes Hawthorne in the Diary — hauled the material 

 by ox-team. Piatt, the stage-driver, boasted of the fact 

 that he was the first man to drive a team to the summit 

 of the then pathless Greylock, led by President GriflQn 

 of Williams on horseback, who directed the building of 

 that first observatory. This tower is now replaced by 

 a modern iron structure fifty feet high. 



Thoreau collected some ' ' dry sticks, and made a fire 

 on some flat stones ' ' placed on the floor of the observa- 

 tory for the purpose, and cooked the rice which he had 

 bought in the village, eating it with a wooden spoon 

 whittled out for the occasion. He was up at daybreak 

 the next morning, and he has left a glorious description 

 of sunrise on Greylock, as seen from the tower in the 

 mists. ^ 



The nights are very chill on these summits, even in 

 July. There are now several log-cabins erected on 



* Thoreau, Tuesday, Week on the Concord and Merrimack 

 Rivers. 



