JVa tube About Bos ton 
V. 
BY RALPH HOFFMANN 
j __ SPENT Wednesday, April IT, on the 
Squannacook, letting the little stream, 
I which was high with the melted snow, 
I ^rry my canoe down to Townsend har- 
b r The Squannacook starts on the eastern 
slopes of Ashby, a hill town in the north¬ 
western corner of Middlesex County, 
the New Hampshire line. It is not a stream 
that one would care to paddle up, foi 
though by no means as imP e tu° us “ * 
mountain brook it loiters very little on its 
l iourney to tii© 
When I entered,the freight shed at West 
Townsend I found my canoe at the bot¬ 
tom of a pile of ten; the station agent told 
me with evident pride that he had re¬ 
ceived thirty canoes during the last season. 
I supposed that my trip would open the 
present one, but he told me that two 
canoes had gone down the day b ®* or ®‘ * 
found later that they belonged to some 
■ brother ornithologists who had spent three 
days on the Squannacook, Nashua, Merr - 
: mac and Concord rivers. 
1 The stream flows for the most part b - 
tween steep banks, through which it has 
cut a deep channel. The banks are clothed 
for nearly the whole distance with trees, j 
and as the fierce onset of the s P ril }g fl . OOC !? 
*ats into the loose soil of the bank, it 
gradually undermines some tall Pn «r 
water-loving red maple. vain > 
the tree strives to cling with half its roots 
ssr a“roe"°r t X’S* 
*fretched branches. T-here is nu 
<**. but -ith ot U„,i 
M i». «>• cr,U- 
sowing the ■ ™ enough excitement to 
SLTSrK >» <>» ««* 
An orminoiwe com . 
I“ “prt. to run und.r 
panion and f , len elm, a Cooper s 
a low arch aswampy bit 
r ^ru1ou° 8 U bar e 8 ft on 2 Setst^d 
fhe C blackish bands across 
the 1 next ? moment we were cheerfully en- 
harbor The wite c anoe; tho 
stem settlt>d ^ n m ns , looking back from 
bis amused companions^ ^ h , B head 
above°water still wearing his hat, his eye- 
along the 
, T^fThe stream Now and then a song 
bank ulked silently among the roots 
TSr.rS Md one IhousM t 
_ „ olding of a winter wren, but I could 
evergreens. Patches of snow still lay under 
the laurel, and here we heard the lisp of 
"olden-crowned knights, and once or twice 
Their song. Except for a few chipping 
sparrows I met no bird that had not been 
here for at least two weeks, unless it were 
a fine osprey that started from the top of a 
tree on the bank of the river. I saw no 
swallows, no kingfishers, no sandpipers, and 
did not hear a single grouse drum in the 
woods. Near Townsend harbor the Squan¬ 
nacook almost loses itself in a deep swamp 
where a hairv woodpecker showed himself 
for a moment. When the stream escapes 
from the swamp It broadens into the har¬ 
bor. a wide expanse caused by a dam just 
below. Here as we were leaving the alders 
that had fringed the current for a mile or 
more, I heard the low quack of a black 
duck; a moment later a pair sprang from 
the water ahead oi us. The sun fell full on 
them, and I saw that the drake at least 
had bright red legs. This mark served to 
identify him as the northern species, the 
red-legged black duck. What was he doing 
in the reeds of the Squannacook in the 
middle of April? According to the books, 
he should have left for the north a month 
ago. I could not help suspecting that if we 
had known these marshes as well as he and 
his mate, and could have followed -where 
his red legs had paddled, we might have 
found at the base of some tree on the shore 
a nest lined with down in which he had a 
particular interest. 
At Townsend Centre we had a pleasant 
surprise. A duck flew up from a pool and 
crossed ahead of us, with a swaying flight. , 
As the light fell on it, I saw the white un- | 
der parts of a female wood duck, once the 1 
commonest duck on our inland streams, j 
now “a vanishing game bird.” We had to 
carry around the dam at Townsend Centre 
and before we “set in,” we stopped a mo¬ 
ment to listen to some fox spari-ows that 
were singing near the ruins of a large saw¬ 
mill. I had had an opportunity the night 
before to watch this same flock feeding in 
what seemed at first a very peculiar situa¬ 
tion. The mill had burned to the ground 
during the winter; the fox sparrows, to¬ 
gether with some song sparrows, w-ere 
scratching in a sort of cellar where the 
burned rafters lay over masses of crumbled 
stone. I climbed down to see w-liat they 
could possibly find among the ruins, and 
discovered a quantity of half-charred corn. 
The mill, though chiefly for sawing lumber, 
had also a grist department, and a whole 
carload of corn was in the storeroom at the 
time of the fire. Much had been shovelled 
out, I was told, and fed to the neighbors’ 
hens, and the fox sparrows were gleaning 
thankfully amidst the remainder. 
The valley of the Squannacook is pme- 
plain” land, to use the local term. A bet¬ 
ter physiographer than I could no doubt 
read the records w-hich ice and water have 
left, and explain the great stretches of sand 
which have apparently been spread over an 
earlier and deeper valley. These' sandy 
stretches produce an abundance of white 
pine, of an inferior grade, but useful in an 
industry- which I had never before had a 
