176 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
that this which is now Concord was once Mns- 
ketaquid, and that the American race has had 
its destiny also. Everywhere in the fields, in 
the corn and grain land, the earth is strewn 
with the relics of a race which has vanished as 
completely as if trodden in with the earth. Is 
it not good to remember the eternity behind me 
as well as the eternity before ? Wherever I 
go I tread in the tracks of the Indian. I pick 
up the bolt which he has but just dropped at 
my feet. And if I consider destiny I am on 
his trail. I scatter his hearth-stones with my 
feet, and pick out of the embers of his fire the 
simple but enduring implements of the wigwam 
and the chase. In planting my corn in the 
same furrow which yielded its increase to his 
support so long, I displace some memorial of 
him. I have been walking this afternoon over 
a pleasant field planted with winter rye in a 
region where this strange people once had their 
dwelling-place. Another species of mortal men 
but little less wild to me than the musquash 
they hunted. Strange spirits, demons, whose 
eye could never meet mine. With another na¬ 
ture, and another fate than mine. The crows 
flew over the edge of the woods, and wheeling 
over my head, seemed to rebuke, as dark¬ 
winged spirits more akin to the Indian than I. 
Perhaps only the present disguise of the Indian. 
If the new has a meaning, so has the old. .... 
