Though all the fates should prove unkind,
     Leave not your native land behind. 
     The ship, becalmed, at length stands still;
     The steed must rest beneath the hill;
     But swiftly still our fortunes pace
     To find us out in every place.

     The vessel, though her masts be firm,
     Beneath her copper bears a worm;
     Around the cape, across the line,
     Till fields of ice her course confine;
     It matters not how smooth the breeze,
     How shallow or how deep the seas,
     Whether she bears Manilla twine,
     Or in her hold Madeira wine,
     Or China teas, or Spanish hides,
     In port or quarantine she rides;
     Far from New England’s blustering shore,
     New England’s worm her hulk shall bore,
     And sink her in the Indian seas,
     Twine, wine, and hides, and China teas.

We passed a small desert here on the east bank, between Tyngsborough and Hudson, which was interesting and even refreshing to our eyes in the midst of the almost universal greenness.  This sand was indeed somewhat impressive and beautiful to us.  A very old inhabitant, who was at work in a field on the Nashua side, told us that he remembered when corn and grain grew there, and it was a cultivated field.  But at length the fishermen, for this was a fishing place, pulled up the bushes on the shore, for greater convenience in hauling their seines, and when the bank was thus broken, the wind began to blow up the sand from the shore, until at length it had covered about fifteen acres several feet deep.  We saw near the river, where the sand was blown off down to some ancient surface, the foundation of an Indian wigwam exposed, a perfect circle of burnt stones, four or five feet in diameter, mingled with fine charcoal, and the bones of small animals which had been preserved in the sand.  The surrounding sand was sprinkled with other burnt stones on which their fires had been built, as well as with flakes of arrow-head stone, and we found one perfect arrow-head.  In one place we noticed where an Indian had sat to manufacture arrow-heads out of quartz, and the sand was sprinkled with a quart of small glass-like chips about as big as a fourpence, which he had broken off in his work.  Here, then, the Indians must have fished before the whites arrived.  There was another similar sandy tract about half a mile above this.

Still the noon prevailed, and we turned the prow aside to bathe, and recline ourselves under some buttonwoods, by a ledge of rocks, in a retired pasture sloping to the water’s edge, and skirted with pines and hazels, in the town of Hudson.  Still had India, and that old noontide philosophy, the better part of our thoughts.