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SubTitle: In 1843 - Henry David Thoreau wrote a letter about Staten Island - "The Whole Island Is Like A Garden"
Posted by: Gina (Coiro) Lettieri (adventur@satelnet.org) on 6/19/1997@18:56hrs:
ned plane. I do not like their cities and forts, with their morning and evening guns, and sails flapping in one's eye. I
Note: Henry D. Thoreau was a famous naturalist & a tutor in the home of Judge William Emerson in Concord.
1843 he wrote:
"I have already run over no small part of the island, to the highest hill, and some way along the shore. From the hill directly behind the house I can see New York, Brooklyn, Long Island, the Narrows, through which vessels bound to and from all parts of the world chiefly pass--Sandy Hook and the Highlands of Neversink (part of the coast of New Jersey) - and, by going still farther up the hill, the Kill van Kull, and Newark Bay. From the pinnacle of one Madame Grimes' house, the other night at sunset, I could see almost round the island. Far in the horizon there was a fleet of sloops bound up the Hudson, which seemed to be going over the edge of the earth; and in view of these trading ships, commerce seems quite imposing. But it is rather derogatory that your dwelling-place should be only a neighborhood to a great city--to live on an inclined plane. I do not like their cities and forts, with their morning and evening guns, and sails flapping in one's eye. I want a whole continent to breathe in, and a good deal of solitude and silence, such as all Wall Street cannot buy--nor Broadway with its wooden pavement. I must live along the beach, on the southern shore, which looks directly out to sea and see what that great parade of water means, that dashes and roars, and has not yet wet me, as long as I have lived.
A week later, in another letter, he wrote:
"The cedar seems to be one of the most common trees here, and the fields are very fragrant with it. There are also the gum and tulip trees. The latter is not very common, but it is very large and beautiful, having flowers as large as tulips, and as handsome. It is not time for it yet. The woods are now full of a large honeysuckle in full bloom, which differs from ours in being red instead of white, so that at first I did not know its genus. The painted cup is very common in the meadows here. Peaches and especially cherries, seem to grow by all the fences. Things are very forward here compared with Concord (Massachusetts). The apricots growing out of doors are already as large as plums. The apple, pear, peach, cherry and plum trees have shed their blossoms.
and affords a very fine scenery. In front of the house is a very extensive wood, beyond which is the sea, whose roar I can hear all night long, when there is a wind; if easterly winds have prevailed on the Atlantic. There are always some vessels in sight--ten, twenty, or thirty miles off--and Sunday before last there were hundreds in long procession, stretching from New York to Sandy Hook, and far beyond, for Sunday is a lucky day. I went to New York Saturday before last. A walk of half an hour, by half a dozen houses along the Richmond Road...brings me to the village of Stapleton, in Southfield, where is the lower dock; but if I prefer I can walk along the shore three quarters of a mile farther toward New York to the quarantine village of Castleton, to the upper dock, which the boat leaves five or six times every day, a quarter of an hour later than the former place. Farther on is the village of New Brighten, and father still Port Richmond, which villages another steamboat visits...I have just come from the beach and I like it very much. Everything there is on grand and generous scale--seaweed, water and sand; and even the dead fishes, horses and hogs have a rank, luxuriant odor; great shad- nets spread to dry; crabs and horseshoe crawling over the sand; clumsy boats only for service, dancing like sea-fowl over the surf, and ships afar off going about their business."