Thoreau and the Merrimack -- Who Will Speak for the Fishes

By Sam Evans Brown on Tuesday, July 22, 2008.

listen:

River Minute Number Two

One of the most famous books written about the Merrimack river was by Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and the Merrimack.

I’m Sam Evans-Brown with this Merrimack River minute.

Thoreau paddled the river in 1839 but even at that early date, he bemoaned the changes of the industrial revolution. Historian John Cumbler says Thoreau described the problems brought by the dams that powered the mills.

CUT Cumbler: he says that the farmers fields remain flooded all the year long, and the fish nets that used to catch fish were rotting in attics.

In the very long term, Thoreau was more optimistic. In the book, he also wrote:

Who hears the fishes when they cry? It will not be forgotten by some memory that we were contemporaries. Thou shalt erelong have thy way up the rivers, up all the rivers of the globe, if I am not mistaken.

The triumph of the fish has yet to come but maybe in a couple of thousand years, history will prove Thoreau right.

With this Merrimack River Minute, I’m Sam Evans-Brown