Rowing Down A New England River; A Rare Book

Rowing Down A River

I report on an old book I found in the library of an estate we purchased a few weeks ago.  I have sold off the whole library except this one book that I liked the look of and am reading.  It is Henry Parker Fellows; BOATING TRIPS ON NEW ENGLAND RIVERS, Cupples, Upham & Co. with The Old Corner Bookstore, 176 pp. (and an attractive advertisement for row boat equipment on pp.(177), Boston, 1884.  It is the only book Fellows wrote and evidently the only edition excepting modern computer reprints.  A handful of copies are on the internet for $50 to $110. Aside from the actual book for sale, there is nothing ABOUT the book or its author out there that I can find.  The book is a charming, verifiable and relaxing read of a pre-industrial last gasp camping trip; the true tale of two men rowing down three Massachusetts rivers; the Nashua, Housatonic and Concord.  The narrative is a carefully described regular guy in a leaky row boat accounting of …rowing the rivers.  Dragging over dams, ducking under bridges, fences and trees, scraping bottom and cascading rapids while all along reporting natural wonder, antiquarian sites and industrial destruction… are all mingled with human contacts, eggs and milk from farms, waking tours of villages, grilling steaks on the river bank, sleeping in the pup tent with it ALWAYS about to rain, always with WET camping gear and… pleasing accounts of dining at a few center of the village 1880’s hotels too.  In fact it is all VERY 1884 with a JUST in the row boat on the river NOW pure truth spoken style.  The result is a taking the reader way back to a very real era of possibility …that is no longer is possible… but herein laid bare to become a refreshingly NOT PRETENDED in the rivers accounting.  Putting that boat in, taking the boat out, wrecking the boat, swamping the boat and retrieving the wet and floating away down river equipment… with helps from the river bank communities ADD authentic adventure to the pleasingly historic-at-its-date narrative.  Today… to consider putting an old row boat in … a local New England river of one’s choice… and then taking a ten day no schedule at all camping trip down that river to its end at the Atlantic ocean… is not going to happen except in the mind’s eye.  This tranquil antiquarian book read IS as close as I can get to a real river ride in a leaky row boat.  It is a little gem of an outdoor New England read; the best I’ve found in quite a while.  It is also a true rare book worth hunting for.