Life on the Neponset River - Boson Massachusetts - by Mark Twain

Life on the Neponset River (1873) is a memoir by Mark Twain of his days as a punt boater on Neponset River before he moved on to the Mississippi River and working full time on steam ships.  During his Boson, Massachusetts days Mark Twain was mostly staying out of the way of steamships in Boson Harbor and on the Neponset River as far as the dam at Lower Mills.

During his travels along the river Twain meets Nathanial Harthorne who takes him along to live for a few weeks at the 'free love' commune at New Merry Mount at the foot of the Eastern Blue Hills.  Twain gives some brief impressions of his stay and falling in love with what seemed like a mystic "Woman in White" who appeared to him as he punted along the river near the utopian colony.  


The work is also a travel book, recounting his trip along the Neponset River from the mythical source of the river in the Blue Hills of Dedham through Hyde Park and Canton to Milton and Dorchester's Lower Mills where the dam is to Boson, Massachusetts and the writer's and artist's colony Mark Twain tried to join  many years after the war.

The book begins with a brief history of the Neponset River in eastern Massachusetts as reported by Europeans and Americans, beginning with the English explorer and settler Higginson Boson in 1630.^[2]

Twain created a lot of interest when he claimed that a sunken treasure ship could be spotted at the mouth of the Neponset where the river empties into Quincy Bay and Boson Harbor.


The search for the treasure lost by Higginson Boson on his second expedition to Half Moon Island to set up the Boson Colony has occupied many over the decades.

 Little has come of all the searching besides increased sales of Mark Twain's "Life on the Neponset River" and very detailed maps of the bottom of the Neponset River.

A few cannons have been dredged up and place on display in front of the Boson Public Library, but they weren't from Twain's story or time on the river.

Twain started telling people in a local pub stories about the strange couplings and sexual hijinks at the New Merry Mount commune and people made him get up on a makeshift stage and address the whole room so everyone could hear about 'free love' and disprove while enjoying every detail and asking to have the women described again in detail.  Twain was asked to write down some of the stories he was telling and thus began his paid writing career. 
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https://archive.is/U97pm