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paddles briskly moving, just over the surf, to reconnoitre you
before they leave these parts; gulls wheeling overhead, muskrats
swimming for dear life, wet and cold, with no fire to warm them
by that you know of; their labored homes rising here and there
like haystacks; and countless mice and moles and winged titmice
along the sunny windy shore; cranberries tossed on the waves and
heaving up on the beach, their little red skiffs beating about
among the alders;--such healthy natural tumult as proves the last
day is not yet at hand.  And there stand all around the alders,
and birches, and oaks, and maples full of glee and sap, holding
in their buds until the waters subside.  You shall perhaps run
aground on Cranberry Island, only some spires of last year's
pipe-grass above water, to show where the danger is, and get as
good a freezing there as anywhere on the Northwest Coast.  I never
voyaged so far in all my life.  You shall see men you never heard
of before, whose names you don't know, going away down through
the meadows with long ducking-guns, with water-tight boots wading
through the fowl-meadow grass, on bleak, wintry, distant shores,
with guns at half-cock, and they shall see teal, blue-winged,
green-winged, shelldrakes, whistlers, black ducks, ospreys, and
many other wild and noble sights before night, such as they who
sit in parlors never dream of.  You shall see rude and sturdy,
experienced and wise men, keeping their castles, or teaming up
their summer's wood, or chopping alone in the woods, men fuller
of talk and rare adventure in the sun and wind and rain, than a
chestnut is of meat; who were out not only in '75 and 1812, but
have been out every day of their lives; greater men than Homer,
or Chaucer, or Shakespeare, only they never got time to say so;
they never took to the way of writing.  Look at their fields, and
imagine what they might write, if ever they should put pen to
paper.  Or what have they not written on the face of the earth
already, clearing, and burning, and scratching, and harrowing,
and ploughing, and subsoiling, in and in, and out and out, and
over and over, again and again, erasing what they had already
written for want of parchment.

As yesterday and the historical ages are past, as the work of
to-day is present, so some flitting perspectives, and
demi-experiences of the life that is in nature are in time
veritably future, or rather outside to time, perennial, young,
divine, in the wind and rain which never die.

     The respectable folks,--
     Where dwell they?
     They whisper in the oaks,
     And they sigh in the hay;
     Summer and winter, night and day,
     Out on the meadow, there dwell they.
     They never die,
     Nor snivel, nor cry,
     Nor ask our pity
     With a wet eye.
     A sound estate they ever mend
     To every asker readily lend;
     To the ocean wealth,
     To the meadow health,
     To Time his length,
     To the rocks strength,
     To the stars light,
     To the weary night,
     To the busy day,
     To the idle play;
     And so their good cheer never ends,
     For all are their debtors, and all their friends.

Concord River is remarkable for the gentleness of its current,
which is scarcely perceptible, and some have referred to its
influence the proverbial moderation of the inhabitants of
Concord, as exhibited in the Revolution, and on later occasions.
It has been proposed, that the town should adopt for its coat of
arms a field verdant, with the Concord circling nine times round.
I have read that a descent of an eighth of an inch in a mile is
sufficient to produce a flow.  Our river has, probably, very near
the smallest allowance.  The story is current, at any rate,
though I believe that strict history will not bear it out, that
the only bridge ever carried away on the main branch, within the
limits of the town, was driven up stream by the wind.  But
wherever it makes a sudden bend it is shallower and swifter, and
asserts its title to be called a river.  Compared with the other
tributaries of the Merrimack, it appears to have been properly
named Musketaquid, or Meadow River, by the Indians.  For the most
part, it creeps through broad meadows, adorned with scattered
oaks, where the cranberry is found in abundance, covering the
ground like a moss-bed.  A row of sunken dwarf willows borders
the stream on one or both sides, while at a greater distance the
meadow is skirted with maples, alders, and other fluviatile
trees, overrun with the grape-vine, which bears fruit in its
season, purple, red, white, and other grapes.  Still farther from
the stream, on the edge of the firm land, are seen the gray and
white dwellings of the inhabitants.  According to the valuation
of 1831, there were in Concord two thousand one hundred and
eleven acres, or about one seventh of the whole territory in
meadow; this standing next in the list after pasturage and
unimproved lands, and, judging from the returns of previous
years, the meadow is not reclaimed so fast as the woods are
cleared.

Let us here read what old Johnson says of these meadows in his
"Wonder-working Providence," which gives the account of New
England from 1628 to 1652, and see how matters looked to him.  He
says of the Twelfth Church of Christ gathered at Concord: "This
town is seated upon a fair fresh river, whose rivulets are filled
with fresh marsh, and her streams with fish, it being a branch of
that large river of Merrimack.  Allwifes and shad in their season
come up to this town, but salmon and dace cannot come up, by
reason of the rocky falls, which causeth their meadows to lie
much covered with water, the which these people, together with
their neighbor town, have several times essayed to cut through
but cannot, yet it may be turned another way with an hundred
pound charge as it appeared."  As to their farming he says:
"Having laid out their estate upon cattle at 5 to 20 pound a cow,
when they came to winter them with inland hay, and feed upon such
wild fother as was never cut before, they could not hold out the
winter, but, ordinarily the first or second year after their
coming up to a new plantation, many of their cattle died." And
this from the same author "Of the Planting of the 19th Church in
the Mattachusets' Government, called Sudbury": "This year [does
he mean 1654] the town and church of Christ at Sudbury began to
have the first foundation stones laid, taking up her station in
the inland country, as her elder sister Concord had formerly
done, lying further up the same river, being furnished with great

etc/rivers.txt  view on Meta::CPAN

beaches on which the fishermen draw up their nets.  I have passed
down this portion of the river in a steamboat, and it was a
pleasant sight to watch from its deck the fishermen dragging
their seines on the distant shore, as in pictures of a foreign
strand.  At intervals you may meet with a schooner laden with
lumber, standing up to Haverhill, or else lying at anchor or
aground, waiting for wind or tide; until, at last, you glide
under the famous Chain Bridge, and are landed at Newburyport.
Thus she who at first was "poore of waters, naked of renowne,"
having received so many fair tributaries, as was said of the
Forth,

   "Doth grow the greater still, the further downe;
      Till that abounding both in power and fame,
      She long doth strive to give the sea her name";

or if not her name, in this case, at least the impulse of her
stream.  From the steeples of Newburyport you may review this
river stretching far up into the country, with many a white sail
glancing over it like an inland sea, and behold, as one wrote who
was born on its head-waters, "Down out at its mouth, the dark
inky main blending with the blue above.  Plum Island, its sand
ridges scolloping along the horizon like the sea-serpent, and the
distant outline broken by many a tall ship, leaning, _still_,
against the sky."

Rising at an equal height with the Connecticut, the Merrimack
reaches the sea by a course only half as long, and hence has no
leisure to form broad and fertile meadows, like the former, but
is hurried along rapids, and down numerous falls, without long
delay.  The banks are generally steep and high, with a narrow
interval reaching back to the hills, which is only rarely or
partially overflown at present, and is much valued by the
farmers.  Between Chelmsford and Concord, in New Hampshire, it
varies from twenty to seventy-five rods in width.  It is probably
wider than it was formerly, in many places, owing to the trees
having been cut down, and the consequent wasting away of its
banks.  The influence of the Pawtucket Dam is felt as far up as
Cromwell's Falls, and many think that the banks are being abraded
and the river filled up again by this cause.  Like all our
rivers, it is liable to freshets, and the Pemigewasset has been
known to rise twenty-five feet in a few hours.  It is navigable
for vessels of burden about twenty miles; for canal-boats, by
means of locks, as far as Concord in New Hampshire, about
seventy-five miles from its mouth; and for smaller boats to
Plymouth, one hundred and thirteen miles.  A small steamboat once
plied between Lowell and Nashua, before the railroad was built,
and one now runs from Newburyport to Haverhill.

Unfitted to some extent for the purposes of commerce by the
sand-bar at its mouth, see how this river was devoted from the
first to the service of manufactures.  Issuing from the iron
region of Franconia, and flowing through still uncut forests, by
inexhaustible ledges of granite, with Squam, and Winnipiseogee,
and Newfound, and Massabesic Lakes for its mill-ponds, it falls
over a succession of natural dams, where it has been offering its
_privileges_ in vain for ages, until at last the Yankee race came
to _improve_ them.  Standing at its mouth, look up its sparkling
stream to its source,--a silver cascade which falls all the way
from the White Mountains to the sea,--and behold a city on each
successive plateau, a busy colony of human beaver around every
fall.  Not to mention Newburyport and Haverhill, see Lawrence,
and Lowell, and Nashua, and Manchester, and Concord, gleaming one
above the other.  When at length it has escaped from under the
last of the factories, it has a level and unmolested passage to
the sea, a mere _waste water_, as it were, bearing little with it
but its fame; its pleasant course revealed by the morning fog
which hangs over it, and the sails of the few small vessels which
transact the commerce of Haverhill and Newburyport.  But its real
vessels are railroad cars, and its true and main stream, flowing
by an iron channel farther south, may be traced by a long line of
vapor amid the hills, which no morning wind ever disperses, to
where it empties into the sea at Boston.  This side is the louder
murmur now.  Instead of the scream of a fish-hawk scaring the
fishes, is heard the whistle of the steam-engine, arousing a
country to its progress.


This river too was at length discovered by the white man,
"trending up into the land," he knew not how far, possibly an
inlet to the South Sea.  Its valley, as far as the Winnipiseogee,
was first surveyed in 1652.  The first settlers of Massachusetts
supposed that the Connecticut, in one part of its course, ran
northwest, "so near the great lake as the Indians do pass their
canoes into it over land."  From which lake and the "hideous
swamps" about it, as they supposed, came all the beaver that was
traded between Virginia and Canada,--and the Potomac was thought
to come out of or from very near it.  Afterward the Connecticut
came so near the course of the Merrimack that, with a little
pains, they expected to divert the current of the trade into the
latter river, and its profits from their Dutch neighbors into
their own pockets.

Unlike the Concord, the Merrimack is not a dead but a living
stream, though it has less life within its waters and on its
banks.  It has a swift current, and, in this part of its course,
a clayey bottom, almost no weeds, and comparatively few fishes.
We looked down into its yellow water with the more curiosity, who
were accustomed to the Nile-like blackness of the former river.
Shad and alewives are taken here in their season, but salmon,
though at one time more numerous than shad, are now more rare.
Bass, also, are taken occasionally; but locks and dams have
proved more or less destructive to the fisheries.  The shad make
their appearance early in May, at the same time with the blossoms
of the pyrus, one of the most conspicuous early flowers, which is
for this reason called the shad-blossom.  An insect called the
shad-fly also appears at the same time, covering the houses and
fences.  We are told that "their greatest run is when the
apple-trees are in full blossom.  The old shad return in August;
the young, three or four inches long, in September.  These are
very fond of flies." A rather picturesque and luxurious mode of
fishing was formerly practised on the Connecticut, at Bellows
Falls, where a large rock divides the stream.  "On the steep
sides of the island rock," says Belknap, "hang several
arm-chairs, fastened to ladders, and secured by a counterpoise,
in which fishermen sit to catch salmon and shad with dipping
nets." The remains of Indian weirs, made of large stones, are
still to be seen in the Winnipiseogee, one of the head-waters of
this river.

It cannot but affect our philosophy favorably to be reminded of

etc/rivers.txt  view on Meta::CPAN

       "I thynke for to touche also
       The worlde whiche neweth everie daie,
       So as I can, so as I maie."

                          ^Gower^.


          "The hye sheryfe of Notynghame,
            Hym holde in your mynd."
                       _Robin Hood Ballads_.


[page]


            "His shoote it was but loosely shott,
              Yet flewe not the arrowe in vaine,
             For it mett one of the sheriffe's men,
              And William a Trent was slaine."
                                     _Robin Hood Ballads_

    "Gazed on the heavens for what he missed on Earth."
                                   _Britania's Pastorale_


[page]



                       MONDAY.

                        --*--


When the first light dawned on the earth and the birds, awoke,
and the brave river was heard rippling confidently seaward, and
the nimble early rising wind rustled the oak leaves about our
tent, all men having reinforced their bodies and their souls with
sleep, and cast aside doubt and fear, were invited to unattempted
adventures.

     "All courageous knichtis
      Agains the day dichtis
      The breest-plate that bricht is,
           To feght with their foue.
      The stoned steed stampis
      Throw curage and crampis,
      Syne on the land lampis;
           The night is neir gone."

One of us took the boat over to the opposite shore, which was
flat and accessible, a quarter of a mile distant, to empty it of
water and wash out the clay, while the other kindled a fire and
got breakfast ready.  At an early hour we were again on our way,
rowing through the fog as before, the river already awake, and a
million crisped waves come forth to meet the sun when he should
show himself.  The countrymen, recruited by their day of rest,
were already stirring, and had begun to cross the ferry on the
business of the week.  This ferry was as busy as a beaver dam,
and all the world seemed anxious to get across the Merrimack
River at this particular point, waiting to get set over,--children
 with their two cents done up in paper, jail-birds broke loose
and constable with warrant, travellers from distant lands to
distant lands, men and women to whom the Merrimack River was a
bar.  There stands a gig in the gray morning, in the mist, the
impatient traveller pacing the wet shore with whip in hand, and
shouting through the fog after the regardless Charon and his
retreating ark, as if he might throw that passenger overboard and
return forthwith for himself; he will compensate him.  He is to
break his fast at some unseen place on the opposite side.  It may
be Ledyard or the Wandering Jew.  Whence, pray, did he come out
of the foggy night?  and whither through the sunny day will he
go?  We observe only his transit; important to us, forgotten by
him, transiting all day.  There are two of them.  May be, they
are Virgil and Dante.  But when they crossed the Styx, none were
seen bound up or down the stream, that I remember.  It is only a
_transjectus_, a transitory voyage, like life itself, none but
the long-lived gods bound up or down the stream.  Many of these
Monday men are ministers, no doubt, reseeking their parishes with
hired horses, with sermons in their valises all read and gutted,
the day after never with them.  They cross each other's routes
all the country over like woof and warp, making a garment of
loose texture; vacation now for six days.  They stop to pick nuts
and berries, and gather apples by the wayside at their leisure.
Good religious men, with the love of men in their hearts, and the
means to pay their toll in their pockets.  We got over this ferry
chain without scraping, rowing athwart the tide of travel,--no
toll for us that day.

The fog dispersed and we rowed leisurely along through
Tyngsborough, with a clear sky and a mild atmosphere, leaving
the habitations of men behind and penetrating yet farther into
the territory of ancient Dunstable.  It was from Dunstable, then
a frontier town, that the famous Captain Lovewell, with his
company, marched in quest of the Indians on the 18th of April,
1725.  He was the son of "an ensign in the army of Oliver
Cromwell, who came to this country, and settled at Dunstable,
where he died at the great age of one hundred and twenty years."
In the words of the old nursery tale, sung about a hundred years
ago,--

     "He and his valiant soldiers did range the woods full wide,
      And hardships they endured to quell the Indian's pride."

In the shaggy pine forest of Pequawket they met the "rebel
Indians," and prevailed, after a bloody fight, and a remnant
returned home to enjoy the fame of their victory.  A township
called Lovewell's Town, but now, for some reason, or perhaps
without reason, Pembroke, was granted them by the State.

     "Of all our valiant English, there were but thirty-four,
      And of the rebel Indians, there were about four-score;
      And sixteen of our English did safely home return,
      The rest were killed and wounded, for which we all must mourn.

     "Our worthy Capt.  Lovewell among them there did die,
      They killed Lieut.  Robbins, and wounded good young Frye,
      Who was our English Chaplin; he many Indians slew,
      And some of them he scalped while bullets round him flew."

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but great antiquity can make graveyards interesting to me.  I
have no friends there.  It may be that I am not competent to
write the poetry of the grave.  The farmer who has skimmed his
farm might perchance leave his body to Nature to be ploughed in,
and in some measure restore its fertility.  We should not retard
but forward her economies.

Soon the village of Nashua was out of sight, and the woods were
gained again, and we rowed slowly on before sunset, looking for a
solitary place in which to spend the night.  A few evening clouds
began to be reflected in the water and the surface was dimpled
only here and there by a muskrat crossing the stream.  We camped
at length near Penichook Brook, on the confines of what is now
Nashville, by a deep ravine, under the skirts of a pine wood,
where the dead pine-leaves were our carpet, and their tawny
boughs stretched overhead.  But fire and smoke soon tamed the
scene; the rocks consented to be our walls, and the pines our
roof.  A woodside was already the fittest locality for us.

The wilderness is near as well as dear to every man.  Even the
oldest villages are indebted to the border of wild wood which
surrounds them, more than to the gardens of men.  There is
something indescribably inspiriting and beautiful in the aspect
of the forest skirting and occasionally jutting into the midst of
new towns, which, like the sand-heaps of fresh fox-burrows, have
sprung up in their midst.  The very uprightness of the pines and
maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature.  Our
lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine
flourishes and the jay still screams.

We had found a safe harbor for our boat, and as the sun was
setting carried up our furniture, and soon arranged our house
upon the bank, and while the kettle steamed at the tent door, we
chatted of distant friends and of the sights which we were to
behold, and wondered which way the towns lay from us.  Our cocoa
was soon boiled, and supper set upon our chest, and we lengthened
out this meal, like old voyageurs, with our talk.  Meanwhile we
spread the map on the ground, and read in the Gazetteer when the
first settlers came here and got a township granted.  Then, when
supper was done and we had written the journal of our voyage, we
wrapped our buffaloes about us and lay down with our heads
pillowed on our arms listening awhile to the distant baying of a
dog, or the murmurs of the river, or to the wind, which had not
gone to rest:--

     The western wind came lumbering in,
     Bearing a faint Pacific din,
     Our evening mail, swift at the call
     Of its Postmaster General;
     Laden with news from Californ',
     Whate'er transpired hath since morn,
     How wags the world by brier and brake
     From hence to Athabasca Lake;--

or half awake and half asleep, dreaming of a star which glimmered
through our cotton roof.  Perhaps at midnight one was awakened by
a cricket shrilly singing on his shoulder, or by a hunting spider
in his eye, and was lulled asleep again by some streamlet purling
its way along at the bottom of a wooded and rocky ravine in our
neighborhood.  It was pleasant to lie with our heads so low in
the grass, and hear what a tinkling ever-busy laboratory it was.
A thousand little artisans beat on their anvils all night long.

Far in the night as we were falling asleep on the bank of the
Merrimack, we heard some tyro beating a drum incessantly, in
preparation for a country muster, as we learned, and we thought
of the line,--

     "When the drum beat at dead of night."

We could have assured him that his beat would be answered, and
the forces be mustered.  Fear not, thou drummer of the night, we
too will be there.  And still he drummed on in the silence and
the dark.  This stray sound from a far-off sphere came to our
ears from time to time, far, sweet, and significant, and we
listened with such an unprejudiced sense as if for the first time
we heard at all.  No doubt he was an insignificant drummer
enough, but his music afforded us a prime and leisure hour, and
we felt that we were in season wholly.  These simple sounds
related us to the stars.  Ay, there was a logic in them so
convincing that the combined sense of mankind could never make me
doubt their conclusions.  I stop my habitual thinking, as if the
plough had suddenly run deeper in its furrow through the crust of
the world.  How can I go on, who have just stepped over such a
bottomless skylight in the bog of my life.  Suddenly old Time
winked at me,--Ah, you know me, you rogue,--and news had come
that IT was well.  That ancient universe is in such capital
health, I think undoubtedly it will never die.  Heal yourselves,
doctors; by God, I live.

                Then idle Time ran gadding by
                And left me with Eternity alone;
            I hear beyond the range of sound,
            I see beyond the verge of sight,--

I see, smell, taste, hear, feel, that everlasting Something to
which we are allied, at once our maker, our abode, our destiny,
our very Selves; the one historic truth, the most remarkable fact
which can become the distinct and uninvited subject of our
thought, the actual glory of the universe; the only fact which a
human being cannot avoid recognizing, or in some way forget or
dispense with.

           It doth expand my privacies
       To all, and leave me single in the crowd.

I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid, and I have
not the least doubt that it will stand a good while.

         Now chiefly is my natal hour,
         And only now my prime of life.
         I will not doubt the love untold,
         Which not my worth nor want hath bought,
         Which wooed me young and wooes me old,
         And to this evening hath me brought.

What are ears? what is Time? that this particular series of
sounds called a strain of music, an invisible and fairy troop
which never brushed the dew from any mead, can be wafted down
through the centuries from Homer to me, and he have been
conversant with that same aerial and mysterious charm which now

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letteth his rain fall on the just and on the unjust, and without
whom not a sparrow falleth to the ground, would not neglect the
stranger (meaning me), and with even more direct and personal
applications, though mainly according to the long-established
formula common to lowlanders and the inhabitants of mountains.
When he had done praying, I made bold to ask him if he had any
cheese in his hut which he would sell me, but he answered without
looking up, and in the same low and repulsive voice as before,
that they did not make any, and went to milking.  It is written,
"The stranger who turneth away from a house with disappointed
hopes, leaveth there his own offences, and departeth, taking with
him all the good actions of the owner."


Being now fairly in the stream of this week's commerce, we began
to meet with boats more frequently, and hailed them from time to
time with the freedom of sailors.  The boatmen appeared to lead
an easy and contented life, and we thought that we should prefer
their employment ourselves to many professions which are much
more sought after.  They suggested how few circumstances are
necessary to the well-being and serenity of man, how indifferent
all employments are, and that any may seem noble and poetic to
the eyes of men, if pursued with sufficient buoyancy and freedom.
With liberty and pleasant weather, the simplest occupation, any
unquestioned country mode of life which detains us in the open
air, is alluring.  The man who picks peas steadily for a living
is more than respectable, he is even envied by his shop-worn
neighbors.  We are as happy as the birds when our Good Genius
permits us to pursue any out-door work, without a sense of
dissipation.  Our penknife glitters in the sun; our voice is
echoed by yonder wood; if an oar drops, we are fain to let it
drop again.

The canal-boat is of very simple construction, requiring but
little ship-timber, and, as we were told, costs about two hundred
dollars.  They are managed by two men.  In ascending the stream
they use poles fourteen or fifteen feet long, pointed with iron,
walking about one third the length of the boat from the forward
end.  Going down, they commonly keep in the middle of the stream,
using an oar at each end; or if the wind is favorable they raise
their broad sail, and have only to steer.  They commonly carry
down wood or bricks,--fifteen or sixteen cords of wood, and as
many thousand bricks, at a time,--and bring back stores for the
country, consuming two or three days each way between Concord and
Charlestown.  They sometimes pile the wood so as to leave a
shelter in one part where they may retire from the rain.  One can
hardly imagine a more healthful employment, or one more favorable
to contemplation and the observation of nature.  Unlike the
mariner, they have the constantly varying panorama of the shore
to relieve the monotony of their labor, and it seemed to us that
as they thus glided noiselessly from town to town, with all their
furniture about them, for their very homestead is a movable, they
could comment on the character of the inhabitants with greater
advantage and security to themselves than the traveller in a
coach, who would be unable to indulge in such broadsides of wit
and humor in so small a vessel for fear of the recoil.  They are
not subject to great exposure, like the lumberers of Maine, in
any weather, but inhale the healthfullest breezes, being slightly
encumbered with clothing, frequently with the head and feet bare.
When we met them at noon as they were leisurely descending the
stream, their busy commerce did not look like toil, but rather
like some ancient Oriental game still played on a large scale, as
the game of chess, for instance, handed down to this generation.
From morning till night, unless the wind is so fair that his
single sail will suffice without other labor than steering, the
boatman walks backwards and forwards on the side of his boat, now
stooping with his shoulder to the pole, then drawing it back
slowly to set it again, meanwhile moving steadily forward through
an endless valley and an everchanging scenery, now distinguishing
his course for a mile or two, and now shut in by a sudden turn of
the river in a small woodland lake.  All the phenomena which
surround him are simple and grand, and there is something
impressive, even majestic, in the very motion he causes, which
will naturally be communicated to his own character, and he feels
the slow, irresistible movement under him with pride, as if it
were his own energy.

The news spread like wildfire among us youths, when formerly,
once in a year or two, one of these boats came up the Concord
River, and was seen stealing mysteriously through the meadows and
past the village.  It came and departed as silently as a cloud,
without noise or dust, and was witnessed by few.  One summer day
this huge traveller might be seen moored at some meadow's wharf,
and another summer day it was not there.  Where precisely it came
from, or who these men were who knew the rocks and soundings
better than we who bathed there, we could never tell.  We knew
some river's bay only, but they took rivers from end to end.
They were a sort of fabulous river-men to us.  It was
inconceivable by what sort of mediation any mere landsman could
hold communication with them.  Would they heave to, to gratify
his wishes?  No, it was favor enough to know faintly of their
destination, or the time of their possible return.  I have seen
them in the summer when the stream ran low, mowing the weeds in
mid-channel, and with hayers' jests cutting broad swaths in three
feet of water, that they might make a passage for their scow,
while the grass in long windrows was carried down the stream,
undried by the rarest hay-weather.  We admired unweariedly how
their vessel would float, like a huge chip, sustaining so many
casks of lime, and thousands of bricks, and such heaps of iron
ore, with wheelbarrows aboard, and that, when we stepped on it,
it did not yield to the pressure of our feet.  It gave us
confidence in the prevalence of the law of buoyancy, and we
imagined to what infinite uses it might be put.  The men appeared
to lead a kind of life on it, and it was whispered that they
slept aboard.  Some affirmed that it carried sail, and that such
winds blew here as filled the sails of vessels on the ocean;
which again others much doubted.  They had been seen to sail
across our Fair Haven bay by lucky fishers who were out, but
unfortunately others were not there to see.  We might then say
that our river was navigable,--why not?  In after-years I read in
print, with no little satisfaction, that it was thought by some
that, with a little expense in removing rocks and deepening the
channel, "there might be a profitable inland navigation." _I_
then lived some-where to tell of.

Such is Commerce, which shakes the cocoa-nut and bread-fruit tree
in the remotest isle, and sooner or later dawns on the duskiest
and most simple-minded savage.  If we may be pardoned the
digression, who can help being affected at the thought of the
very fine and slight, but positive relation, in which the savage
inhabitants of some remote isle stand to the mysterious white

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was as ancient and honorable an art as agriculture, and that
there might be a naval as well as a pastoral life.  The whole
history of commerce was made manifest in that scow turned bottom
upward on the shore.  Thus did men begin to go down upon the sea
in ships; _quaeque diu steterant in montibus altis, Fluctibus
ignotis insultavere carinae;_ "and keels which had long stood on
high mountains careered insultingly (_insultavere_) over unknown
waves." (Ovid, Met.  I. 133.) We thought that it would be well
for the traveller to build his boat on the bank of a stream,
instead of finding a ferry or a bridge.  In the Adventures of
Henry the fur-trader, it is pleasant to read that when with his
Indians he reached the shore of Ontario, they consumed two days
in making two canoes of the bark of the elm-tree, in which to
transport themselves to Fort Niagara.  It is a worthy incident in
a journey, a delay as good as much rapid travelling.  A good
share of our interest in Xenophon's story of his retreat is in
the manoeuvres to get the army safely over the rivers, whether on
rafts of logs or fagots, or sheep-skins blown up.  And where
could they better afford to tarry meanwhile than on the banks of
a river?

As we glided past at a distance, these out-door workmen appeared
to have added some dignity to their labor by its very publicness.
It was a part of the industry of nature, like the work of hornets
and mud-wasps.

      The waves slowly beat,
      Just to keep the noon sweet,
      And no sound is floated o'er,
      Save the mallet on shore,
      Which echoing on high
      Seems a-calking the sky.

The haze, the sun's dust of travel, had a Lethean influence on
the land and its inhabitants, and all creatures resigned
themselves to float upon the inappreciable tides of nature.

     Woof of the sun, ethereal gauze,
     Woven of Nature's richest stuffs,
     Visible heat, air-water, and dry sea,
     Last conquest of the eye;
     Toil of the day displayed sun-dust,
     Aerial surf upon the shores of earth.
     Ethereal estuary, frith of light,
     Breakers of air, billows of heat
     Fine summer spray on inland seas;
     Bird of the sun, transparent-winged
     Owlet of noon, soft-pinioned,
     From heath or stubble rising without song;
     Establish thy serenity o'er the fields

The routine which is in the sunshine and the finest days, as that
which has conquered and prevailed, commends itself to us by its
very antiquity and apparent solidity and necessity.  Our weakness
needs it, and our strength uses it.  We cannot draw on our boots
without bracing ourselves against it.  If there were but one
erect and solid standing tree in the woods, all creatures would
go to rub against it and make sure of their footing.  During the
many hours which we spend in this waking sleep, the hand stands
still on the face of the clock, and we grow like corn in the
night.  Men are as busy as the brooks or bees, and postpone
everything to their business; as carpenters discuss politics
between the strokes of the hammer while they are shingling a
roof.


This noontide was a fit occasion to make some pleasant harbor,
and there read the journal of some voyageur like ourselves, not
too moral nor inquisitive, and which would not disturb the noon;
or else some old classic, the very flower of all reading, which
we had postponed to such a season

     "Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure."

But, alas, our chest, like the cabin of a coaster, contained only
its well-thumbed "Navigator" for all literature, and we were
obliged to draw on our memory for these things.

We naturally remembered Alexander Henry's Adventures here, as a
sort of classic among books of American travel.  It contains
scenery and rough sketching of men and incidents enough to
inspire poets for many years, and to my fancy is as full of
sounding names as any page of history,--Lake Winnipeg, Hudson
Bay, Ottaway, and portages innumerable; Chipeways, Gens de
Terres, Les Pilleurs, The Weepers; with reminiscences of Hearne's
journey, and the like; an immense and shaggy but sincere country,
summer and winter, adorned with chains of lakes and rivers,
covered with snows, with hemlocks, and fir-trees.  There is a
naturalness, an unpretending and cold life in this traveller, as
in a Canadian winter, what life was preserved through low
temperatures and frontier dangers by furs within a stout heart.
He has truth and moderation worthy of the father of history,
which belong only to an intimate experience, and he does not
defer too much to literature.  The unlearned traveller may quote
his single line from the poets with as good right as the scholar.
He too may speak of the stars, for he sees them shoot perhaps
when the astronomer does not.  The good sense of this author is
very conspicuous.  He is a traveller who does not exaggerate, but
writes for the information of his readers, for science, and for
history.  His story is told with as much good faith and
directness as if it were a report to his brother traders, or the
Directors of the Hudson Bay Company, and is fitly dedicated to
Sir Joseph Banks.  It reads like the argument to a great poem on
the primitive state of the country and its inhabitants, and the
reader imagines what in each case, with the invocation of the
Muse, might be sung, and leaves off with suspended interest, as
if the full account were to follow.  In what school was this
fur-trader educated?  He seems to travel the immense snowy
country with such purpose only as the reader who accompanies him,
and to the latter's imagination, it is, as it were, momentarily
created to be the scene of his adventures.  What is most
interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for
the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it
furnishes; not the _annals_ of the country, but the natural
facts, or _perennials_, which are ever without date.  When out of
history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates
like withered leaves.


The Souhegan, or _Crooked_ River, as some translate it, comes in
from the west about a mile and a half above Thornton's Ferry.

etc/rivers.txt  view on Meta::CPAN

it were in a straight line.

      Sea and land are but his neighbors,
      And companions in his labors,
      Who on the ocean's verge and firm land's end
      Doth long and truly seek his Friend.
      Many men dwell far inland,
      But he alone sits on the strand.
      Whether he ponders men or books,
      Always still he seaward looks,
      Marine news he ever reads,
      And the slightest glances heeds,
      Feels the sea breeze on his cheek,
      At each word the landsmen speak,
      In every companion's eye
      A sailing vessel doth descry;
      In the ocean's sullen roar
      From some distant port he hears,
      Of wrecks upon a distant shore,
      And the ventures of past years.

Who does not walk on the plain as amid the columns of Tadmore of
the desert?  There is on the earth no institution which
Friendship has established; it is not taught by any religion; no
scripture contains its maxims.  It has no temple, nor even a
solitary column.  There goes a rumor that the earth is inhabited,
but the shipwrecked mariner has not seen a footprint on the
shore.  The hunter has found only fragments of pottery and the
monuments of inhabitants.

However, our fates at least are social.  Our courses do not
diverge; but as the web of destiny is woven it is fulled, and we
are cast more and more into the centre.  Men naturally, though
feebly, seek this alliance, and their actions faintly foretell
it.  We are inclined to lay the chief stress on likeness and not
on difference, and in foreign bodies we admit that there are many
degrees of warmth below blood heat, but none of cold above it.

Mencius says: "If one loses a fowl or a dog, he knows well how to
seek them again; if one loses the sentiments of his heart, he
does not know how to seek them again.  .  .  .  The duties of
practical philosophy consist only in seeking after those
sentiments of the heart which we have lost; that is all."


One or two persons come to my house from time to time, there
being proposed to them the faint possibility of intercourse.
They are as full as they are silent, and wait for my plectrum to
stir the strings of their lyre.  If they could ever come to the
length of a sentence, or hear one, on that ground they are
dreaming of!  They speak faintly, and do not obtrude themselves.
They have heard some news, which none, not even they themselves,
can impart.  It is a wealth they can bear about them which can be
expended in various ways.  What came they out to seek?

No word is oftener on the lips of men than Friendship, and indeed
no thought is more familiar to their aspirations.  All men are
dreaming of it, and its drama, which is always a tragedy, is
enacted daily.  It is the secret of the universe.  You may thread
the town, you may wander the country, and none shall ever speak
of it, yet thought is everywhere busy about it, and the idea of
what is possible in this respect affects our behavior toward all
new men and women, and a great many old ones.  Nevertheless, I
can remember only two or three essays on this subject in all
literature.  No wonder that the Mythology, and Arabian Nights,
and Shakespeare, and Scott's novels entertain us,--we are poets
and fablers and dramatists and novelists ourselves.  We are
continually acting a part in a more interesting drama than any
written.  We are dreaming that our Friends are our _Friends_ ,
and that we are our Friends' _Friends_.  Our actual Friends are
but distant relations of those to whom we are pledged.  We never
exchange more than three words with a Friend in our lives on that
level to which our thoughts and feelings almost habitually rise.
One goes forth prepared to say, "Sweet Friends!" and the
salutation is, "Damn your eyes!"  But never mind; faint heart
never won true Friend.  O my Friend, may it come to pass once,
that when you are my Friend I may be yours.

Of what use the friendliest dispositions even, if there are
no hours given to Friendship, if it is forever postponed to
unimportant duties and relations?  Friendship is first, Friendship
last.  But it is equally impossible to forget our Friends, and to
make them answer to our ideal.  When they say farewell, then
indeed we begin to keep them company.  How often we find
ourselves turning our backs on our actual Friends, that we may go
and meet their ideal cousins.  I would that I were worthy to be
any man's Friend.

What is commonly honored with the name of Friendship is no very
profound or powerful instinct.  Men do not, after all, _love_
their Friends greatly.  I do not often see the farmers made seers
and wise to the verge of insanity by their Friendship for one
another.  They are not often transfigured and translated by love
in each other's presence.  I do not observe them purified,
refined, and elevated by the love of a man.  If one abates a
little the price of his wood, or gives a neighbor his vote at
town-meeting, or a barrel of apples, or lends him his wagon
frequently, it is esteemed a rare instance of Friendship.  Nor do
the farmers' wives lead lives consecrated to Friendship.  I do
not see the pair of farmer Friends of either sex prepared to
stand against the world.  There are only two or three couples in
history.  To say that a man is your Friend, means commonly no
more than this, that he is not your enemy.  Most contemplate only
what would be the accidental and trifling advantages of
Friendship, as that the Friend can assist in time of need, by his
substance, or his influence, or his counsel; but he who foresees
such advantages in this relation proves himself blind to its real
advantage, or indeed wholly inexperienced in the relation itself.
Such services are particular and menial, compared with the
perpetual and all-embracing service which it is.  Even the utmost
good-will and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient
for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as
some say, but in melody.  We do not wish for Friends to feed and
clothe our bodies,--neighbors are kind enough for that,--but to
do the like office to our spirits.  For this few are rich enough,
however well disposed they may be.  For the most part we stupidly
confound one man with another.  The dull distinguish only races
or nations, or at most classes, but the wise man, individuals.
To his Friend a man's peculiar character appears in every feature
and in every action, and it is thus drawn out and improved by
him.

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longer?  What are the earth and all its interests beside the deep
surmise which pierces and scatters them?  While I sit here
listening to the waves which ripple and break on this shore, I am
absolved from all obligation to the past, and the council of
nations may reconsider its votes.  The grating of a pebble annuls
them.  Still occasionally in my dreams I remember that rippling
water.

     Oft, as I turn me on my pillow o'er,
     I hear the lapse of waves upon the shore,
     Distinct as if it were at broad noonday,
     And I were drifting down from Nashua.

With a bending sail we glided rapidly by Tyngsborough and
Chelmsford, each holding in one hand half of a tart country
apple-pie which we had purchased to celebrate our return, and in
the other a fragment of the newspaper in which it was wrapped,
devouring these with divided relish, and learning the news which
had transpired since we sailed.  The river here opened into a
broad and straight reach of great length, which we bounded
merrily over before a smacking breeze, with a devil-may-care look
in our faces, and our boat a white bone in its mouth, and a speed
which greatly astonished some scow boatmen whom we met.  The wind
in the horizon rolled like a flood over valley and plain, and
every tree bent to the blast, and the mountains like school-boys
turned their cheeks to it.  They were great and current motions,
the flowing sail, the running stream, the waving tree, the roving
wind.  The north-wind stepped readily into the harness which we
had provided, and pulled us along with good will.  Sometimes we
sailed as gently and steadily as the clouds overhead, watching
the receding shores and the motions of our sail; the play of its
pulse so like our own lives, so thin and yet so full of life, so
noiseless when it labored hardest, so noisy and impatient when
least effective; now bending to some generous impulse of the
breeze, and then fluttering and flapping with a kind of human
suspense.  It was the scale on which the varying temperature of
distant atmospheres was graduated, and it was some attraction for
us that the breeze it played with had been out of doors so long.
Thus we sailed, not being able to fly, but as next best, making a
long furrow in the fields of the Merrimack toward our home, with
our wings spread, but never lifting our heel from the watery
trench; gracefully ploughing homeward with our brisk and willing
team, wind and stream, pulling together, the former yet a wild
steer, yoked to his more sedate fellow.  It was very near flying,
as when the duck rushes through the water with an impulse of her
wings, throwing the spray about her, before she can rise.  How we
had stuck fast if drawn up but a few feet on the shore!

When we reached the great bend just above Middlesex, where the
river runs east thirty-five miles to the sea, we at length lost
the aid of this propitious wind, though we contrived to make one
long and judicious tack carry us nearly to the locks of the
canal.  We were here locked through at noon by our old friend,
the lover of the higher mathematics, who seemed glad to see us
safe back again through so many locks; but we did not stop to
consider any of his problems, though we could cheerfully have
spent a whole autumn in this way another time, and never have
asked what his religion was.  It is so rare to meet with a man
out-doors who cherishes a worthy thought in his mind, which is
independent of the labor of his hands.  Behind every man's
busy-ness there should be a level of undisturbed serenity and
industry, as within the reef encircling a coral isle there is
always an expanse of still water, where the depositions are going
on which will finally raise it above the surface.


The eye which can appreciate the naked and absolute beauty of a
scientific truth is far more rare than that which is attracted by
a moral one.  Few detect the morality in the former, or the
science in the latter.  Aristotle defined art to be <Lo'gos tou~
e'rgou a'neu hy'l_es>, _The principle of the work without the
wood_; but most men prefer to have some of the wood along with
the principle; they demand that the truth be clothed in flesh and
blood and the warm colors of life.  They prefer the partial
statement because it fits and measures them and their commodities
best.  But science still exists everywhere as the sealer of
weights and measures at least.

We have heard much about the poetry of mathematics, but very
little of it has yet been sung.  The ancients had a juster notion
of their poetic value than we.  The most distinct and beautiful
statement of any truth must take at last the mathematical form.
We might so simplify the rules of moral philosophy, as well as of
arithmetic, that one formula would express them both.  All the
moral laws are readily translated into natural philosophy, for
often we have only to restore the primitive meaning of the words
by which they are expressed, or to attend to their literal
instead of their metaphorical sense.  They are already
_supernatural_ philosophy.  The whole body of what is now called
moral or ethical truth existed in the golden age as abstract
science.  Or, if we prefer, we may say that the laws of Nature
are the purest morality.  The Tree of Knowledge is a Tree of
Knowledge of good and evil.  He is not a true man of science who
does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn
something by behavior as well as by application.  It is childish
to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and
extraneous laws.  The study of geometry is a petty and idle
exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than
the starry one.  Mathematics should be mixed not only with
physics but with ethics, _that_ is _mixed_ mathematics.  The fact
which interests us most is the life of the naturalist.  The
purest science is still biographical.  Nothing will dignify and
elevate science while it is sundered so wholly from the moral
life of its devotee, and he professes another religion than it
teaches, and worships at a foreign shrine.  Anciently the faith
of a philosopher was identical with his system, or, in other
words, his view of the universe.

My friends mistake when they communicate facts to me with so much
pains.  Their presence, even their exaggerations and loose
statements, are equally good facts for me.  I have no respect for
facts even except when I would use them, and for the most part I
am independent of those which I hear, and can afford to be
inaccurate, or, in other words, to substitute more present and
pressing facts in their place.

The poet uses the results of science and philosophy, and
generalizes their widest deductions.

The process of discovery is very simple.  An unwearied and
systematic application of known laws to nature, causes the