The Actual Height And
Breadth Of A Mountain Or A Waterfall Are Always Ridiculously
Small; They Are The Imagined Only That Content Us.
Nature is not
made after such a fashion as we would have her.
We piously
exaggerate her wonders, as the scenery around our home.
Such was the heaviness of the dews along this river that we were
generally obliged to leave our tent spread over the bows of the
boat till the sun had dried it, to avoid mildew. We passed the
mouth of Penichook Brook, a wild salmon-stream, in the fog,
without seeing it. At length the sun's rays struggled through
the mist and showed us the pines on shore dripping with dew, and
springs trickling from the moist banks, -
"And now the taller sons, whom Titan warms,
Of unshorn mountains blown with easy winds,
Dandle the morning's childhood in their arms,
And, if they chanced to slip the prouder pines,
The under corylets did catch their shines,
To gild their leaves."
We rowed for some hours between glistening banks before the sun
had dried the grass and leaves, or the day had established its
character. Its serenity at last seemed the more profound and
secure for the denseness of the morning's fog. The river became
swifter, and the scenery more pleasing than before. The banks
were steep and clayey for the most part, and trickling with
water, and where a spring oozed out a few feet above the river
the boatmen had cut a trough out of a slab with their axes, and
placed it so as to receive the water and fill their jugs
conveniently. Sometimes this purer and cooler water, bursting
out from under a pine or a rock, was collected into a basin close
to the edge of and level with the river, a fountain-head of the
Merrimack. So near along life's stream are the fountains of
innocence and youth making fertile its sandy margin; and the
voyageur will do well to replenish his vessels often at these
uncontaminated sources. Some youthful spring, perchance, still
empties with tinkling music into the oldest river, even when it
is falling into the sea, and we imagine that its music is
distinguished by the river-gods from the general lapse of the
stream, and falls sweeter on their ears in proportion as it is
nearer to the ocean. As the evaporations of the river feed thus
these unsuspected springs which filter through its banks, so,
perchance, our aspirations fall back again in springs on the
margin of life's stream to refresh and purify it. The yellow and
tepid river may float his scow, and cheer his eye with its
reflections and its ripples, but the boatman quenches his thirst
at this small rill alone. It is this purer and cooler element
that chiefly sustains his life. The race will long survive that
is thus discreet.
Our course this morning lay between the territories of Merrimack,
on the west, and Litchfield, once called Brenton's Farm, on the
east, which townships were anciently the Indian Naticook.
Brenton was a fur-trader among the Indians, and these lands were
granted to him in 1656.
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