Naught Was Familiar But The Heavens, From Under
Whose Roof The Voyageur Never Passes; But With Their Countenance,
And The Acquaintance We Had With River And Wood, We Trusted To
Fare Well Under Any Circumstances.
From this point, the river runs perfectly straight for a mile or
more to Carlisle Bridge, which consists of
Twenty wooden piers,
and when we looked back over it, its surface was reduced to a
line's breadth, and appeared like a cobweb gleaming in the sun.
Here and there might be seen a pole sticking up, to mark the
place where some fisherman had enjoyed unusual luck, and in
return had consecrated his rod to the deities who preside over
these shallows. It was full twice as broad as before, deep and
tranquil, with a muddy bottom, and bordered with willows, beyond
which spread broad lagoons covered with pads, bulrushes, and
flags.
Late in the afternoon we passed a man on the shore fishing with a
long birch pole, its silvery bark left on, and a dog at his side,
rowing so near as to agitate his cork with our oars, and drive
away luck for a season; and when we had rowed a mile as straight
as an arrow, with our faces turned towards him, and the bubbles
in our wake still visible on the tranquil surface, there stood
the fisher still with his dog, like statues under the other side
of the heavens, the only objects to relieve the eye in the
extended meadow; and there would he stand abiding his luck, till
he took his way home through the fields at evening with his
fish. Thus, by one bait or another, Nature allures inhabitants
into all her recesses. This man was the last of our townsmen
whom we saw, and we silently through him bade adieu to our
friends.
The characteristics and pursuits of various ages and races of men
are always existing in epitome in every neighborhood. The
pleasures of my earliest youth have become the inheritance of
other men. This man is still a fisher, and belongs to an era in
which I myself have lived. Perchance he is not confounded by many
knowledges, and has not sought out many inventions, but how to
take many fishes before the sun sets, with his slender birchen
pole and flaxen line, that is invention enough for him. It is
good even to be a fisherman in summer and in winter. Some men are
judges these August days, sitting on benches, even till the court
rises; they sit judging there honorably, between the seasons and
between meals, leading a civil politic life, arbitrating in the
case of Spaulding _versus_ Cummings, it may be, from highest noon
till the red vesper sinks into the west. The fisherman,
meanwhile, stands in three feet of water, under the same summer's
sun, arbitrating in other cases between muckworm and shiner, amid
the fragrance of water-lilies, mint, and pontederia, leading his
life many rods from the dry land, within a pole's length of where
the larger fishes swim.
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