That straight geometrical line against the water and
the sky stood for the last refinements of civilized life, and
what of sublimity there is in history was there symbolized.
For the most part, there was no recognition of human life in the
night, no human breathing was heard, only the breathing of the
wind. As we sat up, kept awake by the novelty of our situation,
we heard at intervals foxes stepping about over the dead leaves,
and brushing the dewy grass close to our tent, and once a
musquash fumbling among the potatoes and melons in our boat, but
when we hastened to the shore we could detect only a ripple in
the water ruffling the disk of a star. At intervals we were
serenaded by the song of a dreaming sparrow or the throttled cry
of an owl, but after each sound which near at hand broke the
stillness of the night, each crackling of the twigs, or rustling
among the leaves, there was a sudden pause, and deeper and more
conscious silence, as if the intruder were aware that no life was
rightfully abroad at that hour. There was a fire in Lowell, as
we judged, this night, and we saw the horizon blazing, and heard
the distant alarm-bells, as it were a faint tinkling music borne
to these woods. But the most constant and memorable sound of a
summer's night, which we did not fail to hear every night
afterward, though at no time so incessantly and so favorably as
now, was the barking of the house-dogs, from the loudest and
hoarsest bark to the faintest aerial palpitation under the eaves
of heaven, from the patient but anxious mastiff to the timid and
wakeful terrier, at first loud and rapid, then faint and slow, to
be imitated only in a whisper; wow-wow-wow-wow - wo - wo - w - w.
Even in a retired and uninhabited district like this, it was a
sufficiency of sound for the ear of night, and more impressive
than any music. I have heard the voice of a hound, just before
daylight, while the stars were shining, from over the woods and
river, far in the horizon, when it sounded as sweet and melodious
as an instrument. The hounding of a dog pursuing a fox or other
animal in the horizon, may have first suggested the notes of the
hunting-horn to alternate with and relieve the lungs of the dog.
This natural bugle long resounded in the woods of the ancient
world before the horn was invented. The very dogs that sullenly
bay the moon from farm-yards in these nights excite more heroism
in our breasts than all the civil exhortations or war sermons of
the age. "I would rather be a dog, and bay the moon," than many
a Roman that I know. The night is equally indebted to the
clarion of the cock, with wakeful hope, from the very setting of
the sun, prematurely ushering in the dawn. All these sounds, the
crowing of cocks, the baying of dogs, and the hum of insects at
noon, are the evidence of nature's health or _sound_ state. Such
is the never-failing beauty and accuracy of language, the most
perfect art in the world; the chisel of a thousand years
retouches it.
At length the antepenultimate and drowsy hours drew on, and all
sounds were denied entrance to our ears.
Who sleeps by day and walks by night,
Will meet no spirit but some sprite.
-
SUNDAY.
"The river calmly flows,
Through shining banks, through lonely glen,
Where the owl shrieks, though ne'er the cheer of men
Has stirred its mute repose,
Still if you should walk there, you would go there again."
^CHANNING.^
-
"The Indians tell us of a beautiful River lying far to the south,
which they call Merrimack."
^Sieur de Monts^, _Relations of the jesuits_, 1604.
-
SUNDAY.
- * -
In the morning the river and adjacent country were covered with a
dense fog, through which the smoke of our fire curled up like a
still subtiler mist; but before we had rowed many rods, the sun
arose and the fog rapidly dispersed, leaving a slight steam only
to curl along the surface of the water. It was a quiet Sunday
morning, with more of the auroral rosy and white than of the
yellow light in it, as if it dated from earlier than the fall of
man, and still preserved a heathenish integrity: -
An early unconverted Saint,
Free from noontide or evening taint,
Heathen without reproach,
That did upon the civil day encroach,
And ever since its birth
Had trod the outskirts of the earth.
But the impressions which the morning makes vanish with its dews,
and not even the most "persevering mortal" can preserve the
memory of its freshness to mid-day. As we passed the various
islands, or what were islands in the spring, rowing with our
backs down stream, we gave names to them. The one on which we had
camped we called Fox Island, and one fine densely wooded island
surrounded by deep water and overrun by grape-vines, which looked
like a mass of verdure and of flowers cast upon the waves, we
named Grape Island. From Ball's Hill to Billerica meeting-house,
the river was still twice as broad as in Concord, a deep, dark,
and dead stream, flowing between gentle hills and sometimes
cliffs, and well wooded all the way. It was a long woodland lake
bordered with willows. For long reaches we could see neither
house nor cultivated field, nor any sign of the vicinity of
man. Now we coasted along some shallow shore by the edge of a
dense palisade of bulrushes, which straightly bounded the water
as if clipt by art, reminding us of the reed forts of the
East-Indians, of which we had read; and now the bank slightly
raised was overhung with graceful grasses and various species of
brake, whose downy stems stood closely grouped and naked as in a
vase, while their heads spread several feet on either side.
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