We Wished To Camp This Night On A Large Rock In The Middle Of The
Stream, Just Above These Falls,
But the want of fuel, and the
difficulty of fixing our tent firmly, prevented us; so we made
our bed
On the main-land opposite, on the west bank, in the town
of Bedford, in a retired place, as we supposed, there being no
house in sight.
-
WEDNESDAY
_"Man is man's foe and destiny."_
^Cotton.^
-
WEDNESDAY.
- * -
Early this morning, as we were rolling up our buffaloes and
loading our boat amid the dew, while our embers were still
smoking, the masons who worked at the locks, and whom we had seen
crossing the river in their boat the evening before while we were
examining the rock, came upon us as they were going to their
work, and we found that we had pitched our tent directly in the
path to their boat. This was the only time that we were observed
on our camping-ground. Thus, far from the beaten highways and
the dust and din of travel, we beheld the country privately, yet
freely, and at our leisure. Other roads do some violence to
Nature, and bring the traveller to stare at her, but the river
steals into the scenery it traverses without intrusion, silently
creating and adorning it, and is as free to come and go as the
zephyr.
As we shoved away from this rocky coast, before sunrise, the
smaller bittern, the genius of the shore, was moping along its
edge, or stood probing the mud for its food, with ever an eye on
us, though so demurely at work, or else he ran along over the wet
stones like a wrecker in his storm-coat, looking out for wrecks
of snails and cockles. Now away he goes, with a limping flight,
uncertain where he will alight, until a rod of clear sand amid
the alders invites his feet; and now our steady approach compels
him to seek a new retreat. It is a bird of the oldest Thalesian
school, and no doubt believes in the priority of water to the
other elements; the relic of a twilight antediluvian age which
yet inhabits these bright American rivers with us Yankees. There
is something venerable in this melancholy and contemplative race
of birds, which may have trodden the earth while it was yet in a
slimy and imperfect state. Perchance their tracks too are still
visible on the stones. It still lingers into our glaring
summers, bravely supporting its fate without sympathy from man,
as if it looked forward to some second advent of which _he_ has
no assurance. One wonders if, by its patient study by rocks and
sandy capes, it has wrested the whole of her secret from Nature
yet. What a rich experience it must have gained, standing on one
leg and looking out from its dull eye so long on sunshine and
rain, moon and stars! What could it tell of stagnant pools and
reeds and dank night-fogs!
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