The boatmen told us that the
current had recently made important changes here. An island
always pleases my imagination, even the smallest, as a small
continent and integral portion of the globe. I have a fancy for
building my hut on one. Even a bare, grassy isle, which I can
see entirely over at a glance, has some undefined and mysterious
charm for me. There is commonly such a one at the junction of
two rivers, whose currents bring down and deposit their
respective sands in the eddy at their confluence, as it were the
womb of a continent. By what a delicate and far-stretched
contribution every island is made! What an enterprise of Nature
thus to lay the foundations of and to build up the future
continent, of golden and silver sands and the ruins of forests,
with ant-like industry! Pindar gives the following account of
the origin of Thera, whence, in after times, Libyan Cyrene was
settled by Battus. Triton, in the form of Eurypylus, presents a
clod to Euphemus, one of the Argonauts, as they are about to
return home.
"He knew of our haste,
And immediately seizing a clod
With his right hand, strove to give it
As a chance stranger's gift.
Nor did the hero disregard him, but leaping on the shore,
Stretching hand to hand,
Received the mystic clod.
But I hear it sinking from the deck,
Go with the sea brine
At evening, accompanying the watery sea.
Often indeed I urged the careless
Menials to guard it, but their minds forgot.
And now in this island the imperishable seed of spacious Libya
Is spilled before its hour."
It is a beautiful fable, also related by Pindar, how Helius, or
the Sun, looked down into the sea one day, - when perchance his
rays were first reflected from some increasing glittering
sandbar, - and saw the fair and fruitful island of Rhodes
"springing up from the bottom,
Capable of feeding many men, and suitable for flocks;
and at the nod of Zeus,
"The island sprang from the watery
Sea; and the genial Father of penetrating beams,
Ruler of fire-breathing horses, has it."
The shifting islands! who would not be willing that his house
should be undermined by such a foe! The inhabitant of an island
can tell what currents formed the land which he cultivates; and
his earth is still being created or destroyed. There before his
door, perchance, still empties the stream which brought down the
material of his farm ages before, and is still bringing it down
or washing it away, - the graceful, gentle robber!
Not long after this we saw the Piscataquoag, or Sparkling Water,
emptying in on our left, and heard the Falls of Amoskeag above.
Large quantities of lumber, as we read in the Gazetteer, were
still annually floated down the Piscataquoag to the Merrimack,
and there are many fine mill privileges on it.
