Then with our fire we burned up a portion of the
loitering night, while the kettle sang its homely strain to the
morning star. We tramped about the shore, waked all the
muskrats, and scared up the bittern and birds that were asleep
upon their roosts; we hauled up and upset our boat and washed it
and rinsed out the clay, talking aloud as if it were broad day,
until at length, by three o'clock, we had completed our
preparations and were ready to pursue our voyage as usual; so,
shaking the clay from our feet, we pushed into the fog.
Though we were enveloped in mist as usual, we trusted that there
was a bright day behind it.
Ply the oars! away! away!
In each dew-drop of the morning
Lies the promise of a day.
Rivers from the sunrise flow,
Springing with the dewy morn;
Voyageurs 'gainst time do row,
Idle noon nor sunset know,
Ever even with the dawn.
Belknap, the historian of this State, says that, "In the
neighborhood of fresh rivers and ponds, a whitish fog in the
morning lying over the water is a sure indication of fair weather
for that day; and when no fog is seen, rain is expected before
night." That which seemed to us to invest the world was only a
narrow and shallow wreath of vapor stretched over the channel of
the Merrimack from the seaboard to the mountains.
