When There Was A Suitable Reach, We Caught Sight Of The Goffstown
Mountain, The Indian Uncannunuc, Rising Before Us On The West
Side.
It was a calm and beautiful day, with only a slight zephyr
to ripple the surface of the water, and rustle the woods on
shore, and just warmth enough to prove the kindly disposition of
Nature to her children.
With buoyant spirits and vigorous
impulses we tossed our boat rapidly along into the very middle of
this forenoon. The fish-hawk sailed and screamed overhead. The
chipping or striped squirrel, _Sciurus striatus_ (_Tamias
Lysteri_, Aud.), sat upon the end of some Virginia fence or rider
reaching over the stream, twirling a green nut with one paw, as
in a lathe, while the other held it fast against its incisors as
chisels. Like an independent russet leaf, with a will of its
own, rustling whither it could; now under the fence, now over it,
now peeping at the voyageurs through a crack with only its tail
visible, now at its lunch deep in the toothsome kernel, and now a
rod off playing at hide-and-seek, with the nut stowed away in its
chops, where were half a dozen more besides, extending its cheeks
to a ludicrous breadth, - as if it were devising through what safe
valve of frisk or somerset to let its superfluous life escape;
the stream passing harmlessly off, even while it sits, in
constant electric flashes through its tail. And now with a
chuckling squeak it dives into the root of a hazel, and we see no
more of it.
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