Early One Summer Morning I Had Left The Shores Of The
Connecticut, And For The Livelong Day Travelled Up The
Bank of a
river, which came in from the west; now looking down on the
stream, foaming and rippling through
The forest a mile off, from
the hills over which the road led, and now sitting on its rocky
brink and dipping my feet in its rapids, or bathing adventurously
in mid-channel. The hills grew more and more frequent, and
gradually swelled into mountains as I advanced, hemming in the
course of the river, so that at last I could not see where it
came from, and was at liberty to imagine the most wonderful
meanderings and descents. At noon I slept on the grass in the
shade of a maple, where the river had found a broader channel
than usual, and was spread out shallow, with frequent sand-bars
exposed. In the names of the towns I recognized some which I had
long ago read on teamsters' wagons, that had come from far up
country; quiet, uplandish towns, of mountainous fame. I walked
along, musing and enchanted, by rows of sugar-maples, through the
small and uninquisitive villages, and sometimes was pleased with
the sight of a boat drawn up on a sand-bar, where there appeared
no inhabitants to use it. It seemed, however, as essential to
the river as a fish, and to lend a certain dignity to it. It was
like the trout of mountain streams to the fishes of the sea, or
like the young of the land-crab born far in the interior, who
have never yet heard the sound of the ocean's surf.
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