Thus We Held On, Sailing Or Dipping
Our Way Along With The Paddle Up This Broad River, Smooth And
Placid,
Flowing over concealed rocks, where we could see the
pickerel lying low in the transparent water, eager to double some
Distant cape, to make some great bend as in the life of man, and
see what new perspective would open; looking far into a new
country, broad and serene, the cottages of settlers seen afar for
the first time, yet with the moss of a century on their roofs,
and the third or fourth generation in their shadows. Strange was
it to consider how the sun and the summer, the buds of spring and
the seared leaves of autumn, were related to these cabins along
the shore; how all the rays which paint the landscape radiate
from them, and the flight of the crow and the gyrations of the
hawk have reference to their roofs. Still the ever rich and
fertile shores accompanied us, fringed with vines and alive with
small birds and frisking squirrels, the edge of some farmer's
field or widow's wood-lot, or wilder, perchance, where the
muskrat, the little medicine of the river, drags itself along
stealthily over the alder-leaves and muscle-shells, and man and
the memory of man are banished far.
At length the unwearied, never-sinking shore, still holding on
without break, with its cool copses and serene pasture-grounds,
tempted us to disembark; and we adventurously landed on this
remote coast, to survey it, without the knowledge of any human
inhabitant probably to this day.
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