We Rowed Leisurely Up The Stream For Several Hours, Until The Sun
Had Got High In The Sky, Our Thoughts Monotonously Beating Time
To Our Oars.
For outward variety there was only the river and
the receding shores, a vista continually opening behind and
closing before us, as we sat with our backs up-stream; and, for
inward, such thoughts as the muses grudgingly lent us.
We were
always passing some low, inviting shore, or some overhanging
bank, on which, however, we never landed.
Such near aspects had we
Of our life's scenery.
It might be seen by what tenure men held the earth. The smallest
stream is _mediterranean_ sea, a smaller ocean creek within the
land, where men may steer by their farm-bounds and cottage-lights.
For my own part, but for the geographers, I should hardly have
known how large a portion of our globe is water, my life has
chiefly passed within so deep a cove. Yet I have sometimes
ventured as far as to the mouth of my Snug Harbor. From an old
ruined fort on Staten Island, I have loved to watch all day some
vessel whose name I had read in the morning through the
telegraph-glass, when she first came upon the coast, and her hull
heaved up and glistened in the sun, from the moment when the
pilot and most adventurous news-boats met her, past the Hook, and
up the narrow channel of the wide outer bay, till she was boarded
by the health-officer, and took her station at Quarantine, or
held on her unquestioned course to the wharves of New York.
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