Finding Our Boat Safe In Its Harbor, Under Uncannunuc Mountain,
With A Fair Wind And The Current In Our Favor,
We commenced our
return voyage at noon, sitting at our ease and conversing, or in
silence watching for the last
Trace of each reach in the river as
a bend concealed it from our view. As the season was further
advanced, the wind now blew steadily from the north, and with our
sail set we could occasionally lie on our oars without loss of
time. The lumbermen throwing down wood from the top of the high
bank, thirty or forty feet above the water, that it might be sent
down stream, paused in their work to watch our retreating sail.
By this time, indeed, we were well known to the boatmen, and were
hailed as the Revenue Cutter of the stream. As we sailed rapidly
down the river, shut in between two mounds of earth, the sounds
of this timber rolled down the bank enhanced the silence and
vastness of the noon, and we fancied that only the primeval
echoes were awakened. The vision of a distant scow just heaving
in sight round a headland also increased by contrast the
solitude.
Through the din and desultoriness of noon, even in the most
Oriental city, is seen the fresh and primitive and savage nature,
in which Scythians and Ethiopians and Indians dwell. What is
echo, what are light and shade, day and night, ocean and stars,
earthquake and eclipse, there? The works of man are everywhere
swallowed up in the immensity of Nature.
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