For Ice Is Floating In The River; The Spring Is
Opening; The Muskrat And The Beaver Are Driven Out Of
Their holes
by the flood; deer gaze at them from the bank; a few
faint-singing forest birds, perchance, fly
Across the river to
the northernmost shore; the fish-hawk sails and screams overhead,
and geese fly over with a startling clangor; but they do not
observe these things, or they speedily forget them. They do not
smile or chat all day. Sometimes they pass an Indian grave
surrounded by its paling on the bank, or the frame of a wigwam,
with a few coals left behind, or the withered stalks still
rustling in the Indian's solitary cornfield on the interval. The
birch stripped of its bark, or the charred stump where a tree has
been burned down to be made into a canoe, these are the only
traces of man, - a fabulous wild man to us. On either side, the
primeval forest stretches away uninterrupted to Canada, or to the
"South Sea"; to the white man a drear and howling wilderness, but
to the Indian a home, adapted to his nature, and cheerful as the
smile of the Great Spirit.
While we loiter here this autumn evening, looking for a spot
retired enough, where we shall quietly rest to-night, they thus,
in that chilly March evening, one hundred and forty-two years
before us, with wind and current favoring, have already glided
out of sight, not to camp, as we shall, at night, but while two
sleep one will manage the canoe, and the swift stream bear them
onward to the settlements, it may be, even to old John Lovewell's
house on Salmon Brook to-night.
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