They Are
Not Subject To Great Exposure, Like The Lumberers Of Maine, In
Any Weather, But Inhale The Healthfullest Breezes,
Being slightly
encumbered with clothing, frequently with the head and feet bare.
When we met them at noon as they
Were leisurely descending the
stream, their busy commerce did not look like toil, but rather
like some ancient Oriental game still played on a large scale, as
the game of chess, for instance, handed down to this generation.
From morning till night, unless the wind is so fair that his
single sail will suffice without other labor than steering, the
boatman walks backwards and forwards on the side of his boat, now
stooping with his shoulder to the pole, then drawing it back
slowly to set it again, meanwhile moving steadily forward through
an endless valley and an everchanging scenery, now distinguishing
his course for a mile or two, and now shut in by a sudden turn of
the river in a small woodland lake. All the phenomena which
surround him are simple and grand, and there is something
impressive, even majestic, in the very motion he causes, which
will naturally be communicated to his own character, and he feels
the slow, irresistible movement under him with pride, as if it
were his own energy.
The news spread like wildfire among us youths, when formerly,
once in a year or two, one of these boats came up the Concord
River, and was seen stealing mysteriously through the meadows and
past the village. It came and departed as silently as a cloud,
without noise or dust, and was witnessed by few. One summer day
this huge traveller might be seen moored at some meadow's wharf,
and another summer day it was not there. Where precisely it came
from, or who these men were who knew the rocks and soundings
better than we who bathed there, we could never tell. We knew
some river's bay only, but they took rivers from end to end.
They were a sort of fabulous river-men to us. It was
inconceivable by what sort of mediation any mere landsman could
hold communication with them. Would they heave to, to gratify
his wishes? No, it was favor enough to know faintly of their
destination, or the time of their possible return. I have seen
them in the summer when the stream ran low, mowing the weeds in
mid-channel, and with hayers' jests cutting broad swaths in three
feet of water, that they might make a passage for their scow,
while the grass in long windrows was carried down the stream,
undried by the rarest hay-weather. We admired unweariedly how
their vessel would float, like a huge chip, sustaining so many
casks of lime, and thousands of bricks, and such heaps of iron
ore, with wheelbarrows aboard, and that, when we stepped on it,
it did not yield to the pressure of our feet. It gave us
confidence in the prevalence of the law of buoyancy, and we
imagined to what infinite uses it might be put. The men appeared
to lead a kind of life on it, and it was whispered that they
slept aboard. Some affirmed that it carried sail, and that such
winds blew here as filled the sails of vessels on the ocean;
which again others much doubted. They had been seen to sail
across our Fair Haven bay by lucky fishers who were out, but
unfortunately others were not there to see. We might then say
that our river was navigable, - why not? In after-years I read in
print, with no little satisfaction, that it was thought by some
that, with a little expense in removing rocks and deepening the
channel, "there might be a profitable inland navigation." _I_
then lived some-where to tell of.
Such is Commerce, which shakes the cocoa-nut and bread-fruit tree
in the remotest isle, and sooner or later dawns on the duskiest
and most simple-minded savage. If we may be pardoned the
digression, who can help being affected at the thought of the
very fine and slight, but positive relation, in which the savage
inhabitants of some remote isle stand to the mysterious white
mariner, the child of the sun? - as if _we_ were to have dealings
with an animal higher in the scale of being than ourselves. It
is a barely recognized fact to the natives that he exists, and
has his home far away somewhere, and is glad to buy their fresh
fruits with his superfluous commodities. Under the same catholic
sun glances his white ship over Pacific waves into their smooth
bays, and the poor savage's paddle gleams in the air.
Man's little acts are grand,
Beheld from land to land,
There as they lie in time,
Within their native clime
Ships with the noontide weigh,
And glide before its ray
To some retired bay,
Their haunt,
Whence, under tropic sun,
Again they run,
Bearing gum Senegal and Tragicant.
For this was ocean meant,
For this the sun was sent,
And moon was lent,
And winds in distant caverns pent.
Since our voyage the railroad on the bank has been extended, and
there is now but little boating on the Merrimack. All kinds of
produce and stores were formerly conveyed by water, but now
nothing is carried up the stream, and almost wood and bricks
alone are carried down, and these are also carried on the
railroad. The locks are fast wearing out, and will soon be
impassable, since the tolls will not pay the expense of repairing
them, and so in a few years there will be an end of boating on
this river. The boating at present is principally between
Merrimack and Lowell, or Hooksett and Manchester. They make two
or three trips in a week, according to wind and weather, from
Merrimack to Lowell and back, about twenty-five miles each way.
The boatman comes singing in to shore late at night, and moors
his empty boat, and gets his supper and lodging in some house
near at hand, and again early in the morning, by starlight
perhaps, he pushes away up stream, and, by a shout, or the
fragment of a song, gives notice of his approach to the lock-man,
with whom he is to take his breakfast.
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