If He Gets Up To His
Wood-Pile Before Noon He Proceeds To Load His Boat, With The Help
Of
His single "hand," and is on his way down again before night.
When he gets to Lowell he unloads his
Boat, and gets his receipt
for his cargo, and, having heard the news at the public house at
Middlesex or elsewhere, goes back with his empty boat and his
receipt in his pocket to the owner, and to get a new load. We
were frequently advertised of their approach by some faint sound
behind us, and looking round saw them a mile off, creeping
stealthily up the side of the stream like alligators. It was
pleasant to hail these sailors of the Merrimack from time to
time, and learn the news which circulated with them. We imagined
that the sun shining on their bare heads had stamped a liberal
and public character on their most private thoughts.
The open and sunny interval still stretched away from the river
sometimes by two or more terraces, to the distant hill-country,
and when we climbed the bank we commonly found an irregular
copse-wood skirting the river, the primitive having floated
down-stream long ago to - - the "King's navy." Sometimes we saw
the river-road a quarter or half a mile distant, and the
particolored Concord stage, with its cloud of dust, its van of
earnest travelling faces, and its rear of dusty trunks, reminding
us that the country had its places of rendezvous for restless
Yankee men. There dwelt along at considerable distances on this
interval a quiet agricultural and pastoral people, with every
house its well, as we sometimes proved, and every household,
though never so still and remote it appeared in the noontide, its
dinner about these times. There they lived on, those New England
people, farmer lives, father and grandfather and great-grandfather,
on and on without noise, keeping up tradition, and expecting,
beside fair weather and abundant harvests, we did not learn what.
They were contented to live, since it was so contrived for them,
and where their lines had fallen.
Our uninquiring corpses lie more low
Than our life's curiosity doth go.
Yet these men had no need to travel to be as wise as Solomon in
all his glory, so similar are the lives of men in all countries,
and fraught with the same homely experiences. One half the world
_knows_ how the other half lives.
About noon we passed a small village in Merrimack at Thornton's
Ferry, and tasted of the waters of Naticook Brook on the same
side, where French and his companions, whose grave we saw in
Dunstable, were ambuscaded by the Indians. The humble village of
Litchfield, with its steepleless meeting-house, stood on the
opposite or east bank, near where a dense grove of willows
backed by maples skirted the shore. There also we noticed some
shagbark-trees, which, as they do not grow in Concord, were as
strange a sight to us as the palm would be, whose fruit only we
have seen. Our course now curved gracefully to the north,
leaving a low, flat shore on the Merrimack side, which forms a
sort of harbor for canal-boats. We observed some fair elms
and particularly large and handsome white-maples standing
conspicuously on this interval; and the opposite shore, a quarter
of a mile below, was covered with young elms and maples six
inches high, which had probably sprung from the seeds which had
been washed across.
Some carpenters were at work here mending a scow on the green and
sloping bank. The strokes of their mallets echoed from shore to
shore, and up and down the river, and their tools gleamed in the
sun a quarter of a mile from us, and we realized that boat-building
was as ancient and honorable an art as agriculture, and that
there might be a naval as well as a pastoral life. The whole
history of commerce was made manifest in that scow turned bottom
upward on the shore. Thus did men begin to go down upon the sea
in ships; _quaeque diu steterant in montibus altis, Fluctibus
ignotis insultavere carinae;_ "and keels which had long stood on
high mountains careered insultingly (_insultavere_) over unknown
waves." (Ovid, Met. I. 133.) We thought that it would be well
for the traveller to build his boat on the bank of a stream,
instead of finding a ferry or a bridge. In the Adventures of
Henry the fur-trader, it is pleasant to read that when with his
Indians he reached the shore of Ontario, they consumed two days
in making two canoes of the bark of the elm-tree, in which to
transport themselves to Fort Niagara. It is a worthy incident in
a journey, a delay as good as much rapid travelling. A good
share of our interest in Xenophon's story of his retreat is in
the manoeuvres to get the army safely over the rivers, whether on
rafts of logs or fagots, or sheep-skins blown up. And where
could they better afford to tarry meanwhile than on the banks of
a river?
As we glided past at a distance, these out-door workmen appeared
to have added some dignity to their labor by its very publicness.
It was a part of the industry of nature, like the work of hornets
and mud-wasps.
The waves slowly beat,
Just to keep the noon sweet,
And no sound is floated o'er,
Save the mallet on shore,
Which echoing on high
Seems a-calking the sky.
The haze, the sun's dust of travel, had a Lethean influence on
the land and its inhabitants, and all creatures resigned
themselves to float upon the inappreciable tides of nature.
Woof of the sun, ethereal gauze,
Woven of Nature's richest stuffs,
Visible heat, air-water, and dry sea,
Last conquest of the eye;
Toil of the day displayed sun-dust,
Aerial surf upon the shores of earth.
Ethereal estuary, frith of light,
Breakers of air, billows of heat
Fine summer spray on inland seas;
Bird of the sun, transparent-winged
Owlet of noon, soft-pinioned,
From heath or stubble rising without song;
Establish thy serenity o'er the fields
The routine which is in the sunshine and the finest days, as that
which has conquered and prevailed, commends itself to us by its
very antiquity and apparent solidity and necessity.
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