Page:A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.djvu/217

Rh the ceaseless sound of the surf, and the dreary peep of the beach birds.

There were several canal boats at Cromwell's Falls, passing through the locks, for which we waited. In the forward part of one stood a brawny New Hampshire man, leaning on his pole, bareheaded and in shirt and trousers only, a rude Apollo of a man, coming down from that "vast uplandish country" to the main; of nameless age, with flaxen hair, and vigorous, weather-bleached countenance, in whose wrinkles the sun still lodged, as little touched by the heats and frosts and withering cares of life, as a mountain maple; an undressed, unkempt, uncivil man, with whom we parleyed a while, and parted not without a sincere interest in one another. His humanity was genuine and instinctive, and his rudeness only a manner. He inquired, just as we were passing out of earshot, if we had killed any thing, and we shouted after him that we had shot a buoy, and could see him for a long while scratching his head in vain, to know if he had heard aright.

There is reason in the distinction of civil and uncivil. The manners are sometimes so rough a rind, that we doubt whether they cover any core or sap-wood at all. We sometimes meet uncivil men, children of Amazons, who dwell by mountain paths, and are said to be inhospitable to strangers; whose salutation is as rude as the grasp of their brawny hands, and who deal with men as unceremoniously as they are wont to deal with the elements. They need only to extend their clearings, and let in more sunlight, to seek out the southern slopes of the hills, from which they may look down on the civil plain or ocean,