Page:A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.djvu/338

332 bought one watermelon, the largest in his patch, to carry with us for ballast. It was Nathan's, which he might sell if he pleased, having been conveyed to him in the green state, and owned daily by his eyes. After due consultation with "Father," the bargain was concluded,—we to buy it at a venture on the vine, green or ripe, our risk, and pay "what the gentlemen pleased." It proved to be ripe; for we had had honest experience in selecting this fruit.

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 sound 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,