Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/295

262 the noisy rapid at its foot. Zigzag it crossed the river; and as I led into a well-defined rushing V, aiming at the angle, I felt the first grumble of a rock along the keel. Next moment we were pitching on sharp little white-caps below the rush, and scooting down toward the swift, deep water.

We had launched our canoes at Binghamton, J. Smith and I, because the river above is too low in September. Shame that it should be so! The beautiful hills above Binghamton, that a few years ago were clothed with rich foliage for unbroken leagues, are shorn like a stubble-field. The naked stumps are white and unsightly on the mountains, like the bones of an old battle-field.

A monster has crept up the valley and devoured the strong young trees. Every trunk has been swallowed; and the maw of the dragon is belching for more. On both sides of the river, and through many of the valleys that open back to the farm-lands, the railroads wind like serpents; and every foot-long joint in their vertebræ is the trunk of a twenty-year old tree. The hills stand up in the sun, cropped and debased like convicts; their beauty and mystery and shadowed sacredness torn from them; their silence and loneliness replaced by the selfish chirp of the grasshopper among the dry weeds. Never did the hard utility of civilization appear less disguised and less