Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/361

318 Here we had a striking illustration of the power of color. The wooded height before us rose at least twelve hundred feet. The river below was green with the immense reflection. But on the very line of union, where the leaves met and kissed in air and water, was a little flame of crimson, which held the eye and centered all the immensity.

It was one small cardinal flower, a plant that grows all the way along the Delaware. The intensity of its color is indescribable. After this superb exhibition of its power, one little red flower against a mile of green and silver, I gathered every day a handful of the lovely blossoms and set them on the bow of the canoe.

When one thinks of the marvels of this river, the regret becomes painful that they are unknown to the outer world, that they are only seen by the natives of the scenes and the accidental canoe voyager.

The rivers are the veins and arteries of a country, the railroads and roads the nerves and sinews.

He has seen the land truly, with its wealth and strength, who has followed the rivers from their sources in the hills down to the tide-pulsating ocean-heart. But the railroads are familiar,