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320 But one is tempted to linger too long on such a scene as this at Walpack Bend. Here, for the first time since we left Port Jervis, the water ran slowly. It is hard to leave a spot so beautiful, where so few strangers are led. Here was Nature at first hand. To impress it deeper on my mind, I retrace our course, on the bank, to where, a hundred yards above the bend, a little singing river flows into the Delaware. Only a few inches deep, babbling over brown pebbles, bright as the sun itself in its flashes, coming down under a dim arch of trees and fringing underwood—a very dream of a little singing brook, that

Here, sitting on a stone, enjoying the soft susurrus in my ears and in the leaves and in the ripples, comes along a country boy, fishing—down the dim arch, walking in the little river, barefooted.

"Bushmill Creek is its name," he says; and he knows no more about it—not how long it is, nor whence it comes. But yet a commentator and critic, this barefooted fisher.

"How far have you fellows come?" he asked, examining the canoes.

"From Port Jervis."

"And how far are you going?"

"To Philadelphia."