Page:The Five Nations.djvu/76

56 There I found me food and water, and I lay a week recruiting,

Got my strength and lost my nightmares. Then I entered on my find.

Thence I ran my first rough survey—chose my trees and blazed and ringed 'em—

Week by week I pried and sampled—week by week my findings grew.

Saul he went to look for donkeys, and by God he found a kingdom!

But by God, who sent His Whisper, I had struck the worth of two!

Up along the hostile mountains, where the hair-poised snow-slide shivers—

Down and through the big fat marshes that the virgin ore-bed stains,

Till I heard the mile-wide mutterings of unimagined rivers

And beyond the nameless timber saw illimitable plains!