Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/31

Rh meadow, forest, and mountain. As we read the quaint epithets and the unskilled, though wonderfully expressive, terms and phrases — sometimes really gems of language — by which in short, strong touches they present the features of some new scene which first of civilized men they beheld, with all their senses quickened to joy, we become oblivious of the stern hardships and the ways of peril through which they had passed, and long that we too might share in the surprises and delights which they portray to us. After long and tempestuous voyages so unlike those by which we pass like shuttles across the ocean, — stived together in cramped vessels, seldom much exceeding, often not reaching, half a hundred tons burden; most generally with scurvy and ship-fever among them; weary of each other's company and the dreary monotony of days and nights, of storms and calms; subsisting upon odious food and stagnant water, while in vain craving something fresh and green, — the signs of bank and shoals and drifting weeds betokened the end of their sea course. Their compass was bewildered: they had no charts. Then the small boat must be put to service, with its watchful crew, to sound the way on, to search for a passage, between reefs and rocks, with eyes ever open for each whitened tuft of water that crowned a breaker. Meanwhile they tell us of the fragrant breathings that came from the wooded and bushy shore, and how they drank in the odorous airs from sassafras and piny groves, and how they filled their waterbutts at fresh springs, and gathered from shrub or bough or root the rich, green, juicy fruit or berry so racy in its flavor to the landed seaman. And then their pages fairly sparkle with tales of the vine-clad trees, the fields strewed with the white blossoms of the strawberry, the aroma of the juices of pine and fir and juniper, and all the luxurious vesture and charms of a teeming virgin soil. Nor were they insensible to the solemnities of the primeval forests, the depths of their solitudes, the sombreness and