Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/103

 of civilized life in the woods, under a sylvan garb. The wildest scenes even have an air of domesticity and homeliness to the citizen, and when the flicker's cackle is heard in the clearings, he is reminded that civilization has imported nothing into them. Science is welcome to their deepest recesses, for there, too, Nature obeys the same old civil laws. The little red bug on the stump of a pine,—for him the wind shifts, and the sun breaks through the clouds.

With this propitious breeze and the additional help of our oars, we soon reached the Falls of Amoskeag at the mouth of the Piscataquoag, and recognized, as we passed rapidly by, many a fair bank and islet upon which our thoughts had rested on the upward passage. All the world reposes in beauty to him who preserves equipoise in his life, and moves serenely on his path without resistance, as he who sails down a stream. He has only to steer, keeping his boat in the middle of the stream and carrying it round the portages. Our boat was like that which Chaucer describes in his Dream in which the knight took his departure from the island,— [55]