Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/59

 had sunk wells in the loose sand and loam. There dwelt the subject of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Esprit des Lois, whose thin vaporous smoke curled up through the noon. All that is told of mankind,—of the inhabitants of the Upper Nile, and the Sunderbunds, and Timbuctoo, and the Orinoko, is experience there. And there have lived original and free-thinking men, perhaps,—those men of whom we read in the history of New Hampshire.

While we were engaged in these reflections, and thought ourselves the only navigators of this water, suddenly a canal-boat, like some huge river-horse, with its large sail set, glided round a point before us, and changed the scene in an instant. And then another and another glided into sight, and we found ourselves once more in the current of commerce.

At length we were delivered from this fleet of junks, and ascended the river in solitude once more. In the middle of the day we rested under a willow or maple, which hung over the water; and drew forth a melon for our repast, contemplating at our leisure the [11]