Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/70

 water with its broad leaf, affording a grateful shade to us sailors. The inner bark of this genus is the material of the fisherman's matting, and the peasant's shoes, of which the Russians make so much use. In the wildest scenes is the raw material of the most refined life. Here is bast for our shoes and for matting, and rushes for our light, and no doubt there is papyrus by this river's side; while the goose surely flies overhead. It was a new tree to us, with its broad and handsome leaf, but still like those we knew. What an impulse was given, some time or other, to vegetation that now nothing can stay it! but everywhere it is Nature's business constantly to create new leaves and repeat the type in many materials. One who travelled hastily through her territories would say that she was a vast manufactory of leaves. The leaf is her constant cipher. It is grass in the field,—the garment she wears; it flutters on the oak; it springs in the mould upon a jar; and in animal, vegetable, and mineral; in fluids and in crystals,—plain or variegated, fresh or decayed, it acts a principal part in the economy of the [22]