Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/81

 and handle our guns, which were leaning against a tree. This was the first and only time that we were observed in our camping ground by any one,—though our white tent on an eminence must have been a conspicuous object,—so much room is there still in Nature, and so easy would it be to travel the length and breadth of the land without the knowledge of its inhabitants. Thus without skulking, far from the dust and din of travel, we had beheld the country at our leisure by daylight and by night, secure of the best introduction to Nature; for all other roads intrude and bring the traveller to a stand; but the river has stolen into the scenery it traverses without intrusion, watering and adorning it, and is as free to come and go as the zephyr.

As we shoved away from the rocks in the morning the small green bittern, the genius of this shore, stood probing the mud for its food,—a melancholy contemplative bird, with ever an eye upon us, though so industriously at work. It was running along over the wet stones, like a wrecker in his storm coat,—looking out for wrecks of [33]