Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/85

 hostility as well as friendship. This oldest race, a venerable and hospitable nation, gave us liberty to settle and plow these fields. Who can realize that, within the memory of this generation, the remnant of an ancient and dusky race of warriors now, like Ossian's heroes, no more resident on this earth, furnished a company to the war, on condition only, as they wrote to the General Court, that they should not be expected to train or fight white man's fashion, but Indian fashion. And occasionally their wigwams are seen on the banks of this very stream, still solitary and withdrawn, like the cabins of the muskrats in the meadow.

They seem like a race who have exhausted the secrets of Nature; tanned with age, while this younger and still fair Saxon race, on whom the sun has not long shone, is but commencing its career. Their memory is in harmony with the russet hue of the fall of the year. And yet they did not always retreat before the ravages of time,—more than before the arrows of their foes. These relics in the fields, which have preserved their rugged forms so long, are evidence of [37]