A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers - Pennsylvania State ...

ter pasturage anywhere.” I then asked if this place was the
one I had heard of, calling it by a name I had seen on the
map, or if it was a certain other; and he answered, gruffly,
that it was neither the one nor the other; that he had settled
it and cultivated it, and made it what it was, and I could
know nothing about it. Observing some guns and other
implements of hunting hanging on brackets around the room,
and his hounds now sleeping on the floor, I took occasion to
change the discourse, and inquired if there was much game
in that country, and he answered this question more graciously,
having some glimmering of my drift; but when I
inquired if there were any bears, he answered impatiently
that he was no more in danger of losing his sheep than his
neighbors; he had tamed and civilized that region. After a
pause, thinking of my journey on the morrow, and the few
hours of daylight in that hollow and mountainous country,
which would require me to be on my way betimes, I remarked
that the day must be shorter by an hour there than
on the neighboring plains; at which he gruffly asked what I
knew about it, and affirmed that he had as much daylight as
his neighbors; he ventured to say, the days were longer there
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than where I lived, as I should find if I stayed; that in some
way, I could not be expected to understand how, the sun
came over the mountains half an hour earlier, and stayed
half an hour later there than on the neighboring plains. And
more of like sort he said. He was, indeed, as rude as a fabled
satyr. But I suffered him to pass for what he was,—for why
should I quarrel with nature?—and was even pleased at the
discovery of such a singular natural phenomenon. I dealt
with him as if to me all manners were indifferent, and he
had a sweet, wild way with him. I would not question nature,
and I would rather have him as he was than as I would
have him. For I had come up here not for sympathy, or kindness,
or society, but for novelty and adventure, and to see
what nature had produced here. I therefore did not repel his
rudeness, but quite innocently welcomed it all, and knew
how to appreciate it, as if I were reading in an old drama a
part well sustained. He was indeed a coarse and sensual man,
and, as I have said, uncivil, but he had his just quarrel with
nature and mankind, I have no doubt, only he had no artificial
covering to his ill-humors. He was earthy enough, but
yet there was good soil in him, and even a long-suffering