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

the river and the receding shores, a vista continually opening
behind and closing before us, as we sat with our backs upstream;
and, for inward, such thoughts as the muses grudgingly
lent us. We were always passing some low, inviting shore,
or some overhanging bank, on which, however, we never
landed.
Such near aspects had we
Of our life’s scenery.
It might be seen by what tenure men held the earth. The
smallest stream is mediterranean sea, a smaller ocean creek
within the land, where men may steer by their farm-bounds
and cottage-lights. For my own part, but for the geographers,
I should hardly have known how large a portion of our globe
is water, my life has chiefly passed within so deep a cove. Yet
I have sometimes ventured as far as to the mouth of my Snug
Harbor. From an old ruined fort on Staten Island, I have
loved to watch all day some vessel whose name I had read in
the morning through the telegraph-glass, when she first came
upon the coast, and her hull heaved up and glistened in the
A <strong>Week</strong> on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
186
sun, from the moment when the pilot and most adventurous
news-boats met her, past the Hook, and up the narrow
channel of the wide outer bay, till she was boarded by the
health-officer, and took her station at Quarantine, or held
on her unquestioned course to the wharves of New York. It
was interesting, too, to watch the less adventurous newsman,
who made his assault as the vessel swept through the Narrows,
defying plague and quarantine law, and, fastening his
little cockboat to her huge side, clambered up and disappeared
in the cabin. And then I could imagine what momentous
news was being imparted by the captain, which no
American ear had ever heard, that Asia, Africa, Europe—
were all sunk; for which at length he pays the price, and is
seen descending the ship’s side with his bundle of newspapers,
but not where he first got up, for these arrivers do not
stand still to gossip; and he hastes away with steady sweeps
to dispose of his wares to the highest bidder, and we shall
erelong read something startling,—”By the latest arrival,”—
”by the good ship——.” On Sunday I beheld, from some
interior hill, the long procession of vessels getting to sea,
reaching from the city wharves through the Narrows, and