Digital heart book

Fortunately we had
no business in this country. The Concord had rarely been a
river, or _rivus_, but barely _fluvius_, or between _fluvius_ and
_lacus_. This Merrimack was neither _rivus_ nor _fluvius_ nor
_lacus_, but rather _amnis_ here, a gently swelling and stately
rolling flood approaching the sea. We could even sympathize with
its buoyant tide, going to seek its fortune in the ocean, and,
anticipating the time when "being received within the plain of
its freer water," it should "beat the shores for banks,"--
"campoque recepta
Liberioris aquae, pro ripis litora pulsant."
At length we doubled a low shrubby islet, called Rabbit Island,
subjected alternately to the sun and to the waves, as desolate as
if it lay some leagues within the icy sea, and found ourselves in
a narrower part of the river, near the sheds and yards for
picking the stone known as the Chelmsford granite, which is
quarried in Westford and the neighboring towns. We passed
Wicasuck Island, which contains seventy acres or more, on our
right, between Chelmsford and Tyngsborough.


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