This is a work which
Time will surely edit, reserved to crown the labors of the
printing-press. This would be the Bible, or Book of Books, which
let the missionaries carry to the uttermost parts of the earth.
While engaged in these reflections, thinking ourselves the only
navigators of these waters, suddenly a canal-boat, with its sail
set, glided round a point before us, like some huge river beast,
and changed the scene in an instant; and then another and another
glided into sight, and we found ourselves in the current of
commerce once more. So we threw our rinds in the water for the
fishes to nibble, and added our breath to the life of living men.
Little did we think, in the distant garden in which we had
planted the seed and reared this fruit, where it would be eaten.
Our melons lay at home on the sandy bottom of the Merrimack, and
our potatoes in the sun and water at the bottom of the boat
looked like a fruit of the country. Soon, however, we were
delivered from this fleet of junks, and possessed the river in
solitude, once more rowing steadily upward through the noon,
between the territories of Nashua on the one hand, and Hudson,
once Nottingham, on the other.
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