In the names of the towns I recognized some which I had
long ago read on teamsters' wagons, that had come from far up
country; quiet, uplandish towns, of mountainous fame. I walked
along, musing and enchanted, by rows of sugar-maples, through the
small and uninquisitive villages, and sometimes was pleased with
the sight of a boat drawn up on a sand-bar, where there appeared
no inhabitants to use it. It seemed, however, as essential to
the river as a fish, and to lend a certain dignity to it. It was
like the trout of mountain streams to the fishes of the sea, or
like the young of the land-crab born far in the interior, who
have never yet heard the sound of the ocean's surf. The hills
approached nearer and nearer to the stream, until at last they
closed behind me, and I found myself just before nightfall in a
romantic and retired valley, about half a mile in length, and
barely wide enough for the stream at its bottom. I thought that
there could be no finer site for a cottage among mountains. You
could anywhere run across the stream on the rocks, and its
constant murmuring would quiet the passions of mankind forever.
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