It was
pleasant to hail these sailors of the Merrimack from time to
time, and learn the news which circulated with them. We imagined
that the sun shining on their bare heads had stamped a liberal
and public character on their most private thoughts.
The open and sunny interval still stretched away from the river
sometimes by two or more terraces, to the distant hill-country,
and when we climbed the bank we commonly found an irregular
copse-wood skirting the river, the primitive having floated
down-stream long ago to----the "King's navy." Sometimes we saw
the river-road a quarter or half a mile distant, and the
particolored Concord stage, with its cloud of dust, its van of
earnest travelling faces, and its rear of dusty trunks, reminding
us that the country had its places of rendezvous for restless
Yankee men. There dwelt along at considerable distances on this
interval a quiet agricultural and pastoral people, with every
house its well, as we sometimes proved, and every household,
though never so still and remote it appeared in the noontide, its
dinner about these times.
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