Still the ever rich and
fertile shores accompanied us, fringed with vines and alive with
small birds and frisking squirrels, the edge of some farmer's
field or widow's wood-lot, or wilder, perchance, where the
muskrat, the little medicine of the river, drags itself along
stealthily over the alder-leaves and muscle-shells, and man and
the memory of man are banished far.
At length the unwearied, never-sinking shore, still holding on
without break, with its cool copses and serene pasture-grounds,
tempted us to disembark; and we adventurously landed on this
remote coast, to survey it, without the knowledge of any human
inhabitant probably to this day. But we still remember the
gnarled and hospitable oaks which grew even there for our
entertainment, and were no strangers to us, the lonely horse in
his pasture, and the patient cows, whose path to the river, so
judiciously chosen to overcome the difficulties of the way, we
followed, and disturbed their ruminations in the shade; and,
above all, the cool, free aspect of the wild apple-trees,
generously proffering their fruit to us, though still green and
crude,--the hard, round, glossy fruit, which, if not ripe, still
was not poison, but New-English too, brought hither its ancestors
by ours once.
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