Thus, far from the beaten highways and
the dust and din of travel, we beheld the country privately, yet
freely, and at our leisure. Other roads do some violence to
Nature, and bring the traveller to stare at her, but the river
steals into the scenery it traverses without intrusion, silently
creating and adorning it, and is as free to come and go as the
zephyr.
As we shoved away from this rocky coast, before sunrise, the
smaller bittern, the genius of the shore, was moping along its
edge, or stood probing the mud for its food, with ever an eye on
us, though so demurely at work, or else he ran along over the wet
stones like a wrecker in his storm-coat, looking out for wrecks
of snails and cockles. Now away he goes, with a limping flight,
uncertain where he will alight, until a rod of clear sand amid
the alders invites his feet; and now our steady approach compels
him to seek a new retreat. It is a bird of the oldest Thalesian
school, and no doubt believes in the priority of water to the
other elements; the relic of a twilight antediluvian age which
yet inhabits these bright American rivers with us Yankees.
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