--*--


In the morning the river and adjacent country were covered with a
dense fog, through which the smoke of our fire curled up like a
still subtiler mist; but before we had rowed many rods, the sun
arose and the fog rapidly dispersed, leaving a slight steam only
to curl along the surface of the water. It was a quiet Sunday
morning, with more of the auroral rosy and white than of the
yellow light in it, as if it dated from earlier than the fall of
man, and still preserved a heathenish integrity:--

An early unconverted Saint,
Free from noontide or evening taint,
Heathen without reproach,
That did upon the civil day encroach,
And ever since its birth
Had trod the outskirts of the earth.

But the impressions which the morning makes vanish with its dews,
and not even the most "persevering mortal" can preserve the
memory of its freshness to mid-day. As we passed the various
islands, or what were islands in the spring, rowing with our
backs down stream, we gave names to them. The one on which we had
camped we called Fox Island, and one fine densely wooded island
surrounded by deep water and overrun by grape-vines, which looked
like a mass of verdure and of flowers cast upon the waves, we
named Grape Island. From Ball's Hill to Billerica meeting-house,
the river was still twice as broad as in Concord, a deep, dark,
and dead stream, flowing between gentle hills and sometimes