Читать книгу At the Sign of the Fox. A Romance онлайн

2 страница из 81

For more than a hundred miles between its throne in the hill country and the sea travels the Moosatuk, and all the land through which it passes is its kingdom. What its stern mood was in the ancient days when as an ice-floe, maybe, it tore a pathway through the granite hills, fortressing them with splintered slabs and tossing huge boulders from its course, man may but guess; but to-day a wild thing, half tamed, it obeys while it still compels. Above, below, confined by dams, it does the will of man; and yet, flow where it will, man follows, with his mills, his factories, his railways, until, by spreading into shallows, it half eludes his greed. For twenty sinuous miles it follows a free, sunlit course, now running swift and lapping the banks of little islands wooded with hemlocks, now stretching itself on the smooth pebbles until it tempts the unwary to the crossing on a bridge of stepping-stones. For all this space the ferns and wood flowers stoop from the slanting banks to snatch its lingering kisses, the wood folk drink from it, the wild fowl sleep on it, and its waters bear no heavier responsibility or weight than driftwood or the duck boat, that steals silently forth, a shadow in the morning twilight, like the Mohican canoes that a mere century ago plied the selfsame waters.