As yesterday and the historical ages are past, as the work of to-day is present, so some flitting perspectives, and demi-experiences of the life that is in nature are in time veritably future, or rather outside to time, perennial, young, divine, in the wind and rain which never die.
The respectable folks,-- Where dwell they? They whisper in the oaks, And they sigh in the hay; Summer and winter, night and day, Out on the meadow, there dwell they. They never die, Nor snivel, nor cry, Nor ask our pity With a wet eye. A sound estate they never mend, To every asker readily lend; To the ocean wealth, To the meadow health, To Time his length, To the rocks strength, To the stars light, To the weary night, To the busy day, To the idle play; And so their good cheer never ends, For all are their debtors, and all their friends.
Concord River is remarkable for the gentleness of its current, which is scarcely perceptible, and some have referred to its influence the proverbial moderation of the inhabitants of Concord, as exhibited in the Revolution, and on later occasions. It has been proposed, that the town should adopt for its coat of arms a field verdant, with the Concord circling nine times around. I have read that a descent of an eighth of an inch in a mile is sufficient to produce a flow. Our river has, probably, very near the smallest allowance. The story is current, at any rate, though I believe that strict history will bear it out, that the only bridge ever carried away on the main branch, within the limits of the town, was driven up stream by the wind. But wherever it makes a sudden bend it is shallower and swifter, and asserts its title to be called a river. Compared with the other tributaries of the Merrimack, it appears to have been properly named Musketaquid, or Meadow River, by the Indians. For the most part, it creeps through broad meadows, adorned with scattered oaks, where the cranberry is found in abundance, covering the ground like a moss-bed. A row of sunken dwarf willows borders the stream on one or both sides, while at a greater distance the meadow is skirted with maples, alders, and other fluviatile trees, overrun with the grape-vine, which bears fruit in its season, purple, red, white, and other grapes. Still farther from the stream, on the edge of the firm land, are seen the gray and white dwellings of the inhabitants.
The sluggish artery of the Concord meadows steals thus unobserved through the town, without a murmur or a pulse beat, its general course from south-west to north-east, and its length about fifty miles; a huge volume of matter, ceaselessly rolling through the plains and valleys of the substantial earth with the moccasined tread of an Indian Warrior, making haste from the high places of the earth to its ancient reservoir. The murmurs of many a famous river on the other side of the globe reach even to us here, as to more distant dwellers on its banks; many a poet’s stream floating the helms and shields of heroes on its bosom. The Xanthus or Scamander is not a mere dry channel and bed of a mountain torrent, but fed by the overflowing springs of fame;--
“And thou Simois, that as an arrowe, clere Through Troy rennest, aie downward to the sea”;--
and I trust that I may be allowed to associate our muddy but much abused Concord River with the most famous in history.
“Sure there are poets which did never dream Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream Of Helicon; we therefore may suppose Those made not poets, but the poets those.”
The Mississippi, the Ganges and the Nile, those journeying atoms from the Rocky Mountains, the Himmaleh, and Mountains of the Moon, have a kind of personal importance in the annals of the world. The heavens are not yet drained over their sources, but the Mountains of the Moon still send their annual tribute to the Pasha without fail, as they did to the Pharaohs, though he must collect the rest of his revenue at the point of the sword. Rivers must have been the guides which conducted the footsteps of the first travellers. They are the constant lure, when they flow by our doors, to distant enterprise and adventure, and, by a natural impulse, the dwellers on their banks will at length accompany their currents to the lowlands of the globe, or explore at their invitation the interior of continents. They are the natural highways of all nations, not only levelling the ground and removing obstacles from the path of the traveller, quenching his thirst and bearing him on their bosoms, but conducting him through the most interesting scenery, the most populous portions of the globe, and where the animal and vegetable kingdoms attain their greatest perfection.
I had often stood on the banks of the Concord, watching the lapse of the current, an emblem of all progress, following the same law with the system, with time, and all that is made; the weeds at the bottom gently bending down the stream, shaken by the watery wind, still planted where their seeds had sunk, but erelong to die and go down likewise; the shining pebbles, not yet anxious to better their condition, the chips and weeds, and occasional logs and stems of trees that floated past, fulfilling their fate, were objects of singular interest to me, and at last I resolved to launch myself on its bosom and float whither it would bear me.
THE TAGUS
ARTHUR SHADWELL MARTIN
The Tagus rises in that maze of mountains between Cuenca and Tereul on the frontier of New Castile and Aragon. It is the largest river of the Iberian peninsula, having a length of 566 miles. It is of little commercial advantage, however, as a means of traffic and communication, because in Spain its shallows, rapids and cataracts render it unnavigable through much of its course; and only from Villavelha, eighteen miles within the Portuguese frontier does it become navigable for the remaining 115 miles to its mouth. It flows from its source first north-westwards for about thirty miles to its junction with the Gallo, where it turns to the south-west to Toledo, whence it flows westwards to the frontier of Portugal at Abrantes. There it again curves south-westwards and falls into the Atlantic ten miles below Lisbon.
[Illustration: THE TAGUS]
The waves of the Tagus, according to ancient historians, rolled with gold; it is even said that the sceptre of the kings of Portugal is made of the gold dust found in the deposit of this river. However, the Tagus is not now endowed with this auriferous virtue; and its banks in nowise deserve the brilliant descriptions indulged in by ancient and modern poets. They are generally escarpments and rocky gorges. The traveller, who follows the course of the stream through a country often bare, arid and uncultivated, or burnt up by the sultry rays of the sun, sees little but an impetuous water course, narrow and impeded with dangerous rocks, forming dangerous cataracts and rapids. The rocky cliffs that hem it in have little vegetation beyond a few evergreen oaks; and with a few rare exceptions, notably the valleys of Aranjuez and Talavera, which have been embellished with human art and culture there are few parts of Spain so poor and savage in character. In winter, the Tagus has a considerable rise, and covers the few plains to be found along its banks; but in summer, like most of the other Spanish rivers it dwindles to almost nothing; so that even below Santarem, from Alcantara to the confluence of the Zezere, navigation is interrupted by numerous cataracts.
“Of the various phases of its most poetical and picturesque course--first green and arrowy amid the yellow cornfields of New Castile; then freshening the sweet Tempe of Aranjuez, clothing the garden with verdure, and filling the nightingale-tenanted glens with groves; then boiling and rushing around the granite ravines of rock-built Toledo, hurrying to escape from the cold shadows of its deep prison, and dashing joyously into light and liberty, to wander far away into silent plains and on to Talavera, where its waters were dyed with brave blood, and gladly reflected the flash of the victorious bayonets of England,--triumphantly it rolls thence, under the shattered arches of Almaraz, down to desolate Estremadura, in a stream as tranquil as the azure sky by which it is curtained, yet powerful enough to force the mountains of Alcantara. There the bridge of Trajan is worth going a hundred miles to see; it stems the now fierce condensed stream, and ties the rocky gorges together; grand, simple, and solid, tinted by the tender colours of seventeen centuries, it looms like the grey skeleton of Roman power, with all the sentiment of loneliness, magnitude, and the interest of the past and present.
“How stern, solemn, and striking is this Tagus of Spain! No commerce has ever made it its highway--no English steamer has ever civilized its waters like those of France and Germany. Its rocks have witnessed battles, not peace; have reflected castles and dungeons, not quays or warehouses: few cities have risen on its banks, as on those of the Thames and Rhine; it is truly a river of Spain--that isolated and solitary land. Its waters are without boats, its banks without life; man has never laid his hand upon its billows, nor enslaved their free and independent gambols.”