The Sight Of This Tree Reminded Us That We Had Reached A Strange
Land To Us.
As we sailed under this canopy of leaves we saw the
sky through its chinks, and, as it were, the meaning and idea of
the tree stamped in a thousand hieroglyphics on the heavens.
The
universe is so aptly fitted to our organization that the eye
wanders and reposes at the same time. On every side there is
something to soothe and refresh this sense. Look up at the
tree-tops and see how finely Nature finishes off her work there.
See how the pines spire without end higher and higher, and make a
graceful fringe to the earth. And who shall count the finer
cobwebs that soar and float away from their utmost tops, and the
myriad insects that dodge between them. Leaves are of more
various forms than the alphabets of all languages put together;
of the oaks alone there are hardly two alike, and each expresses
its own character.
In all her products Nature only develops her simplest germs. One
would say that it was no great stretch of invention to create
birds. The hawk, which now takes his flight over the top of the
wood, was at first, perchance, only a leaf which fluttered in its
aisles. From rustling leaves she came in the course of ages to
the loftier flight and clear carol of the bird.
Salmon Brook comes in from the west under the railroad, a mile
and a half below the village of Nashua.
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