The Writings of John Burroughs | Page 8

of the river below, gauging their
notions of it from the spring and fall freshets tossing about the heavy
and cumbrous rafts. There was a whirlpool, a rock eddy, and a binocle
within a mile. I might be caught in the binocle, or engulfed in the
whirlpool, or smashed up in the eddy. But I felt much reassured when
they told me I had already passed several whirlpools and rock eddies;
but that terrible binocle,--what was that? I had never heard of such a
monster. Oh, it was a still, miry place at the head of a big eddy. The
current might carry me up there, but I could easily get out again; the
rafts did. But there was another place I must beware of, where two
eddies faced each other; raftsmen were sometimes swept off there by
the oars and drowned. And when I came to rock eddy, which I would
know, because the river divided there (a part of the water being afraid
to risk the eddy, I suppose), I must go ashore and survey the pass; but
in any case it would be prudent to keep to the left. I might stick on the
rift, but that was nothing to being wrecked upon those rocks. The boys
were quite in earnest, and I told them I would walk up to the village
and post some letters to my friends before I braved all these dangers.
So they marched me up the street, pointing out to their chums what
they had found.
"Going way to Phil-- What place is that near where the river goes into
the sea?"

"Philadelphia?"
"Yes; thinks he may go way there. Won't he have fun?"
The boys escorted me about the town, then back to the river, and got in
their boat and came down to the bend, where they could see me go
through the whirlpool and pass the binocle (I am not sure about the
orthography of the word, but I suppose it means a double, or a sort of
mock eddy). I looked back as I shot over the rough current beside a
gentle vortex, and saw them watching me with great interest. Rock
eddy, also, was quite harmless, and I passed it without any preliminary
survey.
I nooned at Sodom, and found good milk in a humble cottage. In the
afternoon I was amused by a great blue heron that kept flying up in
advance of me. Every mile or so, as I rounded some point, I would
come unexpectedly upon him, till finally he grew disgusted with my
silent pursuit, and took a long turn to the left up along the side of the
mountain, and passed back up the river, uttering a hoarse, low note.
The wind still boded rain, and about four o'clock, announced by
deep-toned thunder and portentous clouds, it began to charge down the
mountain-side in front of me. I ran ashore, covered my traps, and took
my way up through an orchard to a quaint little farmhouse. But there
was not a soul about, outside or in, that I could find, though the door
was unfastened; so I went into an open shed with the hens, and lounged
upon some straw, while the unloosed floods came down. It was better
than boating or fishing. Indeed, there are few summer pleasures to be
placed before that of reclining at ease directly under a sloping roof,
after toil or travel in the hot sun, and looking out into the rain-drenched
air and fields. It is such a vital yet soothing spectacle. We sympathize
with the earth. We know how good a bath is, and the unspeakable
deliciousness of water to a parched tongue. The office of the sunshine
is slow, subtle, occult, unsuspected; but when the clouds do their work,
the benefaction is so palpable and copious, so direct and wholesale, that
all creatures take note of it, and for the most part rejoice in it. It is a
completion, a consummation, a paying of a debt with a royal hand; the
measure is heaped and overflowing. It was the simple vapor of water
that the clouds borrowed of the earth; now they pay back more than
water: the drops are charged with electricity and with the gases of the
air, and have new solvent powers. Then, how the slate is sponged off,

and left all clean and new again!
In the shed where I was sheltered were many relics and odds and ends
of the farm. In juxtaposition with two of the most stalwart wagon or
truck wheels I ever looked upon was a cradle of ancient and peculiar
make,--an aristocratic cradle, with high-turned posts and an elaborately
carved and moulded body, that was suspended upon rods and swung
from the top. How I should have