Riverman

“ All this was accomplished in a very short time, and immediately below the mill, but beyond sight from the sluice-gate of the dam.
“Now, boys,” commanded Orde, “shove off some shore logs, and let them come down.”
“We'll have a jam sure,” objected Purdy stupidly.
“No, my son, would we?” mocked Orde. “I surely hope not!”
The stray logs floating down with the current the rivermen caught and arranged to the best possible advantage about the improvised piers. A good riverman understands the correlation of forces represented by saw-logs and water-pressure. ”

“ In like manner the softer moods of the spring rarely penetrate through the concentration of faculties on the work. The warm sun shines; the birds by thousands flutter and twitter and sing their way north; the delicate green of spring, showered from the hand of the passing Sower, sprinkles the tops of the trees, and gradually sifts down through the branches; the great, beautiful silver clouds sail down the horizon like ships of a statelier age, as totally without actual existence to these men. The logs, the river—those are enough to strain all the faculties a man possesses, and more. ”

“ Orde replaced his pipe.
Reed ran back and forth frantically, disappeared, returned bearing an antiquated pike-pole, and single-handed and alone attacked the jam!
Astonishment and delight held the rivermen breathless for a moment. Then a roar of laughter drowned even the noise of the waters. Men pounded each other on the back, rolled over and over, clutching handfuls of earth, struggled weak and red-faced for breath as they saw against the sky-line of the bristling jam the lank, flapping figure with the old plug hat pushing frantically against the immovable statics of a mighty power. ”

“ A lumberjack is not necessarily a riverman; but many of them are. And a goodly proportion, when the river opens, pull on the spiked boots and exchange ax and saw for peavey and pike pole, and so make their way by water to the town where they are paid off. Driscoll and Mitchell were rivermen as well as sawyers.
The men began to break out the rollways, knocking out the wedges and starting the logs with peavies. ”

“ Suppose you slept in rough blankets, on the ground or in bunks, ate rough food, never saw a woman or a book, undertook work to scare your city men up a tree and into a hole too easy, risked your life a dozen times a week in a tangle of logs, with the big river roaring behind just waiting to swallow you ”

“ Among the men gained currency a half-affectionate belief in “Orde's luck.”
After this happy fashion the drive went, until at last it entered the broad, deep, and navigable stretches of the river from Redding to the lake. Here, barring the accident of an extraordinary flood, the troubles were over. On the broad, placid bosom of the stream the logs would float. A crew, following, would do the easy work of sacking what logs would strand or eddy in the lazy current ”

“ Strong, powerful men were waiting at the riverside. Of these, two placed themselves on each side of a mule, and conducted him, rider, baggage, and all, through the deep part of the river, till they reached a great bank of gravel in the middle: when the whole of the travellers have arrived at this spot, they are again conducted in the same manner through the second arm of the stream; while the fellows, by pushing and shoving, keep the animal in the right track, and support him against the current. ”

“ The river scarcely ran at our passing it; when, all on a sudden, we heard a noise on the mountains above, louder than the loudest thunder. Our guides, upon this, flew to the baggage, and removed it to the top of the green hill; which was no sooner done, than we saw the river coming down in a stream about the height of a man, and breadth of the whole bed it used to occupy. ”

“ At our feet a stream was struggling with the multitude of rude rocks, which Nature, in one of her primeval convulsions, had flung here and there in masses into its current; sometimes uniting into irregular ledges, over which the water swept with impetuosity;—sometimes standing insulated in the stream, and increasing the energies of the river by their resistance;—sometimes breaking forward from the bank, and giving a bolder effect to its romantic outline. ”

“ Wandering in this aimless humour, I turned up a lane and found myself following the course of the bright little river. I passed first one and then another, then a third, several couples out love-making in the spring evening; and a consequent feeling of loneliness was beginning to grow upon me, when I came to a dam across the river, and a mill—a great, gaunt promontory of building,—half on dry ground and half arched over the stream. ”

“ There seems always a deep interest in exploring the source of a river. It is so wonderful to perceive, how from a noteless fountain, or a shallow brook, that broad bold stream should spring, on which navies ride. A fullness of thought springs up, as on visiting the birthplace of an illustrious man; not one who is remembered by blood shed upon the earth, but by deeds of benevolence, that cannot die. ”

“ We crawled down to the river bank and feeble folk were we, That Julie Claire from God-knows-where, and Barb-wire Bill and me. From shore to shore we heard the roar the heaving ice-floes make, And loud we laughed, and launched our raft, and followed in their wake. The river swept and seethed and leapt, and caught us in its stride; And on we hurled amid a world that crashed on every side. With sullen din the banks caved in; the shore-ice lanced the stream; The naked floes like spooks arose, all jiggling and agleam. ”

“ There were others further down the stream, and almost every day men passed either up or down the river, going from one set of houses to another. Finally we heard, and, before we had been there a week, saw with our own eyes, that only some ten miles further on, where our stream joined another and made a mighty river, there was a town, which had all sprung up since last winter, in which hundreds of men lived together. ”

“ Here the river, crazy with delight, seems to lose its head and goes meandering about, poking its nose up backwaters, creeping across meadows, flooding limpid shallows, mirroring oaks and willows upside down, surging up as if to sweep away a velvet-shorn lawn, only to pour itself—its united self—into an open-mouthed lock, and so on to a saner life in a level stretch beyond. ”

“ Even to us, with nineteenth-century science within reach, how mysterious a river seems, as, in the quiet gloaming or in the grey dawn, it glides along beneath overhanging trees, and how full of life it is when, swollen by rain, it rushes forward in a resistless flood! ”

“ They will dam the river to bless its valley. They will mutilate it, chop it into pools, so to speak, and cage its currents in canals and ditches to make them sing in the wilderness the song of plenty. ”

“ The river runs by, blood-like, through the snow—and, short as is the reach you can see through the flaky gloom, that short reach shows that all his course must be terrible—more and more terrible—as, gathering his streams like a chieftain his clan—ere long he will sweep shieling, and hut, and hamlet to the sea, undermining rocks, cutting mounds asunder, and blowing up bridges that explode into the air with a roar like that of cannon. ”

“ The mighty river, after its dizzy plunge at the great cataract, and mad tumultuous rush and eddy at the rapids and whirlpool, smoothes its rugged front and restrains its impetuous stream to the semblance of a placid old age after a wild and stormy life. ”

“ After taking my breakfast, I prepared to cross the river, which was here about a hundred yards wide, with a sluggish and deep current. The morning was sultry, and the thickets along the margin of the river teemed with insects and reptiles. By sounding the river with a pole, I found the stream too deep to be waded, and I therefore prepared to swim it. For this purpose, I stripped myself, and bound my clothes on the top of my knapsack, and my bag of meal on the top of my clothes; then drawing my knapsack close up to my head, I threw myself into the river. ”

“ Some youthful spring, perchance, still empties with tinkling music into the oldest river, even when it is falling into the sea, and we imagine that its music is distinguished by the river gods from the general lapse of the stream, and falls sweeter on their ears in proportion as it is nearer to the ocean. As the evaporations of the river feed thus these unsuspected springs which filter through its banks, so, perchance, our aspirations fall back again in springs on the margin of life's stream to refresh and purify it. ”

“ Winding its silvery length along, like a huge serpent crawling across the rolling prairies, is a clear and lazy river, its waters cold and inviting, coming from the icy fountains in the hills, and its banks flower-spangled and many-hued, while here and there a motte, or growth of timber, casts fantastic shadows across the stream. ”

“ The yellow and tepid river may float his scow, and cheer his eye with its reflections and its ripples, but the boatman quenches his thirst at this small rill alone. It is this purer and cooler element that chiefly sustains his life. The race will long survive that is thus discreet. ”

“ When full they are inevitably muddy, and when empty are very empty indeed; lifeless, and mute at the best, at the worst actually dry. The river of low-country birth acquires, in short, neither{2} character nor quality worthy of consideration till as a full-grown stream it can trace a shining coil in the valley, or reflect the shadow of spire, bridge or mill, of willow or poplar. ”

“ The deep river of speculative thought, with all its devious windings, with all its perilous shoals, whirlpools, and cataracts, will flow on for ever; and he must be a rustic, a barbarian indeed, who would loiter on its banks in the vain expectation of beholding the mighty flood at length run dry. ”

“ The River flows on, ever on; the hills watch, watch always; the birds sing, the sun shines grateful across your shoulders; the big trout and the little rise in predestined order, and make their predestined fight, and go their predestined way either to liberty or the creel; the pools and the rapids and the riffles slip by upstream as though they had been withdrawn rather than as though you had advanced.
Then suddenly the day has dropped its wings. The earth moves forward with a jar. Things are to be accomplished; things are being accomplished. The River is hurrying down to the Lake ”

“ We will not, however, anticipate but allow the events of our tale to flow on in their natural course like a mighty river, which, as it nears the ocean which is the goal of its destiny, sweeps onwards with it every little tributary stream and murmuring rivulet that has borrowed a brief existence from it. ”

“ The bending of the river shuts out the channel by which you have made your approach, giving the semblance of a lake, on whose surface vessels of every nation lie at anchor, some with the sails hung out to dry, gracefully drooping from the taper spars; others refitting again for sea, and loading the huge pine-trunks, moored as vast rafts to the stern. There were people everywhere; all was motion, life, and activity. Jolly-boats with twenty oars, man-of-war gigs bounding rapidly past them with eight ”

“ Here at our feet is another river, a little brook flowing in clear stream over the roadside sand, born of the last snow-drift and living till the sun drinks it up. And beside it are half a dozen happy boys, paddling with their bare feet, making mud dams, scraping new channels and short cuts for the stream. ”

“ And the river itself, which I had formerly seen so gay with all kinds of craft, watermen plying up and down constantly, and great sea-going ships coming and going, and lesser vessels crowding the noble stream, now seemed as desolate as the town that lay on its banks; only as we went on we came to many ships lying at anchor, by two and two; sometimes two or three lines of these ships lay in the breadth of the river, and as we threaded our way between them, men, women, and children came and looked over the sides at us. ”

“ Two or three hundred yards has been the limit of the view ahead, as the stream swerves gracefully from the slightest rise of land, and flows now east, now north, now east, now south again. So long a stretch of navigable water is not common on the Delectable River, and we make the most of it, moving leisurely, and prisoning the everchanging picture with the imperfect camera of the eyes. ”

“ The wide and wasteful river with its ceaseless rushing—the beautiful water-birds too, which abounded upon the islets and were so tame that we could come close up to them—the ineffable purity of the air—the solemn peacefulness of the untrodden region—could there be a more delightful and exhilarating combination? ”

“ Whether opening and shutting in a driving winter mist, or with their high rocky shoulders turned gloomily from the sun on a fine autumn morning, these inner sanctuaries and water-sheds where so many of our English rivers rise seem as if they gathered the silence of unlimited wastes and distilled its very essence. ”

“ The river was covered with boats and barges, festooned, canopied, and hung with banners and devices; and from sunrise music and singing conducted down the stream the gayly dressed populace—for those were the days when a man spent on his ruff and his hose and his russet coat as much as would feed and house [Pg 165] a family for a year; when the fine-figured ruffler with sables about his neck, corked slipper, trimmed buskin, and cloak of silk or damask furred, carried his all upon his back. ”

“ To him who loves the pages of human history, who listens to the voices of the world about him, who frequents the market and the thoroughfare, who lives in the study of time and its accidents rather than in the deeper emotions, in abstract speculation and spiritual contemplation, the RIVER addresses itself as his natural companion. ”