This incident would have delighted those modern
sages, who, in imitation of the sitting philosophers of ancient Ind,
prefer silence to speech, waiting to going, and scornfully smile in
answer to the motions of earnest life,
"Of itself will nothing come,
That ye must still be seeking?"
However, it seemed to me to-day, as formerly on these sublime occasions,
obvious that nothing would come, unless something would go; now, if we
had been as sublimely still as the pedler, his pins would have tarried
in the pack, and his pockets sustained an aching void of pence!
Passing through one of the fine, park-like woods, almost clear from
underbrush and carpeted with thick grasses and flowers, we met, (for it
was Sunday,) a little congregation just returning from their service,
which had been performed in a rude house in its midst. It had a sweet
and peaceful air, as if such words and thoughts were very dear to them.
The parents had with them all their little children; but we saw no old
people; that charm was wanting, which exists in such scenes in older
settlements, of seeing the silver bent in reverence beside the flaxen
head.
At Oregon, the beauty of the scene was of even a more sumptuous
character than at our former "stopping place." Here swelled the river in
its boldest course, interspersed by halcyon isles on which nature had
lavished all her prodigality in tree, vine, and flower, banked by noble
bluffs, three hundred feet high, their sharp ridges as exquisitely
definite as the edge of a shell; their summits adorned with those same
beautiful trees, and with buttresses of rich rock, crested with old
hemlocks, which wore a touching and antique grace amid the softer and
more luxuriant vegetation.
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