The Souhegan, though a rapid river, seemed to-day to have borrowed its character from the noon.

     Where gleaming fields of haze
     Meet the voyageur’s gaze,
     And above, the heated air
     Seems to make a river there,
     The pines stand up with pride
     By the Souhegan’s side,
     And the hemlock and the larch
     With their triumphal arch
     Are waving o’er its march
        To the sea. 
     No wind stirs its waves,
     But the spirits of the braves
        Hov’ring o’er,
     Whose antiquated graves
     Its still water laves
        On the shore. 
     With an Indian’s stealthy tread
     It goes sleeping in its bed,
     Without joy or grief,
     Or the rustle of a leaf,
     Without a ripple or a billow,
     Or the sigh of a willow,
     From the Lyndeboro’ hills
     To the Merrimack mills. 
     With a louder din
     Did its current begin,
     When melted the snow
     On the far mountain’s brow,
     And the drops came together
     In that rainy weather. 
     Experienced river,
     Hast thou flowed forever? 
     Souhegan soundeth old,
     But the half is not told,
     What names hast thou borne,
     In the ages far gone,
     When the Xanthus and Meander
     Commenced to wander,
     Ere the black bear haunted
        Thy red forest-floor,
     Or Nature had planted
        The pines by thy shore?

During the heat of the day, we rested on a large island a mile above the mouth of this river, pastured by a herd of cattle, with steep banks and scattered elms and oaks, and a sufficient channel for canal-boats on each side.  When we made a fire to boil some rice for our dinner, the flames spreading amid the dry grass, and the smoke curling silently upward and casting grotesque shadows on the ground, seemed phenomena of the noon, and we fancied that we progressed up the stream without effort, and as naturally as the wind and tide went down, not outraging the calm days by unworthy bustle or impatience.  The woods on the neighboring shore were alive with pigeons, which were moving south, looking for mast, but now, like ourselves, spending their noon in the shade.  We could hear the slight, wiry, winnowing sound of their wings as they changed their roosts from time to time, and their gentle and tremulous cooing.  They sojourned with us during the noontide, greater travellers far than we.  You may frequently discover a single pair sitting upon the lower branches of the white-pine in the depths of the wood, at this hour of the day, so silent and solitary, and with such a hermit-like appearance, as if they had never strayed beyond its skirts, while the acorn which was gathered in the forests of Maine is still undigested in their crops.  We obtained one of these handsome birds, which lingered too long upon its perch, and plucked