The wilderness is near as well as dear to every man.  Even the oldest villages are indebted to the border of wild wood which surrounds them, more than to the gardens of men.  There is something indescribably inspiriting and beautiful in the aspect of the forest skirting and occasionally jutting into the midst of new towns, which, like the sand-heaps of fresh fox-burrows, have sprung up in their midst.  The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature.  Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams.

We had found a safe harbor for our boat, and as the sun was setting carried up our furniture, and soon arranged our house upon the bank, and while the kettle steamed at the tent door, we chatted of distant friends and of the sights which we were to behold, and wondered which way the towns lay from us.  Our cocoa was soon boiled, and supper set upon our chest, and we lengthened out this meal, like old voyageurs, with our talk.  Meanwhile we spread the map on the ground, and read in the Gazetteer when the first settlers came here and got a township granted.  Then, when supper was done and we had written the journal of our voyage, we wrapped our buffaloes about us and lay down with our heads pillowed on our arms listening awhile to the distant baying of a dog, or the murmurs of the river, or to the wind, which had not gone to rest:—­

     The western wind came lumbering in,
     Bearing a faint Pacific din,
     Our evening mail, swift at the call
     Of its Postmaster General;
     Laden with news from Californ’,
     Whate’er transpired hath since morn,
     How wags the world by brier and brake
     From hence to Athabasca Lake;—­

or half awake and half asleep, dreaming of a star which glimmered through our cotton roof.  Perhaps at midnight one was awakened by a cricket shrilly singing on his shoulder, or by a hunting spider in his eye, and was lulled asleep again by some streamlet purling its way along at the bottom of a wooded and rocky ravine in our neighborhood.  It was pleasant to lie with our heads so low in the grass, and hear what a tinkling ever-busy laboratory it was.  A thousand little artisans beat on their anvils all night long.

Far in the night as we were falling asleep on the bank of the Merrimack, we heard some tyro beating a drum incessantly, in preparation for a country muster, as we learned, and we thought of the line,—­

     “When the drum beat at dead of night.”

We could have assured him that his beat would be answered, and the forces be mustered.  Fear not, thou drummer of the night, we too will be there.  And still he drummed on in the silence and the dark.  This stray sound from a far-off sphere came to our ears from time to time, far, sweet, and significant, and we listened with such an unprejudiced sense as if for the first time we heard at all.  No doubt