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The low chirping of the wood-birds, the tiny barkings of the out-starting squirrels, the hurrying footsteps of the night-prowling animals, on their way to their coverts, on the land; and the leaping up of fish, the flapping of the wings of ducks, and the far-heard, trumpet-toned cry of the great northern diver, on the water, those unfailing concomitants of approaching day, in the watered wilderness, early aroused the next morning our little band of soundly-sleeping hunters from their woodsmen's feather beds, the soft, elastic boughs of the health-giving hemlock, and put them on the stir in building their fire, and making preparations for their breakfast.
What music can there be in that long, piercing, far-heard note of the first meadowlark in spring to any but a native, or in the "o-ka-lee" of the red-shouldered starling as he rests upon the willows in March?
"Nay, nay," she said, "I have a happier plan For where at Portsmouth, on the embattled tides The ships of war step out with thundering prow And shake their stormy sides In yonder place of arms, whose gaunt sea wall Flings to the clouds the far-heard bugle call He shall be born amid the drums and guns, He shall be born among my fighting sons, Perhaps the greatest warrior of them all."
Tongue of spice and salt and wine and honey, Magic, mystic, sweet, intemperate tongue! Flower of lavish love and lyric fury, Mixed on lips forever rash and young, Wildly droll and quaintly tender; Hark, the hidden melodies of Elfland In the under, in the over tone; Clear faint wailing of the far-heard banshee, Out of lands where never the sun shone, Calling doom on chieftains dying....
It has in it something expressing the wildness and loneliness of these lovely hills. Its rhythm suggests the sigh of the wind among mountain pines or the continuous and far-heard melody of distant waterfalls. This famous peak is everything that a New Hampshire mountain should be. It bears the name of an Indian chief. It is invested with traditional and poetic interest.
When a steamer came in sight, or announced its approach by the far-heard sound of its beating paddles, it brought with it a few moments of almost awful responsibility; but I found that the presence of danger and duty together, instead of making me feel flurried, composed my nerves, and enabled me to concentrate my whole attention on getting the head of the boat as nearly as possible at right angles with the waves from the paddles; for Percivale had told me that if one of any size struck us on the side, it would most probably capsize us.
Into the quiet room, quenching the rhythm of the Connecticut clock, floats an uproar of delighted voices, a medley of stirring foreign sounds, an echo of far-heard music of a strangely alien cadence. But the dusk is falling, and the unsophisticated young person closes the book wearily and wanders to the window. The dusk is falling on the beaten snow.
There was no sound except the rhythmical murmur of the pines and far-heard sound of waterfalls. Presently a night hawk rose from a wooded ridge and uttered her weird cry, then a bat darted "hither and thither, as if tethered by invisible strings." Then began the real serenade of the evening. Down in the waters of Lake Waco the frogs broke the silence.
On the safe, dry sands they turned, and as they looked back, the Heron slid forward into the ocean and quenched her fires with a hiss that was like a far-heard whisper of the sea. Meanwhile the shouts of the mutineers rang louder and louder as their rafts edged in toward the land, so the three turned again and made directly inland.
When night arrived, "a death-like silence," says Major Mitchell, "prevailed along the banks of the river; no far-heard voices of natives at their fires broke, as before, the stillness of the night, while a painful sympathy for the child bereft of its parent, and anticipations of the probable consequences to us, cast a melancholy gloom over the scene.
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