Hills of the Shatemuc

by Susan Warner

"No!" said Rufus.

"We are going to Point Bluff, Winnie," said Winthrop stopping to kiss her, — "and I am afraid you would roll off on one side while I was pulling up a fish on the other."

She stood still, and looked after her two brothers as they went down to the water.

The house stood in a tiny little valley, a little basin in the rocks, girdled about on all sides with low craggy heights covered with evergreens. On all sides but one. To the south the view opened full upon the river, a sharp angle of which lay there in a nook like a mountain lake; its further course hid behind a headland of the western shore; and only the bend and a little bit before the bend could be seen from the valley. The level spot about the house gave perhaps half an acre of good garden ground; from the very edge of that, the grey rising ledges of granite and rank greensward between held their undisputed domain. There the wild roses planted themselves; there many a flourishing sweet-briar flaunted in native gracefulness, or climbed up and hung about an old cedar as if like a wilful child determined that only itself should be seen. Nature grew them and nature trained them; and sweet wreaths, fluttering in the wind, gently warned the passer-by that nature alone had to do there. Cedars, as soon as the bottom land was cleared, stood the denizens of the soil on every side, lifting their soft heads into the sky. Little else was to be seen. Here and there, a little further off, the lighter green of an oak shewed itself, or the tufts of a yellow pine; but near at hand the cedars held the ground, thick pyramids or cones of green, from the very soil, smooth and tapered as if a shears had been there; but only nature had managed it. They hid all else that they could; but the grey rocks peeped under, and peeped through, and here and there broke their ranks with a huge wall or ledge of granite, where no tree could stand. The cedars had climbed round to the top and went on again above the ledge, more mingled there with deciduous trees, and losing the exceeding beauty of their supremacy in the valley. In the valley it was not unshared; for the Virginia creeper and cat-briar mounted and flung their arms about them, and the wild grape-vines took wild possession; and in the day of their glory they challenged the bystander to admire anything without them. But the day of their glory was not now; it came when Autumn called them to shew themselves; and Autumn's messenger was far off. The cedars had it, and the roses, and the eglantine, under Summer's rule.

It was in the prime of summer when the two fishers went down to their boat. The valley level was but a few feet above the river; on that side, with a more scattering growth of cedars, the rocks and the greensward gently let themselves down to the edge of the water. The little dory was moored between two uprising heads of granite just off the shore. Stepping from rock to rock the brothers reached her. Rufus placed himself in the stern with the fishing tackle, and Winthrop pushed off.

There was not a stir in the air; there was not a ripple on the water, except those which the oars made, and the long widening mark of disturbance the little boat left behind it. Still — still, — surely it was Summer's siesta; the very birds were still; but it was not the oppressive rest before a thunderstorm, only the pleasant hush of a summer's day. The very air seemed blue — blue against the mountains, and kept back the sun's fierceness with its light shield; and even the eye was bid to rest, the distant landscape was so hidden under the same blue.

No distant landscape was to be seen, until they had rowed for several minutes. Winthrop had turned to the north and was coasting the promontory edge, which in that direction stretched along for more than a quarter of a mile. It stretched west as well as north, and the river's course beyond it was in a north-easterly line; so that keeping close under the shore as they were, the up view could not be had till the point was turned. First they passed the rock-bound shore which fenced in the home valley; then for a space the rocks and the heights fell back and several acres of arable ground edged the river, cut in two by a small belt of woods. These acres were not used except for grazing cattle; the first field was occupied with a grove of cylindrical cedars; in the second a soft growth of young pines sloped up towards the height; the ground there rising fast to a very bluff and precipitous range which ended the promontory, and pushed the river boldly into a curve, as abrupt almost as the one it took in an opposite direction a quarter of a mile below. Here the shore was bold and beautiful. The sheer rock sprang up two hundred feet from the very bosom of the river, a smooth perpendicular wall; sometimes broken with a fissure and an out-jutting ledge, in other parts only roughened with lichens; then breaking away into a more irregular and wood-lined shore; but with this variety keeping its bold front to the river for many an oar's length. Probably as bold and more deep below the surface, for in this place was the strength of the channel. The down tides rushed by here furiously; but it was still water now, and the little boat went smoothly and quietly on, the sound of the oars echoing back in sharp quick return from the rock. It was all that was heard; the silence had made those in the boat silent; nothing but the dip of the oars and that quick mockery of the rowlocks from the wall said that anything was moving.

But as they crept thus along the foot of the precipice, the other shore was unfolding itself. One huge mountain had been all along in sight, over against them, raising its towering head straight up some fourteen hundred feet from the water's edge; green, in the thick luxuriance of summer's clothing, except where here and there a blank precipice of many hundred feet shewed the solid stone. Now the fellow mountain, close beyond, came rapidly in view, and, as the point of the promontory was gained, the whole broad north scene opened upon the eye. Two hills of equal height on the east shore looked over the river at their neighbours. Above them, on both shores, the land fell, and at the distance of about eight miles curved round to the east in an amphitheatre of low hills. There the river formed a sort of inland sea, and from thence swept down queen-like between its royal handmaids on the right hand and on the left, till it reached the promontory point. This low distant shore and water was now masked with blue, and only the nearer highlands shewed under the mask their fine outlines, and the Shatemuc its smooth face.

At the point of the promontory the rocky wall broke down to a low easy shore, which stretched off easterly in a straight line for half a mile, to the bottom of what was called the north bay. Just beyond the point, a rounded mass of granite pushed itself into the water out of reach of the trees and shewed itself summer and winter barefacedly. This rock was known at certain states of the tide to be in the way of the white mackerel. Winthrop made fast his little skiff between it and the shore, and climbing upon the rock, he and Rufus sat down and fell to work; for to play they had not come hither, but to catch their supper.

The spirit of silence seemed to have possessed them both, for with very few words they left the boat and took their places, and with no words at all for some time the hooks were baited and the lines thrown. Profound stillness — and then the flutter of a poor little fish as he struggled out of his element, or the stir made by one of the fishers in reaching after the bait-basket — and then all was still again. The lines drooped motionless in the water; the eyes of the fishers wandered off to the distant blue, and then came back to their bobbing corks. Thinking, both the young men undoubtedly were, for it could not have been the mackerel that called such grave contemplation into their faces.