brethren from the Christians. One of his oddities is, that, while
steadfastly maintaining an opinion that he is a very small and slow
eater, and the we, in common with other Yankees, eat immensely and fast,
he actually eats both faster and longer than we do, and devours, as
B---- avers, more victuals than both of us together.

* * * * *

_Saturday, July 8th._--Yesterday afternoon, a stroll with B---- up a
large brook, he fishing for trout, and I looking on. The brook runs
through a valley, on one side bordered by a high and precipitous bank;
on the other there is an interval, and then the bank rises upward and
upward into a high hill with gorges and ravines separating one summit
from another, and here and there are bare places, where the rain-streams
have washed away the grass. The brook is bestrewn with stones, some
bare, some partially moss-grown, and sometimes so huge as--once at
least--to occupy almost the whole breadth of the current. Amongst these
the stream brawls, only that this word does not express its good-natured
voice, and "murmur" is too quite. It sings along, sometimes smooth, with
the pebbles visible beneath, sometimes rushing dark and swift, eddying
and whitening past some rock, or underneath the hither or the farther
bank; and at these places B----cast his line, and sometimes drew out a
trout, small, not more than five or six inches long. The farther we went
up the brook, the wilder it grew. The opposite bank was covered with
pines and hemlocks, ascending high upwards, black and solemn. One knew
that there must be almost a precipice behind, yet we could not see it.
At the foot you could spy, a little way within the darksome shade, the
roots and branches of the trees; but soon all sight was obstructed
amidst the trunks. On the hither side, at first the bank was bare, then
fringed with alder-bushes, bending and dipping into the stream, which,
farther on brawled through the midst of a forest of maple, beech, and
other trees, its course growing wilder and wilder as we proceeded. For a
considerable distance there was a causeway, built long ago of logs, to
drag lumber upon; it was now decayed and rotten, a red decay, sometimes
sunken down in the midst, here and there a knotty trunk stretching
across, apparently sound. The sun being now low towards the west, a
pleasant gloom and brightness were diffused through the forest, spots of
brightness scattered upon the branches, or th