17-spring-第2节
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shore; and there was a smooth and warm sheet of water; with a muddy
bottom; such as the ducks love; within; and he thought it likely
that some would be along pretty soon。 After he had lain still there
about an hour he heard a low and seemingly very distant sound; but
singularly grand and impressive; unlike anything he had ever heard;
gradually swelling and increasing as if it would have a universal
and memorable ending; a sullen rush and roar; which seemed to him
all at once like the sound of a vast body of fowl coming in to
settle there; and; seizing his gun; he started up in haste and
excited; but he found; to his surprise; that the whole body of the
ice had started while he lay there; and drifted in to the shore; and
the sound he had heard was made by its edge grating on the shore
at first gently nibbled and crumbled off; but at length heaving up
and scattering its wrecks along the island to a considerable height
before it came to a standstill。
At length the sun's rays have attained the right angle; and warm
winds blow up mist and rain and melt the snowbanks; and the sun;
dispersing the mist; smiles on a checkered landscape of russet and
white smoking with incense; through which the traveller picks his
way from islet to islet; cheered by the music of a thousand tinkling
rills and rivulets whose veins are filled with the blood of winter
which they are bearing off。
Few phenomena gave me more delight than to observe the forms
which thawing sand and clay assume in flowing down the sides of a
deep cut on the railroad through which I passed on my way to the
village; a phenomenon not very common on so large a scale; though
the number of freshly exposed banks of the right material must have
been greatly multiplied since railroads were invented。 The material
was sand of every degree of fineness and of various rich colors;
commonly mixed with a little clay。 When the frost comes out in the
spring; and even in a thawing day in the winter; the sand begins to
flow down the slopes like lava; sometimes bursting out through the
snow and overflowing it where no sand was to be seen before。
Innumerable little streams overlap and interlace one with another;
exhibiting a sort of hybrid product; which obeys half way the law of
currents; and half way that of vegetation。 As it flows it takes the
forms of sappy leaves or vines; making heaps of pulpy sprays a foot
or more in depth; and resembling; as you look down on them; the
laciniated; lobed; and imbricated thalluses of some lichens; or you
are reminded of coral; of leopard's paws or birds' feet; of brains
or lungs or bowels; and excrements of all kinds。 It is a truly
grotesque vegetation; whose forms and color we see imitated in
bronze; a sort of architectural foliage more ancient and typical
than acanthus; chiccory; ivy; vine; or any vegetable leaves;
destined perhaps; under some circumstances; to become a puzzle to
future geologists。 The whole cut impressed me as if it were a cave
with its stalactites laid open to the light。 The various shades of
the sand are singularly rich and agreeable; embracing the different
iron colors; brown; gray; yellowish; and reddish。 When the flowing
mass reaches the drain at the foot of the bank it spreads out
flatter into strands; the separate streams losing their
semi…cylindrical form and gradually becoming more flat and broad;
running together as they are more moist; till they form an almost
flat sand; still variously and beautifully shaded; but in which you
can trace the original forms of vegetation; till at length; in the
water itself; they are converted into banks; like those formed off
the mouths of rivers; and the forms of vegetation are lost in the
ripple marks on the bottom。
The whole bank; which is from twenty to forty feet high; is
sometimes overlaid with a mass of this kind of foliage; or sandy
rupture; for a quarter of a mile on one or both sides; the produce
of one spring day。 What makes this sand foliage remarkable is its
springing into existence thus suddenly。 When I see on the one side
the inert bank for the sun acts on one side first and on the
other this luxuriant foliage; the creation of an hour; I am affected
as if in a peculiar sense I stood in the laboratory of the Artist
who made the world and me had come to where he was still at work;
sporting on this bank; and with excess of energy strewing his fresh
designs about。 I feel as if I were nearer to the vitals of the
globe; for this sandy overflow is something such a foliaceous mass
as the vitals of the animal body。 You find thus in the very sands
an anticipation of the vegetable leaf。 No wonder that the earth
expresses itself outwardly in leaves; it so labors with the idea
inwardly。 The atoms have already learned this law; and are pregnant
by it。 The overhanging leaf sees here its prototype。 Internally;
whether in the globe or animal body; it is a moist thick lobe; a
word especially applicable to the liver and lungs and the leaves of
fat (jnai; labor; lapsus; to flow or slip downward; a lapsing;
jiais; globus; lobe; globe; also lap; flap; and many other words);
externally a dry thin leaf; even as the f and v are a pressed and
dried b。 The radicals of lobe are lb; the soft mass of the b
(single lobed; or B; double lobed); with the liquid l behind it
pressing it forward。 In globe; glb; the guttural g adds to the
meaning the capacity of the throat。 The feathers and wings of birds
are still drier and thinner leaves。 Thus; also; you pass from the
lumpish grub in the earth to the airy and fluttering butterfly。 The
very globe continually transcends and translates itself; and becomes
winged in its orbit。 Even ice begins with delicate crystal leaves;
as if it had flowed into moulds which the fronds of waterplants have
impressed on the watery mirror。 The whole tree itself is but one
leaf; and rivers are still vaster leaves whose pulp is intervening
earth; and towns and cities are the ova of insects in their axils。
When the sun withdraws the sand ceases to flow; but in the
morning the streams will start once more and branch and branch again
into a myriad of others。 You here see perchance how blood…vessels
are formed。 If you look closely you observe that first there pushes
forward from the thawing mass a stream of softened sand with a
drop…like point; like the ball of the finger; feeling its way slowly
and blindly downward; until at last with more heat and moisture; as
the sun gets higher; the most fluid portion; in its effort to obey
the law to which the most inert also yields; separates from the
latter and forms for itself a meandering channel or artery within
that; in which is seen a little silvery stream glancing like
lightning from one stage of pulpy leaves or branches to another; and
ever and anon swallowed up in the sand。 It is wonderful how rapidly
yet perfectly the sand organizes itself as it flows; using the best
material its mass affords to form the sharp edges of its channel。
Such are the sources of rivers。 In the silicious matter which the
water deposits is perhaps the bony system; and in the still finer
soil and organic matter the fleshy fibre or cellular tissue。 What
is man but a mass of thawing clay? The ball of the human finger is
but a drop congealed。 The fingers and toes flow to their extent
from the thawing mass of the body。 Who knows what the human body
would expand and flow out to under a more genial heaven? Is not the
hand a spreading palm leaf with its lobes and veins? The ear may be
regarded; fancifully; as a lichen; umbilicaria; on the side of the
head; with its lobe or drop。 The lip labium; from labor (?)
laps or lapses from the sides of the cavernous mouth。 The nose is a
manifest congealed drop or stalactite。 The chin is a still larger
drop; the confluent dripping of the face。 The cheeks are a slide
from the brows into the valley of the face; opposed and diffused by
the cheek bones。 Each rounded lobe of the vegetable leaf; too; is a
thick and now loitering drop; larger or smaller; the lobes are the
fingers of the leaf; and as many lobes as it has; in so many
directions it tends to flow; and more heat or other genial
influences would have caused it to flow yet farther。
Thus it seemed that this one hillside illustrated the principle
of all the operations of Nature。 The Maker of this earth but
patented a leaf。 What Champollion will decipher this hieroglyphic
for us; that we may turn over a new leaf at last? This phenomenon
is more exhilarating to me than the luxuriance and fertility of
vineyards。 True; it is somewhat excrementitious in its character;
and there is no end to the heaps of liver; lights; and bowels; as if
the globe were turned wrong side outward; but this suggests at least
that Nature has some bowels; and there again is mother of humanity。
This is the frost coming out of the ground; this is Spring。 It
precede