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Our Old FeuillageAlways our old feuillage! Always Florida’s green peninsula—always the priceless delta of Louisiana—always the cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas, Always California’s golden hills and hollows, and the silver mountains of New Mexico—always soft-breath’d Cuba, Always the vast slope drain’d by the Southern sea, inseparable with the slopes drain’d by the Eastern and Western seas, The area the eighty-third year of these States, the three and a half millions of square miles, The eighteen thousand miles of sea-coast and bay-coast on the main, the thirty thousand miles of river navigation, The seven millions of distinct families and the same number of dwellings— always these, and more, branching forth into numberless branches, Always the free range and diversity—always the continent of Democracy; Always the prairies, pastures, forests, vast cities, travelers, Kanada, the snows; Always these compact lands tied at the hips with the belt stringing the huge oval lakes; Always the West with strong native persons, the increasing density there, the habitans, friendly, threatening, ironical, scorning invaders; All sights, South, North, East—all deeds, promiscuously done at all times, All characters, movements, growths, a few noticed, myriads unnoticed, Through Mannahatta’s streets I walking, these things gathering, On interior rivers by night in the glare of pine knots, steamboats wooding up, Sunlight by day on the valley of the Susquehanna, and on the valleys of the Potomac and Rappahannock, and the valleys of the Roanoke and Delaware, In their northerly wilds beasts of prey haunting the Adirondacks the hills, or lapping the Saginaw waters to drink, In a lonesome inlet a sheldrake lost from the flock, sitting on the water rocking silently, In farmers’ barns oxen in the stable, their harvest labor done, they rest standing, they are too tired, Afar on arctic ice the she-walrus lying drowsily while her cubs play around, The hawk sailing where men have not yet sail’d, the farthest polar sea, ripply, crystalline, open, beyond the floes, White drift spooning ahead where the ship in the tempest dashes, On solid land what is done in cities as the bells strike midnight together, In primitive woods the sounds there also sounding, the howl of the wolf, the scream of the panther, and the hoarse bellow of the elk, In winter beneath the hard blue ice of Moosehead lake, in summer visible through the clear waters, the great trout swimming, In lower latitudes in warmer air in the Carolinas the large black buzzard floating slowly high beyond the tree tops, Below, the red cedar festoon’d with tylandria, the pines and cypresses growing out of the white sand that spreads far and flat, Rude boats descending the big Pedee, climbing plants, parasites with color’d flowers and berries enveloping huge trees, The waving drapery on the live-oak trailing long and low, noiselessly waved by the wind, The camp of Georgia wagoners just after dark, the supper-fires and the cooking and eating by whites and negroes, Thirty or forty great wagons, the mules, cattle, horses, feeding from troughs, The shadows, gleams, up under the leaves of the old sycamore-trees, the flames with the black smoke from the pitch-pine curling and rising; Southern fishermen fishing, the sounds and inlets of North Carolina’s coast, the shad-fishery and the herring-fishery, the large sweep-seines, the windlasses on shore work’d by horses, the clearing, curing, and packing-houses; Deep in the forest in piney woods turpentine dropping from the incisions in the trees, there are the turpentine works, There are the negroes at work in good health, the ground in all directions is cover’d with pine straw; In Tennessee and Kentucky slaves busy in the coalings, at the forge, by the furnace-blaze, or at the corn-shucking, In Virginia, the planter’s son returning after a long absence, joyfully welcom’d and kiss’d by the aged mulatto nurse, On rivers boatmen safely moor’d at nightfall in their boats under shelter of high banks, Some of the younger men dance to the sound of the banjo or fiddle, others sit on the gunwale smoking and talking; Late in the afternoon the mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing in the Great Dismal Swamp, There are the greenish waters, the resinous odor, the plenteous moss, the cypress-tree, and the juniper-tree; Northward, young men of Mannahatta, the target company from an excursion returning home at evening, the musket-muzzles all bear bunches of flowers presented by women; Children at play, or on his father’s lap a young boy fallen asleep, (how his lips move!...
