WATER-MARKS. 
149 
on gyromias and moose-flowers, sarsaparillas and cahoshes, which 
bloomed here for ages, when the eye of the red man alone be- 
held them. Even within the limits of the village spots may still 
be found on the bank of the river, which are yet unbroken by the 
plough, where the trailing arbutus, and squirrel-cups, and May- 
wings tell us so every spring ; in older regions, these children of 
the forest would long since have vanished from all the meadows 
and villages, for the plough would have passed a thousand times 
over every rood of such ground. 
The forest flowers, the gray stumps in our fields, and the heav- 
ing surface of our wild hill-sides, are not, however, the only way- 
marks to tell the brief course of cultivation about us. These 
speak of the fallen forest; but here, as elsewhere, the waters 
have also left their impression on the face of the earth, and in 
these new lands the marks of their passage is seen more clearly 
than in older countries. They are still, in many places, sharp 
and distinct, as though fresh from the workman's hand. Our 
valleys are filled with these traces of water- work ; the most care- 
less observer must often be struck with their peculiar features, 
and it appears remarkable that here, at an elevation so much 
above the great western lakes, upon this dividing ridge, at the 
very fountain head of a stream, running several hundred miles 
to the sea, these lines are as frequent and as boldly marked as 
though they lay in a low country subject to floods. Large 
mounds rise like islands from the fields, their banks still sharply 
cut ; in other spots a depressed meadow is found below the level 
of the surrounding country, looking like a drained lake, enclosed 
within banks as plainly marked as the works of a fortification ; a 
shrunken brook, perhaps, running to-day where a river flowed at 
