A boat should have a sort of life and independence of its own. It is a sort of amphibious animal, a creature of two elements, a fish to swim and a bird to fly, related by one half of its structure to some swift and shapely fish and by the other to some strong-winged and graceful bird. The fins of the fish will tell where to set the oars, and the tail give some hint for the form and position of the rudder. And so may we learn where there should be the greatest breadth of beam and depth in the hold. The bird will show how to rig and trim the sails, and what form to give to the prow, that it may balance the boat and divide the air and water best. The boat took to the water; from of old there had been a tacit league struck between these two, and now it gladly availed itself of the old law that the heavier shall float the lighter. Two masts we had provided, one to serve for a tent-pole at night, and likewise other slender poles, that we might exchange the tedium of rowing for poling in shallow reaches. At night we lay on a buffalo-skin under a tent of drilled cotton eight feet high and as many in diameter, which effectually defended from dampness, so short a step is it from tiled roofs to drilled cotton, from carpeted floors to a buffalo-skin.[128] There were a few berries left still on the hills, hanging with brave content by the slenderest threads.[129] As the night stole over, such a freshness stole across the meadow that every blade of cut-grass seemed to teem with life.[130] We stole noiselessly down the stream, occasionally driving a pickerel from the covert of the pads, or a bream from her nest, and the small green bittern would now and then sail away on sluggish wings from some recess of the shore.[131] With its patient study by rocks and sandy capes, has it wrested the whole of her secret from Nature yet? It has looked out from its dull eye for so long, standing on one leg, on moon and stars sparkling through silence and dark, and now what a rich experience is its! What says it of stagnant pools, and reeds, and damp night fogs? It would be worth while to look in the eye which has been open and seeing at such hours and in such solitudes. When I behold that dull yellowish green, I wonder if my own soul is not a bright, invisible green. I would fain lay my eye side by side with its and learn of it.[132] _End of my Journal of 546 pages._[133] _June 14._ Λόγος τοῦ ἔργου ἄνευ ὕλης.—_Aristotle's definition of art._[134] Ὅ χρή σε νοεῖν νόου ἄνθει.—_Chaldaic Oracles._ Ἐγώ εἰμι πᾶν τὸ γεγονὸν, καὶ ὂν, καὶ ἐσόμενον, καὶ τὸν ἐμὸν πέπλον οὐδείς πω θνητὸς ἀπεκάλυψεν.—_Inscription upon the temple at Sais._ Plotinus aimed at ἐπαφήν, and παρουσίαν ἐπιστήμης κρείττονα, and τὸ ἑαυτὸν κέντρον τῷ οἷον πάντων κέντρῳ συνάπτειν. Μέλλει τὸ Θεῖον δ' ἐστὶ τοιοῦτον φύσει.—EURIPIDES in _Orestes_. "The right Reason is in part divine, in part human; the second can be expressed, but no language can translate the first."—EMPEDOCLES.