The river, broadening as it debouched through many channels into a lordly bay, seemed to him the ULTIMA THULE of his journeyings.

Unyoking his oxen on the edge of the luxuriant meadows which blended with scarcely any line of demarcation into the great stream itself, he found the prospect "good" according to his lights and prairial experiences, and, converting his halted wagon into a temporary cabin, he resolved to rest here and "settle." There was little difficulty in so doing.

The cultivated clearings he had passed were few and far between; the land would be his by discovery and occupation; his habits of loneliness and self-reliance made him independent of neighbors.

He took his first meal in his new solitude under a spreading willow, but so near his natural boundary that the waters gurgled and oozed in the reeds but a few feet from him.

The sun sank, deepening the gold of the river until it might have been the stream of Pactolus itself.