“It was so musing that I found myself approaching a high tangle of reeds, through which a narrow path wound and was lost to view. On this path I engaged. The reeds on either side were so tall as to hide the farther landscape, and so closely set that one could see but a few yards into their mass.
“After perhaps an hour of such journeying my mule and I came out suddenly upon the firm bank of a broad and shallow river whose noise and coolness, swift current and clear stream were a delight after so many hours of arid travel. There did I sit me down. There did I unload and hobble my patient companion. There did we drink of the good water, and there did the mule eat plentifully of cool grass. But I made no meal, for the oatcakes and cheese which I had taken from the common table of the poor in the Pilgrims’ camp were now exhausted.
“It was this circumstance which made me a little anxious for the day. I looked about me, stood up on the highest part of the bank, and then saw that the shore opposite had been artificially heightened to form a regular levee or embankment, beyond which the flat country was hidden. I determined to seek this point of advantage for a view. I reloaded my mule, carefully forded the stream in its various branches and climbed to the farther shore.
“At the summit of the embankment, which was evidently of recent construction, my effort was well rewarded, for I saw a sight that set at rest all anxiety for food and shelter.
“The embankment on which I stood swept round in a horseshoe shape—not everywhere finished, but everywhere traced out. It thus enclosed a peninsula, bounded by the river: a space of marshy ground full of stagnant pools and water-grasses. Three or four furlongs away, cutting across the whole neck of the horseshoe of swamp and stretching from the river to the river again, ran the well-built stone wall of a strong town, the flat roofs and low domes of which (it had no tower or minaret) made a ridge of snow-white against the intense blue of the sky. Far away beyond were distant mountains, purple in the heat.
“Scattered over the swamp itself and on the unfinished sections of the embankment were groups of labourers working with spades and barrows, and, overseeing them, nearby to me, a young man of energetic carriage, well dressed in a brown garment, rich, but suitable to his work and girded. He had no sandals, for they would have impeded him on such ground; he bore an inlaid ebon staff with an ivory hand-grasp, and was occupied, when I first saw him, in shouting a new order to a distant group of diggers. His back was towards me. He had not seen my approach.
“As he turned, to proceed along the levee towards another group, he caught sight of my mule and myself and at once started to run, pouring out when he had reached us a mixed flood of greetings, warnings, and varied exclamations.
“ ‘We were to beware of the embankment! It was but just raised and was not yet stable! Was it not a fine work? Half-completed, as we saw it, it had taken but three months. Did I notice how thoroughly it had cut off the river? Had I not found it firm as I came up it from the bank? Would I be pleased to go carefully lest the edge should be injured? … and so on.
“It was clear from such a salutation with what sort of man I had to deal. Here was an enthusiast. It is a character of the utmost service to the man of affairs. He was of that sort which is labelled in our indexes as ‘The constructive wild man,’ and happy is the captain of industry who chances upon such a one. He was perhaps thirty years of age, strong, short in stature, very dark in complexion, with steady but eager eyes, and such an expression of grasp, resolution, and immediate decision as should lead to a fortune, not perhaps for himself but at least for anyone who knew how to use him; for he was as keen as a boy upon the matter occupying him, and therefore careless for the moment of all other things.
“I answered him with a mixture of sympathy, caution, and gravity, which I was glad to see impressed him. I praised his work vaguely but courteously enough. I asked the names of the river and the town, and also his own. All these he gave me; and then asked me whether I would not share the midday meal he was about to take. I said I should be overjoyed to do so: and so I was, for I saw the prospect of refreshment at the charges of another, an opportunity, which remember—my dear nephews—is never to be neglected by men of clear commercial judgment.
“He led me, followed by the mule, to a shady place where a few trees stood on a drier part of the enclosed plain. There we found excellent meats, and there we reclined for above an hour, during the whole of which he did not cease to overwhelm me with description, praise, and prospect of the great enterprise in which he was wholly absorbed.
“This horseshoe bend, he told me, outside his native town, had never been utilized. It was flooded in the spring when
