THE RIVER RISES.	107
of water before ; we were shaving stumpy shores, like that at the foot
of Madrid Bend, which I had always seen avoided before; we were
clattering through chutes like that of 82, where the opening at the
foot was an unbroken wall of timber till our nose was almost at the
very spot. Some of these chutes were utter solitudes. The dense,
untouched forest overhung both banks of the crooked little crack, and
one could believe that human creatures had never intruded there
before. The swinging grape-vines, the grassy nooks and vistas
glimpsed as we swept by, the flowering creepers waving their red
blossoms from the tops of dead trunks, and all the spendthrift richness
of the forest foliage, were wasted and thrown away there. The
chutes were lovely places to steer in; they were deep, except at the
head; the current was gentle; under the * points' the water was
absolutely dead, and the invisible banks so bluff that where the tender
willow thickets projected you could bury your boat's broadside in
them as you tore along, and then you seemed fairly to fly.
Behind other islands we found wretched little farms, and
wretcheder little log-cabins; there were crazy rail fences sticking a
foot or two above the water, with one or two jeans-clad, chills-
racked, yellow-faced male iniserables roosting on the top-rail, elbows
on knees, jaws in hands, grinding tobacco and discharging the result
at floating chips through crevices left by lost teeth; while the rest of
the family and the few faim-animals were huddled together in an
empty wood-flat riding at her moorings close at hand. In this flat-
boat the family would have to cook and eat and sleep for a lesser or
greater number of days (or possibly weeks), until the river should
fall two or three feet and let them get back to their log-cabin and
their chills again—chills being a merciful provision of an all-wise
Providence to enable them to take exercise without exertion. And
this sort of watery camping out was a thing which these people
were rather liable to be treated to a couple of times a year : by the
December rise out of the Ohio, and the June rise out of the Missis-
sippi. .And yet these were kindly dispensations, for they at least
enabled the poor things to rise from the dead now and then, and look
upon life when a steamboat went by. They appreciated the blessing,
too, for they spread their mouths and eyes wide open and made the
most of these occasions. Now what could these banished creatures