92 LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI*
never one that you could leave unread without loss, never one that
you would want to skip, thinking you could find higher enjoyment in
some other thing. There never was so wonderful a book written
by man; never one whose interest was so absorbing, so -unflagging, so
sparklingly renewed with every re-perusal. The passenger who could
not read it was charmed with a peculiar sort of faint dimple on
its surface (on the rare occasions when he did not overlook it alto-
gether) ; but to the pilot that was an italicized passage; indeed, it
was more than that, it was a legend of the largest capitals, with a
string of shouting exclamation points at the end of it; for it meant
that a wreck or a rock was buried there that could tear the life
out of the strongest vessel that ever floated. It is the faintest and
simplest expression the water ever makes, and the most hideous
to a pilot's eye. In truth, the passenger who could not read this
book saw nothing but all manner of pretty pictures in it painted by
the sun and shaded by the clouds, whereas to the trained eye these
were not pictures at all, but the grimmest and most dead-earnest of
reading-matter.
Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had
come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as
familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a
valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost
something which could never be restored to me while I lived.
All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic
river! I still keep in mind a certain wonderful sunset which I
witnessed when steamboating was new to me. A broad expanse of
the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance the red hue
brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came floating,
black and conspicuous ; in one place a long, slanting mark lay sparkling
upon the water; in another the surface was broken by boiling,
tumbling rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal; where the ruddy
flush, was faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful
circles and radiating lines, ever BO delicately traced; the shore on our
left was densely wooded, and the sombre shadow that fell from this
forest was broken in one place by a long, rufiled trail that shone like
silver; and high above the forest wall a clean-stemmed dead tree
waved a single leafy bough that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed