TRAVELLING INCOGNITO*

227

bags. A strange place for such folk! Ko carriage was waiting.
The party moved off as if they had not expected any, and struck
down a winding country road afoot.

But the mystery was explained when we got under way again j
for these people were evidently
bound for a large town which
lay shut in behind a tow-head
(i.e., new island) a couple
of miles below this landing.
I couldn't remember that
town; I couldn't place it,
couldn't call its name. So
I lost part of my temper.
I suspected that it might be
St. Genevieve — and so it
proved to be. Observe what
this eccentric river had been
about: it had built up this
huge useless tow-head directly
in front of this town, cut
off its river communications^
fenced it away completely, and
made a ' country' town of it.
It is a fine old place, too, and
deserved a better fate. It was
settled by the French, and is
a relic of a time when one
could travel from the mouths

of the Mississippi to Quebec and be on French territory and tinder
French rule all the way.

Presently I ascended to the hurricane deck and cast a longin
glance toward the pilot-touse.

A CLOSE INSPECTION.