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CHAPTER XXYIL
SOME IMPORTED ARTICLES,
WE met two steamboats at New Madrid. Two steamboats in sight
at once ! an infrequent spectacle now in the lonesome Mississippi.
The loneliness of this solemn, stupendous flood is impressive—and
depressing. League after league, and still league after league, it
pours its chocolate tide along, between its solid forest walls, its
almost untenanted shores, with seldom a «A.il or a moving object of
any kind tc disturb tlie surface and break the monotony of the blank,
watery solitude; and so the day goes, the night comes, and again
the day—and still the same, night after night and day after day—
majestic, unchanging sameness of serenity, repose, tranquillity,
lethargy, vacancy—symbol of eternity, realisation of the heaven
pictured by priest and prophet, and longed for by the good and
thoughtless!
Immediately after the war of 1812, tourists began to come to
America, from England; scattering ones at first, then a sort of
procession of them—a procession which kept tip its plodding, patient
march through the land during many, many years. Each tourist
took notes, and went home and published a book—a book which was
usually calm, truthful, reasonable, kind ; but which seemed just the
reverse to our tender-footed progenitors. A glance at these tourist-
books shows us that in certain of its aspects the Mississippi has
undergone no change since those strangers viidted it, but remains
to-day about as it was then. The emotions produced in those foreign
breasts by these aspects were not all formed on one pattern, of course;
they had to be various, along at first, because the earlier tonnes
were obliged to originate their emotions, whereas in older countries