SKETCHES BY THE WAY. 291
good. Afterward I saw him several times below daring the trip;
but he was cold—would not look at me. Idiot, if he had not been
in such a sweat to play his witless practical joke upon me, in the
beginning, I would have persuaded his thoughts into some other
direction, and saved him from committing that wanton and silly
impoliteness.
I had myself called with the four o'clock watch, mornings, for
one cannot see too many summer sunrises on the Mississippi. They
are enchanting. Eirst, there is the eloquence of silence; for a deep
hush broods everywhere. Next, there is the haunting sense of lone-
liness, isolation, remoteness from the worry and bustle of the world.
The dawn creeps in stealthily; the solid walls of black forest soften
to grey, and vast stretches of the river open up and reveal themselvesj
the water is glass-smooth, gives off spectral little wreaths of white
mist, there is not the faintest breath of wind, nor stir of leaf; the
tranquillity is profound and infinitely satisfying. Then, a bird pipes
up, another follows, and soon the pipings develope into a jubilant riot
of music. You see none of the birds ; you simply move through an
atmosphere of song which seems to sing itsel£ When the light has
become a little stronger, you have one of the fairest and softest
pictures imaginable. You have the intense green of the massed and
crowded foliage near by; you see it paling shade by shade in front
of you; upon the next projecting cape, a mile off or more, the tint
has lightened to the tender young green of spring; the cape beyond
that one has almost lost colour, and the furthest one, rnftaa away
under the horizon, sleeps upon the water a mere dim vapour, and
hardly separable from the sky above it and about it. And all tMg
stretch of river is a mirror, and you have the shadowy reflections of
the leafage and the curving shores and the receding capes pictured in
it. "Well, that is all beautiful; soft and rich and beautiful; and
when the sun gets well up, and distributes a pink flush here and a
powder of gold yonder and a purple haze where it will yield the best
effect, you grant that you have seen something that is worth re-
membering.
We had the Kentucky Bend country in the early morning—scene
of a strange and tragic accident in the old times. Captain Poe had a
small stern-wheel boat, for years the home of himself and his wife.