450 ZZF^ ON THE MISSISSIPPI.
We made Natchez (three hundred miles) in twenty-two hours
and a half—much the swiftest passage I have ever made over that
piece of water.
The next morning I came on with the four o'clock watch, and
saw Ritchie successfully run half a dozen crossings in a fog, using
for his guidance the marked chart devised and patented by Bkby
and himself. This sufficiently evidenced the great value of the chart.
By and by, when the fog began to dear off, I noticed that the
reflection of a tree in the smooth water of an overflowed bank, six
hundred yards away, was stronger and blacker than the ghostly tree
itself. The faint spectral trees, dimly glimpsed through the shredding
fog, were very pretty things to see.
We had a heavy thunder-storm at Natchez, another at Yicksburg,
and still another about fifty miles below Memphis. They had an
old-fashioned energy which had long been unfamiliar to me. This third
storm was accompanied by a raging wind. We tied up to the bank
when we saw the tempest coming, and everybody left the pilot-house
but me. The wind bent the young trees down, exposing the pale
underside of the leaves; and gust after gust followed, in quick soo-
cession, thrashing the branches violently up and down, and to this
side and that, and creating swift waves of alternating green and
white according to the side of the leaf that was exposed, and these
waves raced after each other as do their kind over a wind-tossed field
of oats. No colour that was visible anywhere was quite natural—all
tints were charged with a leaden tinge from the solid cloud-bank
overhead. The river was leaden; all distances the same; and em
the far-reaching ranks of combing white-caps were dully shaded hy
the dark, rich atmosphere through which their swarming legions
inarched. The thunder-peals were constant and deafening; explosion
followed explosion with but inconsequential intervals between, and
the reports grew steadily sharper and higher-keyed, and more trying
to the ear; the lightning was as diligent as the thunder, and pro-
duced effects which enchanted the eye and sent electric ecstasies if
mixed delight and apprehension shivering along every nerve in the
body in unintermittenfr procession. The rain poured down in *.rn*mg
volume; the ear-splitting thunder-peals broke nearer and nearer;
the wind increased in fury and b«M$an to wrench off boughs and tree*