the pipings develop into a jubilant riot of music.
You see none of the birds; you simply move through an atmosphere of song
which seems to sing itself. 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
color, and the furthest one, miles away under the horizon, sleeps upon
the water a mere dim vapor, and hardly separable from the sky above it
and about it. And all this 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 remembering.

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. One night
the boat struck a snag in the head of Kentucky Bend, and sank with
astonishing suddenness; water already well above the cabin floor when
the captain got aft. So he cut into his wife's state-room from above
with an ax; she was asleep in the upper berth, the roof a flimsier one
than was supposed; the first blow crashed down through the rotten boards
and clove her skull.

This bend is all filled up now--result of a cut-off; and the same agent
has taken the great and once much-frequented Walnut Bend, and set it
away back in a solitude far from the accustomed track of passing
steamers.

Helena we visited, and also a town I had not heard of before, it being
of recent birth--Arkansas City. It was born of a railway; the Little
Rock, Mississippi River and Texas Railroad touches the river there. We
asked a passenger who belonged there what sort of a place it was.
'Well,' said he, after considering, and with the air of one who wishes
to take time and be accurate, 'It's a hell of a place.' A description
which was photographic for exactness. There were several rows and
clusters of shabby frame-houses, and a supply of mud suff