topped navigating and tied up--nearly always in
the dead water under a towhead; and then cut young cottonwoods and
willows, and hid the raft with them. Then we set out the lines. Next we
slid into the river and had a swim, so as to freshen up and cool off;
then we set down on the sandy bottom where the water was about knee deep,
and watched the daylight come. Not a sound anywheres--perfectly still
--just like the whole world was asleep, only sometimes the bullfrogs
a-cluttering, maybe. The first thing to see, looking away over the water,
was a kind of dull line--that was the woods on t'other side; you couldn't
make nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness
spreading around; then the river softened up away off, and warn't black
any more, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting along ever
so far away--trading scows, and such things; and long black streaks
--rafts; sometimes you could hear a sweep screaking; or jumbled up voices,
it was so still, and sounds come so far; and by and by you could see a
streak on the water which you know by the look of the streak that there's
a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak
look that way; and you see the mist curl up off of the water, and the
east reddens up, and the river, and you make out a log-cabin in the edge
of the woods, away on the bank on t'other side of the river, being a
woodyard, likely, and piled by them cheats so you can throw a dog through
it anywheres; then the nice breeze springs up, and comes fanning you from
over there, so cool and fresh and sweet to smell on account of the woods
and the flowers; but sometimes not that way, because they've left dead
fish laying around, gars and such, and they do get pretty rank; and next
you've got the full day, and everything smiling in the sun, and the
song-birds just going it!

A little smoke couldn't be noticed now, so we would take some fish off of
the lines and cook up a hot breakfast. And afterwards we would watch the
lonesomeness of the river, and kind of lazy along, and by and by lazy off
to sleep. Wake up by and by, and look to see what done it, and maybe see
a steamboat coughing along up-stream, so far off towards the other side
you couldn't tell nothing about her only whether she was a stern-wheel or
side-wheel; then for about an hour there wouldn't be nothing to hear nor
nothing to see--just solid lonesomeness. Next you'd see a raft sliding
by, aw