the fantastic shadows
of leaves and dancing boughs.

CHAPTER XIX.

Fishermen's tales--Skiff nomenclature--Green
River--Evansville--Henderson--Audubon and Rafinesque--Floating
trade--The Wabash.

Green River Towhead, Monday, June 4th.--We were shopping in Owensboro,
this morning, soon after seven o'clock. The business quarter was just
stirring into life; and the negroes who were lounging about on every
hand were still drowsy, as if they had passed the night there, and
were reluctant to be up and doing. There is a pretty court-house in
a green park, the streets are well paved, and the shops clean and
bright, with their wares mostly under the awnings on the sidewalk, for
people appear to live much out of doors here--and well they may,
with the temperature 73 deg. at this early hour, and every promise of
a scorching day.

I wonder if a fisherman could, if he tried, be exact in his
statements. One of them, below Owensboro, who kept us company for a
mile or two down stream, declared that at this stage of the water
he made forty and fifty dollars a week, "'n' I reck'n I ote to be
contint." A few miles farther on, another complained that when the
river was falling, the water was so muddy the fish would not bite; and
even in the best of seasons, a fisherman had "a hard pull uv it; hit
ain't no business fer a decent man!" The other day, when the river was
rising, a Cincinnati follower of the apostle's calling averred that
there was no use fishing when the water was coming up. As the variable
Ohio is like the ocean tide, ever rising or falling, it would seem
that the thousands in this valley who make fishing their livelihood
must be playing a losing game.

There are many beautiful islands on these lower reaches of the river.
We followed the narrow channel between Little Hurricane and the
Kentucky shore, a charming run of two or three miles, with both banks
a dense tangle of drift-wood, weeds and vines. Between Three-Mile
Island and Indiana, is another interesting cut-short, where the
shores are undisturbed by the work of the main stream, and trees and
undergrowth come down to the water's edge; the air is quivering with
the songs of birds, and resonant with sweet smells; while over
stumps, and dead and fallen trees, grape-vines luxuriantly festoon
and cluster. Near the pretty group of French Islands, two government
dredges, with their boarding barges, were moored to the Kentucky
shore--waiting for coal,