stem the current, and the rocks stand out in shelves and rugged ridges, around which the stream whirls swiftly and sweeps off into broad dark pools in whose green, mysterious depths there should be noble fish.  Below, the river widens and has long placid reaches, but for the most part its banks are precipitous, and the deep water runs along the trunks and bares the roots of great trees whose branches stretch far out over its surface.  Occasionally, the mountains recede and form a vast amphitheatre, clad in primeval forest, and there are islands on which vegetation runs riot in its unbridled luxury, and weaves festoons of gay creepers to conceal the gaunt skeletons of the endless piles of dead drift-wood.  All is in the most glorious green—­a very extravagance of fresh and brilliant color—­relieved with the bright purples and tender leafing of the flowering shrubs and vines that intertwine among its heavy jungle.  Upon the broad, flat rocks one may see dozens of stolid “sliders,” or mud-turtles, some of great size, basking in the sun like so many boarders at a country hotel.  They crowd upon the rocks as thickly as they can, and blink there all day long unless disturbed by the approach of a boat, when they dive clumsily but quickly.  Occasionally, one sees an otter, with seal-like head above the surface of the water, swimming swiftly from haunt to haunt in pursuit of the bass; and small coteries of summer ducks fly swiftly from sedge to sedge.

The acoustic properties of the river would make an architect die with envy.  The light breeze bears one’s conversation audibly for half a mile; one hears the splash of a fish that jumps a thousand yards away; and the grim cliffs at the foot of which the canal winds in and out take up the profanity of the towpath and hurl it back and forth across the river as if it was great fun and all propriety.  The stalwart exhortations and clean-cut phraseology of the mule-drivers and the notes of the bugles go ringing over to Virginia’s shore, and fill the air with cadences so sweet and musical that they sound like the pleasant laughter of good-humored Nature, instead of the well-punctuated and diligent ribaldry of the most profane class of humanity in existence.  It is perfectly startling and frightful to hear an objurgation of the most utterly purposeless and ingeniously vile description transmitted half a mile with painful distinctness, and then seized by a virtuous and reproachful echo and indignantly repelled in disjointed fragments.

“Y’ill take care, sorr, an’ sit fair in the middle of the shkiff,” said Mr. McGrath as I got into his frail craft at five o’clock in the morning on the bank of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal near Point of Rocks.  “It’s onconvanient to be outside of the boat whin we’re going through them locks.  There were a gintleman done that last year, an’ he come near lavin’ a lot of orphans behind him.”

“How was that, McGrath?” said I.

“Begorra! the divil a child had he,” he replied.