As I have said, the big rise brought a new world under my vision.  By the time the river was over its banks we had forsaken our old paths and were hourly climbing over bars that had stood ten feet out of water before; we were shaving stumpy shores, like that at the foot of Madrid Bend, which I had always seen avoided before; we were clattering through chutes like that of 82, where the opening at the foot was an unbroken wall of timber till our nose was almost at the very spot.  Some of these chutes were utter solitudes.  The dense, untouched forest overhung both banks of the crooked little crack, and one could believe that human creatures had never intruded there before.  The swinging grape-vines, the grassy nooks and vistas glimpsed as we swept by, the flowering creepers waving their red blossoms from the tops of dead trunks, and all the spendthrift richness of the forest foliage, were wasted and thrown away there.  The chutes were lovely places to steer in; they were deep, except at the head; the current was gentle; under the ‘points’ the water was absolutely dead, and the invisible banks so bluff that where the tender willow thickets projected you could bury your boat’s broadside in them as you tore along, and then you seemed fairly to fly.

Behind other islands we found wretched little farms, and wretcheder little log-cabins; there were crazy rail fences sticking a foot or two above the water, with one or two jeans-clad, chills-racked, yellow-faced male miserables roosting on the top-rail, elbows on knees, jaws in hands, grinding tobacco and discharging the result at floating chips through crevices left by lost teeth; while the rest of the family and the few farm-animals were huddled together in an empty wood-flat riding at her moorings close at hand.  In this flat-boat the family would have to cook and eat and sleep for a lesser or greater number of days (or possibly weeks), until the river should fall two or three feet and let them get back to their log-cabin and their chills again—­chills being a merciful provision of an all-wise Providence to enable them to take exercise without exertion.  And this sort of watery camping out was a thing which these people were rather liable to be treated to a couple of times a year:  by the December rise out of the Ohio, and the June rise out of the Mississippi.  And yet these were kindly dispensations, for they at least enabled the poor things to rise from the dead now and then, and look upon life when a steamboat went by.  They appreciated the blessing, too, for they spread their mouths and eyes wide open and made the most of these occasions.  Now what could these banished creatures find to do to keep from dying of the blues during the low-water season!

Once, in one of these lovely island chutes, we found our course completely bridged by a great fallen tree.  This will serve to show how narrow some of the chutes were.  The passengers had an hour’s recreation in a virgin wilderness, while the boat-hands chopped the bridge away; for there was no such thing as turning back, you comprehend.