332 The Unknown River, 



CHAPTER XII. 



ON leaving Gueugnon, in the cool of a bright autumn 

 evening, I saw a magnificent piece of black oak 

 which had been disengaged from the bed of the river 

 during the great inundation, and thrown upon the high 

 shore. The whole trunk was complete, and measured 

 seventy feet in length by forty in girth. I cut it in 

 several places with a penknife and found it as black as 

 ebony. How many centuries it had lain in the river's 

 bed I know not, but, judging from the color and condi- 

 tion of the wood, which was all black bog-oak of the 

 finest quality, the tree must have lain beneath the flow- 

 ing water as long as the black oak in the deepest bogs 

 of Ireland. What noble chambers might have been 

 furnished out of it ! what rich inlaying of parquets 

 and wainscot would it not have supplied ! 



The landscape now began to wear an aspect of un- 

 common sadness and desolation. The river divided 

 itself into many straggling currents in a wide desert 

 of sand and pebbles. A low, yellow precipice of the 

 same material hid all the fields from my sight, as I sat 

 low in the canoe on the level of the dreary gray water. 

 How mournfully, too, the water seemed to murmur 

 down its tortuous, divided channels ! For miles and 

 miles there was nothing to be seen except a great 

 chateau on the top of a bare slope, a long, ugly, melan- 



