STORM SCENE ON THE MISSISSIPPI. 127 
them, while the animal would put forward his ears, as 
if expecting soon to be very much alarmed; and lastly, 
to make all those signs certain, the rheumatic limbs of 
an old Indian guide, who accompanied us, suddenly grew 
Jame, for he went limping upon his delicately formed 
feet, and occasionally looking aloft with suspicious eyes, 
he proclaimed, that there would be “ storm too much!” 
A storm in the forest is no trifling affair; the tree 
under which you shelter yourself may draw the light- 
ning upon your head, or its ponderous limbs, pressed 
upon by the winds, drag the heavy trunk to the earth, 
crushing you with itself in its fall; or some dead branch 
that has for years protruded from among the green 
foliage, may on the very occasion of your presence, fall 
to the ground and destroy you. 
The rain too, which in the forest finds difficulty in 
soaking into the earth, will in a few hours fill up the 
ravines and water-courses, wash away the trail you may 
be following, or destroy the road over which you 
journey. 
All these things we were from experience aware of, 
and as we were some distance from our journey’s end, 
and also from any “ settlement,” we pressed forward to 
a ‘clearing,’ which was in our path, as a temporary 
stopping-place, until the coming storm should have 
passed away. : 
Our resting-place for the night was on the banks of 
the Mississippi; it consisted of a rude cabin in the cen- 
