STORM SCENE ON THE MISSISSIPPI. 131 
“T tell you what, stranger, a storm on that ar Mis- 
sissipp ain’t to be sneezed at.” 
The wood-chopper’s story, when concluded, would 
have occasioned a general laugh, had there not been 
outside our cabin at this moment a portentous silence, 
which alarmed us all. 
The storm we thought had been upon us in all its 
fury, but we now felt that more was to come; in the 
midst of this expectation a stream of fire rushed from 
the horizon upwards; where high over head could be 
seen its zigzag course, then rushed downwards, appa- 
rently almost at our very feet,—a few hundred yards from 
usa tall oak dropped some of its gigantic limbs, and flash- 
ed into a light blaze. The rain, however powerful pre- 
viously, now descended in one continued sheet. The 
roof of our shelter seemed to gather water rather than 
to protect us from it; little rivulets dashed: across the 
floor, and then widening into streams, we were soon lite- 
rally afloat. The descending floods sounded about us 
like the roll-call of a muffled drum, the noise almost 
deafening us, then dying off in the distance, as the 
sweeping gusts of wind drove the clouds before them. 
The burning forest meanwhile hissed and cracked, and 
rolled up great columns of steam. 
The turbid water of the Mississippi in all this war 
of the elements, rushed on, save where it touched its 
banks, with a smooth but mysterious looking surface 
that resembled in the glare of the lightning, a mirror of 
