THE RIVER. 135 



Are those little circlets of light enclosing a round 

 umbra or slightly darker spot, that move along the 

 bottom as the bubbles drift above on the surface 

 shadows or reflections ? 



In still, dark places of the stream, where there seems 

 no current, a dust gathers on the water, falling from 

 the trees, or borne thither by the wind and dropping 

 where its impulse ceases. Shadows of branches lie 

 here upon the surface itself, received by the greenish 

 water dust. Bound the curve on the concave and lee 

 side of the river, where the wind drives the wavelets 

 direct upon the strand, there are little beaches formed 

 by the undermining and fall of the bank. 



The tiny surge rolls up the incline ; each wave 

 differing in the height to which it reaches, and none 

 of them alike, washing with it minute fragments of 

 stone and gravel, mere specks which vibrate to and 

 fro with the ripple and even drift with the current. 

 Will these fragments, after a process of trituration, 

 ultimately become sand ? A groove runs athwart the 

 bottom, left recently by the keel of a skiff, recently 

 only, for in a few hours these specks of gravel, sand, 

 and particles that sweep along the bottom, fill up such 

 depressions. The motion of these atoms is not con- 

 tinuous, but intermittent ; now they rise and are 

 carried a few inches and there sink, in a minute or 

 two to rise again and proceed. 



Looking to windward there is a dark tint upon the 

 water ; but down the stream, turning the other way, 

 intensely brilliant points of light appear and disap- 

 pear. Behind a boat rowed against the current two 

 widening lines of wavelets, in the shape of an elongated 



