704 Insects fyc. 



for I could not avoid sitting up in bed, and gazing through the open 

 window of my berth, on the placid beauty of the night. At early day, 

 too, I found it delightful to stand alone on the upper deck, and watch 

 the opening morning : it was yet dawn ; stillness and quiet prevail- 

 ed ; the decks were yet untrodden ; the noise of the day was yet hush- 

 ed; the bats and whip-poor- Wills were still sweeping over the stream 

 in tortuous flight, both engaged in the same vocation, the pursuit of 

 crepuscular insects : the breadth of wing and rushing flight of the lat- 

 ter, deceived me for some time into the notion that they were large 

 swallows ; the bat, though of swift wing, had no chance whatever in 

 a race with them. As the eastern sky began to glow and brighten 

 into fiery red, they gradually disappeared, the bats being the first to 

 retire. Soon the sun, with dilated face, peeped over the horizon in 

 cloudless majesty, and flushed with golden light the hills and culti- 

 vated fields that surrounded us ; but as yet the air was delightfully 

 cool and refreshing, and perfumed with the breath of flowers, which, 

 after a while was dissipated by the increasing heat. The river 

 was smooth and shone like silver, until its surface was broken and 

 swollen by the rushing steamer : before us we had a polished surface, 

 reflecting a cloudless sky; behind us we left a rolling sea, enshrouded 

 beneath a long sable cloud of dense smoke. Nor was the day with- 

 out pleasure ; though we passed no towns, and very few settlements, 

 at least during day-light : occasionally we stopped to replenish our 

 stock of wood, which is cut, split and corded, at certain stations by 

 negroes residing at them ; these stations are called wood-yards. The 

 moment the steamer stops, the crew begin to bring the wood on board 

 on their shoulders, and it is astonishing to observe how quickly the 

 great piles are transferred, and we are again on our roaring and rush- 

 ing course. Here and there we open on some large cleared estate, 

 and fields planted with corn or cotton, as yet scarcely appearing above 

 ground, and perhaps a single negro-hut; but the planters' houses and 

 the general buildings of the farm do not appear, they being situated 

 at a considerable distance from the bank. Every spring, the river 

 overflows its banks, and inundates the surrounding country to a wide 

 extent. Of this I saw sufficient traces, though the water had now re- 

 turned to its wonted channel : high up on the trees which overhang 

 the water, the branches were incumbered with rubbish that had been 

 left there by the spring floods, and which showed the great extent to 

 which the river had been swollen. In one tree was the carcass of a 

 cow that had probably been drowned in the freshets, and having be- 

 come entangled among the forked boughs, had been deposited in the 



