But Our Progress Was Naturally Much Retarded, And Sometimes We
Were Aground An Hour, Sometimes A Half Day Or More.
Captain
Mellon was always cheerful.
River steamboating was his life, and
sand-bars were his excitement. On one occasion, I said, "Oh!
Captain, do you think we shall get off this bar to-day ?" "Well,
you can't tell," he said, with a twinkle in his eye; "one trip, I
lay fifty-two days on a bar," and then, after a short pause, "but
that don't happen very often; we sometimes lay a week, though;
there is no telling; the bars change all the time."
Sometimes the low trees and brushwood on the banks parted, and a
young squaw would peer out at us. This was a little diversion,
and picturesque besides. They wore very short skirts made of
stripped bark, and as they held back the branches of the low
willows, and looked at us with curiosity, they made pictures so
pretty that I have never forgotten them. We had no kodaks then,
but even if we had had them, they could not have reproduced the
fine copper color of those bare shoulders and arms, the soft wood
colors of the short bark skirts, the gleam of the sun upon their
blue-black hair, and the turquoise color of the wide bead-bands
which encircled their arms.
One morning, as I was trying to finish out a nap in my
stateroom, Jack came excitedly in and said: "Get up, Martha, we
are coming to Ehrenberg!" Visions of castles on the Rhine, and
stories of the middle ages floated through my mind, as I sprang
up, in pleasurable anticipation of seeing an interesting and
beautiful place.
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