University of Virginia Library

A STORM SCENE ON THE MISSISSIPPI.

In the year 18—, we found ourselves travelling on horse-back,
“low down on the Mississippi.” The weather was
intensely hot, and as we threaded our way through the
forests and swamps, through which the river flows, a
silent and stifled atmosphere prevailed, such as required
little wisdom to predict as the forerunner of a storm.

The insects of the woods were more than usually
troublesome and venomous. The locust would occasionally
make its shrill sounds as on a merry day, then suddenly
stop, give a disquiet chirp or two, and relapse into
silence. The venomous mosquito, revelled in the dampness
of the air, and suspending its clamor of distant
trumpets, seemed only intent to bite. The crows scolded
like unquiet housewives, high in the air, while higher
still the buzzard wheeled in graceful but narrowed
circles.

The dried twigs in our path bent, instead of snapping,
as the weight of our horses' hoofs pressed upon

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
lame, 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 lightning
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 centre

of a small garden-spot and field, and had once been
the residence of a squatter—but now deserted for causes
unknown to us. The cabin was most pleasantly situated,
and commanded a fine view of the river both up and
down its channel.

We reached this rude dwelling just as the sun was
setting, and his disappearance behind the lowlands of
the Mississippi, was indeed glorious. Refracted by the
humidity of the atmosphere into a vast globe of fire, it
seemed to be kindling up the Cypress trees that stretched
out before us, into a light blaze, while the gathering
clouds extended the conflagration far north and south,
and carried it upwards into the heavens. Indeed, so
glorious for a moment was the sight, that we almost
fancied that another Phæton was driving the chariot of
the Sun, and that in its ungoverned course, its wheels
were fired; and the illusion was quite complete, when we
heard the distant thunder echoing from those brilliant
clouds, and saw the lightning, like silver arrows, flash
across the crimson heavens.

A moment more, and the sun was extinguished in
the waters—all light disappeared, and the sudden darkness
that follows sunset as you approach the tropics,
was upon us.

With the delightful consciousness of having already
escaped the storm, we gathered round a pleasant blaze
formed of dried twigs, kindled by flashing powder in the
pan of an old-fashioned gun. In the meantime, the

thunder grew more and more distinct, the lightning
flashed more brightly, and an occasional gust of wind,
accompanied by sleet, would penetrate between the logs
that composed our shelter.

An old wood-chopper, who made one of our party,
feeling unusually comfortable, grew loquacious; and he
detailed with great effect the woeful scenes he had been
in at different times of his life, the most awful of which
had been preceded, he said, by just such signs of weather
as were then exhibiting themselves.

Among other adventures, he had been wrecked while
acting as a “hand” on a flat-boat navigating the Mississippi.

He said he had come all the way from Pittsburgh,
at the head of the Ohio, to within two or three hundred
miles of Orleans, without meeting with any other serious
accident, than that of getting out of whiskey twice.

But one night the captain of the flat-boat said that
the weather was “crafty,” a thing he thought himself, as
it was most too quiet to last long.

After detailing several other particulars, he finished
his story of being wrecked, as follows: “The quiet
weather I spoke of, was followed by a sudden change;
the river grew as rough as an alligator's back; thar was
the tallest kind of a noise overhead, and the fire flew
about up thar, like fur in a cat-fight.

“`We'll put in shore,' said the captain; and we tried
to do it, that's sartain; but the way in which we always

walked off from a tree, whar we might have tied up, was
a caution to steamboats.

“`Keep the current,' said the captain, `and let us
sweat it out.' We went on this way some time, when I
told the captain—said I, Captain, I have never been in
these diggins afore, but if I haven't seen the same landscape
three times, then I can't speak the truth.

“At this the captain looked hard, and swore that we
were in an eddy, and doing nothing but whirling round.

“The lightning just at this time was very accommodating,
and showed us a big tree in the river that had
stuck fast, and was bowing up and down, ready to receive
us, and we found ourselves rushing straight on
to it.

“The owner of the bacon and other `plunder,' with
which the boat was loaded, was on board,—and when
he saw the `sawyer,' he eyed it as hard as a small thief
would a constable; says he, `Captain, if that ar fellow
at the sweep (oar) (fellow meant me)' said he `Captain,
if that ar fellow at the sweep don't bear on harder, and
keep us off that tree, I am a busted-up pork merchant.'
I did bear on it as well as I could, but the current was
too strong, and we went on the `sawyer' all standing.
The boat broke up like a dried leaf; pork and plunder
scattered, and I swam, half dead, to the shore.

“I lost in the whole operation just two shirts, eighteen
dollars in wages, and half a box of Kaintucky tobacker,
besides two game cocks.

“I tell you what, stranger, a storm on that ar Mississipp
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, apparently
almost at our very feet,—a few hundred yards from
us a tall oak dropped some of its gignatic limbs, and flashed
into a light blaze. The rain, however powerful previously,
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 literally
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

bronze, and to heighten this almost unearthly effect, the
forest trees that lined its most distant shores, rose up
like mountains of impenetrable darkness, against clouds
burning with fire.

The thunder cracked and echoed through the heavens,
and the half starved wolf, nearly dead with fear,
mingled his cries of distress with the noises without,
startling us with the momentary conviction, that we
heard the voices of men in the agony of death.

Hours passed away and the elements spent their
fury; and although the rain continued falling in torrents,
it was finally unaccompanied with lightning. So
sudden, indeed, were the extremes, that with your eyes
dilating with the glare of the heavens, you were, a moment
after, surrounded by the most perfect darkness.

Confused, bewildered, and soaking wet; we followed
the stoical example of our Indian guide, and settling
down in a crouching attitude, waited most impatiently
for the light of the morning.

The rain continued to descend in gusts, and the same
deep darkness was upon us; my companions soon fell
asleep as soundly as if they were at home; the long
drawn respirations added to my misery. Wound up to
the highest pitch of impatience, I was about starting to
my feet to utter some angry complaint, when the Indian,
whom I thought in a profound slumber, touched
me upon the arm, and with a peculiar sound, signified
that I must be silent and listen.

This I did do, but I heard nothing save the continued
clattering of the rain and after a while I said so.

For some time the Indian made no reply, although
I was conscious that he was intensely interested in the
prevailing dull sounds without.

Suddenly he sprang upon his feet and groped his
way to the door. The intrusive noise awoke the wood-chopper,
who instantly seizing his rifle, sang out:

“Halloo, what's the matter, you red varmint, snorting
in a man's face like a scared buffalo bull, what's
the matter?”

“River too near,” was the slow reply of the Indian.

“He's right, so help me —,” shouted the wood-chopper,
“the banks of the Mississippi ar caving in,”
and then with a spring he leaped through the door and
bid us follow.

His advice was quickly obeyed. The Indian was the
last to leave the cabin, and as he stepped from its threshold,
the weighty unhewn logs that composed it, crumbled,
along with the rich soil, into the swift-running
current of the mysterious river.

This narrow escape made our fortunes somewhat
bearable, and we waited with some little patience
for day.

At the proper time the sun rose gloriously bright,
as if its smiling face had never been obscured by a
cloud.

The little birds of the woods sung merrily, there

was the freshness and beauty of a new creation on every
thing; and the landscape of the previous night was indeed
altered. The long jutting point where stood the
squatter's hut and “clearing,” had disappeared—house,
garden-spot, fields, and fences, were obliterated; the
water washed banks were lined only with the unbroken
forest.

The stranger, while looking, would never have
dreamed that the axe and the plough had been in the
vicinity.

The caving banks had swept away all signs of humanity,
and left every thing about us in wild and primitive
solitude.