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In the first place, it was not five feet from deck to deck and even this space was encroached upon by two outlandish cross-timbers bracing the vessel, and by the sailors' chests, over which you must needs crawl in getting about. At meal-times, and especially when we indulged in after-dinner chat, we sat about the chests like a parcel of tailors.
In this house there is a room with pillars of carved stone; this room is all of ivory, as well the chamber as the walls, from top to bottom, and the pillars of the cross-timbers at the top had roses and flowers of lotuses all of ivory, and all well executed, so that there could not be better, it is so rich and beautiful that you would hardly find anywhere another such.
It was a great natural pasture, covered with a very open forest of low, twisted trees, bearing a superficial likeness to the cross-timbers of Texas and Oklahoma. It is as well fitted for stock-raising as Oklahoma; and there is also much fine agricultural land, while the river will ultimately yield electric power. It is a fine country for settlement.
About eight feet, it will be seen, was decked, and a space of only eight feet by three was all that was available for the reception of four men and the working of the boat. It was decided to remove three feet of the rear half-deck, increasing the open space to eleven feet. This was easily done, leaving the strong cross-timbers untouched, and also six inches of weather-board on each side.
Two moons, one at three quarters and the other full, shone brightly, while the water was alive with gymnotuses and other luminous creatures. Sitting and living upon the cross-timbers, they looked up at the sky.
The whaler was mounted on the sledge part of the Girling tractor forward and two sledges amidships and aft. These sledges were strengthened with cross-timbers and shortened oars fore and aft. The cutter was mounted on the aero-sledge. The sledges were the point of weakness.
The miner shores up his galleries with uprights and cross-timbers; the builder of underground railways supports the sides and roofs of his tunnels with a lining of brick or masonry or segments of iron tube; the larva of the Cigale, no less prudent an engineer, plasters the walls of its burrow with cement, so that the passage is always free and ready for use.
Since that day I have always been an attentive listener to the humblest of my fellowmen when interpreting the secrets of animal life. Another incident occurred on this trip which showed the observation and insight of my half-breed wrangler. We were passing through some cross-timbers one morning in northern Texas, the remuda and wagon far in the lead.
Early in March the raft, formed of great cypress trees, forty feet long and fifty inches through, laid lengthwise in the river about three feet apart, anchored by heavy chains and strengthened by massive cross-timbers, had been partly carried away by the flood. To make good the damage, a number of large schooners had then been anchored in the gap.
"I 'spec ter fin' him howsomever he's a-lyin'." He wandered off in the darkness, and Cleave heard him speaking to a picket, "Marster, is you seen Marse Charlie?" Stonewall Jackson and his army in slow retreat up the valley came, the second day after Kernstown, to the gorge of Cedar Creek. A bridge had once been here; there remained the blackened cross-timbers and a portion of the flooring.
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