United States or Peru ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Both of the men were inexperienced, one being a raftsman who came down the river, and the other a man from Vicksburg.
"I bought four yesterday for four hundred and seventy-five dollars Confederate scrip." "Why, where did you get that?" "Bought it in Washington, when we first went through, of a boy on the Avenue for fifteen cents. I thought there might be a show for it some day or other." The Corporal was a slender, lantern-jawed, weasel-faced Monongahela raftsman, sharp as a steel-trap.
The connections of the several sections of the raft are slack and pliant, so that the raft may be readily bent into any sort of curve required by the shape of the river. The Neckar is in many places so narrow that a person can throw a dog across it, if he has one; when it is also sharply curved in such places, the raftsman has to do some pretty nice snug piloting to make the turns.
And does not the fact that he had courage to cross the estranging deep thereon give graphic proof of the inhospitality of his native soil? Flat and generally of sad aspect, the country of the raftsman lies remote and uncommended. The scented sandalwood is there, dwarfed, attenuated, worthless.
In less than two weeks he enjoyed this plunge and finally remembering that he had to be at home by four o'clock, he scrambled onto a raft and discovered that his body was covered with some unknown, greasy, tar-like substance. He could not get it off, and at last asked a raftsman, who stood by, what it was: "Why, son," answered the lumberman; "That is petroleum.
Unfortunately, they forgot to give him a faucet. All that day was very hot, and the entire party longed for a drink from its cooling depths. Late that evening a steamer, towing a raft, came slowly down the river. Paul told the negro to pull alongside and have the raftsman open the keg. They had no faucet but they had an auger, with which they willingly started to bore into its head.
In addition to his military character, Dick Garland also carried with him the odor of the pine forest and exhibited the skill and training of a forester, for in those early days even at the time when I began to remember the neighborhood talk, nearly every young man who could get away from the farm or the village went north, in November, into the pine woods which covered the entire upper part of the State, and my father, who had been a raftsman and timber cruiser and pilot ever since his coming west, was deeply skilled with axe and steering oars.
The Laird decided, therefore, that Donald could not be very ill, otherwise Nan would not have left him home alone. This thought comforted him somewhat. During the week he thought frequently of telephoning up to Darrow and asking if they still had the same raftsman on the pay-roll, but his pride forbade this.
Not that I'm anything of a raftsman," he added, modestly, "but I picked up a good bit of knowledge concerning the river while on that government job down in Arkansas. If you'll only give me the chance, I'll guarantee to find the raft and navigate it to any port you may choose to name Dubuque, St.
There's a lot o' you young fellers that've been takin' John Cardigan's money under false pretenses, so if I was you I'd keep both eyes on my job hereafter. For a year I've been claimin' that good No. 2 stock has been chucked into the slab-fire as refuge lumber." The raftsman tells me he seen Bryce down at the end o' the conveyin' belt givin' that refuge the once-over so step easy."
Word Of The Day