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Only occasionally, by the river-sides, near the station, small patches of cultivated land are to be seen; but, generally speaking, the country is barren, and will ever remain so. We are still nearly 5000 feet above the level of the sea. There is no longer any snow on the ground alongside us, but the mountains within sight are all covered.
They said that the daily New York murder might even at that moment be somewhere taking place; and that no murder of the whole homicidal year could have such proper circumstance; they morbidly wondered what that day's murder would be, and in what swarming tenement-house, or den of the assassin streets by the river-sides, if indeed it did not befall in some such high, close-shuttered, handsome dwelling as those they passed, in whose twilight it would be so easy to strike down the master and leave him undiscovered and unmourned by the family ignorantly absent at the mountains or the seaside.
So it seems at the moment, but I am not sure that it is so true as it is that after passing the Tower the one shore of the Thames begins to lose its dignity and beauty, and to be of like effect with the other, which is the Southwark side, and like all the American river-sides that I remember.
Yet, strange to say, these river-sides are frequently selected as chosen places of residence, as witness the Lung Arno of Pisa and Florence. One of the features of Palermo is the number of reservoirs, which are generally situated at the corners of streets, and every house in the city accordingly has an abundant supply of water. This must also be a great source of cleanliness and healthfulness.
That it was still rising was made obvious by the fact that the rolling masses at the river-sides were being thrust higher and higher on obstructing points, carrying bushes and trees before them. Even while he gazed a lofty elm that grew on a low part of Angus Macdonald's property was overthrown as if it had been a mere twig, and swept away.
His intent was to rob the churches, and rifle the houses of the chief citizens of Nicaragua. Thus in the dark night they entered the river leading to that city, rowing in their canoes; by day they hid themselves and boats under the branches of trees, on the banks, which grow very thick along the river-sides in those countries, and along the sea-coast.
Here and there in the patches of thick shrubbery that had been planted to take off the harsh formality surrounding the parade, there were faint, twinkling sparks that gave a suggestion of how beautiful the river-sides must be where the lights of the curious insects flashed and died out and lit up again in full force; and for some minutes Mrs Morley stood breathing in the sweet, moist perfume of the many night blooms which floated on the air.
Likewise I found that the watermen on the river above the bridge found means to convey themselves away up the river as far as they could go, and that they had, many of them, their whole families in their boats, covered with tilts and bales, as they call them, and furnished with straw within for their lodging, and that they lay thus all along by the shore in the marshes, some of them setting up little tents with their sails, and so lying under them on shore in the day, and going into their boats at night; and in this manner, as I have heard, the river-sides were lined with boats and people as long as they had anything to subsist on, or could get anything of the country; and indeed the country people, as well Gentlemen as others, on these and all other occasions, were very forward to relieve them but they were by no means willing to receive them into their towns and houses, and for that we cannot blame them.
Into this patriarchal and luxuriant country, the retreating army wound like a great devouring serpent. It was to me, the coming back of the beaten jetters through Midgards, or the repulse of the fallen angels from heaven, trampling down the river-sides of Eden.
Will they not fancy they catch him taking the middle way between the unsociable French étude and the old-fashioned English "picture"? If one of these extremes is a desert, the other, no doubt, is an oasis still more vain. I have a recollection of productions of Mr. Alfred Parsons' which might have come from a Frenchman who was in love with English river-sides.
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