United States or Portugal ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We sailed right through the Golden Gate and up the San Francisco water-front. There was a swift flood tide, too; and the men, both watches, were taking in sail as fast as they could. "Now the fault was the steamboat captain's. He miscalculated our speed and tried to cross our bow. Then came the collision, and the Dixie's bow cut through that steamboat, cabin and hull.
He was a combination of an Italian brigand and a poker player whom she had once met on a Mississippi steamboat. He would wear a broad-brimmed soft hat, a red shirt, showing his massive throat and neck and high boots! Alas! the man before her was of medium height, with light close-cut hair, hollow cheeks that seemed to have been lately scraped with a razor, and light gray troubled eyes.
More people were run over in the streets upon that one day, than in the previous three months, and a County Council steamboat, the Isaac Walton, collided with a pier of Westminster Bridge, and narrowly escaped disaster by running ashore it was low water on the mud on the south side.
There was a solemnity in the scene which impressed the young pilot, even accustomed as he was to the night and the silence. He was worn out by the labors and the excitement of the day, but he could not resist the inspiration which came from the quiet waters and the gloomy shores. The Woodville sped on her way, and at midnight she was approaching the steamboat wharf at Burlington.
"Hang it, Fred," said he, rather brokenly; "how can what's babyish in men whip a full-grown steamboat captain?" "The same way that it whipped a full-grown woolen-mill manager once, I suppose, old boy," said Macdonald. "Is that so?" exclaimed the captain, astonishment getting so sudden an advantage over shame that he turned over and looked his companion in the face. "Why how are you, Fred?
A steamboat was sent to explore the flooded region. I saw its captain soon after his return. "I took my boat through the cut," said he, "without any trouble. We drew nearly three feet, but there was plenty of water. We ran two miles over a cotton-field, and could see the stalks as our wheels tore them up.
It sure looks to me like it was these yere steamboat people. They can't expect to rope nothing on such a raw deal as this!" To which the English assented, though in different idiom. But now up the companion ladder struggled eight serious-minded individuals herded by the second mate.
Father determined to join them, and took passage on a steamboat which was going up the river. Having reached the place of crossing, he made himself known to the leaders of the party, by whom he was most cordially received. The pro-slavery men, hearing of the approach of the Free State party, resolved to drive them out of the territory.
Hobbs employed the Yumas to take his party over, the horses swimming, and the arrangement seems to have worked very well. According to Hobbs, the first steamboat came up the river while he was there, frightening the Yumas so that they ran for their lives, exclaiming the devil was coming, blowing fire and smoke out of his nose, and kicking back with his feet in the water.
Exactly twenty years later, on October 8th, 1882, I sat beside Mrs. Gladstone at dinner at Leeds, where the Prime Minister had just been making a series of memorable speeches, and had received a welcome which even surpassed that at Newcastle in 1862. I recalled our meeting on the steamboat twenty years before, and her face kindled with an expression of delight.
Word Of The Day