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Updated: September 1, 2025
As the Saints were driven from their homes, most of them made their way to Clay county whose people received them kindly. Soon the shores of the river were lined with men, women and children, goods, boxes, wagons, etc; The ferrymen were kept busy taking them over the river. At night the place had a strange appearance.
Even the little trellises of the <I>traghetti</I> count charmingly as reminders, amid so much artifice, of the woodland nature of man. The vine-leaves, trained on horizontal poles, make a roof of chequered shade for the gondoliers and ferrymen, who doze there according to opportunity, or chatter or hail the approaching "fare."
Kawawa was not to be balked of his supposed rights by the unceremonious way in which we had left him; for, when we had reached the ford of the Kasai, about ten miles distant, we found that he had sent four of his men, with orders to the ferrymen to refuse us passage. We were here duly informed that we must deliver up all the articles mentioned, and one of our men besides.
"If you mean stomach, Sir, you will not have reason to be disappointed," retorted the Alderman, a little more severely than was usual with one so callous. "The heiress of Myndert Van Beverout will not be a penniless bride, and Monsieur Barbérie did not close the books of life without taking good care of the balance-sheet but yonder are those devils of ferrymen quitting the wharf without us!
The other three ferrymen were in the hut. Simeon who was an old man of about sixty, skinny and toothless, but broad-shouldered and healthy, was drunk. He would long ago have gone to bed, but he had a bottle in his pocket and was afraid of his comrades asking him for vodka.
Then Jud should follow to keep the bunch moving, while Ump and the two ferrymen fed the line, a few at a time, keeping it unbroken, and as thin as possible. This was the only plan offering any shadow of hope. We could not swim the cattle in small bunches because each bunch would require one or two drivers, and the best horse would go down on his third trip.
"Then you're not going to put them in?" I said. "Damn it!" said the hunchback, "we've got to put 'em in." "Don't you think we'll get them over all right?" said I, bidding for the consolation of hope. "God knows," answered the hunchback. "It'll be the toughest sleddin' that we ever went up against." Then he turned his mare and rode back to the house of the ferrymen, and we followed him.
He swung into the Rue Dauphin and mounted the Pont Neuf, glancing idly below at the ferrymen whose torches threw on the black bosom of the Seine long wavering threads of phantom fire. The snow-clouds had passed over, and the stars were shining; the wind was falling. The quays were white; the Louvre seemed but a vast pile of ghostly stones.
This want of respect to us may have been owing to the impressions conveyed to them by the Arabs, whose dhows have sometimes been taken by English cruisers when engaged in lawful trade. Much foreign cloth, beads, and brass-wire were worn by these ferrymen and some had muskets.
He frankly told every one with whom he came in contact where he was going and what he was seeking. Both white and colored people along the route gave him food and a place to sleep free of cost, and even the usually exacting ferrymen were so impressed with the young negro's desire for an education that, except in one case, he was given free ferriage across the creeks and rivers.
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