United States or Cayman Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
They passed from the great northern wheat region into that of corn, then into the broad cotton belt, and finally to the land of sugar-cane and rice, orange-trees, glossy-leaved magnolias, and gaunt moss-hung cypresses. Of more immediate interest even than these ever-changing features of the land was the varied and teeming life of the mighty river itself.
It was a scene never to be forgotten: the moss-hung trees, with their hundred-feet diameter of shade; the eager faces of women and children in the foreground; the many-colored headdresses; the upraised hands; the neat uniforms of the soldiers; the outer row of mounted officers and ladies; and beyond all the blue river, with its swift, free tide.
The wounded man died in the hospital, and the general verdict seemed to be, "Him brought it on heself." Another soldier died of pneumonia on the same day, and we had the funerals in the evening. It was very impressive. A dense mist came up, with a moon behind it, and we had only the light of pine-splinters, as the procession wound along beneath the mighty, moss-hung branches of the ancient grove.
It was in the midst of a grand oak grove, surrounding a crystal spring; and before sunset the slightly built lodges had sprung up as though by magic among its trees, the sparks from the camp-fires gleamed like myriads of fire-flies among the moss-hung branches, and the tribe was at home.
Is it a reminiscence of those dim centuries when our ancestors in the forests of the Elbe sat under the moss-hung oaks and stuffed themselves with roast ox washed down with huge skins of wine?
It makes me feel as old as these dreary hills to look down upon these moss-hung ruins, this historic desolation. One may read the Scriptures and believe, but he can not go and stand yonder in the ruined theatre and in imagination people it again with the vanished multitudes who mobbed Paul's comrades there and shouted, with one voice, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!"
It was late November. And as Honora sat at the window of the drawing-room of the sleeping car, life seemed as fantastic and unreal as the moss-hung Southern forest into which she stared. She was happy, as a child is happy who is taken on an excursion into the unknown. The monotony of existence was at last broken, and riven the circumscribing walls. Limitless possibilities lay ahead.
"Aye, if but no matter." He resumed his nervous pacing back and forth, back and forth, hands in pockets, head up, chin out, and face turned always toward the river, past the moss-hung cypress trees to the yellow Savannah flowing swiftly beyond. The salt tide-water made as far as Villard Landing, and when it was in full flood, as now, it brought the smell of the sea strongly with it.
The brute, with her small bestial eye fixed on him distrustfully and askance, moved enough to the right to let him pass on the other hand, and with his coat on his arm so strong was the October sun he turned into the road westward, followed one or two of its slight curves, and presently saw neat fields on either hand, walled in on each farther side by the moss-hung swamp; and now a small, gray, unpainted house, then two or three more, the roofs of others peering out over the dense verdure, and down at the end of the vista a small white spire and cross.
Going for some distance down the river, they turned into a small stream from the banks of which huge, moss-hung oaks and rustling palm-trees cast a pleasant shade over the dark waters. Here the canoe was allowed to drift while Has-se unburdened his mind to his friend. It seemed that the day of the Ripe Corn Dance, the great feast day of his tribe, was set for that of the next full moon.
Word Of The Day