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Updated: May 8, 2025
It is pleasant, when the sun is bright, and the trees are green, and when flowering shrubs and sweet-smelling tropical trees scent the balmy atmosphere at eventide, to lie extended at full length in a canoe, and drop easily, silently, yet quickly, down the current of a noble river, under the grateful shadow of overhanging foliage; and to look lazily up at the bright blue sky which appears in broken patches among the verdant leaves; or down at the river in which that bright sky and those green leaves are reflected; or aside at the mud-banks where greedy vultures are searching for prey, and lazy alligators are basking in the sun; and to listen, the while, to the innumerable cries and notes of monkeys, toucans, parrots, orioles, bemtevi or fly-catchers, white-winged and blue chatterers, and all the myriads of birds and beasts that cause the forests of Brazil, above all other forests in the world probably, to resound with the gleeful songs of animated nature!
The tide had nearly covered the mud-banks and twenty little ripples broke on the beach before Maisie chose to speak. 'Dick, she said slowly, 'I believe very much that you are better than I am. 'This doesn't seem to bear on the argument but in what way? 'I don't quite know, but in what you said about work and things; and then you're so patient. Yes, you're better than I am.
Little by little, and without any apparent motive, he worked the Chinaman up to the point where silence is agony, and at last, as a river in flood crashes over the mud-banks, the whole tale of his wrongs came bursting through his closed mouth, and with the sweat pouring down his yellow face he out it into words.
At length the Pass is reached; and dashing gallantly across it, the little Sumter starboards her helm and rounds the mud-banks to the eastward! As she does so the Brooklyn rounds to for a moment and gives her a shot from her pivot gun. But the bolt falls short; and now the race begins in earnest!
We then rode on in peace and quietness to a low point called Punta Alta, whence we could see nearly the whole of the great harbour of Bahia Blanca. The wide expanse of water is choked up by numerous great mud-banks, which the inhabitants call Cangrejales, or crabberies, from the number of small crabs. The mud is so soft that it is impossible to walk over them, even for the shortest distance.
There was the green stuff like a hedge on both sides of the river, the parrots a-screaming, the crockydiles crawling on to the mud-banks or floating down, the birds a-fishing, and all looking as bright as could be, while my heart was black as a furnace-hole, Mas'r Harry, and that black-looking Don was close aside me.
What was to happen next I could not imagine, for the Chinese were a different race from mine and from what I knew I was confident that fair play was no part of their make-up. After waiting a few minutes longer, the crew hoisted the lateen sail, and Yellow Handkerchief steered down toward the mouth of San Rafael Creek. The tide was getting lower, and he had difficulty in escaping the mud-banks.
Nay, it goes beyond that. Consider every molecule of air to be a mud-bank in itself. Then try to imagine the multitudinous impact of mud-banks. No; it is beyond me. Language may be adequate to express the ordinary conditions of life, but it cannot possibly express any of the conditions of so enormous a blast of wind.
But in PROTECTED bays, such as in that of Bahia Blanca, wherever the sea is accumulating extensive mud-banks, or where the winds quietly heap up sand-dunes, beds of shells might assuredly be preserved buried in the positions in which they had lived, even whilst the land retained the same level; any, the smallest, amount of elevation would directly aid in their preservation.
Just imagine the luxury of a warm day's journey in such a vehicle, which has neither springs nor backed seats three fiery horses fastened to it, and each pulling, plunging, and pirouetting on his own account; a ferocious yamtschick cracking his whip and shrieking "Shivar! shivar!" faster! faster! the wagon, rattling all over, plunging into ruts, jumping over stones, ripping its way through bogs and mud-banks; your bones shaken nearly out of their sockets; your vertebrae partially dislocated; your mouth filled with dust; your tongue swollen and parched; your eyes blinded with grit; your yamtschick reeling drunk with vodka, and bound to draw to the destined station or some worse place; your confidence in men and horses shaken with your bones; your views of the future circumscribed by every turn of the road oh! it is charming; it is the very climax of human enjoyment.
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