United States or Brunei ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The rain drips drearily around Judge Hardin's spacious residence in San Francisco. January, 1861, finds the sheltering trees higher. The embowered shade hides to-night an unusual illumination. Winter breezes sigh through the trees. Showers of spray fall from acacia and vine. As the wet fog drives past, the ship-lights on the bay are almost hidden.
As I followed my conductor to the riverside, and he parted the close bushes and boughs to give us exit, the glare of the camp-fires broke all at once upon us. The ship-lights quivered on the water; the figures of men moved to and fro before the fagots; the stars peeped timorously from the vault; the woods and steep banks were blackly shadowed in the river.
Towards morning the boat stopped, and when I came on deck, before six, "The watch-lights glittered on the land, The ship-lights on the sea." Hilton Head lay on one side, the gunboats on the other; all that was raw and bare in the low buildings of the new settlement was softened into picturesqueness by the early light.
I knew now that I was at "Putney's," a ford on the Pamunkey, and an hour later I came in sight of the ship-lights at White House, and heard the steaming of tugs and draught-boats, going and coming by night.
Word Of The Day