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Oh, many a time have I watched the sunrise beyond the Neosho Valley, but on this rare May morning every shaft of light, every tint of roseate beauty along the horizon, every heap of feathery mist that decked the Plains, with the Neosho, bank-full, sweeping like molten silver below it all these took on a new loveliness.
Above the place of the meeting rose the flank of the mountain, scarred with washes and scantily clothed with stunted trees, so that in patches the soil showed through like the hide of a mangy hound. The creek was swollen by the April rains and ran bank-full through raw, red walls.
The current at this point is as usual very strong, being upwards of two and a half miles per hour; the river is quite bank-full although not actually flooding, the windings endless; one moment our course is due north, then east, then again north, and as suddenly due south; in fact, we face every point of the compass within an hour.
The sodden snow settled heavily, and around the base of stumps and the trunks of standing trees appeared rings of bare ground, while the course of the skidways and cross-hauls stood out sharp and black, like great veins in the clearing. Each sag and depression became a pond, and countless rills and rivulets gurgled riverward, bank-full with sparkling snow-water.
In places, the creek running bank-full, backed up over their path. At times, Laramie halting his companions, rode slowly ahead, sounding out the overflows and choosing the footing. Where streamlets poured over rock outcroppings the horses slipped. Frequently to get his bearings, Laramie felt his way forward by reaching for trees and scraped his knees against them as he pushed his horse close.
However, Eagle Bend was two miles wide at this bank-full stage, and correspondingly long and deep; and the boat was steering herself straight down the middle and taking no chances. Still, that was only luck a body MIGHT have found her charging into the woods.
The early May rains following that April were such as we had never known in Kansas before. The Neosho became bank-full; then it spread out over the bottom lands, flooding the wooded valley, creeping up and up towards the bluffs. It raced in a torrent now, and the song of its rippling over stony ways was changed to the roar of many waters, rushing headlong down the valley.
Thar they be, antein', goin' it blind, straddlin', raisin' before the draw, bluffin', an' bettin', an' havin' the time of their c'reers. "'It's the spring flood, an' the old Cumberland is bank-full an' still a-risin'. The flat boat is softly raisin' an' fallin' on the sobbin' tide.
Although bank-full, there is no stream whatever from the Bahr el Gazal, and it has the appearance of a backwater formed by the Nile. The water being clear and perfectly dead, a stranger would imagine it to be an overflow of the Nile, were the existence of the Bahr el Gazal unknown.
The first miserable afternoon at Marshmallows looked now as if it had been the whole of my coming relation to the place seen through a reversed telescope. And here I was IN it now. The walk along the side was tolerably dry, although the river was bank-full.
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