Reelfoot Lake is sixteen or eighteen miles long, very irregular in shape, and covers from 35,000 to 40,000 acres of land. It varies in width from a mile in some places to four or five miles in others. The northern end is extended by a series of sloughs and bayous into Kentucky.
The most distinctive feature of the lake's appearance, the feature which first impresses and stays longest with the observer's fancy, is a certain grotesque effect, as if a set of crazy men had been operating a pile-driver there for the last century, for the trunks, stumps, and stark branches of dead trees stick out of it everywhere in desolate parody of some such human handiwork; far below the surface the fish dart among the boles and branches where the squirrels frolicked a hundred years ago.
There are beautiful spots here and there, but the effect, as a whole, is not beautiful; at its best, when the mist rises and myriad protruding tree trunks are white and ghostly in the moonlight, it is weird; the general remembrance is of something uncouth. It is a kind of sloven lake that has preferred to sit down with its hair uncombed all day long, but at night it does manage to achieve a touch of wizard dignity.
[A FLOATING SLUM.]
Stand beside the imperial custom-house at Canton and let the eye range down the river toward Hongkong. As far as the sight can reach lie boats, boats, and again boats. These are no ordinary craft, mere vessels of transport plying hither and thither, but the countless homes of myriad Chinese, in which millions of human beings have been born, have lived, and have died. They are the dwellings of the very poor, who live in them practically free from rent, taxes, and the other burdens of the ordinary citizen.
The Tankia—which means boat-dwellers—as the denizens of these floating houses are called, form a sort of caste apart from the rest of the Cantonese. The shore-dwellers regard them as belonging to a lower social order; and indeed they have many customs, peculiar to themselves, which mark them as a separate community. How the swarming masses of them contrive to support existence is a mystery, but their chief mode of employment is in carrying merchandise and passengers from place to place.
[WILD HORSES OF NEVADA.]
Horses are cheap in Nevada. On the government ranges, where they are protected by game-laws, droves of wild horses exist which in the aggregate are said to amount to fifteen thousand. Formerly there was a law in Nevada permitting the shooting of these wild horses for their hides, but there were hunters who were not particular, and the ranchers found their domestic horses disappearing if they let them out on the range. So their shooting was prohibited, and since that time the droves have grown to be exceedingly troublesome. They can be domesticated, but they are not needed there, and it costs too much to ship them East. It seems a pity that, while so many sections could use them to advantage, the transportation problem makes it impossible to get them at a price which they are worth.