He was a queer youngster, not more than fourteen years old, with innocent blue eyes and the modest air of a little child when he asked questions, but changing instantly to the most reckless braggadocio when he referred to his own experiences. He was born, he said, at Montezuma, pointing to a distant spire, and hoped some day to jump from the Brooklyn Bridge. It has been a query in our minds ever since, whether the mere fact of being born on a flat would gender such ambitions.
Below this island the stream flows under the aqueduct of the Erie Canal, and putting waterproof blankets over our heads we shot under a dripping arch, coming out dry, but with decks glistening with the shower-bath. The river widens here, becomes very shallow, and at last spreads out in all directions like a huge Delta. It was often difficult to find the current, and the air seemed loaded with the heaviness of the swamp.
Acres of water-lilies spread before us, small flowers of a waxy whiteness gleamed among patches of sagittaria, and the interminable walls of reeds were weighted down with a plant resembling the hop-vine, and bearing clusters of pink blossoms, that added their perfume to the heaviness of the air.
Slowly we worked our way through this strange region, the paddles after every stroke coming up laden with dripping plants, while we were kept anxiously alert lest we should lose our way in the labyrinth. We occasionally stood up in the boats in vain efforts to see where we were. At one spot the Sybaris moored herself in a lush mass of lily-pads and grasses, from which the soft mud oozed as her keel pressed it down, while Simpson, who had been exerting himself manfully, ceased his efforts in disgust. I took advantage of his experience to avoid the slough, and as I paddled past, heard him remark, as if to himself: “Query, is this land or water?”
But, like Bunyan’s pilgrims on the enchanted ground, we “made a good shift and wagged along,” and before night struck a State ditch—not a canal, but a broad channel dug to drain the region—a channel with a current that bore us along with scarcely an effort on our part.
We were glad enough to escape, even through a ditch. This was our last day spent in a swamp, for the country soon became more broken, the water clearer, and the air lost its malarial heaviness and blew fresh over green hills. Even the mosquito stayed behind.
One evening Simpson was sitting by the fire, having arrived at a good camping-place and put the Sybaris in order for the night before I had come up. He was frying potatoes, holding the spider in one hand and running his eye over a letter that had reached him through the Weedsport post-office. He had laid a stone on the letter to prevent its being blown away, and occasionally his eye would wander from the closely-written page to the graceful lines of the canoe, whose jauntily striped tent was flapping back and forth in the breeze.
In addition to these occupations he was singing something about his “Bonny over the Ocean,” and his voice, which is not unmusical, came floating up to where I had moored the Rena, and was trying to catch a sunset effect. The musical cadence fell in with the place and hour, and I found myself humming the air while I worked; but suddenly it stopped, and I paused a moment in my drawing, thinking I heard thunder.
Certainly there was a roar, though there was no sign of a storm overhead. I put my sketch under the deck, pushed off the boat, and paddled down toward the camp.