barely bring it back. How could boats be made to go against the current? Everywhere and everywhere inventive minds were puzzling over motors, paddles—duck-foot, goose-foot, and elliptical,—wings and sails, side-wheels, stern-wheels, and screws,—and steam was in the air.
As the sun went down in lengthening shadows a purple haze suffused the waters. Adown La Belle Rivière, "the loveliest stream that ever glistened to the moon," arose the evening cadence of the boatmen,—
"Some row up, but we row down,
All the way to Shawnee Town,
Pull away! Pull away!
Pull away to Shawnee Town."
The crescent moon shone brightly on crag and stream and floating forest, the air was mild and moist, the boat glided as in a dream, and the mocking bird enchanted the listening silence.
To Clark no Spring had ever seemed so beautiful. Sitting on deck with Julia he could not forget that turbulent time when as a boy he first plunged down these waters. Symbolic of his whole life it seemed, until now the storm and stress of youth had calmed into the placid current of to-day. The past,—the rough toil-hardened past of William Clark,—fell away, and as under a lifted silken curtain he floated into repose. The rough old life of camps and forts was gone forever.
And to Julia, everything was new and strange,—La Belle Rivière itself whispered of Louisiana. Like an Alpine horn the bugle echoed the dreamlife of the waters.
The fiddles scraping, boatmen dancing, the smooth stream rolling calmly through the forest, the girls who gathered on shore to see the pageant pass, the river itself, momentarily lost to view, then leaping again in Hogarth's line of beauty,—all murmured perpetual music.
Then slumber fell upon the dancers, but still Clark and Julia sat watching. From clouds of owls arose voices of the night, cries of wolves reverberated on shore, the
