When the
nights are very dark, the look-out stationed in the head of the
boat, knows by the ripple of the water if any great impediment be
near at hand, and rings a bell beside him, which is the signal for
the engine to be stopped: but always in the night this bell has
work to do, and after every ring, there comes a blow which renders
it no easy matter to remain in bed.
The decline of day here was very gorgeous; tingeing the firmament
deeply with red and gold, up to the very keystone of the arch above
us. As the sun went down behind the bank, the slightest blades of
grass upon it seemed to become as distinctly visible as the
arteries in the skeleton of a leaf; and when, as it slowly sank,
the red and golden bars upon the water grew dimmer, and dimmer yet,
as if they were sinking too; and all the glowing colours of
departing day paled, inch by inch, before the sombre night; the
scene became a thousand times more lonesome and more dreary than
before, and all its influences darkened with the sky.
We drank the muddy water of this river while we were upon it. It
is considered wholesome by the natives, and is something more
opaque than gruel.
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