But If The Past Is Blank, These
Scenes Are Suggestive Of Happy Reflections As To The Future.
The long
perspective is radiant with busy life and cheerful husbandry.
New
forms spring into being. Villages and towns spring up as if by magic,
along whose streets throngs of men are passing. And thus, as "coming
events cast their shadows before," does the mind wander from the real
to the probable. An hour and a half of this sort of revery, and we had
come to the Fort Ripley ferry, over which we were to go for the mail.
That ferry (and I have seen others on the river like it) is a
marvellous invention. It is a flat-boat which is quickly propelled
either way across the river by means of the resistance which it offers
to the current. Its machinery is so simple I will try to describe it.
In the first place a rope is stretched across the river from elevated
objects on either side. Each end of the boat is made fast to this line
by pullies, which can be taken up or let out at the fastenings on the
boat. All that is required to start the boat is to bring the bow, by
means of the pully, to an acute angle with the current. The after part
of the boat presents the principal resistance to the current by
sliding a thick board into the water from the upper side. As the water
strikes against this, the boat is constantly attempting to describe a
circle, which it is of course prevented from doing by the current, and
so keeps on for it must move somewhere in a direction where the
obstruction is less.
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