And Yet There Was A Beauty About It Too -
A Melancholy, Death-Like Beauty.
The disordered ruin and confused
decay of the forest was all gemmed with particles of ice.
The eye
reaching through the thin underwood could form for itself
picturesque shapes and solitary bowers of broken wood, which were
bright with the opaque brightness of the hoar-frost. The great
river ran noiselessly along, rapid but still with an apparent
lethargy in its waters. The ground beneath our feet was fertile
beyond compare, but as yet fertile to death rather than to life.
Where we then trod man had not yet come with his axe and his plow;
but the railroad was close to us, and within a mile of the spot
thousands of dollars had been spent in raising a city which was to
have been rich with the united wealth of the rivers and the land.
Hitherto fever and ague, mud and malaria, had been too strong for
man, and the dollars had been spent in vain. The day, however, will
come when this promontory between the two great rivers will be a fit
abode for industry. Men will settle there, wandering down from the
North and East, and toil sadly, and leave their bones among the mud.
Thin, pale-faced, joyless mothers will come there, and grow old
before their time; and sickly children will be born, struggling up
with wan faces to their sad life's labor. But the work will go on,
for it is God's work; and the earth will be prepared for the people
and the fat rottenness of the still living forest will be made to
give forth its riches.
We found that two days at Cairo were quite enough for us. We had
seen the gun-boats and the mortar-boats, and gone through the sheds
of the soldiers. The latter were bad, comfortless, damp, and cold;
and certain quarters of the officers, into which we were hospitably
taken, were wretched abodes enough; but the sheds of Cairo did not
stink like those of Benton Barracks at St. Louis, nor had illness
been prevalent there to the same degree. I do not know why this
should have been so, but such was the result of my observation. The
locality of Benton Barracks must, from its nature, have been the
more healthy, but it had become by art the foulest place I ever
visited. Throughout the army it seemed to be the fact, that the men
under canvas were more comfortable, in better spirits, and also in
better health, than those who were lodged in sheds. We had
inspected the Cairo army and the Cairo navy, and had also seen all
that Cairo had to show us of its own. We were thoroughly disgusted
with the hotel, and retired on the second night to bed, giving
positive orders that we might be called at half-past two, with
reference to that terrible start to be made at half-past three. As
a matter of course we kept dozing and waking till past one, in our
fear lest neglect on the part of the watcher should entail on us
another day at this place; of course we went fast asleep about the
time at which we should have roused ourselves; and of course we were
called just fifteen minutes before the train started.
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