River Spey

“ They had not; but, search being made, sure enough, each husband missed a besom and a riddle. "So I thought," said Madge at their next interview; and then added, "Look for your wives in the Spey." No time was lost in following the woman's advice. A search was made from the source of the Spey to the ocean, without any trace of the bodies being obtained; but, most extraordinary, the riddles were found near the "Witches' Pool," a deep part of the river, known by this name to the present day.
A startling mountain tale is given of a girl who could control the elements by means of magical power. ”

“ They are found commencing within a very short distance of that summit which is the common origin of the waters of the Spey and Roy, the one running to the east, the other to the west. In their progress westward they increase in number and in the perfection of their forms and markings, maintaining the same level throughout: while the bottom of the valley, now the course of the Roy, descends with a rapid declivity towards its junction with the Spean. ”

“ He was wistful for human companionship, but as he looked at the distant shanty-boats, and passed a river town or two, he found himself diffident and shamed.
He saw a woman in a blue mother-hubbard dress leaning against the cabin of her low, yellow shanty-boat, a cap a-rake on her head, one elbow resting on her palm, and in the other a long-stemmed Missouri meerschaum. Her face was as hard as a man’s, her eyes were as blue and level as a deputy sheriff’s in the Bad Lands, and her lips were straight and thin. How could a man ask her if she had seen his wife going down that way? ”

“ He could not give over the pursuit, however; he felt that he must save her from herself; he must seek and rescue her. He hoisted in his anchor and starting the motor, turned into the chute and ran down before the wind into the river. Never had he seen the Mississippi in such a dark and repellent mood.
When he had cleared the partial shelter of Island No. 8, he felt the wind and current at the stern of his boat, driving it first one way then the other. Steering was difficult, and fear began to clutch at his heart. ”

“ Drifting near another shanty-boat, she passed the time of day with a runaway couple who had come down the Ohio. They had dinner together on their boat. A solitaire and an unscarred wedding ring attested to the respectability of the association.
“Larry’s a river drifter,” the girl explained, “and Daddy’s one of those set old fellows who hate the river. But Mamma knew it was all right. Larry’s saved $7,000 in three years. He’d never tell me that till I married him, but I knew. We’re going clear down to N’Orleans. Are you?” ”

“ The top of the snag was broken away by drift that lodged against the trunk, pressing heavily. Down the lower end of the creek the snag moved slowly out into the great flood.
A fork of the roots pressed against the side of the little house-boat, so softly that the craft did not jar enough to awaken Sibley; but the whole weight of the oak snag was behind the touch. Irresistibly but slowly the current carried the snag and other drift against the hull, and with a sudden low pop the ash stake in the clay sprang up several feet and fell to the wet bank. ”

“ When they hear of America they are eager to be off, but the means are not provided.
From Homburg I proceeded to Darmstadt and Manheim, in order to make a detour to Speyer, which is celebrated for its Cathedral. At Manheim the river to Ludwigshafen, on the opposite shore, is crossed by a bridge formed by some thirty iron flat-bottomed boats of canal-boat size, fastened together, upon which the structure is laid, with draws for the passage of steamers, as is the case all along the Rhine. An hour’s ride by railroad carries one to the old town of Speyer. ”

“ He said: “You couldn’t expect many morals or much stiddy behavior round a river Spree.”
But I don’t spoze the name made a mite of difference. The water seemed to run along as smooth and placid as Dove Creek, that bathes the streets of Loontown at home. Indeed, the waters of the Spree runs along real slow and quiet. And I spoze the inhabitants there are about on a equality with the dwellers in other cities in the old and new world. Human nater is a good deal the same wherever you find it. ”

“ Spey exacts from those who would fish her waters with success a peculiar and distinctive method of throwing their line, which is known as the "Spey cast." In vain has Major Treherne illustrated the successive phases of the "Spey cast" in the fishing volume of the admirable Badminton series. It cannot be learned by diagrams; no man, indeed, can become a proficient in it who has not grown up from childhood in the practice of it. Yet its use is absolutely indispensable to the salmon angler on the Spey. Rocks, trees, high banks, and other impediments forbid resort to the overhead cast. ”

“ They had shown, those simple words of the man who knew the river, what must be done, what should be done, what ought not to be done. If he read the reports of some men twice, he read those of Kalas a dozen times.
Now Kalas, the great river scientist, had asked Sibley Carruth to help him and take him down the flood, because Sibley was a regular river boy, and knew the handling of a first-class motor-boat. Kalas did more than that. As they cut loose from the levee to go down the stream, he turned his bright eyes under their shaggy gray brows, upon Sibley, who stood at the wheel. ”

“ For the first time in my life I’m free—and—and I don’t—I don’t care a damn!”
“But the future!” he protested, feebly.
“That’s it!” she retorted. “For a river goddess there is no future. It’s all in the present for her, because she is eternal.”
They had walked clear up to the southernmost tip of the sandbar point. They could hear someone, perhaps a chorus of voices, singing on the whiskey boat at the Upper Landing. They could see the light of the boat’s windows. There they turned and started back down the sandbar, reaching the two boats moored side by side in the deadwater. ”

“ There’s a light!" he said quietly.
In a minute, the distant yellow light, with its reflection on the surface of the flood, was visible to all. Just making steerage way against the slow current, Sibley headed for it. Only a shanty-boat or other craft could be in those woods; no house or cabin was within many miles of the place. None but a fugitive was likely to have chosen such a retreat for a mooring-place, for the sudden lowering of the flood level must have held the boat behind snags and other obstructions. ”

“ Every one knows Sib can take care of himself if any one is able to!"
"And he’s been wanting to go alone, too!" she recalled, with just a touch of asperity. "I hope he’s satisfied."
"Lots to eat, a good little boat that rows like a skiff, a brave heart—And he knows—Why, that boy has read River Commission reports clear through, and he’s always talking to shanty-boaters, asking them about the river and how to do things. I wish he had a skiff, though—in case—in case—"
"The drift should break the hull in, and sink it!" she cried. "If we could only do something! What can we do?" ”

“ It is now eleven o'clock; there is more rest than work, a purely negro way of getting through the day; three hours went in idleness before, and now five more are wasted. Again we start, and after crossing a similar small bay, continue along a low shelving shore, densely wooded to the water's edge, until the Malagarazi river's mouth is gained. This river is the largest on the eastern shore of the lake, and was previously crossed by the caravan on its way from Kazé, in small bark canoes, much rougher, but constructed something similarly to those of the Americans. ”

“ Loch Laggan and Loch Ericht are the principal lakes, and the district is abundantly watered by the Spey and its numerous tributaries. It is traversed, from Dalnaspidal to Boat of Garten, by the Highland railway. There are very few industries, and population groups itself at Kingussie and other places on or near the Spey. ”

“ The report told of the failure of men to cope successfully with the Big Muddy. The river maps, on a scale of an inch-to-the-mile, showed the twists and bends of the river, the islands and reaches.
Besides river reports, Sibley had read histories and stories, trappers’ magazines, biographies, grammars, and what not, when he must sit in the little cabin of the shanty-boat floating in a still sheltered eddy, with the rain pattering on the canvas-covering of the thin board roof. ”

“ Of all the parts of the river, the hundred miles from Island No. 10 down to Fort Pillow became the most familiar to his thoughts, black though the night had been. Even each government light began to have characteristics, and the sky-line of levee, wilderness, sandbar, and caving bank grew more and more defined.
Having written his notes, and Jeff Slamey having fingered the nine loose-leaf sheets with exclamatory interest and delight, Terabon said he must go rest awhile.
“Yas, suh,” the fisherman cried, “when a man’s pulled a hundred mile he shore needs sleep. ”

“ I no longer felt any doubt that the lake at my feet gave birth to that interesting river (Nile) , the source of which has been the subject of so much speculation and the object of so many explorers. This is a far more extensive lake than Tanganyika; it is so broad that you could not see across it, and so long that nobody knew its length. This magnificent sheet of water I have ventured to name Victoria after our gracious sovereign."
Speke returned to Kaze after his six weeks' eventful journey, having tramped no less than four hundred and fifty-two miles. ”

“ Wilson has also determined the existence of a current, which sets steadily from Speke Bay parallel with the coast westwards. It is caused by the south-east trade winds, which prevail throughout the greater part of the year. The superfluous waters of the inland sea flow gently through a broad opening on the north coast over against the island of U-Vuma. This emissary, forming the head of the Nile properly so called, gradually narrows its banks to the proportions of a river, when its liquid contents are precipitated over a tremendous cascade, to which Speke has given the name of the Ripon Falls. ”

“ The river was falling, and they held to the trough near the mid-current. It was a navigable river, public and free. Any one in a craft had a right anywhere by living up to the rules. Columbiana, however, was doubtful. Nearly an hour before dusk she pulled into the dead water above Donaldson’s Point about three miles. When she looked across the river, she saw the red cabin-boat floating around in the eddy at the foot of the filled-in Island No. 9. The boat made a complete circle around and then bumped into the bank for the night. ”

“ I met Crele, an old hunter-trapper, in a slough below St. Genevieve. He was talkative, and said he had the prettiest girl on a hundred miles of river. She had married a man of the name of Carline, real rich and a big bug. “But my gal’s got the looks, yes, indeed!” If I find her, I must be sure and tell her to write to her folks—river romance!
Nelia’s face warmed as she read those phrases as well it might. She wondered what other things he had written in his book of notes, and her eye caught a page:
House boatmen are a bad lot. Once a young man came to work for a farmer back on the hills. ”

“ Columbiana floated down close to the west bank eddies till she saw a tall, slim man with thin, brown face standing on a great shanty-boat deck with an expression of bewilderment on his features.
“Excuse me!” he hailed her. “I am greatly disturbed, perturbed, and I am a stranger down the river——”
“A soft-paw?” she asked, sweetly.
“Yes, indeed! Just so; if you——”
“All right,” she smiled. “I’ll come over and see what’s the matter.”
She pulled in and made fast to the stern of the big boat. She climbed aboard and went into the cabin. ”

“ I just sit in the skiff, there, and I write what I see, on the machine: A big sandbar, a flock of geese, a big oak tree just on the brink of the bank half the roots exposed and going to fall in a minute or a day—everything like that!”
“I bet some of these shanty-boaters could tell you histories,” Carline said. “I tell you, some of them are bad. Why, they’d murder a man for ten dollars—those river pirates would.”
“No doubt about it!” 81
“But they wouldn’t talk, ’course. It must be awful hard to make up them stories in the magazines.”
“Oh, if a man gets an idea, he can work it up into a story. ”

“ The people who were having the hard time were those who were fighting the flood at the levees. If a levee broke, the water would pour through and the swift rush of the torrent would cut out the softened ground; swirls would dig deep blue holes, and probably great sand and gravel bars would wash over land worth a hundred dollars or more an acre, and ruin it—by the hundreds of acres.
Having landed their refugees, Sibley and Jimmy ran around to the river front, and went up into the bayou, where they found their cabin boat. ”

“ Finally, Captain Speke made his own lake a physical impossibility. Within little more than 60 miles from east to west he has given it three main effluents, the Mwerango, the Luajerri, and the Nile or Napoleon channel, to say nothing of the Myo Myanza, the Murchison Creek, the Usoga stream, together with the Asúa river from the Baringo. ”

“ This was rich!
“Lucky he didn’t hit you on the head, and take the boat, too!” Doss grinned.
“I suppose so.”
“Yes, sir! Lots of mean men on this river, they play 139 any old game. They say they’re preachers, or umbrella menders, or anything. Every once in a while some feller comes down, saying he’s off’n some magazine. They come down in skiffs, mostly. It’s a great game they play. Everybody tells ’em everything. If I was going to be a crook, I bet I’d say I was a hist’ry writer. I’d snoop around, and then I’d land—same’s that feller landed on you. Get much?”
“Two—three hundred dollars!” ”