their minds from what is above? Besides the reflections, there were
alligators in the bayou, trying to slip away before we could see them,
and watching us with their stupid, senile eyes, sometimes from under
the thickest, prettiest flowery bowers; and turtles splashing into
the water ahead of us; and fish (silver-sided perch), looking like
reflections themselves, floating through the flower reflections,
nibbling their breakfast.

Our bayou had been running through swamp only a little more solid than
itself; in fact, there was no solidity but what came from the roots of
grasses. Now, the banks began to get firmer, from real soil in them.
We could see cattle in the distance, up to their necks in the lilies,
their heads and sharp-pointed horns coming up and going down in the
blue and white. Nothing makes cattle's heads appear handsomer, with
the sun just rising far, far away on the other side of them.
The sea-marsh cattle turned loose to pasture in the lush spring
beauty--turned loose in Elysium!

But the land was only partly land yet, and the cattle still cattle to
us. The rising sun made revelations, as our bayou carried us through a
drove in their Elysium, or it might have always been an Elysium to
us. It was not all pasturage, all enjoyment. The rising and falling
feeding head was entirely different, as we could now see, from the
rising and falling agonized head of the bogged--the buried alive.
It is well that the lilies grow taller and thicker over the more
treacherous places; but, misery! misery! not much of the process was
concealed from us, for the cattle have to come to the bayou for
water. Such a splendid black head that had just yielded breath! The
wide-spreading ebony horns thrown back among the morning-glories, the
mouth open from the last sigh, the glassy eyes staring straight at the