walking pleasant, but I made the tour, nevertheless. From the lower end
the light, of course, changed, and the river looked dark and angry. Only
the backs of the flying waves were visible, streaked with foam, and
pushed forcibly by the great puffs of wind that fell upon them from
behind. For a short mile it was visible, pouring in and out among the
islands, and then disappearing with a huge sweep into the willows, which
closed about it like a herd of monstrous antediluvian creatures crowding
down to drink. They made me think of gigantic sponge-like growths that
sucked the river up into themselves. They caused it to vanish from
sight. They herded there together in such overpowering numbers.

Altogether it was an impressive scene, with its utter loneliness, its
bizarre suggestion; and as I gazed, long and curiously, a singular
emotion began stir somewhere in the depths of me. Midway in my delight
of the wild beauty, there crept unbidden and unexplained, a curious
feeling of disquietude, almost of alarm.

A rising river, perhaps, always suggests something of the ominous: many
of the little islands I saw before me would probably have been swept
away by the morning; this resistless, thundering flood of water touched
the sense of awe. Yet I was aware that my uneasiness lay deeper far than
the emotions of awe and wonder. It was not that I felt. Nor had it
directly to do with the power of the driving wind--this shouting
hurricane that might almost carry up a few acres of willows into the air
and scatter them like so much chaff over the landscape. The wind was
simply enjoying itself, for nothing rose out of the flat landscape to
stop it, and I was conscious of sharing its great game with a kind of
pleasurable excitement. Yet this novel emotion had nothing to do with
the wind. Indeed, so vague was the sense of distress I experienced, that
it was impossible to trace it to its source and deal with it