devoured it, as it wheezed and labored up-stream past them--watched the
thundering stern-wheel threshing the water into a wake of foam far behind it
and flashing its blades, water-dripping in the sun--watched it till it puffed
and wheezed and labored on out of sight. Great Heavens! to think that
he--Chad--was seeing all that!

About the next bend, more but thinner columns of smoke were visible. Soon the
very hills over the capital could be seen, with little green wheat-fields
dotting them and, as the raft drew a little closer, Chad could see houses on
the hills--more strange houses of wood and stone, and porches, and queer
towers on them from which glistened shining points.

"What's them?" he asked.

"Lightnin'-rods," said Tom, and Chad understood, for the school-master had
told him about them back in the mountains. Was there anything that Caleb Hazel
had not told him? The haze over the town was now visible, and soon they swept
past tall chimneys puffing out smoke, great warehouses covered on the outside
with weather-brown tin, and, straight ahead--Heavens, what a bridge!--arching
clear over the river and covered like a house, from which people were looking
down on them as they swept under. There were the houses, in two rows on the
streets, jammed up against each other and without any yards. And people! Where
had so many people come from? Close to the river and beyond the bridge was
another great mansion, with tall pillars, about it was a green yard, as smooth
as a floor, and negroes and children were standing on the outskirting stone
wall and looking down at them as they floated by. And another great house
still, and a big garden with little paths running through it and more patches
of that strange green grass. Was that bluegrass? It was, but it didn't look
blue and it didn't look like any other grass Chad had ever seen. Below this
bridge was another bridge, but not so high, and, while Chad looked, another