Life on the Mississippi / [Mark Twain].

  • Mark Twain
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Life on the Mississippi / [Mark Twain]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    44/632 page 12
    rapid .current coursed athwart their way, by the foot of lofty heights wrapped thick in forests.’ He continues : ‘ Turning southward, they paddled down the stream, through a solitude unrelieved by the faintest trace of man.’ A big cat-fish collided with Marquette’s canoe, and startled him ; and reasonably enough, for he had been warned by the Indians that he was on a foolhardy journey, and even a fatal one, for the river contained a demon ‘ whose roar could be heard at a great distance, CROSSING THE LAKES. and who would engulf them in the abyss where he dwelt.’ I have seen a Mississippi cat-fish that was more than six feet long, and weighed two hundred and fifty pounds; and if Marquette’s fish was the fellow to that one, he had a fair right to think the river’s roaring demon was come. ‘At length the buffalo began to appear, grazing in herds on the great prairies which then bordered the river; and Marquette describes the fierce and stupid look of the old bulls as they stared at the intruders through the tangled mane which nearly blinded them.’
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