We are drawing--how much ?' 'Six feet aft,--six and a half forward.' 'Well, you do seem to know something.' 'But what I particularly want to know is, if I have got to keep up an everlasting measuring of the banks of this river, twelve hundred miles, month in and month out ?' 'Of course!' My emotions were too deep for words for a while.

Presently I said--' And how about these chutes.

Are there many of them ?' 'I should say so.

I fancy we shan't run any of the river this trip as you've ever seen it run before--so to speak.

If the river begins to rise again, we'll go up behind bars that you've always seen standing out of the river, high and dry like the roof of a house; we'll cut across low places that you've never noticed at all, right through the middle of bars that cover three hundred acres of river; we'll creep through cracks where you've always thought was solid land; we'll dart through the woods and leave twenty-five miles of river off to one side; we'll see the hind-side of every island between New Orleans and Cairo.' 'Then I've got to go to work and learn just as much more river as I already know.' 'Just about twice as much more, as near as you can come at it.' 'Well, one lives to find out.