et strike him
as veritable villages, but places akin to those of fairyland.

All the rest of the day he dropped on down, not knowing which side he
should land against, and filled with doubts as to where his duty lay.
Once he caught up his big oars and began to row toward a number of
little shanty-boats moored against a sandbar, close down to a wooded
bank, only to find that the river current carried him away despite his
most muscular endeavours, so he accepted it as a sign that he should not
land there.

For a time Rasba thought that perhaps he had better just let the river
carry him whither it would, but upon reflection he remembered what an
old raftsman, who had run strands of logs down Clinch and Holston, told
him about the nature of rivers:

"Come a falling tide, an' she drags along the banks and all that's
afloat keeps in the middle; but come a fresh an' a risin' tide, an' the
hoist of the water is in the mid-stream, and what's runnin' rolls off to
one side or the other, an' jams up into the drift piles."

The philosophy of that was, for this occasion, that if Old Mississip'
was falling, Elijah Rasba might never get ashore, not in all the rest of
his born days, unless he stirred his boots. So catching up his sweep
handles he began to push a long stroke toward the west bank, and his
boat began to move on the river surface. Under the two corners of his
square bow appeared little swirls and tiny ripples as he approached the
bank and drifted down in the edge of the current looking for a place to
land.

Before he knew it, a big patch of woods grew up behind him, and when he
felt the current under the boat slacken he discovered that he had run
out of the Mississippi River and was in a narrow waterway no larger than
Tug Fork.

"Where all mout I be?" he gasped, in wonderment.

He saw three houseboats just below him, moored against a sandbar, with
hoop nets drying near by, blue smoke curling out of tin pipes, and two
or three people standing by to look at the stranger.

He rowed ashore and carried out a big roped stone, which he used as
anchor; then he walked down the bar toward the man who watched his
approach with interest.

"I am Elijah Rasba," he greeted him. "I come down out of Tug River; I am
looking for Jock Drones; he's down thisaway, somewheres; can yo' all
tell me whichaway is the Mississippi River?"

"I don't know him," the fisherman shook his head. "But this yeah is Wolf
Island Chute; the current ca