ly 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
accordingly, though I was aware somehow that it had to do with my
realization of our utter insignificance before this unrestrained power
of the elements about me. The huge-grown river had something to do with
it too--a vague, unpleasant idea that we had somehow trifled with these
great elemental forces in whose power we lay helpless every hour of the
day and night. For here, indeed, they were gigantically at play
together, and the sight appealed to the imagination.

But my emotion, so far as I could understand it, seemed to attach itself
more particularly to the willow bushes, to these acres and acres of
willows, crowding, so thickly growing there, swarming everywhere the eye
could reach, pressing upon the river as though to suffocate it, standing
in dens