As I recall this part of it, I should say that it was the
perfection of a Western journey to travel in early spring by an
Ohio River steamboat,--such steamboats as they had forty years
ago, comfortable, roomy, and well ordered. The company was
social, as Western emigrants were wont to be when there were not
so very many of them, and the shores of the river, then only
thinly populated, were a constantly shifting panorama of
wilderness beauty. I have never since seen a combination of
spring colors so delicate as those shown by the uplifted forests
of the Ohio, where the pure white of the dogwood and the peach-
bloom tint of the red-bud (Judas tree) were contrasted with soft
shades of green, almost endlessly various, on the unfolding
leafage.
Contrasted with the Ohio, the Mississippi had nothing to show but
breadth and muddiness. More than one of us glanced at its level
shores, edged with a monotonous growth of cottonwood, and sent
back a sigh towards the banks of the Merrimack. But we did not
let each other know what the sigh was for, until long after.
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