We Meet With An Accident

I find it poor work transcribing so much regarding myself in recounting these small adventures, yet how else may I tell the story rightly? This all occurred so long ago the young man of whom I write seems hardly the same old man who puts pen to paper. The impression grows upon me that I merely narrate incidents which befell a friend I once knew, but who has long since passed from my vision.

It was wearying work, toiling up the muddy Arkansas, and in the end disastrous. Occasionally, for miles at a stretch, our hearts were gladdened by a curve toward the northward, yet we drew westerly so much we became fearful lest the Jesuit had made false report on the main course of the stream. Every league plunged us deeper into strange, desolate country, until we penetrated regions perhaps never before looked upon by men of our race. The land became more attractive, the sickly marsh giving place to wide, undulating plains richly decorated with wild grasses, abloom with flowers, bordered by a thick fringe of wood. Toward the end of our journeying by boat, after we had passed two cliffs upreared above the water, the higher rising sheer for two hundred feet, we perceived to the northward vast chains of hills rising in dull brown ridges against the sky-line, seemingly crowned with rare forest growth to their very summits. During all these days and nights in only two things could we deem ourselves fortunate--we discovered no signs of roving savages, while wild animals were sufficiently numerous to supply all our needs.