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Show 1836- 1837] Fogg's Far West 83 cluster of islands, from whose dense foliage the night- mists were rising and settling in dim confusion. Near the middle of the stream, above this collection, lays a very large island, comprising eight or ten thousand acres. It is called English Island; 4' is heavily timbered; huge vines of the wild grape are leaping like living things from branch to branch, and the wild pea flourishes all over the surface of the soil in most luxuriant profusion. The stream here expands itself to the breadth of four miles, and abounds with islands. As the morning advanced the sun burst gloriously forth from the mists; and as I gazed with tranquillized delight upon the beautiful scenery it unrolled, I remembered that it was the morning of the Sabbath - the peaceful Sabbath. It is a sweet thing to pass the hours of holy time amid the eloquent teachings of inanimate nature. It is pleasant to yield up for a season the sober workings of reason to the warm gushings of the heart, and to suffer the homage of the soul to go up before the Author of its being unfettered by the chill formalities, the bustling parade, the soulless dissembling of the unbending courtesies of ordinary life. Amid the [ 53] crowded assemblage, there is but little of that humbleness of spirit and that simple- hearted fervour of worship which it is in man to feel when communing within the shadowy solitudes of Nature with his God. There are moments, too, when the soul of man is called back from the heartlessness of life, and pours forth its emotions, gush upon gush, in all the hallowed luxuriance of its nature; when, from the fevered turmoil of daily existence, it retires to well up its sympathies alone beneath the covert of a lulled and peaceful bosom; and surely such a season is the calm, " The English Island of 1836 is probably the Power's Island of today. It is three miles long, and forms a part of Scott County, Missouri, more than twenty miles above Cairo.- ED. |