So they
walked onward, looking across the long land, hand clasped in hand.
END OF PART I
PART II
The River
CHAPTER I
The Emigrant Trail struck the Platte at Grand Island. From the bluffs
that walled in the river valley the pioneers could look down on the
great waterway, a wide, thin current, hardly more than a glistening
veil, stretched over the sandy bottom. Sometimes the veil was split by
islands, its transparent tissue passing between them in sparkling
strands as if it were sewn with silver threads. These separated
streams slipped along so quietly, so without noise or hurry, they
seemed to share in the large unconcern of the landscape. It was a
still, unpeopled, spacious landscape, where there was no work and no
time and the morning and the evening made the day.
Many years ago the Frenchmen had given the river its name, Platte,
because of its lack of depths. There were places where a man could
walk across it and not be wet above the middle; and, to make up for
this, there were quicksands stirring beneath it where the same man
would sink in above his waist, above his shoulders, above his head.
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