Rainbow Landing: An Adventure Story

Rainbow Landing: An Adventure Story

The boat was late in leaving the Mobile wharf. Dusk fell as it wallowed noisily and slowly up against the current of the Alabama River, under the great bridge, past Hurricane and the lumber mills. The shores ceased to be cleared. Swamps and forests gathered on each shore, dense jungles of cypress and gum and titi, that belted almost the whole course of the river from Mobile to Selma. Lockwood ate an intensely indigestible supper in the saloon in the company of the dozen or so passengers, mostly silent, malarial-looking up-river farmers. Afterwards there was nothing whatever to do. The passengers smoked for an hour or two on the forward deck, talking in a gentle drawl of cotton and hogs and turpentine, and then vanished to their berths. It was not much like the old days, when the river boats ran from Mobile to Montgomery crowded with passengers, carrying cotton and slaves and quick-fingered, hair-trigger gamblers; when wine flowed at a gorgeous bar, and rich planters gambled bales of cotton on a single poker hand. The Alabama almost rivaled the Mississippi in those days, and competing boats raced in a flare of pitch smoke, occasionally piling up on a sand bar and blowing up their boilers. But improved roads and motors had killed the river. The few remaining boats ran irregularly and slowly, decadent, slovenly, dejected, carrying only low grade passengers and freight, or those whose destination lay outside the range of railroads or gasoline. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 67677
Author: Pollock, Frank Lillie
Release Date: Mar 21, 2022
Format: eBook
Language: English
Publisher: Chelsea House
Publication Date: 1926
Publisher Country: United States