Before I could respond, he signed his warriors to push off, and the canoe shot away at arrowy speed. At once Alisanda slipped out of the cabin, to peer after the darting craft and the grim savages, whose naked, bronzed forebodies, fantastically streaked with the war paint, swayed to the paddle strokes so vigorously as to bob their plumed war locks about in a most comical manner. It was a sight she was not apt to see again even on the Mississippi, if only because of the redman's dislike to exert himself except when hunting or on the warpath. Though we had come so well through this adventure, the accident of our escape from attack did not lessen my fear of visits from Indians belonging to other tribes. To my vast relief, the following day brought us safely in the approach of a great flotilla of flour-laden flats, whose draught of water gave them better headway than our boat. The drift of our craft, which sat so much higher in the water, was at times more retarded by the head winds. The difference was so slight that we were able to keep the others in sight until another flotilla overtook us. In fact, so vast was the extent of the river traffic that from this point until our landing at Natchez, we were never beyond view of one or more descending vessels, while even keelboats, ascending under sail or poles, were not uncommon. Though far from as swift as the flooded Ohio, the Mississippi bore us rapidly on our way. Divided by island after island and contorted this way and that by out-jutting points, its mighty current, swollen to vast width, yet swept on in majestic grandeur past towering bluffs and inundated lowlands and wildernesses as virgin as in the remote days of De Soto the Spaniard, and La Salle the Frenchman, other than for an occasional plantation and, at longer intervals, the log cabins of the little settlements. I will not speak of our difficulties from snags and sawyers and delaying eddies, or of the extreme difficulty of shooting the waterfowl, which, though abundant, had long since been taught wariness by the guns aboard the swarming river craft. I shot a swan and now and then a duck, but for the most part was held too close to the navigation of our awkward flat to hunt such shy game. On the other hand, our well-stocked larder supplied us with all else than fresh meat and milk, and to obtain fish we had only to trail a line over the stern. The season was favorable to the avoidance of fevers and agues; the high water obviated in a measure the danger of shoals and sawyers, and I had had the forethought to provide nettings, which saved us when within the cabin the torments which at night we would otherwise have suffered from mosquitoes and gnats, even out in midchannel.