The station itself is a pretty brick colonial building, backed by a neat
if tiny park maintained by the railroad company, and facing the levee
(pronounce "_lev_-vy"), along which the tracks are laid. Beyond the
tracks untidy landing places are scattered along the water front, with
here and there a tall, awkward, stern-wheel river steamer tied up,
looking rather like an old-fashioned New Jersey seacoast hotel, covered
with porches and jimcrack carving, painted white, embellished with a
cupola and a pair of tall, thin smokestacks, and set adrift in its old
age to masquerade in maritime burlesque.
At other points along the bank are moored a heterogeneous assortment of
shanty boats of an incredible and comic slouchiness. Some are nothing
but rafts made of water-soaked logs, bearing tiny shacks knocked
together out of driftwood and old patches of tin and canvas, but the
larger ones have barges, or the hulks of old launches, as their
foundation. These curious craft are moored in long lines to the
half-submerged willow and cottonwood trees along the bank, or to stakes
driven into the levee, or to the railroad ties, or to whatever objects,
ashore, may be made fast an old frayed rope or a piece of telephone
wire. Long, narrow planks, precariously propped, connect them with the
river bank, so that the men, women, children, dogs, and barnyard
creatures who inhabit them may pass to and fro.
Pages:
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495