ALL day we swung along down the river, and had the stream almost wholly to ourselves.

Formerly, at such a stage of the water, we should have passed acres of lumber rafts, and dozens of big coal barges; also occasional little trading-scows, peddling along from farm to farm, with the peddler's family on board; possibly, a random scow, bearing a humble Hamlet and Co.

on an itinerant dramatic trip.

But these were all absent.
Far along in the day, we saw one steamboat; just one, and no more.

She was lying at rest in the shade, within the wooded mouth of the Obion River.