Arkansas true Democrat., 1860-08-11
H U II BOLDT RIVE B
BY JOHN R. RIDGE.


 The following poem by John R. Ridge, esq.,, editor of the Marysville Democrat, appears in the Hesperian for April. It is replete with nervous power, and he who reads 1t must be dulard if he feels no hot blast, or subtiizel breath" from "that region infectious of gloom" which MT Ridge pictures to our imagination with such fearful distinctness. 1t IS the best performance by him we remember to have seen; and would do no discredit to any poet in the land.
 Humboldt river! 0, most horrible of rivers, let us rename it. Let us call 1t the "River of Death" For three hundred miles its banks are one continuous burying ground. Like the monster serpent which once impeded the march and thinned the ranks of the Roman army, by filling the atmosphere with his pestiferous and death dealing breath, so doth this monster stretch itself along the route, and laying in wait for the great annual army of emigration, fill the air with death-producing miasma. It literally fattened its lean sides with the flesh of the emigrant husband, wife and babe. If, as some think departed spirits remain in the vicinity where lie in corrup- ton the heshy tenements once inhabited by them, then, indeed, must the banks of this stream, at midnight, when spirits are sup posed to commence their nightly roaming upon the earth, present to the spirit eye sadder sight than ever caused human eye to fill with tears of sorrow. Naught but the ghost of worn out and starved fathers, mothers and babes! o, horrible, most hor- rible of rivers! Let us call thee the ' River of Death. "- Uosta Courier. The River of Death, as it rolls
 With sound like the wailing of souls. And, nursing their dust, may be seen The ghosts of the dead by the green Bilowy heaps on the shore
 Dim shapes, they crouch by the graves, And vail with the rush of the waves On seeking the desert before. Nursing their dust gainst the morn Which shall see us, new born, Arise from the womb of the earth That, through rain or through dearth, Through calm or through storm, Trough seasons and times, no part may be lost, By the ruthless winds tost, Of the mortal which shall be immortal of form. No leaf that may bud
 By that dark sullen flood; No flower that may bloom, With it's tomb.like perfume, In that region infectious of gloom; No stabilized breath
 That may ripple that River of Death, Or, vapory, float in the desolate air, But is wat hed, with vigilant, miserly care, Lest it steal from the dust of the dead that are
 there.
 For the elements aye are in league; With patience unknowing fatigue, To scatter mortality's mold, And sweep from the graves what they hold! l would not, ween, be the wight To roam by that river at night, When the souls abroad in the gloom; Enough that the day time is weird With such mystical sights are feared Mid the silence of moonlighted tombs. Weird shores, with their alkaline white, That loom in the glare of the light; Weird bones, as they bleach in the sun. Where the beast from his labors is done; Weird frost t-work of poisonous dews On shrub and on herb, which effuse The death they have drank to their core Weird columns upborne from the floor Of the white crusted deserts which boil With the whirlwind's hot blasting turmoil As ghostlike he Gl;des on his way, Each ghastly, worn pilgrim looks gray With the dust the evenomed winds fail; And the heast he bestrdes is as pale As the steed of the Vision of John, With HIM, the Destroyer, thereon. Dark river, foul river, 'ts well That into the jaws of thy Hel-- The open n-mouthed deserts--should fall Thy waves that so haunt and appal. 'Iis fit that thou seek the profound Of the ll-hiding Nights underground: Like the river which nine times around The realm of grim Erebus wound, To roll in that region of dread- Stygian Stream of the Dead sThe "Sink of the Humboldt"
 John Rolin Ridge is native ofGeorgia. and is now about thirty years of age. He went to California eight or ten years ago, where his genius has been felt and re- cognized. Mr. Ridge has been connected with several first class papers in California and is at present editor of the National Democrat, published in Marysville; brave, bold, eloquent, polished and honest. he has carved out political and literary reputa' tion, which any man might envy. And yet MT. Ridge whose genius towers oyer the Aippant, soap bubble refinement of some minds. would be sneered at by them as a "6olf. breed unaaturalized Cherokee Indian
 ,,. no;n.Iass the ieers of such i'll bred