The daily Cairo bulletin. (Cairo, Ill.) 1878-1???, 1884-12-03
A Midsummer Day in the South.

Down upon the white sand-bar RISING
ont OF the back water of the BAYOU the
July sunlight fails not in beams, but in
one great sheet of torrid glory. Here
and there out of the glistening crystals
the jagged end of stranded and i'm
lcdded log projects, while seeming
equally lifeless and just as motionless in
the cnervatng glare, alligators lie, with
open jaws, asleep.
Nearer the waters edge the snowy
smoothness is broken, in spots, by little
bumps of lifted sand betraying, while
concealing, heaps Of round shelless
eggs, out OF whose tilmy crusts after
awhile there shall peep and then crawl,
in stolid company, infant alligators and
turtles.
In the shadows of overhanging trees
the parent turtles lie fixed upon the en-
tangled driftwood. Hour after hour
they lie there motionless and still, only
stirring, now and then, enough to lazi-
ly nip an incautious fly from among
the Swarms crawling over them.
The birds that hitherto have seemed
defiant of repression. now sit mute be-
meath their leafy covers, and, save
where turtle slides from log into the
CLASSY water, scarce motion ruflles
the latent air.
Standing half in the water where its
great roots reach out darky below the
surface, looking like hage sleeping
snakes, giant cypress rears its lofty
trunk far above its fellows of the forest.
An outstretching branch, ignorant of
verdure, is black with vultures jostling
and swapping at each other in surly
clamor.
Starting at some sudden but indefi-
mite noise, they rise in flight, theirgreat
wings shifting the quiet air with the
sound of the wind that foreruns the
storm.
Some of them are content 10 wheel
about among the tree-tops and alight
again upon the old cypress; Others sail
away to distant parts of the forest but
one, separating itself from the flock,
rises away up against the cloudiess sky
as though bidding earth an eternal fare
well.
Far above the ceaseless toll ard strife:
the chickering's and the discussions; the
fruitless labor in unyielding fields, and
the envies and iealousies of unwinged
man, the bird scars and floats in yon
vapory sea that is all unstained by
earth's insinuating sewage.
Oh! for the power thus to rise, if but
for little while, and DO at home in
heavens purity!
No sound from the tapping of those
broad wings reaches the ear. A few
quick beats of them upon the higher air
send the graceful bird on, and on, and
on, almost outstripping the swift shafts
of human vision. Then, behind an OBJ
truding leaf in the topmost limits of
the wood, it turns and soon again, is
nearly overhead. 1t has heard the call
or seen the distant form of an approach
ing fellow of the flock upon the cypress
tree, and meets it in mid-zenith.
Back and forth the two companions
soar, crossing each others flight in easy
glidngs along the spotless altitude.
Then, in mute accord, each leans lit
tie to one side, so that the entire stretch
of upper wing from tip to tip is seen,
and thus, with expanded but unmoving
wings, they circle round and round and
round, as though propelled by an inner
hidden mechanism like those great
wanderers of the neither blue that speed
their way along without assign of smoke
or sail
And yet these creatures of such grace
full wing soaring, soaring, soaring away
up yonder as though it were their mis-
sion thus to leave the earth and float
upon the air in heavens environment,
now turn, descending from those
heights of purity to feast on carrion.
Yet stranger far than this it is when
men of noble guise and genius grand
do stoop from the vicinage of godlike
thought to batten on the ofial of foul
imagery.
Now, like yon soaring birds, the radi-
ant sun, descending from the unsullied
plain, in shame of countenance alights
At last behind the forest in loathsome,
noXious marsh; and thus the nidyear
day departs and dies. -JameS b. Cable
IN The Current.