New Ulm weekly review. [volume] (New Ulm, Minn.) 1878-1892, 1885-06-24
4 SILVER SUNRISE

4 SILVER SUNRISE.
The Splendid and Peculiar Pageant Of Morn
ing IN Southwestern Georgia.
Poets have sung Of rosy dawns, of
orange sunsets waning low, and of
that later hour when large Hesper
glitters through the rosy spaces, while
mid silent spheres rises the deepening
night. But the poet is yet to be who
will tell in numbers worthy of the
theme the story of that magical drama
of nature. the silver sunrise in the
south, or in that part of it known as
the cotton belt of southwestern Geor-
gia. There the isotherm is semi-tropi-
cal. The almost fiat, slightly undu-
latlng Landscape is, or was twenty
years ago, under the high cultivation
of the slave system, sheet of verdure
breathing incense in the months of
March, April, and May. The tall
cypress, the thick-leaved ambrosial
Gve-oak, the heavy-scented magnolia
grandifora, form the upper foliage,
betting the clear dark ponds that dot
the low, fiat, level tracts. Around
their sedgy borders the cranes and
curlews call, on their dark bosoms
swim the broods of mallard and teal
ducks. ALI the beauty and pictur-
esque charm of nature do not belong
to the mountain lands alone. To the
lover of nature in all her phases and
moods this pond land is as full of
beauty as of bloom. 1t is lively at all
seasons of the year, all hours of the
day, but especially when seen under a
silver sunrise.
Not every morning of the whole
year round is this wonder witnessed.
1t takes peculiar conditions of the at
nlosphere to produce the phenome-
non. To the savant belongs the task
of telling what the conditions are that
produce silver sunset. The effect 1
will try to describe. In April or May,
when the early spring rains that have
soaked the porous soil and flied the
ponds, and given the flush and lusty
green hues to the earth, have ceased to
fall, when the atmosphere is rariied
by a heat that makes the young cot
ton plants grow visibly under your
eye; in the darkness of morning that
is only slightly cooler than the night
IN which you have watched the mo-
tions of the consultations in the cloud
less heavens, you may rise, as I have
risen, morning after morning, to catch
that fleeting first scene in the first act
of the spectacular drama of sunny
day in the sunny south.
Do not wait to hear the clock strike,
or look at your watch, but when dawn
is near, the swift-passing dawn of that
latitude, which you will know by the
low murmur of insect and bird life
around you, rise and hasten forth.
You can see the white sands under
your feet, but barely note the long,
gray MOSES that hang like stalactites
from the branches of the trees above
your head, only family in the gloom
made visible by starlight and the
swift-moving dawn. In that latitude
twilight and dawn are matters of only
few minutes. The stars blaze out, as
it were. in the beams of the rising sun.
In the negro parlance of the old times:
lit is broad day before you know what
you are about" The sedgy rims of
the ponds, the tall expresses and oaks,
the heavy trailing creepers of the
vines, the light swaying banners of
the moss, every tiny blade of grass
and leaf plant and weed, every flower
petal and wheel of field cobweb is
gemmed with beads OF dew, but it
does not drip. It looks almost or
quite like hoar-frost spread over the
ocean-like expanse of land and water,
like white veil blending ard making
more beautiful the darker verdure of
the foliage around the pools, and the
glowing emerald and color shades of
the cotton and corn fields.
A thousand mocking birds are all of
a sudden cleavlng the blue vault
above you with such strains of unpre-
meditated art as skylark never
dreamed of. In fact, if one of the
southern hooking birds ever hears the
song of one of those English skylarks
which the late Isaac w. England
found home for in the meadows of
New Jersey, he will beat him so badly
in his own song that the British warb-
Ter will hide his head under his wing,
poor thing, and die of grief and
shame.
Afar off from thicket and leafy COW
ert comes the cooling of a thousand
doves, the soft whistle of as many
quails, the shrill cries of the redbirds,
the shriller calls of the catbirds, and
notes of many another feathered song
ster, whose names you must learn from
Mr.. Audubon. The thrushes, too,
hardly less musical than the hooking
birds, sing from the leafy boughs and
shrubbery near by.
While bathed, as it were, in this out
burst of liquid melody, this first
diapason of the opera of the day, sud-
denly. without warning, with no rosy
glow to herald his coming, up from
the white misty horizon bursts the sun,
a blaze of silver light bigger than the
biggest cart-wheel that ever was made,
dazzling, as if composed of ten thou
sand FURNISHED silver mirrors flashing
electric light through panes of crystal,
flooding the landscape with silver lace
dotted with diamonds and powdered
with sparkling silver dust. The sense
of the exquisite colorlng of the scene
is lost in the wondrous radiance shed