The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1885-06-06
A SILVER SUNRISE.
The Splendid and Peculiar Pageant OF
Morning in Southwestern Georgia.

The Splendid and Peculiar Pageant of
Morning i'm Southwestern Georgia.
Poets have sung of rosy dawns, of or
ange 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 sun
rise in the South, or in that part of it
known as the cotton belt of southwestern
Georgia. There the isotherm is semi-trop-
ical. The almost fat, slightly undulating
landscape is, or was twenty years ago, un-
der the high cultivation of the slave system,
sheet of verdure breathing incense in the
months of March, April, and May. The
tall cypress, thick-leaved ambrosial live oak,
the heavy scented magnolia grandihora,
form the upper foliage, betting the clear
dark ponds that dot the low, fat, level
tracts. Around their sedgy borders the
cranes and curlews call, on their dark bo-
SONS swim the broods of mallard and teal
ducks. All the beauty and picturesque
charm of Nature do not belong to noun
tain 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 live
ly 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
- IL
produce the phenomenon. To the sayant
belongs the task of telling what the condi-
tions are that produce a silver sunrise The
effect viii try to describe. In April or
May, when the early spring rains that have
soaked the porous soil and filed the ponds,
and given the flush and lusty green hues
to the earth, have ceased to fall, when the
atmosphere is rarifed by heat that makes
the young cotton 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 motion of the
consultations in the cIoudless heavens, you
may rise, as [ have risen, morning after
morning, to catch that feeting 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 viii 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 not the long,
gray mosses 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
sum- In the negro parlance of the old
times: at 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 of plant and
weed, every flower petal and wheel of field
cobveb is gemmed with beads of dew, but
it does not drip. 1t looks almost or quite
like hoarfrost spread over the ocean-like
expanse of land and water, like white veil
blending and 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
sudden cleaying the blue vault above you
with such strains of unprecedented art as
skylark never dreamed of. In fact, if one
of the Southern mocking birds ever hears
the song of one of those English skylarks
which the late Isaac w. England found a
home for in the meadows of New jersey,
he will beat him so badly in his own song
that the British warbler will hide his head
under his wing, poor thing, and die ofgrief'
and shame.
Afar off from thicket and leafy covert
comes the cooling of thousand doves, the
soft whistle of as many quails, the shrill
cries of the redbirds, the shriller calls of
the catbirds, and the notes of many another
feathered songster, whose names you must
learn from Mr.. Audubon. The thrushes,
too, hardly less musical than the mocking
birds, sing from the leafy boughs and
shrubbery nearer by,
While hathed, as it were, in this out
burst of liquid melody, this first diapason
of the opera of the day, suddenly, without
warning, with no rosy glow to herald his
coming, up from the white misty horizon
bursts the sun, blaze of silver light big
ger than the biggest cart wheel that ever
was made, dazzling as if composed of ten
thousand Furnished silver mirrors flashing
electric light through panes of crystal,
flooding the landscape with silver lace dot
ted with diamonds and powdered with
sparkling silver dust. The sense of the
exquisite coloring of the scene is lost in the
wondrous radiance shed over landscape
that stretches miles away, until the dazzling
view is lost in the silvery haze of the hori-
zon. 1t looks as if all fairy land had met
to battle on a field of jewelled silver, pano-
Piled in silver mail, and every shield and
every spear decked and tipped with gems.
Not one moment is there rest in this Won
drous scene, which lasts but few minutes,
for the first breeze of morning waving the
sparkling banners of long moss, and the
first warm kiss of the sunbeams sweep the
glittering pageant all away.