Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1885-05-27
A SILVER SUNRISE.
The Splendid and Peculiar Pageant of
Morning in Southwestern Georgia.
From the Neao York Sun.


Morning in Southwestern Georgia.
From the Neeo York Sun.
Poets have sung of rosy dawns, of or
ange sunsets waning low, and of that
later hour when large Besper glitters
through the rosy spaces, while mid silent
spheres rises the deepening night. But
the poet is yet to be who will tell in num-
bers 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 Georgia. There the
isotherm is semI-tropical. The
almost fiat, slightly undulating landscape
is. or was 20 years ago, under the high
cultivation of the slave system, a sheet of
Verdure breathing incense in the months
of March, April and May. The tall cy-
press, the thick-leaved ambrosial live oak,
the heavy-scented magnolia grandifiora,
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. All the beauty and pictur-
esque charm of nature do not belong to
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 atmosphere to
produce the phenomenon. To the savant
belongs the task Of telling what the condi-
tions are that produce silver sunrise.
The effect / will try TO describe. In April
or May, when the early spring rains that
have soaked the porous soil and filled the
ponds, and given the flush and lusty
green hues to the earth have
ceased to fall, when the atmosphere
is rarified by a heat that
makes the young cotton plants grow
visibly under your eye; in the darkness
of a morning that is only slightly cooler
than the night in which you have watched
the motions Of the consultations in the
cloudless heavens, you may rise, as |
have risen. morning after morning, %
catch that 1eeting first scene in the first
act Of the spectacular drama OF a 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 lati-
tude, 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 not the long. gray MOSES that
hang like stalacttes 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 latl-
tude twilight and dawn are matters Of
only a few minutes. The stars blaze out,
as ID were, in the beams Of the rising sun.
In the negro pnrlance 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 ereepers 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 cobwsb IA gemmed with beads Of dew,
but II does not drip. II looks almost or
quite like hoarfrOst spread over the ocean,
like expanse OF land and water, like q
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 a
sudden cleavng the blue vault above YOU
with such strains Of unprecedented art
as skylark never dreamed Of. In fact, If
one Of the Southern hooking birds ever
hears the song OF one Of those English sky
larks which the late Isaac w. England