"We're getting close now, Chad." So Chad rose to his feet thrilled, and watched the scene until the hills shut it off again. One more night and one more dawn, and, before the sun rose, the hills had grown smaller and smaller and the glimpses between them more frequent and, at last, far down the river, Chad saw a column of smoke and all the men on the raft took off their hats and shouted. The end of the trip was near, for that black column meant the capital!
Chad trembled on his feet and his heart rose into his throat, while Caleb Hazel seemed hardly less moved. His hat was off and he stood motionless, with his face uplifted, and his grave eyes fastened on that dark column as though it rose from the pillar of fire that was leading him to some promised land.
As they rounded the next curve, some monster swept out of the low hills on the right, with a shriek that startled the boy almost into terror and, with a mighty puffing and rumbling, shot out of sight again. The school-master shouted to Chad, and the Turner brothers grinned at him delightedly:
"Steam-cars!" they cried, and Chad nodded back gravely, trying to hold in his wonder.
Sweeping around the next curve, another monster hove in sight with the same puffing and a long "h-o-o-ot!" A monster on the river and moving up stream steadily, with no oar and no man in sight, and the Turners and the school-master shouted again. Chad's eyes grew big with wonder and he ran forward to see the rickety little steamboat approach and, with wide eyes, devoured it, as it wheezed and labored up-stream past them--watched the thundering stern-wheel threshing the water into a wake of foam far behind it and flashing its blades, water-dripping in the sun--watched it till it puffed and wheezed and labored on out of sight. Great Heavens! to think that he--Chad--was seeing all that!
About the next bend, more but thinner columns of smoke were visible. Soon the very hills over the capital could be seen, with little green wheat-fields dotting them and, as the raft drew a little closer, Chad could see houses on the hills--more strange houses of wood and stone, and porches, and queer towers on them from which glistened shining points.
"What's them?" he asked.
"Lightnin'-rods," said Tom, and Chad understood, for the school-master had told him about them back in the mountains. Was there anything that Caleb Hazel had not told him? The haze over the town was now visible, and soon they swept past tall chimneys puffing out smoke, great warehouses covered on the outside with weather-brown tin, and, straight ahead--Heavens, what a bridge!--arching clear over the river and covered like a house, from which people were looking down on them as they swept under. There were the houses, in two rows on the streets, jammed up against each other and without any yards. And people! Where had so many people come from? Close to the river and beyond the bridge was another great mansion, with tall pillars, about it was a green yard, as smooth as a floor, and negroes and children were standing on the outskirting stone wall and looking down at them as they floated by. And another great house still, and a big garden with little paths running through it and more patches of that strange green grass. Was that bluegrass? It was, but it didn't look blue and it didn't look like any other grass Chad had ever seen. Below this bridge was another bridge, but not so high, and, while Chad looked, another black monster on wheels were crashing over it.
