Years ago in art class there was a pert, bright elderly lady, maybe 90 or so, who was reminiscing about her childhood. "Mildred" said when she was a child she helped her father ride log rafts down the Leaf River to sawmills, down to the junction of the Pascagoula River. The Pascagoula is familiarly known as The Singing River, because of a peculiar sound it made that sounded like a hive of bees; so it should have rightly been called the humming river.

Mildred's Pa had a crew of black men helping him. Mildred called them "darkies." At nightfall the rafts would be tied up next to the riverbank, and they would cook and make ready for the night. The darkies would go into the woods and set up a crude camp by themselves, make a campfire and cook their own meals. She could hear them talking and singing, their voices carrying through the dark woods to where she and her Pa had made their own camp.

Deep night came and the stars blazed in a glittering blanket overhead, sparkling over them and the river and the vast black forests as the aroma of cooking and singing ebbed and ceased and sleep took them to rest, with the humming murmur of the river and sounds of night birds lulling them in their sleep.

susil