Christmas on the Singing River by Maud Van Buren

_Jefferson Lee Harbour_

There was always a crowd in waiting when the stage-coach arrived in the shabby little mining-camp of Singing River. As a rule, the crowd assembled on the long, wide platform in front of the post-office, which was also the stage-office, the hotel, the general store, and the center from which radiated the social life of the camp. Above the post-office was a small and dingy hall lighted with dripping tallow candles; and such public amusements or entertainments as there were in Singing River were given in this hall. The platform in front of the building was the favorite "loafing-place" of the miners. The arrival of the stage-coach was the connecting-link between Singing River and the great outside world from which the little mining-camp was so far removed. The nearest railroad station was one hundred miles distant, and there was no town within fifteen miles any larger than Singing River, which was but a little hamlet of log-cabins, tents, and slab shanties far up the mountainside above the little Singing River in the rocky gulch below. The Singing River was a narrow and shallow stream; but its crystal-clear waters surged in foamy wavelets around moss-covered boulders and went singing on so merrily that there was perpetual music in even the darkest and gloomiest parts of the gulch. But there was ice over the river for seven months of the year, and then nothing was to be heard but the dreary sound of the wind as it went moaning or shrieking up and down the long, dark cañon.[2]