midnight
Gordon never forgot the sensation he experienced on first beholding it . There was no mist in the midnight . The moon was large and low . The darkness of the dense , towering forests on either hand impinged in no wise on the melancholy realm of wan light in which the Mississippi lay , unshadowed , solitary , silent as always , its channel here a mile or more in breadth . He had been observing how the mighty water-course was sending out its currents into a bayou , called Bogue Holauba , as if the larger stream were a tributary of the lesser .