Explain how Twain's experience as a riverboat captain and the writing technique of local color enhance the exposition of chapter 8.in The...

Twain's riverboat captain experience meant that he spent
much time just looking at every nook and cranny of the river's edges. So, in chapter 8
his references,

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"mostly it was big trees all about, and gloomy
in there amongst them," and

"a deep sound of "boom!" away
up the river," and

"a bunch of smoke laying on the water a
long ways up -- about abreast the ferry" and

"the ferryboat
was floating with the
current"

are all sensory
details consistent with what a person very familiar with the river would
know.

For those of us who haven't ever been alongside a
river's edge, we get to experience it through his visual images, sounds, and
feelings.

As a reader, I can see the currents he refers to,
I can feel the breeze and imagine what it visually does to the trees. I can imagine dark
places in and among trees and the sun peeking through in some
spots.

His awareness of what happens on the river's edges
also brings us closer to the reality of that world. He knew there were some pockets of
homes along there. He wrote about some of the plunder that would brush up against
shores. Logs would float out into the center sometimes, and the expanse of the river
(sometimes 3 miles wide) is much different that the rivers many of us can relate
to.

Without this descriptive writing, we would not be able
to imagine how life on a river that large would really be.