of the nimble-footed Peytoona, "full fetisly
ywrought," as Chaucer obscurely remarks in
his admirable poem entitled Passim, stands on
a high bracket, above the many-coloured bottles
in the steam-boat bar-room, first door on the
right as you enter the great saloon. I am, to
ihe whole truth, rather glad to get away
from Memphis; which is a dirty dangerous
unfinished sort of place, swarming with rats and
rowdies, not to mention the vulgar "drummers,"
as the touting bagsmen of the northern houses
of commerce are generally called in America.
The hotel is large and scrambling, and the
dinners are confused by jostling crowds of lazy
slovenly slave waiters, who run about and butt
each other, and knock down piles of plates and
pyramids of glasses in feux de joie and periodical
grand crashes.

Now, as I look back at the town from the
steam-boat deck, the steep earth cliffs are lurid
with bonfires, for there is an election meeting
to-night, and they are burning tar-barrels on
the Mississippi shore, in honour of Douglas
"the little Giant." Through smoky red sheets of
flame I see some little dark figures; they are the
Douglas adherents tending the beacons that fire
the dim twilight and scare the coveys of stars.
Lower down there are blacks—for night turns us
all to negroes—running about with long poles; at
the end of which are real mediæval cressets—
iron baskets full of blazing pine-knots. There
are men, too, dragging down cotton bales, part of
the Peytoona's lading; and every now and then
they seem to blow my head off with splitting
salutes, for, at election meetings all through
America they use cannon.

Boom-bang—bang-boom! they go, as if a giant
were knocking in a nail in some room of his sky
parlour that was out of repair, or as if, after
clamping it on the other side, he had slammed
his outer door and shut himself in for the night.
America, however, is not the only country where,
in politics particularly, noise is supposed to be a
proof of earnestness, talent, and patriotism; so
I let the guns go on, and bless them, though
they do give me a headache.

I have come down from the town, because there
is a dreadful procession there of men ringing
cow-bells and snouting for "Bell and Everett!"
And now this horrible cannonading! But never
mind; the Americans are an excitable people,
especially the Southerners, and, after all, the
world was not made for my special person's use.

The remarkable feature of a steam-boat about
to start, whether on river or sea, is, that it is
impossible to get anywhere where one is not in the
way. I believe positively, that if I were to go
now and stand on my head on the main truck,
in five minutes some Cæsar or Pompey would
ask me to move and let him put down the
"generalman's box." Wheeled trucks full of
brown horse-hide chests banded with black, such
as Americans affect, pour in, and block up every
passage in the boat, down from the burning fiery
furnace up to the place where the cotton bales
wall us in.

As I am going to spend a considerable segment
of my life on board this boat, the Peytoona,
I proceed to overhaul it and examine its points
of danger and safety; for, although my business
in this chapter is more especially "the
Cotton Country," I must briefly describe my
floating castle, which is no more like an English
steam-boat than a London penny steamer
is like Noah's ark, the Warrior, or the Great
Eastern.

Our racing boat is a huge floating three-
tier card-house; or rather, one of those little
pagodas of diaphanous barley-sugar that crown
the centre table at a public dinner. The
top story, the pinnacle of this Tower of Babel,
is the little square glass-house in which our
pilot struggles with the wheel. In anxious
moments, when the good boat is entangled in a
net of sand-bars, he looks to my mind like a
madman struggling with a wheel of Fortune.

Below him, on the second floor, is a sort of
flat roofed crystal palace, where the captain and
all the officers have their berths, and where,
when off watch, they read dime novels, smoke, and
do et cætera. On this level—which is sheeted
with thin lead, for fear of sparks—are rows of
arm-chairs, where one can sit and shoot pelicans
and alligators, muse, read, or sleep. The
deck here is made very thin for lightness, and
it vibrates as you walk round the two tall
funnels that rise through it. Below this springy
and alarming deck comes the floor on which
the glass doors of the grand saloon open. Here,
under a pent-house formed by the upper deck,
are also chairs, intermingled with luggage, where
men also smoke, et cætera, read, and sleep; looking
out upon the mighty and monotonous river.

Below this stage is the ground floor, where
the negro sailors and steerage passengers are,
and where the furnaces blaze and glow. All
over this deck, unprotected by any tarpaulin from
the furnaces or fire-sprinkling pine-knots, are
huge piles of square fluffy cotton bales, bound
round with iron bands. Below this barathrum,
I suppose, is more stowage room; but lower I
did not, in this vessel, venture.

As for the saloon—to return to that focus of
the vessel—it is a splendid affair, with a drawing-
room at one end for the ladies, innumerable
chandeliers multiplying themselves in mirrors, and
resplendent panelling, white and gold. There
are sofas and ottomans and a piano, with room
for cards, conversation, business, flirting, and
dancing. On either side of this long hall open
the doors of our neat and spacious berths. By
the entrance of the saloon, on either side, are
the bar-room and purser's office; outside, is the
barber's, where the negroes congregate to practise
the banjo—for we have nightly very creditable
concerts on board, and nearly all negroes
are musical. Here sometimes, when I stroll
in, I find the grey-bearded negro barber asleep
in his chair, with his professional comb stuck
in his own crisp locks. Somewhere here, too, is
kept I believe, the sacred gong which announces
our frequent and luxurious meals.

I am singularly comfortable, for my cabin is
airy, and has windows opening on the outer