balcony, not far from where the black waiters
laugh, joke, and clean the dishes; and I have
an agreeable berth companion, Mr. Elias Madison,
a slim young schoolmaster, who has left
Buffalo, and is going to try his fortune at Bâton
Rouge, where Zachary Taylor, the old general,
used to live.

Elias is a pleasant-looking fellow, but a little of
the pedant. He is very emaciated just now with a
recent attack of the "bone fever," that has been
scourging the South. He takes white powders
—I believe quinine—as antidotes against more of
it, every morning when he has reason to fear a
return of either "his hot" or "his cold" attack.
He is profoundly ignorant of English manners,
and at the same time profoundly curious; he
asks all sorts of strange questions as to whether
the Queen can sentence ministers to death (the
story of Essex and Elizabeth is evidently his
precedent), and whether people who forge on the
Bank of England are always sent to the Tower.
His only travelling book is a Shakespeare, two
feet long by five inches thick, that he lumbers
about the deck, while he scans Titus Andronicus
and all the spurious plays. Still he is an intelligent,
kind, harmless fellow, and is never tired of
explaining the rarer American dishes to me
at dinner. He points me out, too, the card-
sharpers, and teaches me how to distinguish the
people of the different states the wild Arkansas
man from the polished Virginian; the hot-
brained Carolina man from the calculating
notion-monger of Connecticut; the sallow half-
French native of Louisiana from the tall bony
Kentuckian.

But to the Cotton Country. I am going down
that river, so awfully grand from its very dulness
and monotony, which rises three thousand miles
from the spot where it empties itself into the Gulf
of Mexico—that river which, before it reaches
the arms of its long-expectant lover, the sea,
has had given it by nature for its dowry the four
great streams, the Ohio, the Arkansas, the Red
River, and the Missouri—a mighty stream it is,
that carries blessings to half a continent—a
stream that has as great a destiny before it, as
the vast new country it irrigates.

It is only twenty-four hours since I came on
board, and already I see, by my map, that we
have passed many towns, villages, and cotton
landings. Norfolk is behind us, Commerce is out
of sight, the Horse-Shoe Bend is at our rear,
Yazoo is miles below the horizon. We have
been taking in cotton all night; I know it, for I
occasionally awoke and heard the bales lumber
and jolt down the double planks, all the time I
heard the blacks sing "Bob Ridley," and the
sharp yelping voice of the first mate hurrying on
any passengers who wanted to land; for, as
he justly said, the boat could not stop half
the night if all Congress wanted to go on
shore.

Last night we were in Mississippi, now we
are near Montgomery's Point in Arkansas
(Arkensaw, pronounce it). It is a lovely autumn
morning, the balm and incense of nature's early
sacrifice to the deity is in the air, slightly
flavoured, but not unpleasantly, with the smoke
of about three dozen cigars.

Our group is of about that number: one rowdy
smokes two cheroots at once, in bravado. We are
up warming ourselves on the second floor over
the saloon, and we form a circle round the fiery
funnel; for the air is cool, and we are all afraid
of the "bone fever." Every man but myself
and a man with an iron stirrup, has his legs
raised higher than his head, resting on the
top rail of a vacant chair. I have tried this,
but I can't do it, and, not being able to do it, I
deny the pleasure, as well as the convenience
of it.

Several are cutting plugs, and my friend
Colonel Isaiah Butts is telling a quaint story
of the roughness of Arkansas life a few years
ago. As it bears upon the question of the
civilisation of the Cotton Country, I will tell
it as it was told to me.

"A dangerous cutting scrape," Colonel Isaiah
Butts called it, as he shifted his plug, and, rocking
himself on his chair, thus to us poured forth
his winged words.

"It was at Napoleon, the point where the
Arkansas empties itself into the Mississippi; he
had gone there about some cotton, and finding
the overseer had gone up the river looking
after a 'painter' (what a curious place for an
artist, I thought), I had to wait about in
Napoleon, which even now isn't much, and then, was
indeed a rowdy place. Yes, sir, it was that. I
turned down three streets," went on the colonel,
"and as there was a gouging match going on in
every street, I thought it wise to make tracks
for the hotel. Wall, I hadn't sat there ten
minutes sucking at a brandy-cobbler, when who
should come in but Horatio Scroggs and John
Pike, two of the most tarnation ruffians in that
whole state.

"Scroggs he begins telling a lie (seeing me a
stranger) about a brother of his on the river who
was so addicted to gouging, that he used to dry
all the eyes he could get and keep them for show
in his waistcoat-pocket. Then, up comes Pike,
and winking at Scroggs, tells a bigger lie still,
about a neighbour's son of his rising twelve,
who had just gouged a big lad of sixteen who
had shot at him about a quarrel at ten-pins.

"Suddenly the liquor seemed to heat Scroggs,
for he said to Pike, 'Do you still carry that foot-
long toothpick of yours that you murdered the
German with, at the Caucus meeting at Vicksburg?'

" 'Yes,' answers Pike, fierce as a gamecock;
'yes, and a tall five-shooter, too, for all infernal
nigger worshippers.'

"'How's your stomach for fightin' now,
then,' says Scroggs.

"'Peart,' says Pike.

" 'Heard you say you'd bleed me next time
we met,' says Scroggs.

" 'That's me,' says Pike.

"The two Bowie knives, broad and bright,
flashed forth at the same moment.

"Wall, I tell you, gentlemen, the fellows had
carved each other briskly for ten or twelve