eyes. The pelicans were busy on the sand-bars,
the cranes and herons were fishing in their own
stilted way, and the turkey buzzards were
searching for flotson and jetson in the shape of
dead Irish deck hands. Now our steamer steered
so close to the shore in search of deep
and the true channel, that I could have broken
a bough off the huge cotton-wood trees that
hung from the great avalanche of earth-banks
that the water had undermined and broken
down. Now we cruised off a mile away to the
central stream: now we went on groping
anxiously, with a sailor on each side the head of
the vessel sounding with long poles, and reporting
progress momentarily lo the captain; who,
in a loud hearty mechanical voice, from his
anxious post repeated it aloud to the pilot, who
stood at the huge wheel in his little glass box
above us all. There was something so cheery
and exhilarating in the whole scene, what with
the pleasant splashing of wild ducks as they fled
before our boat, what with the sense of a new
country and new scenes, what with the chance
of seeing an alligator float past like a drift log,
that when a black spirit summoned me to breakfast
and hot "flannel cakes," I felt reluctant
to leave such a pleasant scene; for I knew that,
by the time I returned, the sun would have
burst through the fog, that the river would be
sunny gold, that in the fierce flood of universal
and glaring sunshine all the finer greys and cool
doves'-wing middle tints would be lost, and half
the charms of early morning vanished.

That very night, too, I and Captain Goodloe
had a terrible fright as we sat up at late dusk
on the pilot-house deck, warming our hands
round the great black tree of a funnel. He had
been telling me stories of the most frightful
explosions, wrecks, river catastrophes, when we
heard, low down in the funnel, an ominous
sinking sound, as of steam violently inhaled and
withdrawn: then a curious vaporous mist and
damping chill: then a roaring burst that seemed
to force the whole vessel to pieces that instant.

For one second I and the captain sat irresolute;
in the next, leaping up and knocking down
our arm-chairs, we rushed at full speed to the
very distant end and edge of the leaden-covered
deck, intending to throw ourselves into the
river. I said nothing. I instinctively imitated
the captain's actions. My alarm pictured the
deck parting into a great smoking gulf at my
very feet. But in that next second calm
judgment had returned, warning me not to leap over
and be either muddily drowned or beaten to
death by the vessel's keel. In a minute more
our fear had subsided, and we were again seated,
laughing at our apprehension, and discussing
the extraordinary effects of imagination, round
the black iron tree.

It was the steam signal that had so alarmed
us. We had forgotten that it is customary for
Mississippi steamers, when passing each other
at night, to thus warn each other of the danger
of collision.

We had no stomach after this for more
stories about steam-boat explosions, therefore,
when we presently retired to the pleasant and
cheerful lighted saloon, I turned the conversation
on cotton-growing, knowing the captain to
have great knowledge of this subject, having
been for years in daily contact with cotton-
growers, and having for years lived in the
pestilential centre of the cotton-growing country.

The ladies were seated at one end of the
vessel, up in their own room, playing on the piano,
dancing and reading; lower down were gentlemen
reading the paper, playing at cards, or
talking; nearer us still were groups busy at
chess or draughts. I and the captain chose a
corner farthest from the lamps and near an
unoccupied table, for the Southerners were not
yet coming homeward from the cool Northern
watering-places, and the boat was not so full as
usual. We were not near enough to be
overheard by any slave-holders, and the captain,
whom I knew for an abolitionist, could talk to
me freely about cotton, the soils adapted for it,
and the necessity or otherwise of the land that
grows it being cultivated by black slaves.

Now I had seen the American cotton country
all through, from the cotton-fields of Kentucky,
where the plant grows low, pinched, and small,
to the great river-side plantations of the Mississippi,
where the plant is rank and flourishing,
six feet high, with leaves as large as a sycamore,
beautiful primrose-coloured flowers and large
pods of cotton, as much on each pod as would
cover the palm of one's hand. I asked the
captain if he knew the relative quantity of
cotton, in 400lb. bales, each state produced
yearly, for I knew that for certain purposes,
which I could guess at, the captain had by him
notes of such important facts.

In a low voice he read me, without much
pressing, the following statement, obtained from
recent government returns:

I asked the captain if, from his great
experience, he was led to believe that free white
labourers could not hoe and plant cotton as
well as the negroes; that is, do as much work,
and bear the climate without suffering more than
the blacks.

The captain, in a still lower voice, replied that
the Irishmen employed in draining cotton-grounds
certainly died very fast of fever, but then they