fitted up, and the former well carpeted; but oh! that carpet!  I will not, I may not describe its condition; indeed it requires the pen of a Swift to do it justice.  Let no one who wishes to receive agreeable impressions of American manners, commence their travels in a Mississippi steam boat; for myself, it is with all sincerity I declare, that I would infinitely prefer sharing the apartment of a party of well conditioned pigs to the being confined to its cabin.

I hardly know any annoyance so deeply repugnant to English feelings, as the incessant, remorseless spitting of Americans.  I feel that I owe my readers an apology for the repeated use of this, and several other odious words; but I cannot avoid them, without suffering the fidelity of description to escape me.  It is possible that in this phrase, “Americans,” I may be too general.  The United States form a continent of almost distinct nations, and I must now, and always, be understood to speak only of that portion of them which I have seen.  In conversing with Americans I have constantly found that if I alluded to anything which they thought I considered as uncouth, they would assure me it was local, and not national; the accidental peculiarity of a very small part, and by no means a specimen of the whole.  “That is because you know so little of America,” is a phrase I have listened to a thousand times, and in nearly as many different places. It may be so—­and having made this concession, I protest against the charge of injustice in relating what I have seen.

CHAPTER 3

Company on board the Steam Boat—­Scenery of the Mississippi—­ Crocodiles—­Arrival at Memphis—­Nashoba

The weather was warm and bright, and we found the guard of the boat, as they call the gallery that runs round the cabins, a very agreeable station; here we all sat as long as light lasted, and sometimes wrapped in our shawls, we enjoyed the clear bright beauty of American moonlight long after every passenger but ourselves had retired.  We had a full complement of passengers on board.  The deck, as is usual, was occupied by the Kentucky flat-boat men, returning from New Orleans, after having disposed of the boat and cargo which they had conveyed thither, with no other labour than that of steering her, the current bringing her down at the rate of four miles an hour.  We had about two hundred of these men on board, but the part of the vessel occupied by them is so distinct from the cabins, that we never saw them, except when we stopped to take in wood; and then they ran, or rather sprung and vaulted over each other’s heads to the shore, whence they all assisted in carrying wood to supply the steam engine; the performance of this duty being a stipulated part of the payment of their passage.