If he did not look very well “got up” in his red shirt, at all events he was clean in his person, thus forming a pleasing contrast to a young chap who came in the evening, and seated himself on the table, where I was playing a game at ecarte with my companion.  His hands absolutely appeared the hands of a nigger, though his voice was the voice of a white; travelling my eyes up to and beyond his face, I found it was all in keeping; his hair looked like an Indian jungle.  If some one could only have caught him by the heels, and swung him round and round on a carding machine, like a handful of hemp, it would have improved him immensely; especially if, after going through that process, he had been passed between two of the pigs through the scalding-trough at Cincinnati.  Among others of our fellow-voyagers, we found one or two very agreeable and intelligent American gentlemen, who, though more accustomed to the desagrements of travel, were fully alive to it, and expressed their disgust in the freest manner.

Let us now turn from company to scenery.—­What is there to be said on this latter subject?  Truly it is nought but sameness on a gigantic scale.  What there is of grand is all in the imagination, or rather the reflection, that you are on the bosom of the largest artery of commerce in the world.  What meets the eye is an average breadth of from half a mile to a mile of muddy water, tenanted by uprooted trees, and bristling with formidable snags.  On either side a continuous forest confines the view, thus depriving the scene of that solemn grandeur which the horizonless desert or the boundless main is calculated to inspire.  The signs of human life, like angels’ visits, are few and far between.  No beast is seen in the forest, no bird in the air, except from time to time a flight of water-fowl.  At times the eye is gratified by a convocation of wild swans, geese, and ducks, assembled in conclave upon the edge of some bank; or, if perchance at sunrise or sunset you happen to come to some broad bend of the river, the gorgeous rays light up its surface till it appears a lake of liquid fire, rendered brighter by the surrounding darkness of the dense and leafless forest.  Occasionally the trumpet-toned pipe of the engine—­fit music for the woods—­bursts forth; but there are no mountains or valleys to echo its strains far and wide.  The grenadier ranks of vegetable life, standing like sentries along the margin of the stream, refuse it either an entry or an answer, and the rude voice of mechanism finds a speedy and certain sepulture in the muddy banks.  This savage refusal of Nature to hold converse is occasionally relieved by the sight of a log hut, surrounded with cords of wood[P] prepared for sale to the steamers.  At other times a few straggling huts, and piles of goods ready for transport, vary the scene.  Sometimes you come to a real village, and there you generally find an old steamer doing duty for wharf-boat and hotel, in case of passengers