The following morning we were obliged to continue our route, for which purpose it was necessary to embark two miles below the town, as the river was not high enough to allow the steamers to pass over a kind of bar called “The Falls.”  The road was one continuous bog of foot-deep mud, but that difficulty concerned the horses, and they got over it with perfect ease, despite the heavy drag.  Once more we were floating down the Ohio, and, curiously enough, in, another “Franklin;” but she could not boast of such a massive cylindrical stewardess as her sister possessed.  A host of people, as usual, were gathered round the bar, drinking, smoking, and arguing.  Jonathan is “first-chop” at an argument.  Two of them were hard at it as I walked up.

Says the Colonel—­“I tell you, Major, it is more than a hundred miles.”

Major—­“Well, but I tell you, Colonel, it aint not no such thing.”

Colonel—­“But, sir’ree, I know it is.”

Judge—­“Well, Colonel, I tell you what it is; I reckon you’re wrong.”

Colonel—­getting evidently excited—­“No, sir’ree, I aint, and,”—­holding out a brawny hand capable of scrunching a nine-pound shot into infant pap—­“darned if I wont lay you, or any other gentleman, six Kentucky niggers to a julep I’m right.”

After offering these tremendous odds, he travelled his fiery eagle eyes from the major to the judge, and from the judge to the major, to ascertain which of them would have it; and as they were silent, he extended the radius of his glance to the company around, chucking his head, and looking out of the corner of his eye, from time to time, towards major and judge with a triumphant sneer, as much as to say, “I’ve fixed you, anyhow.”  The argument was over; whether the major and the judge were right about the distance, or not, I cannot decide; but if the bet, when accepted, had to be ratified in the grasp of the muscular hand which the colonel extended, they were decidedly right in not accepting it, as some painful surgical operation must have followed such a crushing and dislocation as his gripe inevitably portended.  I would as soon have put my hand between the rollers of a cane-press.

The feeding arrangements for the humanities on board were, if disagreeable, sufficiently amusing once in a way.  A table extends nearly the whole length of the gentlemen’s saloon; on each side are ranged low wooden straight-back arm-chairs, of a breadth well suited for the ghost qui n’avait pas de quoi.  But the unfortunate man who happened to be very well supplied therewith, ran considerable risk of finding the chair a permanent appendage.  At the sound of the bell, all the seats being arranged opposite the respective places, the men rush forward and place themselves behind the said chairs, and, like true cavaliers, stand there till the ladies are seated.  I was standing waiting among the rest, and getting impatient as time flew on.  One lady had not yet arrived.  At last the steward came