There are a number of Baptists residing at Cincinnati, who frequently entertain the inhabitants with public baptisms in the Ohio river.  At one of those ceremonies, about this time, rather a ludicrous occurrence took place.  The baptizing preacher stands up to his middle in the water, and the person to be baptized is led to him by another preacher.  On this occasion the officiating clergyman was rather a slight man, and the lady to be baptized was extremely large and corpulent—­he took her by the hands to perform the immersion, but notwithstanding his most strenuous exertions, he was thrown off his centre.  She finding him yield, held still harder, until they both sowsed completely under the water, where they lay floundering and struggling for some time, amidst the shouts and laughter of the multitude assembled on shore.  At length their brethren extricated them from this perilous situation.

FOOTNOTES: 

[8] M. Duponceau adduces the following examples:  “In the Arancanian language the word ‘idnancloclavin’ means ’I do not wish to eat with him.’  There is a similar verb in the Delaware tongue—­’n’schingiwipona,’ which means ‘I do not like to eat with him.’  To which may be added another example in the latter tongue—­’machtitschwanne,’—­this must be translated ’a cluster of islands with channels every way, so that it is in no place shut up, or impassable for craft.’  This term is applied to the islands in the bay of New York.”

CHAPTER VII.

The weather having become cold and disagreeable towards the latter end of December, I set out for New Orleans.  The larger class of steam-boats lay then at Shippingsport, immediately below the falls of Ohio, the river not being sufficiently high to enable them to pass over those rapids.  Boats drawing from nineteen to twenty-six inches water can almost at all seasons ply on the Upper Ohio, and during the periods that the large boats are detained below the Falls, they are constantly employed in transporting produce, intended for the markets on the Mississippi, to Louisville, from whence it is drayed round to Shippingsport and re-shipped.  Flat-boats are also employed for this purpose, and they are preferred, as they pass over the Falls, and thus land-carriage is avoided.

Louisville is the chief town of Jefferson county, in Kentucky, and at present it is estimated to contain about 12,000 inhabitants, including slaves and free people of colour.  The store-keepers here are more wealthy than those of Cincinnati, and their manners less disagreeable.  The inhabitants of the latter town being mostly from the New England states, have in their dealings and manners that dry shrewdness which is the true Yankee characteristic.  There are also located in Cincinnati some Irish pedlars, who have by all manner of means acquired wealth, and are now the “biggest bugs"[9] in the place.