We continued our stroll about the city, coming to a cemetery, where I looked into a newly dug grave to find it half full of water.  On one side were many brick vaults above ground.  The ground here is very low and wet, and seemed to be all swamp.  The drainage was in surface gutters, and in them the water stood nearly still.  It seemed to me such water must have yellow fever in it.

For a long way along the levee the steamboats lay thick and close together, unloading cotton, hemp, sugar, hoop poles, bacon and other products, mostly the product of negro labor.

Here our friend Evans was taken sick, and as he got no better after a day or two, we called a doctor to examine him.  He pronounced it a mild case of yellow fever.  His skin was yellow in places, and he looked very badly.  The doctor advised us to go on up the river, saying it was very dangerous staying here with him.  Evans gave me most of his money and all of his gold specimens to take to his wife, and when he got well he would follow us.  We bade him good-bye, and with many wishes for his speedy recovery, we took passage on a steamer for St. Louis.  This steamer, the Atlantic, proved to be a real floating palace in all respects.  The table was supplied with everything the country afforded, and polite and well-dressed darkies were numerous as table waiters.  This was the most pleasant trip I had ever taken, and I could not help comparing the luxuriance of my coming home to the hardships of the outward journey across the plains, and our starvation fare.

Our boat was rather large for the stage of water this time of year, and we proceeded rather slowly, but I cared little for speed as bed and board were extra good, and a first cabin passage in the company of friends, many of whom were going to the same part of Wisconsin as myself, was not a tedious affair by any means.

At night gambling was carried on very extensively, and money changed hands freely as the result of sundry games of poker, which was the popular game.

We reached St. Louis in time, and here was the end of our boat’s run.  The river had some ice floating on its surface, and this plainly told us that we were likely to meet more ice and colder weather as we went north.  We concluded to take the Illinois River boat from here to Peoria, and paid our passage and stepped on board.  We were no more than half way through this trip when the ice began to form on the surface of the water, and soon became so thick and strong that the boat finally came to a perfect standstill, frozen in solid.

We now engaged a farm wagon to take us to Peoria, from which place we took regular stages for Galena.  Our driver was inclined to be very merciful to his horses, so we were two days in reaching that town, but perhaps it was best, for the roads were icy and slippery, and the weather of the real winter sort.  From here we hired a team to take four of us to Plattville, and then an eighteen-mile walk brought me to Mineral Point, the place from which I started with my Winnebago pony in 1849.  I had now finished my circle and brought both ends of the long belt together.