and quivered, so that you might fancy she would burst right off.  Would she hold together, or would she split into ten million of shivers?  O my home and children!  Would your humble servant’s body be cut in two across yonder chain on the Levee, or be precipitated into yonder first-floor, so as to damage the chest of a black man cleaning boots at the window?  The black man is safe for me, thank goodness.  But you see the little accident might have happened.  It has happened; and if to a mule, why not to a more docile animal?  On our journey up the Mississippi, I give you my honor we were on fire three times, and burned our cook-room down.  The deck at night was a great firework—­the chimney spouted myriads of stars, which fell blackening on our garments, sparkling on to the deck, or gleaming into the mighty stream through which we labored—­the mighty yellow stream with all its snags.

How I kept up my courage through these dangers shall now be narrated.  The excellent landlord of the “Saint Charles Hotel,” when I was going away, begged me to accept two bottles of the very finest Cognac, with his compliments; and I found them in my state-room with my luggage.  Lochlomond came to see me off, and as he squeezed my hand at parting, “Roundabout,” says he, “the wine mayn’t be very good on board, so I have brought a dozen-case of the Medoc which you liked;” and we grasped together the hands of friendship and farewell.  Whose boat is this pulling up to the ship?  It is our friend Glenlivat, who gave us the dinner on Lake Pontchartrain.  “Roundabout,” says he, “we have tried to do what we could for you, my boy; and it has been done de bon coeur” (I detect a kind tremulousness in the good fellow’s voice as he speaks).  “I say—­hem!—­the a—­the wine isn’t too good on board, so I’ve brought you a dozen of Medoc for your voyage, you know.  And God bless you; and when I come to London in May I shall come and see you.  Hallo! here’s Johnson come to see you off, too!”

As I am a miserable sinner, when Johnson grasped my hand, he said, “Mr. Roundabout, you can’t be sure of the wine on board these steamers, so I thought I would bring you a little case of that light claret which you liked at my house.”  Et de trois!  No wonder I could face the Mississippi with so much courage supplied to me!  Where are you, honest friends, who gave me of your kindness and your cheer?  May I be considerably boiled, blown up, and snagged, if I speak hard words of you.  May claret turn sour ere I do!

Mounting the stream it chanced that we had very few passengers.  How far is the famous city of Memphis from New Orleans?  I do not mean the Egyptian Memphis, but the American Memphis, from which to the American Cairo we slowly toiled up the river—­to the American Cairo at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.  And at Cairo we parted company from the boat, and from some famous and gifted fellow-passengers who joined us at Memphis, and whose pictures we had