“Well,” said the Vice-President, crossing his legs, pulling his wide-awake down over his forehead, causing a passing chicken to hop quickly one side by the accuracy of his aim, and speaking with senatorial deliberation, “I think I have.  I’ve been here twenty-five years, and dash, dash my dash to dash, if I haven’t entertained twenty-five separate and distinct earthquakes, one a year.  The niggro is the only person who can stand the fever and ague of this region.”

The convalescence of the engineer was the signal for breaking up quarters at St. Louis, and the young fortune-hunters started up the river in good spirits.  It was only the second time either of them had been upon a Mississippi steamboat, and nearly everything they saw had the charm of novelty.  Col.  Sellers was at the landing to bid thorn good-bye.

“I shall send you up that basket of champagne by the next boat; no, no; no thanks; you’ll find it not bad in camp,” he cried out as the plank was hauled in.  “My respects to Thompson.  Tell him to sight for Stone’s.  Let me know, Mr. Brierly, when you are ready to locate; I’ll come over from Hawkeye.  Goodbye.”

And the last the young fellows saw of the Colonel, he was waving his hat, and beaming prosperity and good luck.

The voyage was delightful, and was not long enough to become monotonous.  The travelers scarcely had time indeed to get accustomed to the splendors of the great saloon where the tables were spread for meals, a marvel of paint and gilding, its ceiling hung with fancifully cut tissue-paper of many colors, festooned and arranged in endless patterns.  The whole was more beautiful than a barber’s shop.  The printed bill of fare at dinner was longer and more varied, the proprietors justly boasted, than that of any hotel in New York.  It must have been the work of an author of talent and imagination, and it surely was not his fault if the dinner itself was to a certain extent a delusion, and if the guests got something that tasted pretty much the same whatever dish they ordered; nor was it his fault if a general flavor of rose in all the dessert dishes suggested that they hid passed through the barber’s saloon on their way from the kitchen.

The travelers landed at a little settlement on the left bank, and at once took horses for the camp in the interior, carrying their clothes and blankets strapped behind the saddles.  Harry was dressed as we have seen him once before, and his long and shining boots attracted not a little the attention of the few persons they met on the road, and especially of the bright faced wenches who lightly stepped along the highway, picturesque in their colored kerchiefs, carrying light baskets, or riding upon mules and balancing before them a heavier load.

Harry sang fragments of operas and talked abort their fortune.  Philip even was excited by the sense of freedom and adventure, and the beauty of the landscape.  The prairie, with its new grass and unending acres of brilliant flowers—­chiefly the innumerable varieties of phlox-bore the look of years of cultivation, and the occasional open groves of white oaks gave it a park-like appearance.  It was hardly unreasonable to expect to see at any moment, the gables and square windows of an Elizabethan mansion in one of the well kept groves.