We now felt ourselves sufficiently at home to decide upon the arrangement of our day. The weather was too hot to let the fatigues of general conversation be endurable for many hours together; and there was little in the general society of the vessel to make us regret this. We rose at five or a little later, the early morning being delicious. Breakfast was ready at seven, and after it I apparently went to my stateroom for the morning; but this was not exactly the case. I observed that the laundresses hung their counterpanes and sheets to dry in the gallery before my window, and that, therefore, nobody came to that gallery. It struck me that this must be the coolest part of the boat, such an evaporation as was perpetually going on. I therefore stepped out of my window, with my book, work, or writing; and, sitting under the shade of a counterpane, and in full view of the river and western shore, spent in quiet some of the pleasantest mornings I have ever known. I was now and then reminded of the poor parson, pitied by Mrs. Barbauld:—
"Or crossing lines
Shall mar thy musings, as the wet cold sheet
Flaps in thy face abrupt;"
and sometimes an unsympathizing laundress would hang up an impenetrable veil between me and some object on shore that I was eagerly watching; but these little inconveniences were nothing in the way of counterbalance to the privilege of retirement. I took no notice of the summons to luncheon at eleven, and found that dinner, at half past one, came far too soon. We all thought it our duty to be sociable in the afternoon, and, therefore, took our seats in the gallery on the other side of the boat, where we were daily introduced to members of our society who before were strangers, and spent two or three hours in conversation or at chess. It was generally very hot, and the conversation far from lively, consisting chiefly of complaints of the heat or the glare; of the children or of the dulness of the river; varied by mutual interrogation about where everybody was going. A remark here and there was amusing; as when a lady described Canada as the place where people row boats, and sing, "Row, brothers, row," and all that. When the heat began to decline, we went to the hurricane deck to watch the beauty of evening stealing on; and, as no one but ourselves and our most esteemed acquaintance seemed to care for the wider view we here obtained, we had the place to ourselves, except that some giddy boys pursued their romps here, and kept us in a perpetual panic, lest, in their racing, they should run overboard. There is no guard whatever, and the leads overhang the water. Mr. E. said he never allowed his boys to play here, but gave them the choice of playing below or sitting still on the top.
After tea we came up again on fine evenings; walked for an hour or two, and watched the glories of the night, till the deck passengers appeared with their blankets and compelled us to go down.
Nothing surprised me more than to see that very few of the ladies looked out of the boat unless their attention was particularly called. All the morning the greater number sat in their own cabin, working collars, netting purses, or doing nothing; all the evening they amused themselves in the other cabin dancing or talking. And such scenery as we were passing! I was in perpetual amazement that, with all that has been said of the grandeur of this mighty river, so little testimony has been borne to its beauty.
On the evening of our first day on the Mississippi, Mr. E. told me of the imminent danger he and his lady had twice been in on board steamboats. His stories give an idea of the perils people should make up their minds to on such excursions as ours. On their wedding journey, the E.'s, accompanied by their relative, Judge H., went down the Alabama river. One night, when Mr. E. was just concluding the watch I have described him as keeping, the boat ran foul of another, and parted in two, beginning instantly to sink. Mr. E. roused his lady from her sleep, made her thrust her feet into his boots, threw his cloak over her, and carried her up to the deck, not doubting that, from her being the only lady on board, she would be the first to be accommodated in the boat. But the boat had been seized by some gamblers who were wide awake and ready dressed when the accident happened, and they had got clear of the steamer. Mr. E. shouted to them to take in the lady, only the lady; he promised that neither Judge H. nor himself should enter the boat. They might have come back for every one on board with perfect safety; but he could not move them. Judge H., meanwhile, had secured a plank, on which he hoped to seat Mrs. E., while Mr. E. and himself, both good swimmers, might push it before them to the shore if they could escape the eddy from the sinking vessel. Mr. E. heard next the voice of an old gentleman whom he knew, who was in the boat, and trying to persuade the fellows to turn back. Mr. E. shouted to him to shoot the wretches if they would not come. The old gentleman took the hint, and held a pistol (which, however, was not loaded) at the head of the man who was steering; upon which they turned back and took in, not only Mrs. E., her party, and their luggage, but everybody else, so that no lives were lost. Mrs. E. lost nothing but the clothes she had left by her bedside. She was perfectly quiet and obedient to directions the whole time. The vessel sank within a quarter of an hour.
A few years after the E.'s went up the Mississippi with their little girl. Some fine ladies on board wondered at Mrs. E. for shaking hands with a rude farmer with whom she had some acquaintance, and it appears probable that the farmer was aware of what passed. When Mr. E. was going down to bed, near day, he heard a deck passenger say to another, in a tone of alarm, "I say, John, look here!" "What's the matter?" asked Mr. E. "Nothing, sir, only the boat's sinking." Mr. E. ran to the spot, and found the news too true. The vessel had been pierced by a snag, and the water was rushing in by hogsheads. The boat seemed likely to be at the bottom in ten minutes. Mr. E. handed the men a pole, and bade them thrust their bedding into the breach, which they did with much cleverness, till the carpenter was ready with a better plug. The horrid words, "the boat's sinking," had, however, been overheard, and the screams of the ladies were dreadful. The uproar above and below was excessive; but through it all was heard the voice of the rough farmer, saying, "Where's E.'s girl? I shall save her first." The boat was run safely ashore, and the fright was the greatest damage sustained.
We passed Baton Rouge, on the east Louisiana bank, on the afternoon of this day. It stands on the first eminence we had seen on these shores, and the barracks have a handsome appearance from the water. A summer-house, perched on a rising ground, was full of people, amusing themselves with smoking and looking abroad upon the river; and, truly, they had an enviable station. A few miles farther on we went ashore at the wooding-place, and I had my first walk in the untrodden forest. The height of the trees seemed incredible as we stood at their foot and looked up. It made us feel suddenly dwarfed. We stood in a crowd of locust and cottonwood trees, elm, maple, and live oak; and they were all bound together by an inextricable tangle of creepers, which seemed to forbid our penetrating many paces into the forest beyond where the woodcutters had intruded. I had a great horror of going too far, and was not sorry to find it impossible; it would be so easy for the boat to leave two or three passengers behind without finding it out, and no fate could be conceived more desolate. I looked into the woodcutters' dwelling, and hardly knew what to think of the hardihood of any one who could embrace such a mode of life for a single week on any consideration. Amid the desolation and abominable dirt, I observed a moscheto bar—a muslin curtain—suspended over the crib. Without this, the dweller in the wood would be stung almost to madness or death before morning. This curtain was nearly of a saffron colour; the floor of the hut was of damp earth, and the place so small that the wonder was how two men could live in it. There was a rude enclosure round it to keep off intruders, but the space was grown over with the rankest grass and yellow weeds. The ground was swampy all about, up to the wall of untouched forest which rendered this spot inaccessible except from the river. The beautiful squills-flower grew plentifully, the only relief to the eye from the vastness and rankness. Piles of wood were built up on the brink of the river, and were now rapidly disappearing under the activity of our deck-passengers, who were passing in two lines to and from the vessel. The bell from the boat tinkled through the wilderness like a foreign sound. We hastened on board, and I watched the woodcutters with deep pity as they gazed after us for a minute or two, and then turned into their forlorn abode.
We were in hopes of passing the junction of the Red River with the Mississippi before dark, but found that we were not to see the Red River at all; a channel having been partly found and partly made between an island and the eastern shore, which saves a circuit of many miles. In this narrow channel the current ran strong against us; and as we laboured through it in the evening light, we had opportunity to observe every green meadow, every solitary dwelling which presented itself in the intervals of the forest. We grew more and more silent as the shades fell, till we emerged from the dark channel into the great expanse of the main river, glittering in the moonlight. It was like putting out to sea.
Just before bedtime we stopped at Sarah Bayou to take in still more passengers. The steward complained that he was coming to an end of his mattresses, and that there was very little more room for gentlemen to lie down, as they were already ranged along the tables, as well as all over the floor. So much for the reputation of the "Henry Clay."