Early on the following day I left the camp of the Ohio boys, for their progress was assisted by a large sail, and it would have been impossible for me to have kept up with them.  They also travelled by night as well as by day, keeping one man at the helm while the others slept.  At the lower end of Crow Island I left the state of Tennessee and entered the confines of Mississippi, having Arkansas still on my right hand.

During part of the afternoon I accompanied a flatboat-man and his family as far as Island No. 60, where we ran into a little bayou for the night.  There was a rowdy settlement here, and many rough fellows were in the streets, shouting and fighting; but as I entered the bayou after dark, and secreted myself in the half submerged swamp, no one knew of my being there:  so I felt safe from insult.  The owner of the flatboat with whom I had entered the bayou intended to fish for the settlement.  He was an old trapper, and informed me that bears were still abundant in parts of Alabama.  He said the Canada Goose bred in small numbers in the lakes of the back country.  His experiences with human nature found expression in his advice to me when I parted from him the next morning.  “Don’t leave your boat alone for half an hour in these parts, stranger.  Niggers is bad, and some white folks too.”  Promising my new friend to look out for number one, I waved an adieu to him and his, and went on my solitary way.

CHAPTER VII.

DESCENT OF THE MISSISSIPPI TO NEW ORLEANS

A flatboat bound for Texas.—­ A flat-man on river physics.—­ Adrift
and asleep.—­ Seeking the earth’s little moon.—­ Vicksburgh.—­
Jefferson Davis’s cotton plantation, and its negro owner.—­ Dying in
his boat.—­ How to civilize Chinese.—­ A Swim of one hundred and
twenty miles on the Mississippi.—­ Twenty-four hours in the water.—­
Arrival in the crescent city.

During the afternoon, while rowing out of the cut-off behind an island, I caught sight of a flatboat floating in the contour of a distant bend.  There was something familiar in her appearance, and, as I drew nearer, I recognized the pile of nets, the rusty stove, and the civil but silent crew.  She was the same flat which had left Hickman, Kentucky, the morning I had departed from that town with my basket of pies.  This time the crew seemed like old friends.  River life makes all men equal.  A pleasant hail now greeted me, and the duck-boat was soon moored to the side of the flat.  As we floated along with the current, sipping our coffee, the captain told