The table was laid for fifty persons, and was already nearly full.  Our party had the honour of sitting near “the lady,” but to check the proud feelings to which such distinction might give birth, my servant, William, sat very nearly opposite to me.  The company consisted of all the shop-keepers (store-keepers as they are called throughout the United States) of the little town.  The mayor also, who was a friend of Miss Wright’s, was of the party; he is a pleasing gentlemanlike man, and seems strangely misplaced in a little town on the Mississippi.  We were told that since the erection of this hotel, it has been the custom for all the male inhabitants of the town to dine and breakfast there.  They ate in perfect silence, and with such astonishing rapidity that their dinner was over literally before our’s was began; the instant they ceased to eat, they darted from the table in the same moody silence which they had preserved since they entered the room, and a second set took their places, who performed their silent parts in the same manner.  The only sounds heard were those produced by the knives and forks, with the unceasing chorus of coughing, &c.  No women were present except ourselves and the hostess; the good women of Memphis being well content to let their lords partake of Mrs. Anderson’s turkeys and venison, (without their having the trouble of cooking for them), whilst they regale themselves on mash and milk at home.

The remainder of the day passed pleasantly enough in rambling round the little town, which is situated at the most beautiful point of the Mississippi; the river is here so wide as to give it the appearance of a noble lake; an island, covered with lofty forest trees divides it, and relieves by its broad mass of shadow the uniformity of its waters.  The town stretches in a rambling irregular manner along the cliff, from the Wolf River, one of the innumerable tributaries to the Mississippi, to about a mile below it.  Half a mile more of the cliff beyond the town is cleared of trees, and produces good pasture for horses, cows, and pigs; sheep they had none.  At either end of this space the forest again rears its dark wall, and seems to say to man, “so far shalt thou come, and no farther!” Courage and industry, however, have braved the warning.  Behind this long street the town straggles back into the forest, and the rude path that leads to the more distant log dwellings becomes wilder at every step.  The ground is broken by frequent water-courses, and the bridges that lead across them are formed by trunks of trees thrown over the stream, which support others of smaller growth, that are laid across them.  These bridges are not very pleasant to pass, for they totter under the tread of a man, and tremble most frightfully beneath a horse or a waggon; they are, however, very picturesque.  The great height of the trees, the quantity of pendant vine branches that hang amongst them; and the variety of gay plumaged birds, particularly