again.  Towards noon the sound of distant cannon began to echo around, probably from Vicksburg again.  About the same time we began to encounter rafts.  To get around them required us to push through brush so thick that we had to lie down in the boat.  The banks were steep and the land on each side a bog.  About 1 o’clock we reached this clear space with dry shelving banks and disembarked to eat lunch.  To our surprise a neatly dressed woman came tripping down the declivity bringing a basket.  She said she lived above and had seen our boat.  Her husband was in the army, and we were the first white people she had talked to for a long while.  She offered some corn-meal pound-cake and beer, and as she climbed back told us to “look out for the rapids.”  H. is putting the boat in order for our start and says she is waving good-bye from the bluff above.

Thursday, July 17, 1862. (On a raft in Steele’s Bayou.)—­Yesterday we went on nicely awhile and at afternoon came to a strange region of rafts, extending about three miles, on which persons were living.  Many saluted us, saying they had run away from Vicksburg at the first attempt of the fleet to shell it.  On one of these rafts, about twelve feet square,[32] bagging had been hung up to form three sides of a tent.  A bed was in one corner, and on a low chair, with her provisions in jars and boxes grouped round her, sat an old woman feeding a lot of chickens.  They were strutting about oblivious to the inconveniences of war, and she looked serenely at ease.

Having moonlight, we had intended to travel till late.  But about ten o’clock, the boat beginning to go with great speed, H., who was steering; called to Max: 

“Don’t row so fast; we may run against something.”

“I’m hardly pulling at all.”

“Then we’re in what she called the rapids!”

The stream seemed indeed to slope downward, and in a minute a dark line was visible ahead.  Max tried to turn, but could not, and in a second more we dashed against this immense raft, only saved from breaking up by the men’s quickness.  We got out upon it and ate supper.  Then, as the boat was leaking and the current swinging it against the raft, H. and Max thought it safer to watch all night, but told us to go to sleep.  It was a strange spot to sleep in—­a raft in the middle of a boiling stream, with a wilderness stretching on either side.  The moon made ghostly shadows and showed H., sitting still as a ghost, in the stern of the boat, while mingled with the gurgle of the water round the raft beneath was the boom of cannon in the air, solemnly breaking the silence of night.  It drizzled now and then, and the mosquitoes swarmed over us.  My fan and umbrella had been knocked overboard, so I had no weapon against them.  Fatigue, however, overcomes everything, and I contrived to sleep.