This sudden apparition struck the crowd with surprise, and, as is usual upon such an occasion in western America, the whole company showered a fire of raillery and “chaff” upon me, to which, on account of the heavy rain, I could not reply, but, dropping backward into my bed, drew the hatch into its place.  The good-natured crowd would not permit me to escape so easily.  Calling the entire ship’s company from the state-rooms and cabins to join them, they used every artifice in their power to induce me to show my head above the deck of my boat.  One shouted, “Here, you deck-hand, don’t cut that man’s rope; it’s mean to steal a fellow’s painter!” Another cried, “Don’t put that heavy plank against that little skiff!” Suspecting their game, however, I kept under cover during the fifteen minutes’ stay of the boat, when, moving off; they all shouted a jolly farewell, which mingled in the darkness with the hoarse whistle of the steamer, while the night air echoed with cries of; “Snug as a bug in a rug;” “I never seed the like afore;” “He’ll git used to livin’in a coffin afore he needs one,” &c.

The reader who may have looked heretofore upon swamps and gloomy creeks as too lonely for camping-grounds, may now appreciate the necessity for selecting such places, and understand why a voyager prefers the security of the wilderness to the annoying curiosity of his fellow-man.

The rains of the past two days had swollen the Kentucky River, which enters the Ohio above Louisville, as well as the Salt River, which I had passed twenty miles below that city, besides many other branches, so that the main stream was now rapidly rising.  After leaving Richardson’s Landing, the rain continued to fall, and as each tributary, affected by the freshet, poured logs, fallen trees, fence-rails, stumps from clearings, and even occasionally a small frame shanty, into the Ohio, there was a floating raft of these materials miles in length.  Sometimes an unlucky shanty-boat was caught in an eddy by the mass of floating timber, and at once becoming an integral portion of the whole, would float with the great raft for two or three days.  The owners, being in the mean time unable to free themselves from their prison-like surroundings, made the best of the blockade, and their fires burned all the brighter, while the enlivening music of the fiddle, and the hilarity induced by frequent potions of corn whiskey, with the inevitable games of cards, made all “merry as a marriage bell,” as they floated down the river.

In the evening, a little creek below Alton was reached, which sheltered me during the night.  Soon the rain ceased, and the stars shone kindly upon my lonely camp.  I left the creek at half-past four o’clock in the morning.  The water had risen two feet and a half in ten hours, and the broad river was in places covered from shore to shore with drift stuff; which made my course a devious one, and the little duck-boat had many a narrow escape in my attempts to avoid the floating mass.  The booming of guns along the shore reminded me that it was Christmas, and, in imagination, I pictured to myself the many happy families in the valley enjoying their Christmas cheer.  The contrast between their condition and mine was great, for I could not even find enough dry wood to cook my simple camp-fare.