Pushing steadily southward, I looked out anxiously for a good camping-ground for the night, feeling that a rest had been well earned, for I had rowed sixty-one miles that day.  Soon after passing Horn Lake Bend, the thickets of Crow Island attracted my attention, for along the muddy, crumbling bank the mast of a little sloop arose from the water, and a few feet inland the bright blaze of a camp-fire shone through the mists of evening.  A cheery hail of; “I say, stranger, pull in, and tie up here,” came from a group of three roughly-clad men, who were bending over the coals, busily engaged in frying salt pork and potatoes.  The swift current forced me into an eddy close to the camp.  One of the men caught my painter, and drew me close under the lee of their roughly constructed sloop of about two tons’ burden.  When seated by the bright fire, “the boys” told me their history.  They were out of work; so, investing sixty dollars in an old sloop, putting on board a barrel of pork, a barrel of flour, some potatoes, coffee, salt, and molasses, (which cargo was to last three months,) they started to cut canes in the canebrakes of White River, Arkansas.  These canes were to be utilized as fishing-poles, and being carefully assorted and fastened into bundles, were to be shipped to Cincinnati by steamer, and from there by rail to Cleveland, Ohio, where Mr. Farrar, their consignee, would dispose of them for the party.  They had come down the Mississippi from Keokuk, Iowa, having left that place December 13th, and had experienced various delays, having several times been frozen up in creeks.  They would be able to cut, during the winter, twenty-five thousand fishing-rods, enough, one would think, to clear the streams of all the finny tribe.  Mr. F. C. Stirling, of Painesville, Ohio, was the principal of the party, and I found him an unusually intelligent young man.  He had passed the previous winter alone upon White River in an experimental sort of way, and had succeeded in obtaining the finest lot of fishing-rods that had ever been sent north.

There was so much to be talked about, and so many experiences in voyaging to be exchanged, that we decided to remain that night on Crow Island, as there was not much risk of. my being deluged by the passing steamers, for it was evident that the steamboat channel hugged the bank of the opposite side of the river.  I took ashore chocolate, canned milk, white sugar, and some of the Hickman mince-pies, while the boys rolled logs of wood on to the fire, and buried potatoes in the hot ashes.  Stirling went to work at bread-making, and putting his dough in one of those flat-bottomed, three-legged, iron-covered vessels, which my reader will now recognize as the bake-pan, or Dutch oven, placed it on the coals, and loaded its cover with hot embers.  The potatoes were soon baked, and possessed a mealiness not usually found in those served up by the family cook.  Stirling’s bread was a success, and my chocolate disappeared down the throats of the hearty western boys as fast as its scalding temperature would admit.