“Early in the morning, above Bonnet Carre, I asked several persons on shore for some coffee, but most of them seemed too much excited to attend to this pressing want of mine.  At last a gentleman who spoke French got his wife to go and get me a cup of coffee, after drinking which I felt greatly refreshed.  The sandwich and drink at Donaldsonville, and this cup of coffee next morning, were the only things in the shape of refreshments which I took during the twenty-four hours’ voyage.  At times I was almost certain I was being attacked by alligators, and thought I should have to use the knife with which I always go armed, but it only proved to be the annoying drift-wood in which I would become fearfully entangled.  I only suffered from the cold in my feet.  These I warmed, however, after the sun came out, by inflating the lower part of my dress, and holding them up out of the water.

“The banks all along the way were crowded with people to see me pass down.  At one point, when I had allowed the air to escape from the lower part of my dress, and was going along rapidly, with nothing showing above water but my head and my paddle, I met a skiff, which contained a negro man and woman, who were crossing the river.  The woman became fearfully alarmed, and her screams could have been heard for miles away.  The man pulled for dear life, the woman in the stern acting the cockswain, and urging the boat forward in the funniest manner possible.

“While in the great eddy I drifted into an immense flock of ducks, and but for the noise made by those in the skiff I could easily have caught several of them, as they were not at all disturbed by my presence, but swam leisurely all about me.

“At the Red Church, the wind blowing up against the current kicked up a nasty sea, which gave me a great deal of trouble.  By sinking down very low, however, and allowing only my head above water, and taking the shower-bath as it came upon me continuously, I was enabled to keep up my headway down stream.  When at my best speed I easily kept ahead of the boats, going sometimes at the rate of seven miles an hour without difficulty.

“This feat was a much more arduous one than my trip across the English Channel.  Then I only slept two hours, and was up again, feeling all right; but when this thing was over I slept all night, had a refreshing bath, and still suffered from fatigue, to say nothing of my swollen wrists and neck-glands.”

Having finished his remarkable voyage successfully, Captain Boyton concluded that his life-saving dress had been fully tested in America, and determined to rest on his laurels, and avoid Mississippi debris in future.  In consequence of being caught in the eddy below Donaldsonville, this great swimmer estimated the distance he traversed from Bayou Goula to New Orleans as fully one hundred and twenty miles. [* footnote:  Since this voyage ended, Captain Boyton has, in the same manner, successfully descended the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers from Cairo to New Orleans.]