Bidding a hasty good-bye to his family and friends, he left New York and made his way[98] through populous Pennsylvania, and over the Alleghanies to Wheeling on the Ohio river, where he found a small steamer, and in it descended leisurely, with many stops by the way, through the recently settled lands of Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and Illinois, into the Mississippi, the Father of Waters, thenceforward pursuing his voyage for more than a thousand miles along that greatest of American highways, to the borders of the Mexican Gulf. For the first time his eyes saw how vast was his country: he realised the South, and he understood the significance of the political struggle for the control of the new West. He was almost afraid as he journeyed, not so much at the immensity of the prospect, as because he felt himself upon the verge of the Unknown and its mysteries: and his feelings found utterance in some verses written on the voyage and subsequently published--surely, with a smile at the critics--in his _Collected Prose_. As they illustrate his mood at the time, and afford the best example of his skill as a maker of conventional verses, I may quote from them here. After describing the fantastic forms which line the margins of the forest-bordered river, he proceeds:-- Tide of youth, thus thickly planted, While in the eddies onward you swim, Thus on the shore stands a phantom army, Lining for ever the channel's rim. Steady, helmsman! you guide the immortal; Many a wreck is beneath you piled, Many a brave yet unwary sailor Over these waters has been beguiled. Nor is it the storm or the scowling midnight, Gold, or sickness, or fire's dismay-- Nor is it the reef or treacherous quicksand Will peril you most on your twisted way. But when there comes a voluptuous languor, Soft the sunshine, silent the air, Bewitching your craft with safety and sweetness, Then, young pilot of life, beware.[99] The lines are not of the best, but they are suggestive. They seem to express the lurking fear of one hardily bred in the North, when first he feels upon his face the breath of the seductive South. His strenuous self-sufficiency is imperilled. A strange world of sensations surrounds him, awakening in himself a world of emotions as strange. It is suggested to him that he is not quite the man that he supposed, that there is another side to his character, and he resents the suggestion. For who will willingly begin over again the task of self-discovery? The conservative organising active Ego fears the awakening of the adventurous, receptive Ego. I think Whitman was startled as he realised how little as yet he understood himself, or was willing to accept his whole soul if it should rise up and face him. * * * * * [Illustration: NEW ORLEANS ABOUT THE TIME OF WHITMAN'S VISIT, FROM A PRINT]