IMPRESSED It was a wearisome journey by river and forest and swamp to New Orleans in the swelter of the July heat, but I pushed on by horse and boat to the mosquito-and-fever-plagued city of the delta. Having long since become hardened to the torments of the Southern insect pests and to the dangers of ague, dengue, and yellow jack, I endured the first with resignation and braved the last without a qualm. The sight of the creole city, with our glorious flag afloat above the bold little forts, St. Louis and St. Charles, filled me with joy and a sense of accomplishment. This marked my point of departure in the crossing of the Gulf, which alone, I hoped, now separated me from my lady. Though, even with the influx of our native-born Americans since the annexation, the city could claim only nine thousand inhabitants, the amount of its trade and shipping was enormous. Among the scores and hundreds of sea-going craft which lay moored along the wharfs and the levees or swung at anchor in the stream, I felt certain I should find one to bear me to Vera Cruz. Of all the merchants of the city, I knew that few if any stood so well with the Spanish authorities in the New World or carried on so extensive a trade with the Spanish colonies as my acquaintance, Mr. Daniel Clark. Accordingly I waited upon him the evening of my arrival, and stated my keen desire to obtain passage to Vera Cruz. He took occasion to congratulate me on my share in the expedition, a general account of which had come to him, I suspect through secret sources of communication with the Spaniards. He, however, shook his head over my request for advice and assistance, until, in desperation, I confessed that the object of my intended voyage was to meet the lady to whom I was betrothed. "Why did you not tell me that at the first, sir?" he snapped. "I set you down for an agent of that double-dealing scoundrel and traitor James Wilkinson." "Mr. Clark," I replied, "General Wilkinson will, I presume, be subjected to the searching cross-examination of the counsel for Colonel Burr. Personally I have little liking for the General, and have so expressed myself in the past. But for the present I think it only just to him, as to Colonel Burr, to await the publication of the facts of this deplorable scandal and the verdict of the trial." "Ay, ay! You can take a dispassionate view, doctor. You have not shared in all the heat and tumult of this last year. Very well. Be as nonpartisan as you wish, just so you do not join in the hounding of honorable men who chanced to show courtesies to that misguided dreamer, Burr." "Sir, I have no other thought, no other object in life that I can consider until I have returned this to my lady," I said, showing him the rosary. He turned to his portfolio, and at once wrote a letter in a neat, clerky hand. Having folded and addressed it, he handed it to me unsealed.