A little later it stated: “Gen. Jackson and family arrived at Natchez on April 21, on board the Steam Boat Rapide, having left Cumberland on account of some accident having happened to her machinery.” The journey was completed in seven days, despite the accident! From Natchez, New Orleans, Blakely, Montpelier, and Mobile came echoes of a triumphant and leisurely progress. But even at that it was several weeks before the General and his suite were finally established in Pensacola—the Spanish governor was inclined to be a bit difficult about relinquishing his sway. Rachel, however, did not like Pensacola. To her friend, Mrs. Eliza Kingsley, she wrote: “Believe me, this country has been greatly overrated.... One acre of our fine Tennessee land is worth a thousand.... The General, I believe, wants to get home again as much as I do....” The General was not overly pleased with the situation and, as soon as he was able to settle certain little difficulties, he was determined to return to his beloved Hermitage. Marquis James, in his _Andrew Jackson, the Border Captain_, writes of this period: “How peaceful the Hermitage! ‘Our place looks like it had been abandoned for a season, But we have a cheirful fire for our friends, and a prospect of living at it for the ... ballance of our lives. I have sent on my resignation by Doctor Brunaugh.’ “It was over, this uncertain adventure into which Andrew Jackson had been drawn by an unreciprocated sense of loyalty to the President and a wish to help his young friends.... Rachel ... and Andrew undertook to make their home comfortable for the rest of their days. In the great hall stood seven cases of furniture and table silver purchased at New Orleans. However Rachel might deplore the wicked luxury of the complaisant Creole town there was no denying the comfort of good French beds. ‘1 Bedstead, of Mahogany, fluted, $100,’ was for her own and Andrew’s tall south chamber; likewise ‘1 Matress of fine ticking, $45, 1 moschette Bar of Muslin, $16, 1 Counterpane knotted, Marseilles, $24.’ There was also a new sideboard and something to fill the decanters....” There was dancing in the hallways in these days—dancing to the sound of a flute which “Old Hickory” himself may have played. Horace Holley, writing from Nashville on August 14, 1823, to his father, Luther Holley, Esq., in Salisbury, Connecticut (copy given to the author by the late Judge John H. De Witt), related: