The damsels tripped lightly towards me, welcoming me as cordially as if I had been an old acquaintance, and hastened to offer me some of their fragrant and delicious fruit. Their greeting and manners were really highly agreeable. Had they been two of my own dear countrywomen, I might have lived ten years with them without being so well and frankly received, or invited to spoil my dinner in so agreeable a manner, as by these fair Pomonas. I could not refuse an invitation so cordially given. I sat down, and, notwithstanding my dull and fretful humour, soon found myself amused in my own despite by the lively chatter of the Creoles. An hour passed rapidly in this manner, and a second and third might possibly have been wiled away as agreeably, had not my stiff Virginian feeling of etiquette made me apprehensive that a longer stay might be deemed intrusive. "You will come back and take tea with us?" said the young ladies as I left the cabin. I bowed a willing assent; and truly, on reaching the deck, I found reason to congratulate myself on having done so. The company there assembled was any thing but the best. A strange set of fellows! I could almost have fancied myself in old Kentuck. Drovers and cattle-dealers from New Orleans proceeding to the north-western countries; half-wild hunters and trappers, on their way to the country beyond Nacogdoches, with the laudable intention of civilizing, or, in other words, of cheating the Indians; traders and storekeepers from Alexandria and its neighbourhood; such was the respectable composition of the society on board the steamer. A rough lot they were, thick-booted, hoarse-voiced, hard-fisted fellows, who walked up and down, chewing and smoking, and spitting with as much exactness of aim as if their throats had been rifle-barrels.