But even the charms of nature and the strange French air of the people did not produce the greatest impression on me here. That which produced the greatest impression of all, was the mighty river Mississippi itself, and the immense traffic carried over its irresistible waters. It is true that its banks are quite plain and homely when compared with the beautiful Ohio in its upper and middle courses. But then the Mississippi is so big, that it is always majestic, solemn and grand. You are never tired of looking at the immense and gigantic "creature," and especially where it has constructed for itself a high embankment, cast up by the silt and overflow of its muddy waters, in the lofty bosom of which the mighty river flows as in an elevated canal. And thus the Natchez was high up above the level of the plains on our right and left hand, and we could look down on the valley of the Mississippi from the deck of our palatial steamboat. Oh, the Mississippi is a glorious sight to behold, always immense, solemn and grand! The next thing that attracted me so much was the immense traffic that came rolling down from the North, and that ascended the stream. When I came off its mighty waters, I felt as if I was coming up from a wild, riotous and troubled sea. And though forty-six years have now fled and gone, the tremendous impression made upon my heart and soul by the Father of Waters remains. I therefore cried, Ho for the Mississippi! as I walked the gang-plank into the city. My dear and beloved mother, Harriet Jackson, was one of those religious women who would go to church if she went nowhere else. She went to the A. M. E. Church whenever she could get there, and I had ascertained before I left Riverside Hall, that she attended the services of that congregation that lay nearest the mansion of the family to whom she had been sold. I cannot say that she belonged to that family, for slavery was nothing but a system of robbery in its best estate. She had been sold down the river to an ancient French family—Roman Catholics—but, in their indifferent, careless way, they allowed mother to go to her own A. M. E. Church. She was so steady and devoted in her ways, and so very remote from Kentucky, that they regarded it as an impossibility that she would ever even dream of making her escape; and never, never, that any one would ever come after her in this far-away part of the great world.