They related the happenings of the morning, and Allen roared with laughter. “Wal,” said he, “we’re bound to stay here fer a couple more days anyhow. None of the commission men kin handle the cargo short o’ that time. An’ you’re welcome to sleep on board here as long as you’ve a mind to.” “Thanks,” said Tad, “I guess I’ll have to do that, until Dad comes back from up river.” While he was ashore Allen had left the boat under the guardianship of their neighbor, the Kentucky man. “I don’t see him anywheres around now,” said he, “but you folks don’t need to stay here. I’ll watch the stuff this afternoon, an’ then you kin take charge after supper. Reckon I’d rather go ashore in the evenin’, when it’s cooler, anyway.” Abe and Tad laughed at him, but they were glad to fall in with his idea, for both of them wanted to see the town. They made such repairs as they could to their clothes, and Abe hauled out from some hiding-place a treasured old coonskin cap. “This’ll keep the sun off my head,” he explained, “an’ I reckon in the city it looks better’n no hat at all.” Tad tried to reason with him, but it was to no purpose. Abe topped off his six feet four of homespun shirt, buckskin breeches, and moccasins with the moth-eaten fur cap, and they set forth. CHAPTER XX New Orleans, in that spring of 1828, was as strange and fascinating a place as ever two boys wandered through on a sunny afternoon. It was a big town--big even to the eyes of Tad, who had seen other cities. Fifty thousand people lived in it, and there were usually two or three thousand sailors from the ships in port besides perhaps five thousand wild, roistering river-men jostling through the streets. With half the commerce of the vast Mississippi Valley pouring through it, New Orleans was growing and spreading like one of its own rank tropical weeds. It had swept past the walls and moats of the old French-Spanish city years before, and now its newer sections filled most of the crescent-shaped bend above the original town. It was along the levee of this new part of the city that the flatboat fleet was moored, and the first mile that Abe and Tad traversed was through raw, fresh-built streets that had little of the picturesque about them. Only here and there ancient French houses, set among great trees, showed where the country estates of rich Creoles had once stood. But when they crossed Canal Street they found themselves breathing a different atmosphere. There was none of the bustling newness of the American quarter. The houses, large and small, had cozy walled gardens and shady balconies, and even the flagstones seemed to drowse in the warm sunshine. From this residential district they bore southward again and came to a region of old shops, old offices, and here and there a venerable church or public building. There seemed to be few people stirring at this time of day in the more ancient part of the city. But as they neared the water front they found the streets busier.