And with a thousand other ideas brought to the mind, and blended with the Rough Diamond, may the good Angel of observation rest with the reader as you peruse these pages. Near the seat of the present town of Helena, Arkansas, old Billy Horner and Henry Mooney made a race on two little ponies, called respectively Silver Heels and the Spotted Buck. The distance was one quarter of a mile, and the stake one hundred dollars. Wishing to obtain the signature of the Governor of Arkansas to a land grant and title to a certain tract of land on the Mississippi river, I determined to attend the races. The ponies were to start at twelve o'clock, on the 15th day of May. I forget the year, but it was soon after the inauguration of steam navigation on the Mississippi. On the 14th day of May I left Bush Bayou, twenty miles below Helena and fifteen miles back from the river, where I was on a tour of surveying, in company of two negro boys, from fifteen to twenty years of age, to assist me. Our route was down the Bayou, which was evidently an old bed of the great river. How long since the muddy and turbulent waters had left this location and sought the present channel no human calculation could tell. Trees had grown up as large as any in other localities in the Mississippi bottoms, in some places extending entirely across the Bayou; in other places there was an open space one hundred yards wide and sometimes a mile long, but there were many places where the timber extended from shore to shore for miles. In such places our only guide was a blaze upon the trees, made by the first navigators of the Bayou. We started in a canoe, eight feet long and eighteen inches wide, with a large trunk, a number of tools, and three men. When all were on board the top of our boat was only three-quarters of an inch above the water. In this critical condition the negroes had to go as freight, for they are proverbially too awkward to manage a nice thing. Near the close of our journey we were attacked by an alligator. He was sixteen feet long, and larger than our boat. His attack frightened the negroes so badly that it was impossible to keep them still, and we came very near being upset. I fired several times at the alligator, with a double-barreled shot-gun, charged with twenty-four buckshot, but the shot only glanced from his scales and fell into the water. At last, frightened by the loud cries of the negroes, the animal left us.