On this river is the home of the genuine crackers. You can see them come to the steamer when it lands; and clever people they are, too. They appear to come from nowhere, their first appearance being on a _bateau_, or little platform, by the river-banks, where are seen standing specimens of humanity so thin a musquito would be doing a bad business in trying to obtain sustenance from their bloodless bodies. Hoping that the mind of the public may be relieved of the impression that a kind of hybrid bipeds circulate through the South entirely unknown in other localities, called crackers, I herewith append a description of the Northern crackers, in connection with our Southern product, taken from my own observation. [Illustration: PLEASURE-RIDING IN A CRACKER CART.] From the Alleghany Mountains of Pennsylvania to the sands of Florida there exists a certain class of the _genus homo_, defined by different names, but possessing traits of character nearly allied, called in the North "the lower class," in the South "crackers." In the Northern States these poor, uneducated creatures ruminate without restraint. The localities they prefer are removed from the principal towns and cities. During the summer they spend a portion of the season in raising a little corn and potatoes, together with other "garden sass," which is consumed by their numerous families to sustain them during the cold winter weather. The little attention this crop receives is when they are not working out as the hired help, in assisting their neighbors through "hayin' and harvestin', or diggin' taters." Many of them never "hire out," but subsist entirely by hunting, fishing, or gathering berries, for which pursuits their wild natures and unsettled habits well adapt them. They excel in the piscatorial profession, studying the habits of the finny tribe during their various stages, together with their times of ascending and descending the streams. Sometimes the city folks come out to spend a few days with tent and reels, which movement these self-constituted sovereigns of the soil regard as a direct innovation of their rights; and if the supposed intruders escape without their tent being burned, or their clothes stolen, during the day when they are absent, it may be regarded as a fortunate circumstance. Many of these "lower class" specimens of humanity cannot read or write, while those who can do not often imbibe orthodox opinions in their religious belief, but embrace theories mapped out by New England fanatics, upon which they try to make an improvement during the cold winter days when they cannot be "stirrin' out doors." If a thaw comes they hunt deer and other wild game, which is bartered for groceries. Hogs with them, as most other people, are an important item for winter food. These animals manage to live tolerably well during the summer on grass, besides occasionally breaking into a neighbor's field of corn or potatoes, and fattening in the autumn on wild mast, which is plentiful.