Besides supplying the raft with passengers, the river helped to feed them. Floating straw-stacks and shocks of corn were always in sight, while fresh milk and eggs, pork and chickens, drifted with the current on all sides. In vain were these passengers landed at the nearest accessible points. A new lot was always found to take the place of those who had left, and for ten days the raft resembled a combination of floating hotel, nursery, hospital, and farm-yard. The resources of our raftmates were taxed to their utmost during this time to provide for the manifold wants of their welcome but uninvited guests, while Solon declared, "I hain't nebber done sich a sight er cooken durin' all de days ob my life." By the time the mouth of the Red River was reached, half of Concordia Parish was flooded, and but for the forest trees rising from the water, the boys would have thought themselves afloat on a vast inland sea. The low bluffs on which the capital of Louisiana is seated, and beyond which the cane lands extend in almost a dead level to the Gulf, were occupied by the tents and rude shelters of hundreds of refugees from the drowned districts. Here our raftmates began to entertain fears for the safety of their friends at the Moss Bank plantation, which lay but a day's journey farther down the river. At Baton Rouge they cleared the raft of its living encumbrances, and then pushed ahead. From this point to the Gulf the great river is enclosed between massive levees, or embankments of earth, behind which the level of the far-reaching cane-fields is much lower than the surface of high-water. Thus the raft was borne swiftly along at such an elevation that its crew could look over the top of the eastern levee and down over a vast area of plantation lands. These were dotted with dark clumps of live-oaks or magnolias, and at wide intervals with little settlements of whitewashed negro quarters, grouped behind the broad-verandaed dwellings of the planters. Near each was the mill in which the cane from the broad fields was crushed and its sweet juices converted into sugar. These mills were surmounted by tall iron smoke-stacks, and near each stood the square, tower-like bagasse (refuse) burner, built of stone, and looking like the keep of some ancient castle. All along the levee they saw gangs of men at work strengthening the embankments and raising them still higher. They were often hailed and asked to lend assistance, but they felt that their own friends might be in need of them, and so passed on without answer. So changed was the aspect of the country since Solon had last seen it, and so excited did the old man become as he neared the scenes of former years, that it was evident he could not be depended upon to recognize Moss Bank when they should reach it.