No special incident occurred during the long and tedious voyage. Once we narrowly escaped being run down by the ‘Empress’ steamer, and we had a lively time of it, the angry men relieving themselves freely of threats and oaths. Steamers passed us every day. Sometimes a pair of them raced madly side by side, or along opposite banks, while their furnaces, fed by pitch-pine, discharged rolling volumes of thick smoke, which betrayed, for hours after they had disappeared from view, the course they had taken. The water would splash up the sides of our boat, and the yellow river would part into alarming gulfs on either hand. At large towns, such as Cairo, Memphis, Vicksburg, and Natchez, we made fast to the shore; and, while the caterer of the mess took me with him to make his purchases of fresh provisions, the crew sought congenial haunts by the river-side for a mild dissipation. By the end of the month, our voyage terminated at some stave and lumber-yards between Carrolltown and New Orleans. On the whole, the flat-boatmen had been singularly decent in their behaviour. Their coarseness was not disproportionate to their circumstances, or what might be expected from wage-earners of their class; but what impressed me most was the vast amount of good feeling they exhibited. There had been a few exciting tussles, and some sharp exchanges of bellicose talk between the principals, but their bitterness vanished in a short time, while, towards myself, they were more like protectors than employers. Nevertheless, a few painful truths had been forced on my notice; I had also gained valuable experience of the humours of rivers. The fluvial moods had considerably interested me. The play of currents, eddies, and whirlpools afforded inexhaustible matter for observation. The varying aspects of the stream in calm and storm, when deep or shallow, in the neighbourhood of snags, sandbars, and spits, reflecting sunshine or leaden sky, were instructive, and the veteran flat-boatmen were not averse to satisfying my inquisitiveness. Being naturally studious and reflective, I carried away with me far more than I could rehearse of what was of practical value; but, boy-like, I relegated my impressions to memory, where, in process of time, they could be solidified into knowledge. CHAPTER V I FIND A FATHER