In the mean time the crew and their guests had eaten up pretty nearly all the boat’s store of provisions, and _The Last of the Flatboats_ had been stripped of her unsightly swaddling-cloth, the tarpaulin. Phil tied her up at the landing near the historic town as proudly as if she had not run away, and misbehaved as she had done. “She has only been showing us some of the wonders of the Wonderful River, that we should never otherwise have known anything about,” he said. But this is going far ahead of my story. The boys and their boat were still in the Yazoo, nearly a week’s journey above Vicksburg. So let us return to them. CHAPTER XXX A YAZOO AFTERNOON There were no difficulties of any consequence to contend with after _The Last of the Flatboats_ entered the Yazoo. The boys’ guests were well now, and joined them in their long talks on deck. These talks covered every conceivable subject, and the planter, who proved himself to be an unusually well-informed man, added not a little to their interest. “I say, Ed,” said Phil one day, holding up one of his newspapers, “you were all wrong about the crops.” “How do you mean, Phil?” “Why, you put corn first, as the most valuable crop produced in this country.” “Well, isn’t it?” “Not if this newspaper writer knows his business and tells the truth.” “Why, what does he say?” asked Ed, with an interest he had not at first shown in Phil’s criticism. “He says that in Missouri, which I take to be one of the great corn-growing states--” “It is all that,” answered Ed. “What about it?” “Why, he says that in Missouri the eggs and spring chickens produced by what he calls ‘the great American hen’ sell every year for more money than all the corn, wheat, oats, and hay raised in the state, twice over. And he gives the figures for it too.” “That is surprising,” said Ed, “but it is very probably true. The trouble is that we have no trustworthy statistics on the subject. No ordinary farmer keeps any account of his crops of that kind. Not one farmer in a hundred could tell you at the end of a year how many dozens of eggs or how many pairs of chickens he had sold. Still less could he tell you how many of either his family had eaten. So it must all be guess-work about such crops, while practically every bushel of wheat, corn, and oats and every bale of cotton or hay, and every pound of tobacco is carefully set down in official records.” “That reminds me,” said Irv, “of the remark a farmer once made to me, when deploring the poverty of himself and his class.” “What was it?” asked Will.