"As his little vessel struggled like a drowning man in the yawning concave made by the ship, he stood with one hand firmly grasping his low, crooked rudder, and with the other held the main sheet, which alone he tended. A short pipe protruded from his mouth, at which he puffed away incessantly; one eye was tightly closed, and the other was so contracted in a network of wrinkles, that I could just discern the twinkle of a gray pupil, as he cocked it up at our quarter-deck, and took in with it the noble size, bearing, and apparel of our fine ship. "A duplicate of the old helmsman, though less battered by storms and time, wearing upon his chalky locks a red, woollen, conical cap, was 'easing off' the foresheet as the little boat passed; and a third was stretching his neck up the companion ladder, to stare at the 'big ship,' while the little carroty-headed imp, who was just the old skipper _razeed_, was performing the culinary operations of his little kitchen under cover of the heavens." The portions of the book immediately relating to New Orleans--its odd buildings--its motley assemblage {123} of inhabitants--their manners and free habitudes, have especially delighted us; and cannot fail, of delighting, in general, all lovers of the stirring and life-like. A novelist of talent would find New Orleans the place of all places for the localities of a romance--and in such case he might derive important aid from the "South-West" of Professor Ingraham. At page 140, vol. i, we were much interested in the following account of a fire.