How lonely and dreary everything was! I knocked at the door, I heard the bolts slide, and the door was slowly opened by the Captain. I introduced myself to him, and told him that I was informed he lived here; that, regarding him as a Mexican veteran, I had called to pay my respects to him; that I was present and witnessed the gallant fight his command made with the Mexican lancers at the hacienda of Buena Vista; that I never was so cold before in my life, except the night of the battle of Buena Vista. He was silent till I finished. He took my hand, and said: "Come in." He ordered the horses taken out, introduced me to his wife, and we passed a pleasant evening before a great blazing fire. Doubt not my word, but no one in Arkansas then believed that we entered the portals of that door. Learning that no steamers could reach Little Rock, we went to Duval's Bluff, on the White river, for a boat; got on the first one that arrived. The Captain said he was bound for Memphis, but would land us at the mouth of the White river to get a down boat. When near the mouth of the White river, the captain of the boat informed me that the wharfboat at the mouth of the river had been removed, and that he would carry us up the Mississippi until we met a down boat, and put us on that. The wind was blowing violently, and the river full of floating cakes of ice; and when we met a boat, so violent was the wind, it would not answer our hail to stop, and we went on up. In the midst of all this snow, ice, and gale the boat caught fire in the hold, and the flames burst up the hatchways very high. The hatches were soon covered with wet mattresses, steam driven into the hold, cotton on deck thrown overboard, and the boat landed where the bank was high and the water deep. Baggage and furniture were put on shore, and fires built. Holes were bored in the hull of the boat, but the cotton on fire could not be extinguished. About dusk the captain announced that he would put the baggage on the boat again and run up the river three miles to a place where he could scuttle her in shoal water and put out the fire. All the passengers walked through the deep snow to the landing above, except one man and his wife, the Frenchman, and myself. It was not pleasant to be on the river in such a gale, and with the boat deck hot from the fires beneath; and when we did land and made fast to a wood barge, the owner, seeing we were on fire, ran out and cut our line with his ax to send us adrift. What a punishment the crew of the steamer gave him for cutting our line!