"And you spent the whole night in the calebouse?" the Virginian asked with a laugh.

"Do you believe the fellows would not let me out again before nine the next morning? The Recorder, though, near killed himself with laughing when I was brought up and told my story in reply to the rogue of a watchman. I was obliged to laugh myself, and couldn't be angry; it was too comical."

"Can you, perhaps, tell me, sir," a very elegantly-dressed man said to Simmons, who looked him kindly in the face, "if there is much game in these parts? You seem to know the country, and I have come from New York merely for the sake of sport. I want to find out a place where there is plenty of shooting."

"Well, sir," said Simmons, with a shrug of his shoulders, "there's a poor prospect hereabouts; it's seldom we meet a stag, and the bears are quite extirpated."

"But there are plenty of turkeys?" the stranger asked.

"Not down here, where the river overflows the banks; but in the hills there may be a flock or two; but they are rare, too."

"But, good gracious!" the New Yorker said, in surprise, "I heard quite different reports in the New England States about the chase here. The swamps were said to swarm with wild beasts, and stags, and turkeys; and the buffaloes to stand and drink from the Mississippi, while the steamers go past."

"Well, look sharp, then," Simmons cried, with a laugh. "You might shoot at your ease; but you want keen eyes, though, to see the buffaloes on the banks of the Mississippi."

"Is it better in Missouri, then?" the New Yorker asked very despondingly. "I should not be disinclined to join a party to the Rocky Mountains."

"Then you've come, at any rate, too late for this year," the Virginian answered; "for, if I'm not mistaken, both the companies for the Rocky Mountains (one from Port Smith, in Arkansas, the other from Independance, in Missouri) start on the 1st of May."

"Stand by!" the captain cried from the hurricane-deck.

The Oceanic approached the right bank, to take up some passengers from a plantation. The steamer's little boat, pulled by two powerful sailors, danced rapidly over the agitated waters, and stopped in a few minutes at a spot where several ladies and gentlemen had hailed the vessel by waving their handkerchiefs, and now waited for the boat.

Several negroes brought down boxes and portmanteaus from the neighbouring house. A gentleman and two ladies got into the boat; the luggage was soon handed in, and in a few minutes it reached the steamer, whose engine was stopped, and which was just commencing to go back with the stream.

"Go ahead!" the captain cried; and a young mulatto now went round, ringing a huge bell, to inform the passengers that dinner would be served in a few moments. The long table in the centre of the cabin was laid, the second bell sounded, and the captain, a tall, handsome man, simply but tastefully dressed, opened the door of the ladies' cabin, and led them to the upper end of the table, while he occupied the seat of honour before an immense roast turkey, to be able to see over the whole of the table, and satisfy the wants of each guest. The book-keeper, round whom the gentlemen were collected, occupied a similar post at the other end of the table; and mulatto and negro lads, with extraordinarily white linen and woolly locks,

waited at table, and handed round the various little dishes with which the board was covered.

In the American fashion, the meal was finished quickly and without much talking; and, soon after, black and tremendously strong coffee was handed round in very little cups, to suit creole taste.

After dinner Simmons and Gray sat again together on the boiler-deck, and the former, stretching and yawning, declared he had eaten so much that he was unfit for anything that afternoon.

"The gumbo, which the French down here are so passionately fond of," the Virginian remarked, "doesn't at all suit my Northern stomach, and the cayennepepper, especially, with which they overload it, is enough to suffocate a healthy man with mere coughing."

"Yes-yes!" Simmons laughingly said; "when I came to this neighbourhood first, it was just the same with me; and my wife could not, for a long while, gain permission to put it on my table; but now I have grown accustomed to it, and eat the pepper like sugar."

"Here it may pass," said a young man, who appeared pale and wretched, and had come on board intoxicated the previous evening; "but, a little further up, at Waterlow, where I lived a year, they put any meat in it they could procure. I myself saw them use owls, hawks, and crows."

"Certainly a pleasant mixture," Mr. Gray thought.

"Well, owls or crows!" Simmons laughingly replied, "I've eaten so much that, if any accident were to happen to the boat to day-and I shouldn't be at all astonished, for we are going like the wind, and there's the third steamer we've caught up already-it would be useless to think of swimming: I should sink like a stone !"

"Do you think there's any danger, sir ?" the elderly gentleman, who had come on board with the ladies, asked, in a somewhat apprehensive tone, and in broken English, but very politely.

"It's of no consequence," Simmons said. "If the boiler were to burst, we should not perceive anything of it here; for we are sitting right over it, and should leave this world so quickly, that we should not have any story to tell about it in the other."

"Then the danger is really so great, as I was told in France ?" the old gentleman asked, growing paler.

"By no means," Mr. Gray kindly interrupted him. "Accidents often happen through the carelessness of the captains and engineers, but I don't fear it with ours; for Captain Wilkins appears a very sober and sensible man, who would not hazard the lives of the passengers intrusted to his care, more especially as his own would run the same risk."

"I am much obliged, sir, for your kind explanation," the Frenchman politely replied. "I will now go and calm the ladies, who came on board, I can assure you, with great reluctance." With these words, he bowed and walked to the ladies' cabin.

"I should like to know," Simmons said, when he had retired, "whether he's got a life-buoy. I should be very much surprised if he and the terribly stout lady who came on board with him haven't got them."

66 Are they always used on the Western boats ?" the New Yorker asked.

H

"Certainly," Simmons answered; "there are few captains who would dare to start without life-buoys; but I don't think that madame there, would require such a thing, for her two hundredweight of fat ought, in any case, to keep her above water. If I were the captain, I'd make her pay excess weight. But the boat's stopping to take in wood; I think it would do none of us any harm to take a little stroll on shore."

With these words he rose and went on shore with Mr. Gray, the New Yorker, and several others.

"Wood-pile-wood-pile!" the mate's voice now sounded through the 'tweendecks and the workmen's bunks, which were in a little room in the stern of the

vessel, close to the rudder. "Wood-pile, boys, wood-pile!" And from every corner crawled out workmen and passengers, to carry on board the wood that lay piled up on the bank.

At the same time the mate carefully examined all the bunks, to see whether all the passengers, who had not paid to be dispensed from wood-carrying, were at work.

The passage-money is usually arranged after this fashion: the ordinary price from New Orleans to St. Louis is five dollars, without food or bed, and then the passenger has nothing to do with wood-carrying; but if he only pays four or three and a half, from New Orleans to St. Louis, about 1,200 miles, he engages, at the same time, to help in carrying up and stowing away the wood, when the boat stops for it. The cabin-passengers have nothing to do with it, of course, and pay twenty to twenty-five dollars for the passage, including board and lodging.

"Heh! old fellow !" the mate cried to a rough fellow, who had retired into a corner and appeared to be asleep, as he seized him by the collar and shook him, "Do you carry wood ?"

"What?" he asked sharply.

"Do you carry wood?"

"No!"

"Show your ticket, then."

He slowly produced a piece of crumpled paper from one of his deep pockets, and handed it to the mate.

"Confound you!" the latter cried. "Why did you say 'No!' when I asked you if you carried wood? You're only a third-class passenger !"

"And confound you! Why did you ask me if I carry wood, when I'm asleep in the corner?"

"Be off with you," the mate replied angrily.

"Well-well," the other laughed, as he got up and stretched himself, "I shall be in time." And he walked slowly to the forecastle to go to work.

"Do you carry wood, here?" the mate asked again, as he turned to a group of German peasants, who had just come from the old country, and did not understand what he wanted, as they made him understand by shaking their heads.

“Nix romni heraus!" the mate said angrily, as he tried to imitate the German of the poor fellows. "Do-you-carry-wood?" And between each word, which he uttered slowly and distinctly, to be better understood, he gesticulated, as if to make them understand the species of work.

"What's the donkey want?" one of the emigrants asked the other.

"I really don't know," was the answer. "Only see what faces he's making!" "Nicht verstehen !" a woman now said to the mate, halloing it into his ears as loudly as she could, probably because she believed that he would understand her better in consequence.

A German passenger, who spoke English, now explained to the people what was wanted of them, and, as they had bargained to help, they immediately obeyed the summons, laid their provisions, which they happened to have in their hands, back in the great chest that served as wardrobe and larder; and one of them said, while he pulled on his old shabby green jacket, "We're a-going," to which the mate grinned a reply of "Yah, yah!"

On the bank, where several hundred cords of wood lay piled up, the bookkeeper had, in the meanwhile, measured off sixteen cords-the steamer expended, in the twenty-four hours, between thirty and thirty-five-and passengers, sailors, and stokers were busily engaged in carrying on board four or five of the light cotton-wood logs at a time-those accustomed to it could carry eight or ten-when they were received by others, who piled them in a regular heap. As the steamer had a great number of 'tween-deck passengers on board, nearly all Germans, who had arrived from Bremen in the Gladiator, and were now bound for Missouri, to settle there, the work was rapidly accomplished, and in half an hour every log was on board, the ropes and planks were drawn in, the vessel pushed off, and, groaning and puffing, the Oceanic again cleaved the yellow waters of the Mississippi.

E

IF unexceptionable examples prove that amateur-gardening and rustic work generally, present nothing incompatible with the dignified repose accompanying the old age of illustrious men, it is difficult, on the other hand, to contemplate without a smile an active member of society, a sturdy citizen, a young Parisian above all, bucolically engaged in pruning his apple-trees, or watering his lettuces. The restlessness of mind, the feverish energy, and the vaulting ambition which torment the present generation have so completely banished the manners of the pastoral era that anything approaching to a reminiscence of the age of gold appears ridiculous. Seriously, one can hardly withhold the merit of singularity from Benoit Chaudieu, perched on his ladder, and innocently daubing his trellis, as if in France there existed not newspapers, railroads, steam-ships, companies of limited liability, or constitutional government.

The externals of Adolphine's husband corresponded sufficiently well with the rustic simplicity of his labours. He was a young man of about twenty-eight, tall, and massive of form, but there his physical advantages ended. The best that could be said of his face was, that it betokened an easy conscience and rude health -there was nothing of regularity or high-breeding in its outline. Straight, light brown hair, weak beard, grey eyes, with no sparkle in them, a large face, tanned by the sun-these composed a visage completely destitute of that pensive disdain and sentimental ferocity which, at the present moment, young gentlemen appear to consider the type of manly beauty, and which is easily enough assumed when Nature has obligingly endowed you with a pale and bearded face. The habitual, and it might be said unchanging, expression of the Chaudieu physiognomy was that tranquillity, bordering on sleepiness, which might equally indicate the absence of ideas or their concentration.

It may be added that, if Gall, or some other eminent phrenologist, had examined that common-place cranium, he would, in all probability, have discovered the bump of obstinacy as magnificently developed as a Breton skull would admit of, Benoit Chaudieu came from Nantes.

On nearing the workman, his four visitors appeared simultaneously to become inspired with a contemptuous idea, to which none gave utterance, though all expressed it in a different fashion. Laboissière put on a sardonic smile; M. Bailleul shrugged his shoulders; Adolphine gave vent to one of those yawning sighs which, in certain amiable women, are provoked by the presence of their husbands; finally, after having stared at her niece's husband for an instant, as though she wished her look might cause him to tumble off the ladder, Mademoiselle Bailleul cried, in her bitterest accents

"Of course all this is meant to be funny! Of course you don't see us!" Chaudieu turned his head, and, casting his eyes upon the group below,

said

"Good day to you!" and resumed his painting.

"Then you don't see M. Laboissière ?" asked Mademoiselle Bailleul, in a tone which was equivalent to an order for him to descend.