I was alone; for the silent pilot, boxed up in
his little tower of glass, could hardly be called a companion.

I make the following observations:

The breadth of the Mississippi river has been much exaggerated. It is
here about half a mile wide. Sometimes more, occasionally less. (This
average width it preserves for more than a thousand miles from its
mouth.) Its waters run at the rate of three or four miles to the hour,
and are of a yellowish cast, with a slight tincture of "red." The
yellow colour it derives from the Missouri, while the deeper tint is
obtained by the influx of the "Red."

Driftwood floats thickly upon its surface; here in single logs, there in
raft-like clusters. To run a boat against one of these is attended with
danger, and the pilot avoids them. Sometimes one swimming below the
surface escapes his eye; and then a heavy bumping against the bows
shakes the boat, and startles the equanimity of the less experienced
passengers. The "snag" is most dreaded. That is a dead tree with heavy
roots still adhering. These, from their weight, have settled upon the
bottom, and the _debris_ gathering around holds them firmly imbedded.
The lighter top, riven of its branches, rises towards the surface; but
the pressure of the current prevents it from attaining to the
perpendicular, and it is held in a slanting position. When its top
rises above the water, the danger is but trifling--unless in a very dark
night--it is when the top is hidden a foot or two below the surface that
the snag is feared. Then a boat running upon it up-stream, is lost to a
certainty. The roots firmly imbedded in the bottom mud, prevent the
pile from yielding; and the top, usually a spiky one, penetrates the bow
timbers of the boat, sinking her almost instantly. A boat properly
"snagged" will go down in a few minutes.

The "sawyer" is a log fixed in the water similarly to the snag, but kept
bobbing up and down by the current, thus suggesting the idea of a sawyer
engaged at his work--hence the name. A boat getting aground upon a
sunken log _crosswise_, is sometimes snagged upon its branches, and
sometimes broken into two pieces by the pressure of her own weight.

Among the drift, I notice odd matters that interest me. Stalks of
sugar-cane that have been crushed in the press-mill (a hundred miles
farther up I should not meet these), leaves and stems of the maize
plant, corn-cobs, pieces of broken gourd-shell, tufts of raw cott