dian jungle. If some one could
only have caught him by the heels, and swung him round and round on a
carding machine, like a handful of hemp, it would have improved him
immensely; especially if, after going through that process, he had been
passed between two of the pigs through the scalding-trough at
Cincinnati. Among others of our fellow-voyagers, we found one or two
very agreeable and intelligent American gentlemen, who, though more
accustomed to the _desagrements_ of travel, were fully alive to it, and
expressed their disgust in the freest manner.

Let us now turn from company to scenery.--What is there to be said on
this latter subject? Truly it is nought but sameness on a gigantic
scale. What there is of grand is all in the imagination, or rather the
reflection, that you are on the bosom of the largest artery of commerce
in the world. What meets the eye is an average breadth of from half a
mile to a mile of muddy water, tenanted by uprooted trees, and bristling
with formidable snags. On either side a continuous forest confines the
view, thus depriving the scene of that solemn grandeur which the
horizonless desert or the boundless main is calculated to inspire. The
signs of human life, like angels' visits, are few and far between. No
beast is seen in the forest, no bird in the air, except from time to
time a flight of water-fowl. At times the eye is gratified by a
convocation of wild swans, geese, and ducks, assembled in conclave upon
the edge of some bank; or, if perchance at sunrise or sunset you happen
to come to some broad bend of the river, the gorgeous rays light up its
surface till it appears a lake of liquid fire, rendered brighter by the
surrounding darkness of the dense and leafless forest. Occasionally the
trumpet-toned pipe of the engine--fit music for the woods--bursts forth;
but there are no mountains or valleys to echo its strains far and wide.
The grenadier ranks of vegetable life, standing like sentries along the
margin of the stream, refuse it either an entry or an answer, and the
rude voice of mechanism finds a speedy and certain sepulture in the
muddy banks. This savage refusal of Nature to hold converse is
occasionally relieved by the sight of a log hut, surrounded with cords
of wood[P] prepared for sale to the steamers. At other times a few
straggling huts, and piles of goods ready for transport, vary the scene.
Sometimes you come to a real village, and there you generally find an
old steamer