right down to the very edge
of the water.

Our captain at starting expressed in very plain terms his extreme
disgust at the expedition, and said he fully expected to run against a
gunboat at any turn of the river.

Soon after leaving Munroe, we passed a large plantation. The negro
quarters were larger than a great many Texan towns, and they held three
hundred hands.

After we had proceeded about half an hour, we were stopped by a mounted
orderly (called a courier), who from the bank roared out the pleasing
information, "They're a-fighting at Harrisonburg." The captain on
hearing this turned quite green in the face, and remarked that he'd be
"dogged" if he liked running into the jaws of a lion, and he proposed to
turn back; but he was jeered at by my fellow-travellers, who were all
either officers or soldiers, wishing to cross the Mississippi to rejoin
their regiments in the different Confederate armies.

One pleasant fellow, more warlike than the rest, suggested that as we
had some Enfields on board, we should make "a little bit of a fight," or
at least "make one butt at a gunboat." I was relieved to find that these
insane proposals were not received with any enthusiasm by the majority.

The plantations, as we went further down the river, looked very
prosperous; but signs of preparations for immediate skedaddling were
visible in most of them, and I fear they are all destined to be soon
desolate and destroyed.

We came to a courier picket every sixteen miles. At one of them we got
the information, "Gun-boats drove back," at which there was great
rejoicing, and the captain, recovering his spirits, became quite jocose,
and volunteered to give me letters of introduction to a "particular
friend of his about here, called Mr Farragut;" but the next news, "Still
a-fightin'," caused us to tie ourselves to a tree at 8 P.M., off a
little village called Columbia, which is half-way between Munroe and
Harrisonburg.

We then lit a large fire, round which all the passengers squatted on
their heels in Texan fashion, each man whittling a piece of wood, and
discussing the merits of the different Yankee prisons at New Orleans or
Chicago. One of them, seeing me, called out, "I reckon, Kernel, if the
Yankees catch you with us, they'll say you're in d----d bad company;"
which sally caused universal hilarity.

[22] The descendants of the French colonists in Louisiana are called
creoles; most of them talk French, and I have often met