zens hurrying on board to leave letters, and to see them
coming away. When a steam-boat is going off on the Southern and Western
waters, the excitement is fully equal to that attendant upon the
departure of a Liverpool packet. About ten o'clock AM the ill-fated
steamer pushed off upon the turbid current of the Mississippi, as a swan
upon the waters. In a few minutes she was under way, tossing high in
air, bright and snowy clouds of steam at every half revolution of her
engine. Talk not of your northern steam-boats! A Mississippi steamer
of seven hundred tons burthen, with adequate machinery, is one of the
sublimities of poetry. For thousands of miles that great body forces
its way through a desolate country, against an almost restless current,
and all the evidence you have of the immense power exerted, is brought
home to your senses by the everlasting and majestic burst of exertion
from her escapement pipe, and the ceaseless stroke of the paddle wheels.
In the dead of night, when amid the swamps on either side, your noble
vessel winds her upward way--when not a soul is seen on board but the
officer on deck--when nought is heard but the clang of the fire-doors
amid the hoarse coughing of the engine, imagination yields to the
vastness of the ideas thus excited in your mind, and if you have a soul
that makes you a man, you cannot help feeling strongly alive to the
mightiness of art in contrast with the mightiness of nature. Such a
scene, and hundreds such have I realised, with an intensity that cannot
be described, always made me a better man than before. I never could
tire of the steam-boat navigation of the Mississippi.

"On Tuesday evening, the 9th of May 1837, the steam-boat Prairie, on her
way to St Louis, bore hard upon the Sherrod. It was necessary for the
latter to stop at Fort Adams, during which the Prairie passed her.
Great vexation was manifested by some of the passengers, that the
Prairie should get to Natchez first. This subject formed the theme of
conversation for two or three hours, the captain assuring them that he
would beat her _any how_. The Prairie is a very fast boat, and under
equal chances could have beaten the Sherrod. So soon as the business
was transacted at Fort Adams, for which she stopped, orders were given
to the men to keep up their fires to the extent. It was now a little
after 11 p.m. The captain retired to his berth, with his clothes on,
and left the deck in charge of an offi