ourse of the river being changed. In the
former State they were heirs beyond dispute. In the latter their claim
vanished into thin air.

Once, while passing up the Mississippi, above Cairo, a
fellow-passenger called my attention to a fine plantation, situated
on a peninsula in Missouri. The river, in its last flood, had broken
across the neck of the peninsula. It was certain the next freshet
would establish the channel in that locality, thus throwing the
plantation into Illinois. Unless the negroes should be removed before
this event they would become free.

"You see, sir," said my informant, "that this great river is an
Abolitionist."

The alluvial soil through which the Mississippi runs easily yields to
the action of the fierce current. The land worn away at one point
is often deposited, in the form of a bar or tongue of land, in the
concave of the next bend. The area thus added becomes the property
of whoever owns the river front. Many a man has seen his plantation
steadily falling into the Mississippi, year by year, while a
plantation, a dozen miles below, would annually find its area
increased. Real estate on the banks of the Mississippi, unless upon
the bluffs, has no absolute certainty of permanence. In several
places, the river now flows where there were fine plantations ten or
twenty years ago.

Some of the towns along the Lower Mississippi are now, or soon
will be, towns no more. At Waterproof, Louisiana, nearly the entire
town-site, as originally laid out, has been washed away. In the
four months I was in its vicinity, more than forty feet of its
front disappeared. Eighteen hundred and seventy will probably find
Waterproof at the bottom of the Mississippi. Napoleon, Arkansas, is
following in the wake of Waterproof. If the distance between them
were not so great, their sands might mingle. In view of the character
Napoleon has long enjoyed, the friends of morality will hardly regret
its loss.

The steamboat captains have a story that a quiet clergyman from New
England landed at Napoleon, one morning, and made his way to the
hotel. He found the proprietor superintending the efforts of a negro,
who was sweeping the bar-room floor. Noticing several objects of a
spherical form among the _debris_ of the bar-room, the stranger asked
their character.

"Them round things? them's _eyes_. The boys amused themselves a little
last night. Reckon there's 'bout a pint-cup full of eyes this mornin'.
Sometimes we gets