ssac--Dead towns in Egypt--The last camp--Cairo.

Opposite Metropolis, Ill., Saturday, June 9th.--As we were dressing
this morning, at half-past five, the echoes were again awakened by the
vociferous negro on the Kentucky shore, who was going out to his work
again, as noisy as ever. One of our own black men walked down the
bank, ostensibly to light his pipe at the breakfast fire, but really
to satisfy a pardonable curiosity regarding us. The singing brother on
the mainland appeared to amuse him, and he paused to listen, saying,
"Dat yere nigger, he got too loud voice!" Then, when he had left our
camp and regained the top of the bank, he leaned upon his hoe and
yelled: "Say, niggah, ober dere! whar you git dat mule?"

"Who you holl'rin' at, you brack island niggah?" was the quick reply.

"You lan' niggah, you tink you smart!"

"I'se so smart, I done want no liv'n' on island, wi' gang boss, 'n not
'lowed go 'way!"

The tuneful darky had evidently here touched a tender spot, for our
man turned back into the field to his work; and the other, kicking the
mule into action, trotted off to the tune of "Dar's a meet'n' here,
to-night!"

We went up into the field, to see the laborers cultivating corn. The
sun was blazing hot, without a breath of air stirring, but the great
black fellows seemed to mind it not, chattering away to themselves
like magpies, and keeping up their conversation by shouts, when
separated from each other at the ends of plow-rows. A natural levee,
eight and ten feet high, and studded with large tree-willows, rims
in the island farm like the edge of a basin. We were told that this
served as a barrier only against the June "fresh," for the regular
spring floods invariably swamp the place; but what is left within the
bowl, when the outer waters subside, soon leaches through the sandy
soil.

After passing the pretty shores of Dog Island, not far below, the
bold, dark headland of Cumberland Island soon bursts upon our view.
We follow the narrow eastern channel, in order to greet the Cumberland
River (909 miles), which half-way down its island name-sake,--at the
woe-begone little village of Smithland, Ky.--empties a generous flood
into the Ohio. The Cumberland, perhaps a quarter-of-a-mile wide,
debouches through high clay banks, which might readily be melted in
the turbulent cross-currents produced by the mingling of the rivers;
but to avoid this, the government engineers have built a wing-dam
running o