VOYAGE ON THE MISSOURI. 



House again, for the attention shown by the men behind 

 the bar, as well as by the waiters and porters there, was 

 very indifferent ; so I recommend all future travellers to 

 St Louis to put up at Barnum's Hotel, for that is infinitely 

 the better house, and there they can be as happy and as 

 comfortable as at any hotel in the United States. I re 

 mained there some days on my way home. Having been 

 introduced to Capt. Sousley by Mr Campbell, and made 

 up my mind that I would sooner drink a glass of wine 

 with him than fight him, for he was a tall, long-armed, 

 lathy son of the States, I saw my dogs in their boarded- 

 up kennel, and my waggons go through the extraordinary 

 process of being craned from the lower to the upper deck, 

 and then had the amusement of seeing a fisherman bring 

 alongside a catfish of some fifty pounds' weight, which he 

 had just taken on a line, and a nastier-coloured, bluish- 

 looking, uglier fish I thought I had never seen. He in 

 deed must have been a bold or a very hungry man who 

 first made the experiment of mastication on the slimy 

 body of such an ill-looking inhabitant of rivers. Mr 

 Campbell took leave of me on board the " Skylark," 

 having, in company with the captain, selected my berth ; 

 and shortly after orders were given to let go, and on a 

 beautiful afternoon on the 16th or 17th of September (I 

 forget which), and in great good spirits, I commenced 

 my first voyage on the dangerous bosom of the Missouri. 

 Before proceeding further, my readers, as well in Eng 

 land as in America, will, I am sure, pardon me for a 

 short discursion thus made from the regular course of my 

 narrative, in order that I may show that my opinion as 

 to some impending danger to the union of the States was 

 not unfounded, and that my remarks, which appeared 



