150 HORSE, FOOT, AND DRAGOONS. 



in the west we slacken speed and run under the high banks, 

 when the "roosters," as the deck-hands are called, scramble up 

 through the loose sand, dragging the heavy ropes behind them, 

 and making them fast to trees, or to spars buried deep in 

 the soft earth. Sometimes we stop at a "wood-yard" where 

 some "squaw-man" — i.e., white man with Indian wife — or 

 some half-breed, solitary dwellers in the wilderness, turn an 

 honest penny now and then by the sale of wood to the oc- 

 casional passing steamer. Many of these "wood-hawks" are 

 honest men, no doubt, but many of them are desperate charac- 

 ters, leading a lawless life, and as brutal in their instincts and 

 as dangerous as the wild red men, their neighbors, and often 

 connected with them by ties of blood through the rather 

 loose marriage-bonds of savage life. At one of the little land- 

 ing-places mentioned we hear rumors of a raid by "Vigilantes" 

 on the desperadoes and horse- thieves who have established 

 their haunts along the .banks of the river and its tributaries, 

 and for a long time have endangered the lives and property 

 of the honest settlers and travellers through the sparsely set- 

 tled country south of the great stream. A band of them had 

 carried their audacity to such an extent as to attack the escort 

 of an army paymaster en route to a military post to pay the 

 troops stationed there, and although they failed in their object, 

 at least one of the soldiers guarding the treasure had met 

 with his death in the discharge of his duty while protecting 

 the property of the Government. 



And now, one bright morning, turning a great bend in the 

 river, a little group of log-cabins comes in sight, their gray 

 walls and brown, grass-grown, mud roofs contrasting with the 

 vivid bright green of the surrounding trees. Back from the 

 bank a little way some freight-wagons are parked, and a patch 

 of white anions: the bushes indicates the site of some small 



