112 THE HIVE OF THE BEE-HUNTER. 
ment,’ turn round and come up to the banks with 
grandeur, astonishing the squatter’s children, and the 
invalid hens that lived in the front yard. The captain 
would pay up the bill for the wood, and off he would go 
again as “big as all out doors,” and a great deal more 
natural. Thus we struggled on, until, sailing up a stream 
with incessant labor, such as we went down when we 
commenced our sketch, we emerged into the world of 
water that flows in the Mississippi. Down the rapid 
current we gracefully swept, very much to the astonish- — 
ment of the permanent inhabitants on its banks. 
Again for the “innumerable time,” the “ furnaces ” 
consumed the wood, and as it had to be replenished, we 
ran alongside one of those immense wood-yards, so pecu- 
liar to the Mississippi, where lay, in one continuous pile, 
thousands of cords of wood. The captain of the “ Em- 
peror,” as he stopped his boat before it, hollowed out 
from his upper deck, in a voice of the loudest tone— 
‘Got any wood here ?” 
Now the owner of the wood-yard, who was a very 
rich man, and a very surly one, looked on the “pile,” and 
said “ he thought it possible.” 
“Then,” said the captain, “how do you sell it a 
cord?” 
The woodman eyed the boat and its crew; and eyed 
the passengers, and then said, “he would not sell the 
boat any wood, but the crew might come ashore and 
get their hats full of chips for nothing.” 
