332 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



submit ; and announcements to that effect, in the 

 forcible language peculiar to the country, rendered 

 the moment of the steamboat's departure one of more 

 than ordinary interest. The good ship Texas was 

 moored to the Levee, amidst a host of shipping and 

 a fleet of Mississippi steamboats, which latter give to 

 the port of New Orleans a character unlike that of any 

 other port in the world. "We picked our way across 

 these extensive wharves, between barrels of sugar and 

 molasses, through lanes formed by bales of cotton, past 

 tobacco from Kentucky and Missouri, amid bags of 

 corn and barrels of pork from Illinois and Iowa ; in 

 fact, through all that varied produce which is grown 

 for two thousand miles upon the banks of this mighty 

 river, and which finds its port of export at New Or- 

 leans. The raw material, however, which possessed 

 the highest interest in my eyes, was that with which 

 I was to be associated, and which was now crowding 

 the deck of the Texas, in the shape of two hundred 

 and fifty " free companions," bound for certain lands 

 of the sunny south, with the laudable determination 

 of appropriating the same. A large crowd Avas col- 

 lected upon the Levee to wish us God-speed, and I 

 parted with a number of friends who had come down 

 to see me off, with feelings of a somewhat unusual 

 description. The crowd generally seemed to regard 

 us with mingled feelings of compassion (for those who 

 have gone to Nicaragua hitherto have seldom returned), 

 of admiration (for the desperate nature of the adventure 



