CHAP. XXXV.] VOYAGE TO LOUISVILLE. 275 



Western Stales, said that duelling and drinking had 

 greatly diminished in the last fifteen years. He re 

 lated one of the strange scenes he had witnessed at a 

 dinner-party, only a few years ago, at the house of a 

 judge, in a town on the banks of the Mississippi. 

 A quarrel had arisen, when one of the guests took 

 out a pen-knife, and stabbed the judge in the side, 

 so that the blood spirted out. The judge himself 

 immediately drew out a bowie knife, and his antago 

 nist, at the same instant, a pistol, and it then ap 

 peared that every other individual was armed with 

 knives or pistols. The narrator admitted, that as he 

 was travelling, he had also pistols upon him. For 

 tunately some cool, judicious persons of the party 

 interposed in time to prevent farther mischief. 



I fell into conversation with an intelligent well- 

 dressed passenger, who, as we sailed by the town of 

 Utica, in Indiana, remarked that it was too near the 

 large city of Louisville to thrive greatly ; and in 

 speculating on the future prospects of the West, he 

 said that by the census of 1840, it was proved that 

 the Atlantic States had about nine and a half mil 

 lions of inhabitants, while the States lying west of 

 the mountains, and between the great lakes and the 

 Gulf of Mexico, numbered about six millions four 

 hundred thousand. Now it is believed that the census 

 of 1850 will show the population of the whole 

 country to have changed its centre to the west of 

 the mountains, and, under a system of universal suf 

 frage, the centre of population becomes the centre 

 of political power. After having been much inte 

 rested with the information which I gained from this 



v 6 



