CHAP. XXIIL] CABIN PASSENGERS. 49 



which adorn the opposite banks, and as the branches of these 

 table trees stretch half way over the stream, the boat, when the 

 river has risen forty or sixty feet, must steer between them. In 

 the dark, when they are going at the rate of sixteen miles an hour 

 or more, and the bends are numerous, a slight miscalculation car 

 ries the woodwork of the great cabin in among the heads of the 

 trees. In this predicament I found the Amaranth when I got 

 on deck. Many a strong bough had pierced right through the 

 cabin windows on one side, throwing down the lights, and smash 

 ing the wooden balustrade and the roof of the long gallery, and 

 tearing the canvas awning from the verandah. The engine had 

 been backed, or its motion reversed, but the steamer, held fast 

 by the trees, was swinging round with the force of the current. 

 A large body of men were plying their axes freely, not only cut 

 ting off boughs, but treating with no respect the framework of the 

 cabin itself. I could not help feeling thankful that no branch had 

 obtruded itself into our berths. At length we got off, and the 

 carpenters and glaziers set to work immediately to make repairs. 

 The evening before this adventure we had been sitting for 

 some hours enjoying the privacy of our own state-room, from the 

 windows of which we had a good view of the river s bank, when 

 at length my wife had thought it polite to visit the ladies cabin, 

 as they might otherwise think her unsociable. She found there 

 a young Irish milliner who had come out from the county of 

 Monaghan, and was settled at Selma, one of the towns on this 

 river, where she said she was getting on extremely well. There 

 was also a cracker family, consisting of a squalling child and its 

 two parents, who were &quot; moving to the Washita river in Louisi 

 ana.&quot; The young mother was smoking a pipe, which her husband, 

 a rough-looking back-woodsman, had politely lighted for her. As 

 this practice was against the regulations, my wife joined the 

 other ladies in remonstrating, and she immediately went out to 

 smoke in the open air on the guard. I had been before amused 

 by seeing a girl, about nine years old, employed, by way of imi 

 tating her elders, in smoking a paper cigar on the deck, and a 

 mother, after suckling an infant of two years, give it some to 

 bacco to chew. 

 VOL. n. C 



