CHAP. XXXIII.] UNDERMINING OF RIVER-BANK. 173 



indeed waited from six o clock, and it was now near their dinner 

 time ! The young German, originally from near Strasburg, a 

 man of simple manners, regarded himself as belonging to a differ 

 ent station in society, and would have acted as waiter till we 

 had finished our repast, had not his wife, a native-born American, 

 from the State of Indiana, insisted on his sitting down to table. 

 They were so poor, that they had no servants, not even a negro 

 boy or girl, and two children to look after. The fare was of the 

 humblest kind, bread of Indian corn, bacon, and thick coffee. 

 Some of the indispensable articles of the breakfast table equipage 

 had been purchased, as we afterward discovered, expressly for 

 our use that morning. The lodger, &quot; Uncle John,&quot; was an old 

 bachelor in easy circumstances, fond of fishing, who had come 

 here to indulge in that sport. He was an old pilot, who had 

 visited half the ports in the Mediterranean, as well as Great 

 Britain, and was quite a character. He could tell many a good 

 story of his adventures, and, like many natives of Louisiana, 

 could bear to be contradicted on any point rather than hear the 

 healthiness of New Orleans called in question. His manners, 

 and those of our host and hostess toward each other and to us, 

 were very polite, and never approached undue familiarity. Uncle 

 John assured me that the Mississippi is now flowing where New 

 Madrid stood in 1811, and that the old grave-yard has traveled 

 over from the State of Missouri into Kentucky. How this had 

 happened, it was easy for me to divine when I went out after 

 breakfast to look at the place by daylight. 



The river bank is now about twenty -five feet high, and would 

 be forty-five feet at the lowest water level. It is giving way rapid 

 ly, three houses having fallen in during the last week, and some 

 proprietors are in the act of shifting their quarters half a mile 

 inland. At the bottom of the wasting bank, there is a semi-fluid 

 quick-sand, which greatly accelerates the process of destruction. 

 Yesterday, the ruins of a house, with the wooden fence of a gar 

 den, were precipitated into the river, and some of the wreck has 

 formed a talus, up which I saw some hogs, after several unsuc 

 cessful attempts, clamber at last into a garden, where they began 

 to uproot the flowers. The steamboats, which are now sailing 



