206 VOYAGE TO LOUISVILLE. [CHAP. XXXV. 



go down to the Mississippi, and buy, for a few dollars, some acres 

 of land, near a wooding station. The husband will fell timber, 

 run up a log cabin, and receive ready money from the steamboats, 

 which burn the wood. At the end of ten or fifteen years, by 

 which time some of their children will have become profitable 

 servants, they may have put by 2000 dollars, bought a farm, and 

 be living in a frame-house.&quot; 



The very moment of our arrival at Evansville, a fine steam 

 boat, the Sultana, came in sight, and we found, among the pas 

 sengers, some agreeable acquaintances, whom we had known at 

 New Orleans and Natchez. 



As some of these large vessels are much more expensive than 

 others, Americans of the richer class, when making a long voyage, 

 choose them purposely, as in England we take places in a first- 

 class railway carriage, that they may be less thrown into contact 

 with ruder travelers. One of our friends, a naval officer, speaking 

 of the improvement of society in the western states, said that 

 dueling and drinking had greatly diminished in the last fifteen 

 years. He related 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 antagonist, at the 

 same instant, a pistol, and it then appeared that every other 

 individual was armed with knives or pistols. The narrator 

 admitted, that as he was traveling, he had also pistols upon him. 

 Fortunately some cool, judicious persons of the party interposed 

 in time to prevent farther mischief. 



I fell into conversation with an intelligent well-dressed pas 

 senger, who, as we sailed by the town of Utica, in Indiana, re 

 marked 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 At 

 lantic states had about nine and a half millions of inhabitants, 

 while the states lying west of the mountains, and^between the 

 great lakes and the Gulf of Mexico, numbered about six millions 



