CHAPTER X. 
BORDER LIFE IN THE WEST, 
AN ADVENTURE NEAR THE MOUTH OF THE OHIO RIVER. 
The neigliborliood of that amphibious city known as Cairo, 
has never been remarkable for either the hospitable or any 
other virtues of its inhabitants, especially those on the Indi- 
ana side. 
I had a most satisfactory opportunity of testing this on an 
occasion which I shall relate. 
Some twelve or thirteen years since, while on my return 
to my native town in Kentucky, after a long sojourn amidst 
the wilds of the Texas border, I accidentally fell in, at Lex- 
ington, with the father of an old and intimate friend of my 
own, who had, too, been an adventurer through the same 
regions and scenes which I had just left, but had now settled 
down, for the time at least, in charge of a new plantation he 
was opening on the Kentucky side of the Ohio, some fifteen 
miles above Cairo. 
The father, Mr. H , was now on his way to pay a visit 
to his son, and invited me — as it would be but a slight de- 
viation from a direct course home — ^to accompany him, and 
pay a passing visit to his son Dick, who would be anxious to 
hear all the news I could give him concerning the late field 
of his adventures. We took water at Louisville, expecting, 
as the new plantation was only a mile from the banks of the 
Ohio, that we would be put ashore by the steamboat on the 
Kentucky side, and have no difficulty in reaching the house. 
