town was somewhat protected from
overflows by levees.

The monitors were very nicely finished and furnished inside. The deck
was about six inches above water. There were four monitors anchored in
line in the middle of the Ohio river off Cairo. The names of them were
as follows: Oneota, Catawba, Manyyunk and Tippecanoe. The officers of
all these vessels messed aboard the U.S. monitor Oneota. Acting
Lieutenant Commander Wells was the captain of the Oneota. He was
afterwards relieved by Acting Master H. E. Bartlett. Thomas Cook was
her chief engineer, and Don Carlos Hasseltino was chief engineer of the
monitor Catawba. One of the officers of the Oneota was a persistent
story-teller, and the only way to get him to stop telling his story was
to suggest to him to make a chalk mark and finish the remainder of it
the following day. One day, early in the morning, he and I went ashore
in Kentucky, hunting; and hunted all day without any dinner. I got very
tired and left him, and returned to the boat, which was made fast
ashore opposite to the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers,
where I lay down on a brush-heap and fell asleep; but when my companion
started to row to the Oneota, the rattling of the oars awakened me,
otherwise I would have been left. One time, during a freshet in the
Ohio river, I think in January, I had occasion to go to one of the
monitors anchored in the rear of the Oneota. After arriving on that
monitor, in our attempt to return, I found that the boat could make no
headway against the current. We struck over along the Kentucky bank of
the river, and did what the sailor calls "cheating the current;" that
is, we rowed up along the bank of the river. After rowing above the
Oneota, we crossed the bows of the Oneota and threw out the end of a
painter, which was instantly tied around the stanchion of the Oneota.
The painter broke, and down the river the boat was carried by the
current; but somebody aboard the Oneota threw the end of a rope
overboard, which we caught, and we were pulled back aboard. Another
time during the freshet, Mr. Thomas Cook and I went ashore, and were
nearly carried by the swift current between two packet boats, but we
fortunately saved ourselves.

A pilot wishing to cross with a packet-boat before or in front of the
Oneota's bows, from a landing on the Cairo side of the river to the
Kentucky side, ran the boat into the Oneota, and the packet was sunk.
The packet-boat was laden with