ath the blue
sky, when, inspired by the blossoming springtime upon the verdant
shores, we sat together in the open stern and sang solos and duets and
trios to the accompaniment of the guitar.

With the coming of nightfall I learned to look longingly for fog or wet,
for a clear moon meant a night on watch, that we might lose nothing of
the drift. But a dark sky gave me excuse to tie up to the bank for the
night and join in an evening of music and genteel talk about our
crackling beechwood fire.

Then there were lessons for me in Spanish from the don, and in the
playing of the guitar by Alisanda. It was strange how clumsy were my
fingers and how repeatedly I had to ask my fair teacher to place them
correctly.

And so we swept on down the beautiful river, the swirling depth of the
Spring fresh bearing us clear over the rocks of the Ohio Falls at
Louisville, as over the hundreds of miles of inundated flats and shoals
above and below.

At Lusk's Ferry Don Pedro had planned to leave the river and cut across
country horseback, over the forty-league road to Kaskaskia, which would
have saved nearly half the keelboat journey up the Mississippi from the
mouth of the Ohio to St. Louis. For this we should have taken aboard our
horses at Louisville or at the little settlement of Shawnee Town below
the Wabash, since at Lusk's Ferry suitable mounts for our party were not
to be had at any price. In the outcome, however, the miscarriage of
plans proved truly fortunate.

Having no other choice, we dropped on downstream past the Cumberland and
Tennessee Rivers, to Fort Massac, our lonesome American stockade, built
near the site of the old French post of the same name. We tied up to the
steep bank of clay and gravel, and I made a landing. Upon inquiry at the
post, Captain Bissell, the commandant, whom I had met the previous Fall
on my eastward journey, informed me at some length as to the movements
of General Wilkinson. Report having been received that General Herrera,
the Spanish commander in Texas, was gathering a force to march upon
Natchitoches, the Commander-in-Chief had descended the Mississippi for
the double purpose of strengthening the forts at New Orleans and of
assembling a force to repel the expected invasion.

I intimated to the captain that Senor Vallois was not averse to a war
which might give his country opportunity to throw off the Spanish yoke.
At this he confided to me as his opinion that the long-impending
hostil