me thicket, for pure love of
slaughter. For a time it was a favorite ruse of hostiles, who had secured
a white captive, to send him alone to the river's edge, under threat of
torture, there to plead with outstretched hands for aid from the passing
raft. But woe to the mariner who was moved by the appeal, for back of the
unfortunate, hidden in the bushes, lay ambushed savages, ready to leap
upon any who came ashore on the errand of mercy, and in the end neither
victim nor decoy escaped the fullest infliction of redskin barbarity.
There were white outlaws along the rivers, too; land pirates ready to rob
and murder when opportunity offered, and as the Spanish territory about
New Orleans was entered, the dangers multiplied. The advertisement of a
line of packets sets forth:

"No danger need be apprehended from the enemy, as every person whatever
will be under cover, made proof against rifle or musket balls, and
convenient portholes for firing out of. Each of the boats are armed with
six pieces, carrying a pound ball, also a number of muskets, and amply
supplied with ammunition, strongly manned with choice hands, and masters
of approved knowledge."

The English of the advertisement is not of the most luminous character,
yet it suffices to tell clearly enough to any one of imagination, the
story of some of the dangers that beset those who drifted from Ohio to New
Orleans.

The lower reaches of the Mississippi River bore among rivermen, during the
early days of the century, very much such a reputation as the Spanish Main
bore among the peaceful mariners of the Atlantic trade. They were the
haunts of pirates and buccaneers, mostly ordinary cheap freebooters,
operating from the shore with a few skiffs, or a lugger, perhaps, who
would dash out upon a passing vessel, loot it, and turn it adrift. But one
gang of these river pirates so grew in power and audacity, and its leaders
so ramified their associations and their business relations, as for a time
to become a really influential factor in the government of New Orleans,
while for a term of years they even put the authority of the United States
at nought. The story of the brothers Lafitte and their nest of criminals
at Barataria, is one of the most picturesque in American annals. On a
group of those small islands crowned with live-oaks and with fronded
palms, in that strange waterlogged country to the southwest of the
Crescent City, where the sea, the bayou, and the marsh fade o