en, a toast!
Here's to the old boat! God bless her ---- _soul!_"

CHAPTER VI.

BOAT LIFE AFLOAT AND AGROUND.

The day after the race our trio exhausted all usual resources of boat
life. We lounged in the saloon and saw the young ladies manage their
beaux and the old ones their children; dropped into the card-rooms and
watched the innocent games--some heavy ones of "draw poker" with a
"bale better;" some light ones of "all fours," with only an occasional
old sinner deep in chess, or solitaire. For cards, conversation,
tobacco, yarns and the bar make up boat life; it being rare, indeed,
that the _ennui_ is attacked from the barricade of a book. Then we
roamed below and saw the negroes--our demons of the night before, much
modified by sunlight--tend the fires and load cotton. A splendidly
developed race are those Africans of the river boats, with shiny, black
skins, through which the corded and tense muscles seem to be bursting,
even in repose. Their only dress, as a general thing, is a pair of
loose pantaloons, to which the more elegant add a fancy colored
bandanna knotted about the head, with its wing-like ends flying in the
wind; but shirts are a rarity in working hours and their absence shows
a breadth of shoulder and depth of chest remarkable, when contrasted
with the length and lank power in the nether limbs. They are a
perfectly careless and jovial race, with wants confined to the only
luxuries they know--plenty to eat, a short pipe and a plug of
"nigger-head," with occasional drinks, of any kind and quantity that
fall to their lot. Given these, they are as contented as princes; and
their great eyes roll like white saucers and their splendid teeth flash
in constant merriment.

As we got further down the river, the flats became less frequent and
high, steep bluffs took their place; and at every landing along these
we laid-by for cotton and took in considerable quantities of "the
king."

Some of the bluffs were from sixty to eighty feet in height; and down
these, the cotton came on slides. These, in most cases, were at an
angle of forty-five degrees, or less; strongly constructed of heavy
beams, cross-tied together and firmly pegged into the hard bluff-clay.
A small, solid platform at the bottom completed the slide.

Scarcely would the plank be run out when the heavy bales came bounding
down the slide, gaining momentum at every yard of descent, till at the
bottom they had the velocity of a cannon-ball.