dden fashion the
day we got the news from Virginia. "All's fixed. The colonel, you and I
are to have a trip of a week, stop at Mobile and then run down t'
Orleans!"

So by sundown we were quietly smoking our cigars on the topmost deck of
the "Southern Republic."

Nowhere in the world can be found just such boats as those that
navigate our south-western rivers. Great three or four-storied
constructions, built upon mere flats of the lightest possible draught,
with length and breadth of beam sufficient to allow storage room for an
immense number of cotton bales and barrels upon the lowest deck; with
their furnaces, boilers and machinery all above the water line, they
look like up-country hotels that, having got out of their element,
contemplate a down-trip for the benefit of their health--or _cuisine_.

The "Southern Republic" was a new boat, built after the most approved
plan, on a scale of size and magnificence unequaled on the river.
Sitting flat and square upon the water, her four decks rising one above
the other--with the thousand doors and windows of her state-rooms
seeming to peer like eyes over the balconies around them--she seemed
more like some fabled marine monster than a vessel meant for speed and
comfort. Her length was immense, and her draught necessarily very
light--not four feet when full loaded; for the Alabama is subject to
many vagaries and what was a clear channel yesterday may be only a
two-foot shoal to-day. Of course, with solidity and strength sacrificed
to this extreme lightness, when the powerful engines are put to any
strain, the high, thin fabric thrills from stem to stern with their
every puff, like a huge card-house.

The speed of a first-class high-pressure boat is very great in the
longer "reaches;" but, the Alabama is a most tortuous stream. Often you
stand by the pilot-house and see, right under the quarter, a gleaming
streak of water across a neck of land over which you might toss a
stone; and yet you may steam on miles around the point that juts ahead,
before you get into it.

The "Southern Republic," from her immense size and unusually handsome
equipment, was a novelty even to the river people; and each afternoon
of her starting, crowds came aboard to bid farewell to friends and roam
over the vessel, or collected on the bluffs above to see her swing out
to the shrill notes of her "calliope," the best and least discordant on
the river. A few evenings before we left, a large party h