rowing from forty to fifty feet high.

This night, after the play, an old acquaintance, Mr. Howard Payne, came
to see me: he had just descended the Mississippi from St. Louis; his
object in travelling being, as he informed me, to obtain subscriptions
for a journal he purposes to establish in London; its object, to
cultivate and sustain an exchange of literary opinions, and a more
liberal and generous intercourse in literature than at present exists.
His success, as might be expected, has been most encouraging.

_Thursday, 12th._--Weather balmy and genial; took a very long walk by
the Mississippi, following the course of the stream through a country
wild and beautiful; and on my way back, encountered a party of the
Choctaw tribe, a miserable sample of this once powerful people. The two
men, who appeared the leaders of the party, were both naked, their faces
daubed here and there with lines and circles of red and black paint:
they bore long rifles over their shoulders; and, buckled about their
loins, were deer-skin pouches, containing their ammunition, pipes, &c.
Several children were nearly or quite in a state of nature, and the
squaws themselves scantily robed in dirty blankets, without a single
ornament, dearly prized as is all finery by these coquettish children of
nature.

The best of this tribe are now away south, about the head of the Red
River: those yet lingering near this place, although numerous, are
considered the outcasts of the nation. The appearance of such as I have
encountered is squalid and filthy in the extreme.

_Friday, 13th._--A clear windy day, but sufficiently mild: a boat up
from New Orleans, with a mail; the first received since my arrival;
latest date from England, December 23rd. Walked down to
Natchy-under-hill, to inquire about a boat to New Orleans: saw one
monster come groaning down the stream, looking like a huge cotton-bale
on fire. Not a portion of the vessel remained above water, that could be
seen, excepting the ends of the chimneys: the hull and all else was
hidden by the cotton-bags, piled on each other, tier over tier, like
bricks. When the boat headed the current, in order to steer in for the
wharf, she was swept down bodily; and even after swinging into the eddy,
I did not think she would ever muster way enough to fetch up the few
yards she required to reach a berth. After a deal of hard puffing and
groaning however, she gathered headway, and slowly crept alongside the
bank.