ee nothing before him. In such a
case, wise and cautious men "lie to," and wait till the mist has
cleared off.

May not these "snags" serve to remind us of certain characters and
circumstances with which we meet on the voyage of life? Who cannot call
to mind many snags--men, rugged, stubborn, and contentious,--snags by
all means to be avoided? D'Israeli was the snag of Peel--Russia was the
snag of Napoleon--Slavery is the snag of the Evangelical Alliance.

On board our steamer was a fine black young man, who acted as barber,
waiter, and man-of-all-work. Curious to know whether he was a slave or
not, I requested my friend from Maine to sound him. "To whom do you
belong?" said the Baptist. "I belong to myself, sir," was the prompt
and dignified reply. "That's right," I involuntarily exclaimed; "he is
free!" In answer to further questions, he told us that he was from New
Orleans, and had bought himself about two years before for 600 dollars.
He could therefore truly say, "I belong to myself, sir!" Oh! that every
slave in America could say the same! But how monstrous, that a man
should have to pay to one of his fellow-men upwards of 120_l._ sterling
in order to "own himself!" Land of liberty, forsooth!

In the evening we reached Vicksburg. This place, like nearly all other
places in this region, is deeply stained with deeds of violence and
blood. A few years ago, a set of thieves and gamblers were here put to
death by Lynch law. "Gentlemen of property and standing laughed the law
(the constitutional law) to scorn, rushed to the gamblers' house, put
ropes round their necks, dragged them through the streets, hanged them
in the public square, and thus saved the sum they had not yet paid.
Thousands witnessed this wholesale murder; yet of the scores of legal
officers present, not a soul raised a finger to prevent it: the whole
city consented to it, and thus aided and abetted it. How many hundreds
of them helped to commit the murders with their own hands does not
appear; but not one of them has been indicted for it, and no one made
the least effort to bring them to trial. Thus, up to the present hour,
the blood of those murdered men rests on that whole city; and it will
continue to be a CITY OF MURDERERS so long as its citizens agree
together to shield those felons from punishment."

Darkness had covered the city of blood when we arrived, and therefore
we could not see it. One of the passengers, in stepping on a plank to
go a