of the boat, except the black hurricane-deck, was crowded;
and so large a number of equally uncomfortable and disagreeable men I
think I never saw elsewhere together. We made very slow progress,
landing, it seems to me, after we entered Red River, at every "bend,"
"bottom," "bayou," "point," and "plantation" that came in sight; often
for no other object than to roll out a barrel of flour or a keg of
nails; sometimes merely to furnish newspapers to a wealthy planter, who
had much cotton to send to market, and whom it was therefore desirable
to please.

I was sitting one day on the forward gallery, watching a pair of
ducks, that were alternately floating on the river and flying farther
ahead as the steamer approached them. A man standing near me drew a
long-barrelled and very finely-finished pistol from his coat-pocket,
and, resting it against a stanchion, took aim at them. They were,
I judged, fully the boat's own length--not less than two hundred
feet--from us, and were just raising their wings to fly when he fired.
One of them only rose; the other flapped round and round, and when
within ten yards of the boat dived. The bullet had broken its wing.
So remarkable a shot excited, of course, not a little admiration and
conversation. Half a dozen other men standing near me at once drew
pistols or revolvers from under their clothing, and several were firing
at floating chips or objects on the shore. I saw no more remarkable
shooting, however; and that the duck should have been hit at such a
distance was generally considered a piece of luck. A man who had been in
the "Rangers" said that all his company could put a ball into a tree,
the size of a man's body, at sixty paces, at every shot, with Colt's
army revolver, not taking steady aim, but firing at the jerk of the arm.

This pistol episode was almost the only entertainment in which the
passengers engaged themselves, except eating, drinking, smoking,
conversation, and card-playing. Gambling was constantly going on, day
and night. I don't think there was an interruption to it of fifteen
minutes in three days. The conversation was almost exclusively confined
to the topics of steamboats, liquors, cards, black-land, red-land,
bottom-land, timber-land, warrants, and locations, sugar, cotton, corn,
and negroes.

After the first night I preferred to sleep on the trunks in the social
hall [the lobby which contained the passengers' baggage] rather than
among the cots in the crowde