nd water, I was taken
by one of them in a lumbersome skiff a short distance up the creek,
and presented to his family. They are genuine "crackers," of the
coarsest type--tall, lean, sallow, fishy-eyed, with tow-colored hair,
an ungainly gait, barefooted, and in nondescript clothing all patches
and tatters. The tousle-headed woman, surrounded by her copies in
miniature, keeps the milk neatly, in an outer dairy, perhaps because
of market requirements; but in the crazy old log-house, pigs and
chickens are free comers, and the cistern from which they drink is
foul. Here in this damp, low pocket of a bottom, annually flooded to
the door-sill, in the midst of vegetation of the rankest order, and
quite unheedful of the simplest of sanitary laws, these yellow-skinned
"crackers" are cradled, wedded, and biered. And there are thousands
like unto them, for we are now in the heart of the "shake" country,
and shall hear enough of the plague through the remainder of our
pilgrimage. As for ourselves, we fear not, for it is not until autumn
that danger is imminent, and we are taking due precaution under the
Doctor's guidance.

Two miles beyond, is the Indiana town of Lawrenceburg, with the
unkempt aspect so common to the small river places; and two miles
still farther, on a Kentucky bottom, Petersburg, whose chiefest
building, as viewed from the stream, is a huge distillery. On a high
sandy terrace, a mile or so below, we pitch our nightly camp. All
about are willows, rustling musically in the evening breeze, and,
soaring far aloft, the now familiar sycamores. Nearly opposite, in
Indiana, the little city of Aurora is sparkling with points of light,
strains of dance music reach us over the way, and occasional shouts
and gay laughter; while now and then, in the thickening dusk of the
long day, we hear skiffs go chucking by from Petersburg way, and the
gleeful voices of men and women doubtless being ferried to the ball.

* * * * *

Near Warsaw, Ky., Saturday, May 26th.--Our first mosquito appeared
last night, but he was easily slaughtered. It has been a comfort to
be free, thus far, from these pests of camp life. We had prepared
for them by laying in a bolt of black tarlatan at Wheeling,--greatly
superior this, to ordinary white mosquito bar,--but thus far it has
remained in the shopman's wrapper.

The fog this morning was of the heaviest. At 4 o'clock we were
awakened by the sharp clanging of a pilot's signal be