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 CHAPTER II.

A TRIP INTO NORTHERN MISSISSIPPI.

Vicksburg, March 18th.—I arrived at this place last night, about sunset, and was told that there was no hotel in the town except on the wharf-boat, the only house used for that purpose having been closed a few days ago on account of a difference of opinion between its owner and his tenant.

There are no wharves on the Mississippi, or any of the southern rivers. The wharf-boat is an old steamboat, with her paddle boxes and machinery removed and otherwise dismantled, on which steamboats discharge passengers and freight. The main deck is used as a warehouse, and, in place of the furnace, has in this case a dram shop, a chandler's shop, a forwarding agency, and a telegraph office. Overhead, the saloon and state-rooms remain, and with the bar-room and clerk's office, kitchen and barber's shop, constitute a stationary though floating hostelry.

Though there were fifty or more rooms, and not a dozen guests, I was obliged, about twelve o'clock, to admit a stranger who had been gambling all the evening in the saloon, to occupy the spare shelf of my closet. If a disposition to enjoy occasional privacy, or to exercise a choice in one's room-mates were a sure symptom of a monomania for incendiarism, it could not be more carefully thwarted than it is at all public-houses in this part of the world.

Memphis, March 20th.—I reached this place to-day in forty-eight horns by steamboat from Vicksburg.

Here, at the "Commercial Hotel," I am favoured with an unusually good-natured room-mate. He is smoking on the bed—our bed—now, and wants to know what my business is