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
