The passengers have descended to the cabin; some to turn in, a few to read, but more to play at the ever-ready card-table. The pilot (as the helmsman is here termed) stands in his lonely wheel-house, comfortably enveloped in his blanket-coat--the hurricane deck is deserted, and the hands are gathered in the bows, listening to the narration of some ludicrous adventure of recent transaction in the city of hair-breadth escapes. Now and then a laugh from the merry auditors, or a loud roar from some ebony-cheeked fireman, as he pitches his wood into the gaping furnace, breaks upon the stillness of night, startling the echoes along the shores. What beings of habit we are! How readily do we accustom ourselves to circumstances! The deep trombone of the steam-pipe--the regular splash of the paddles--and the incessant rippling of the water eddying away astern, as our noble vessel flings it from her sides, no longer affect the senses, unless it may be to lull them into a repose well meant for contemplation. They are now no longer auxiliaries to the scene--habit has made them a part of it: and I can pace the deck with my mind as free and undisturbed as though I were in a lonely boat, upon "the dark blue sea", with no sound but the beating of my own heart, to break the silence. A few short hours have passed, and the grander characters of the scene are mellowed down, by their familiarity with my senses, into calm and quiet loneliness.
Having secured a berth in one corner of the spacious cabin, where I could draw the rich crimsoned curtains around me, and with book or pen pass my time somewhat removed from the bustle, and undisturbed by the constant passing of the restless passengers, I began this morning to look about me upon my fellow-travellers, seeking familiar faces, or scanning strange ones, by Lavater's doubtful rules.
Our passengers are a strange medley, not only representing every state and territory washed by this great river, but nearly every Atlantic and trans-Atlantic state and nation. In the cabin are the merchants and planters of the "up country;" and on deck, emigrants, return-boatmen, &c. &c. I may say something more of them hereafter, but not at present, as the scenery through which we are passing is too attractive to keep me longer below. So, to the deck. We are now about sixty miles above New-Orleans, and the shores have presented, the whole distance, one continued line of noble mansions, some of them princely and magnificent, intermingled, at intervals, with humbler farm-houses.