To a person not accustomed to the unaccountable antics and characteristic monkeyshines of the sable heroes of the corn fields, sugar plantations, flat-boats, and steamboat "'tween decks" of the lower river, a continual fund of amusement is afforded by their fantastic sayings and doings. On the Kentucky river I first observed some of their curious performances--the boats on this stream differ from any others in the world--the one on which I obtained my experience was peculiarly peculiar, and I find my impressions of the craft and the company recorded as follows:--
_Steamboat Blue Wing._--Which said boat is very much the shape of a Michigan country-made sausage, and is built with a hinge in the middle to go around the sharp bends in the river, and is manned by two captains, four mates, sixteen darkies, two stewards, a small boy, a big dog, an opossum, two pair of grey squirrels, one clock, and a cream-colored chamber-maid.
Fog so thick you couldn't run a locomotive through it without a snow-plough; night so dark the clerk has two men on each side of him with pitch-pine torches, to enable him to see his spectacles (he wears spectacles); pilot so drunk the boys have painted his face with charcoal and coke berries, till he looks like a rag carpet in the last stages of dilapidation; and he is fast asleep, with his legs (pardon me, but--legs), tied to the capstan, his whiskers full of coal-dust and cinders, and the black end of the poker in his mouth.
Boat fast aground, with her symmetrical nose six feet deep in Kentucky mud; there she complacently lies, waiting for the mail boat to come along and pull her out. Passengers elegantly disposed in various stages of don't-care-a-cent-itiveness, and the subscriber, taking advantage of the temporary sobriety of the clerk, and his consequent attendance in the after-cabin to play poker with the mates, embraces the opportunity to write. The silence is of brief duration, for I am interrupted by a grand oratorio by the nigger firemen, much to my delight and edification. It runs somewhat as follows:--
(Grand opening chorus) "A-hoo--a-hoo--hoo-oooo--a-hooo--a-hoo--a-hooo-- a-hoooo-oo!"
The dashes in the following represent the passages where the superfluity of the harmony prevented the proper appreciation of the poetry.