Vii.—: Down the River.

We have left Kanzas behind, and my last association with it is of three pistol-shots which killed, in a drunken row, one of the self same company of Virginia and South Carolina youths who were swaggering in our cabin when I went to bed. I did not, however, know of the catastrophe till the next morning. I am told that the remains of the poor young man were taken into a gambling-room and laid upon a table, after which the gambling went on as before.

We are gliding down the rapid Missouri, now shouldering over a sandbank, now shuddering over a snag; while the endless woods look dewy and beautiful in early morning or moonlight, and very hot at noon. The yellow dust drifts over the bare islands which the shrinking water has left, and buzzards and wild geese shriek and soar away through its midst.

The tumultuous steamboat dinner is despatched with that rushing rapidity which is usual on such occasions, where people, having nothing to do afterward, are in a proportionate hurry to do it. As I look up and down the long table, and at the row of guests who sit with their glasses of Missouri water like tumblers of lemonade before them, it is sad to think that among those sixty men there are not half a dozen who belong to the same nation with myself. For what constitutes a common nationality except common ideas, principles, habits, and purposes? and in all these I find myself more alone than I should be among English, French, or Russians.

The majority are young men from various Southern States—Virginia, Kentucky, the Carolinas, and Georgia—who have been to Kanzas expressly to fight men from Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New York, Michigan, Illinois, and so on. And yet people speak of civil war as only a thing that may be, when there is scarcely a State in the Union which has not been already involved in civil war, through its representatives here. The simple fact is, that slaveholders and freemen are always two nations. I could speak my whole thoughts more safely in Berlin or St. Petersburg than here, except indeed that these enemies are more susceptible of fear.

By their own account, indeed, they show a poor record in this respect. Yesterday they were declared by their lieutenant, who alone wears a military coat, to be a pack of cowards; and he further asserted that in the point of danger they had been accustomed to take a vote whether to fight or run, and always ran!

Most of them are quite young and slender, with a dull, profligate look, while a few have open, simple faces, that seem strangely out of place. They have an easy, natural politeness, and swear, chew, and play cards enormously.

They are not in the least hypocrites or doughfaces; too uninstructed for that. One of them said, naively, in my hearing, with a sort of tender regret, “Do n’t you remember when we went up the river, we were all of us drunk all the time?” “So we were,” replied another, himself not far from that condition, “and so we should be now, only we ’ve got no money.”

They proclaim openly that they went to Kanzas to fight and vote for Slavery. All finally voted at Leavenworth; and, having done that, are going home. But they complain bitterly of Atchison and others, who induced them to go; they say they were promised support for a year and fifty dollars in money, and yet they have had to support themselves almost entirely; and now very few have more than enough to take them to St. Louis, and some were unable to leave Leavenworth for want of even that. “Let me once get home,” said the same youth who made the above confession, “and I ’ll stay at home, sure. It ’s cost me the price of one good nigger, just for board and liquor, since I left home.”

“Wo unto them, for they have cast lots for my people and sold a girl for wine, that I may drink.” Let me confess that this apt bit of Scripture I obtain not from memory but from “Dred,” of which I bought an early copy at Lawrence. Several of the passengers have borrowed and examined it, with various comments, but no threatening ones. I could easily fill the margin of the book with sketches of illustrative faces, especially those of Ben Dakin, Jim Stokes, and the unfortunate Cripps. The romance reads well in the midst of the reality, though to be sure we have no actual slaves on board, except one young Topsy in a yellow apron, who stands as patiently as her nature permits, behind the chair of a stout lady, in the consecrated upper end of the long cabin. (I never saw the æsthetic inequality of the sexes so fully recognised as in a Missouri River steamboat.)

October 11.—Yesterday we spent on a sand-bank, till at nightfall the steamer F. X. Aubry came along and pulled us off. We proceeded in company till at another difficult place the two boat-loads were disembarked, and we all walked half a mile along the shore. Then came out a startling story; how H. Miles Moore, Esq., Secretary of the Kanzas State Committee, had taken passage on board the other boat—after being released from a malicious arrest at Kanzas City; how the South Carolina and Virginia rowdies on the boat, finding him alone and unarmed, had threatened to hang him, and were proceeding to actual violence, when Governor Cobb, of Alabama, and the captain interfered and put him, for protection, in a state-room in the ladies’ cabin; and how all thought he actually owed his life to them. Seeking him out, I found that it was all true; although the “honor” of Governor Cobb and some of the rowdies themselves was now pledged for his safety. It appeared to me, however, that a transfer to our boat and the loan of a revolver would be a better security; and that night he availed himself of it, there being fortunately a vacant berth in my state-room. The men on our boat were quite as far gone with whiskey as those on the other, and made common cause with them; but these were fewer in number, and we had three or four very reliable New England men, who kept a good lookout. And caution was needed, for the excitement rose again as we lay at Jefferson City over night, and inquiry began to be made as to the whereabouts of Moore. But Governor Cobb got up a visit to Governor Price, on the part of the passengers; and then there was a dance in the other boat; and when, about 101/2 o’clock, the ringleaders began to whisper mischief again, part of their men were asleep and part in a worse condition, and the noble design fell through and we were undisturbed. I was glad to have him there, for I could not bear that he should owe his safety to the protection of a slaveholder.

We reached St. Louis this afternoon, four days and a half from Leavenworth, a trip which usually takes less than three. Kanzas and its perils lie behind, and there is no excitement but elections. Well, one does feel a little homesick for Kanzas, I can assure you, and at some future day The Tribune may hear again from its correspondent.

I did not, however, go out as a settler, but simply to see the country for myself. Yet if I did not live in Massachusetts, I would live in Kanzas.