A few negroes stole out to us in dugouts, and breathlessly told us how others had been hurried away by the overseers.

We glided safely on, mile after mile.

The day was unutterably hot, but all else seemed propitious.

The men had their combustibles all ready to fire the bridge, and our hopes were unbounded.
But by degrees the channel grew more tortuous and difficult, and while the little Milton glided smoothly over everything, the Enoch Dean, my own boat, repeatedly grounded.

On every occasion of especial need, too, something went wrong in her machinery,--her engine being constructed on some wholly new patent, of which, I should hope, this trial would prove entirely sufficient.