The portion of the river above the mouth of the Ohio, which it had taken me twenty days to ascend in a barge, we were not forty-eight hours in descending.

Trees, points of land, islands, every physical object on shore, we rushed by with a velocity that left but vague and indistinct impressions.

We seemed floating, as it were, on the waters of chaos, where mud, trees, boats, were carried along swiftly by the current, without any additional impulse of a steam-engine, puffing itself off at every stroke of the piston.

The whole voyage to New Orleans had some analogy to the recollection of a gay dream, in which objects were recollected as a long line of loosely-connected panoramic fragments.
At New Orleans, where I remained several days, I took passage in the brig Arethusa, Captain H.Leslie, for New York.
While at anchor at the Balize, we were one night under apprehensions from pirates, but the night passed away without any attack.

The mud and alluvial drift of the Mississippi extend many leagues into the gulf.