Independent of three or four slimy old rivers close by, it varied on the farm from four to six foot deep in the dry season.
He couldn't say how deep it was in the rainy time, for he never had anything long enough to sound it with.' 'Is this true ?' asked Martin of his companion.
'Extremely probable,' he answered.

'Some Mississippi or Missouri lot, I dare say.' 'However,' pursued Mark, 'he came from I-don't-know-where-and-all, down to New York here, to meet his wife and children; and they started off again in a steamboat this blessed afternoon, as happy to be along with each other as if they were going to Heaven.

I should think they was, pretty straight, if I may judge from the poor man's looks.' 'And may I ask,' said Martin, glancing, but not with any displeasure, from Mark to the negro, 'who this gentleman is?
Another friend of yours ?' 'Why sir,' returned Mark, taking him aside, and speaking confidentially in his ear, 'he's a man of colour, sir!' 'Do you take me for a blind man,' asked Martin, somewhat impatiently, 'that you think it necessary to tell me that, when his face is the blackest that ever was seen ?' 'No, no; when I say a man of colour,' returned Mark, 'I mean that he's been one of them as there's picters of in the shops.

A man and a brother, you know, sir,' said Mr Tapley, favouring his master with a significant indication of the figure so often represented in tracts and cheap prints.
'A slave!' cried Martin, in a whisper.
'Ah!' said Mark in the same tone.

'Nothing else.