CHAPTER XX.
In less than a month after his return from South America, Boyton was in St.Paul, Minnesota, ready to start on a voyage of one thousand and eight miles down the Mississippi river to Cairo, this trip being undertaken in order to complete the length of that river from source to mouth.

Though there were no adventures of extraordinary interest in this voyage, it was the stormiest one he ever encountered; and he was diverted on the way by two peculiar characters that accompanied him, being almost continually provoked to mirth by the humorous incidents which befell them.

His companion was a celebrated German artist, Dr.
C., who was on his first visit to America, as a representative of that famous publication, the Gartenlaube.

The Doctor was a scholarly gentleman, but being unacquainted with American characteristics, which had been sadly misrepresented to him by some of his countrymen who were inclined to joke, he had an exaggerated notion as to how he must dress and act for such a trip as he was going to take.

When he was at St.
Paul, he thought he was on the skirts of civilization and it behooved him to appear in such a manner as not to be imposed on as a novice.