They were being floated down to
New Orleans. I had found coal in several places on my land in Illinois.
Sometimes one could dig it out of the surface of the ground. But no
expeditious means were yet in use in Illinois in mining it.
The Mississippi is a wonder scene to me. The river is full of islands
and the boat winds about in endless turns of the stream. There are
swamps, and melancholy cypress and funereal live oaks. There are the
solitary huts of the woodcutters, and bars of sand covered with cane
brake, and impenetrable forests, and the forbidding depths of the
jungle. Farther on there are the sugar plantations, and the levees, and
the great houses of the planters, and the huts of the negroes, and the
vivid greens of fields of sugar cane standing many feet high; and around
these the cypress swamp. And on every side in the midst of each
plantation the tall white towers of the sugar mills. It is all novel and
wonderful to me; and it helps me to forget my insistent thoughts of
Dorothy.
The steamer stopped to get wood. It was at a creole plantation. There
was a procession of carts here, each drawn by a team of mules, driven by
negroes, laughing and joking with each other. They were slaves hauling
wood to the sugar mills. We were soon off again on the silent river,
which had now broadened to the dimensions of a great lake.
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