During the progress of the evening, and while at the dinner and supper table, I had opportunity to survey the crowd, and to recognize in it the representatives of many distinct and different nations.

Americans, the lineal descendants of the true European race, of course predominated. Among the subdivisions of this race were English, Scotch, Irish, and German.

Africans, too, were numerous; but were found chiefly among the "hands" employed on board the steamboat. The waiters at table, the two stewards, the barber, the cooks,—from first to last, for there was almost an army of them,—were more or less of African origin. Some of them were jet black; but the far greater part were of commingled blood. Some were so light colored, that at first sight one would hardly recognize them as having ever belonged to the race of "Uncle Tom," or "Aunt Chloe."

Besides, there were with us four American Indians, of the Shawnee tribe. They were just from their home, among the upper branches of the Arkansas River, and were on their way to Washington, on business in behalf of their nation.

They were dressed in a full American costume, and two of them could converse in English very well. One of them—a young man—appeared to have no knowledge of any but his native dialect.

With one of the elder of these men I had some conversation myself. He answered my questions very readily and frankly, but seldom, in return, made any inquiries of me. Yet he was not destitute of curiosity. On several occasions I saw him looking with interest while mechanical and manufacturing operations were going on, both on board and on shore.

I found to my surprise that these Indians were not, even when at home, naked or half-naked savages, ignorant of the arts and decencies of life; but respectable farmers, more than half civilized, and some of them Christianized. They had cultivated fields and frame houses, with great numbers of horses, cattle, sheep, and hogs.

The younger of them even expressed a good deal of religious feeling, and said by an interpreter that he wished his nation read more in the New Testament and religious books. Another, who was a half-breed, and was older, appeared to be a professor of religion. One bad habit, so common among the whites, they had caught by contact: I mean that of smoking tobacco; and it is fortunate if they have been contaminated by us in nothing else.

But ten o'clock came, the hour when we were expected to retire to our berths, and it was not long before silence and darkness reigned, except where it was needful for men to watch and labor to see that the boat pursued her onward, ascending course.

Some of us, before retiring, took a short walk upon deck. The moon had not yet risen, but it was starlight. The surface of the river, and the waving outline of the adjacent shores and hills, with here and there a house, and one or two small villages, were all that we could see. After taking proper care of my little state-room, to see that the ventilators were so arranged as to give on the one hand a free circulation, and on the other to prevent a current of damp night air from falling directly upon me, and after remembering, too, that there was a God in the heavens in whom, as the supreme director on the water as well as on the land, I could trust, I resigned myself to sleep, and did not rise till the day had dawned, and the moon had reached the middle of the heavens.