Unhappily, between the upland and the
little ridge on which I stood there was a wide river bottom[24], into
which I had scarcely advanced fifty yards when I got bogged. Well, it
took me a long while to get out of my miry hole, where I was as fast as
a swine in its Arkansas sty; and then I looked about for my wallet,
which I had dropped. I could see which way it had gone, for, close to
the yawning circle from which I had just extricated myself, there was
another smaller one two yards off, into which my wallet had sunk deep,
though it was comfortably light; which goes to illustrate the Indiana
saying, that there is no conscience so light but will sink in the bottom
of the Wabash. Well, I did not care much, as in my wallet I had only an
old coloured shirt and a dozen of my own sermons, which I knew by heart,
having repeated them a hundred times over.
[Footnote 24: River bottom is a space, sometimes of many miles in width,
on the side of the river, running parallel with it. It is always very
valuable and productive land, but unhealthy, and dangerous to cross,
from its boggy nature.]
"Being now in a regular fix, I cut a stick, and began wittling and
whistling, to lighten my sorrows, till at last I perceived at the bank
of the river, and five hundred yards ahead, one of those large rafts,
constructed pretty much like Noah's ark, in which a Wabash farmer
embarks his cargo of women and fleas, pigs and chickens, corn, whisky,
rats, sheep, and stolen niggers; indeed, in most cases, the whole of the
cargo is stolen, except the wife and children, the only portion whom the
owner would very much like to be rid of; but these will stick to him as
naturally as a prairie fly to a horse, as long as he has spirits to
drink, pigs to attend to, and breeches to mend.
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