So the time passed dismally on, I was very weary, having had little sleep
last night, also by the wretchedly passed day.  So going inside the barge-store,
I found a motley group reclining on bales, boxes, the counter & floor.
With the bear-skin for a coverlid, & carpetbag for pillow, I lay down
on the floor, in the shade of the counter, & despite the steamboats roar
the trampling about & general noise, fell asleep, and soundly.   This night
  18.  Friday.}       be about 11.   Once I was aroused by another in-
coming steamer, but it not being the one, to sleep again, till 3 in the
morning.    And then the boat did come, and after another weary hour�s delay,
I got desperate at witnessing here among the barges below, clambered off across
a long plank to the mud bank again, took a walk, reached other barges and
planks, crossed steamboats, and got aboard the �Cincinatti.�     More fortunate
than others, I, by producing Times credentials, got a berth; and soon disregarding
all the tumult without was in deep, dead sleep.                Up betimes, and
find we have lain at Cairo till near day-break, and are now steaming up
the Ohio, Kentucky shore on the right, Illinois on the left.   A handsome
boat is the �Cincinatti,� and crowded.        The Ohio is a picturesque stream,
though its waters now partake of the muddy Mississippi tinge; its banks
present fine sloping shores, bluffs, and headlands; here and there an island, (or
what appears to be such is seen,) and distant rounded hill tops, all covered
by bare, brown, autumn-denuded elm and sycamore.     No more luxuriant
foliage now, as in sunny Louisiana.      And welcome be the sturdy north,
with its honest frost and snow, � almost could I welcome mud and sloppy
streets again.  Never did I love striving, stirring New York, (capital and
chief among cities in the Western world!) better than now. /    We pause
at little towns on either bank; and once sever a rope by which one steamer
is attempting to tow a stranded companion off a sand bank, though unwittingly.
Pretty as the Ohio may be, one half mile of the Hudson at West Point
is worth the whole of it.   /           Thinking of that matter of Slavery