We left Louisville in a steamer with rather indifferent accommodations, but commanded by a most obliging and courteous captain. There were several families on board, who were removing to remote parts of the Union; slaves, children, chattels, cattle, accompanied them; they were, in short, domestic Atlasses carrying their own little world on their shoulders–farther west of course–which is quite the way of the world hereabouts.

This was one of the very roughest sets I had ever been among. They lived entirely with the first-class passengers, so no doubt they had paid first-class price. Some were from the heart of old Kentucky, and none of them were emigrants; they all comported themselves very quietly and well, except one family of children, belonging to some hard-working backwoodsman, to judge from appearances. They were awfully spoilt, and led their parents miserable lives; scratching and beating their mother, and boxing the ears and kicking the shins of their (little) respected papa, and knocking cruelly about the only person in the family who had the sense to control the imps a little, in the shape of a gaunt tall grandmamma, resembling a retired grenadier, “in” a turban, with a short pipe–the last evidently the consolation of her soul, and the former ingeniously constructed of some light-coloured handkerchief, or handkerchiefs, and apparently built upon her head by her own hands, in a fantastic fashion, having a little appearance of a fortification for defensive purposes, which was rendered necessary by the violent attacks of the undutiful brats before alluded to.