Bill, who never could speak in hard enough terms about sailing on the
mud-puddle Lakes, which he had never done as yet, once went to
Pittsburgh, meaning to go from there down the Ohio and up the Missouri.
He had heard of the Missouri River fur-trade, and big wages on the
steamboats carrying emigrants from St. Louis up-stream to Nebraska, Iowa
and Dakota Territory, and bringing back furs and hides. But at
Pittsburgh he was turned back by news of the outbreak of cholera at New
Orleans, a disease which had struck us with terror along the canal two
or three years before. That summer there were medicine pedlers working
on all the boats, selling a kind of stuff they called "thieves' vinegar"
which was claimed to be a medicine that was used in the old country
somewhere by thieves who robbed the infected houses in safety, protected
by this wonderful "vinegar"; and only told how it was made to save their
lives when they were about to be hanged. A man offered me a bottle of
this at Rochester, for five dollars, and finally came down to fifty
cents. This made me think it was of no use, and I did not buy, though
just before I had been wondering whether I had not better borrow the
money of Captain Sproule; so I saved my money, which was getting to be a
habit of mine.

California, the Rockies, the fur-trade, the Ohio Valley, the new cities
up the Lakes and the new farms in the woods back of them, and some few
tales of the prairies--all these voices of the West kept calling us more
loudly and plainly every year, and every year I grew stronger and more
confident of myself.

The third year I had made up my mind that I would get work on a
passenger boat so as to be able to see and talk with more people who
were going up and down the Lakes and the canal. I went from one to
another as I met folks who were coming back from the West, and asked