CHAPTER V.
I WANT TO BE A CUB-PILOT.
MONTHS afterward the hope within me struggled to a reluctant death,
and I found myself without an ambition. But I was ashamed to go
home. I was in Cincinnati, and I set to work to map out a new
career. I had been reading about the recent exploration of the river
Amazon by an expedition sent out by our government. It was said
that the expedition, owing to difficulties, had not thoroughly explored
a part of the country lying about the head-waters, some four thousand
miles from the mouth of the river. It was only about fifteen hundred
miles from Cincinnati to !N"ew Orleans, where I could doubtless get a
ship, I had thirty dollars left; I would go and complete the explora-
tion of the Amazon. This was all the thought I gave to the subject.
I never was great in matters of detail. I packed my valise, and took
passage on an ancient tub called the ' Paul Jones/ for New Orleans.
For the sum of sixteen dollars I had the scarred and tarnished
splendours of * her' main saloon principally to myself, for she was
not a creature to attract the eye of wiser travellers.
When we presently got under way and went poking down the
broad Ohio, I became a new being, and the subject of my own admi-
ration. I was a traveller ! A word never had tasted so good in my
mouth before. I had an exultant sense of being bound for mysterious
lands and distant climes which I never have felt in so uplifting a
degree since. I was in such a glorified condition that all ignoble
feelings departed out of me, and I was able to look down and pity the
untravelled with a compassion that had hardly a trace of contempt in
it. Still, when we stopped at villages and wood-yards, I could not
ixelp lolling carelessly upon the railings of the boiler deck to enjoy th*