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As soon as we reached New Orleans we went ashore, and I was paid off -about one hundred dollars. New Orleans is a very irregular town protected from the river by great levees. It lies in the middle of a great morass which is covered by cypress trees.	It is five English miles	from Lake Ponchartrain,	and
has about eighty thousand inhabitants.
In the summer it is very unhealthy to live here, and most of the rich move up the river. It is very expensive to live here. In this season the cholera was raging and they paid grave-diggers fourteen dollars a day. It is a very immoral	town	and Sundays are very	little	respected.	It was nothing
strange,	in the morning,	to see murdered people	lying	in the	streets.	The
inhabitants consist of all possible nationalities, though mostly French and Spanish. Here is also a French Theatre.
As I	intended to go home in the spring as soon as I	earned	a little	more
money, I	stayed only two	days in New Orleans.	Then	I went	down to	Lake
Ponchartrain on a railroad to hire to the steamboat "Watchman" that was hunting a crew.
That was	the	first time I rode on	a railroad. The	locomotive pulled
twenty to thirty cars	so fast	you	could scarcely	see anything near by. They
could go still faster,	but, as	the	distance is only five and a half miles they
have to begin to stop before they are fairly started. It is very dangerous to ride on, as the least	obstacle	on	the track will	overthrow the train. It is
not seldom that someone gets hurt	as they go so	fast. They have a piece of
wood fastened in front to throw things off the track, but it does not always help. I saw	the train once run over a cow which	could not	get off	the track
fast enough.	The locomotive, being heavy, did not	turn over,	but all	the cars,
as they struck the cow, toppled over one by one, and two people killed.
The whole road	was running through cypress	trees growing in the swamp. It
was	evening when I	went out there, and such a	serenade of frogs I have	never
heard. The bull-frog bellows as loud as an ox, and has often scared me when I walked along	this	road in the evenings. Later	in the spring you can hear
thousands of turtle	doves cooing. They love to	stay in the cypress trees.
I had brought	only four dollars with me.	The rest I left in my	trunk
which stood in my lodging house. When I came to the lake I took hire right away on the "Watchman" which took the mail to Mobile. It should make the trip in two days,	for	which it received two	hundred	dollars.	But, if it went
aground, or was delayed in any way, it had to pay one hundred dollars fine.
It was a handsome boat - the first steamboat I was on. But, although I was getting twenty-five dollars a month, I soon got tired of it. It steered so badly in shoals that when one stood his two hours	at the helm he could hardly
move his arms	when at last relieved. After having	delivered	the mail	at Mobile
we started back, but did not reach the railroad till the third day, so had to pay the hundred dollar fine.
When	I got there I received my pay and	wanted to go up to New	Orleans	on
the cars.	But when I went to pay my fare,	and put my hand in my	pocket,	my
purse was	gone. I had to give my watch as	security, and later go	and get	it
back.
But a still greater pleasure awaited me. When I went to my lodging I found my trunk open and fifty dollars gone. The rest was not touched. My host said it must be Tom, whose wedding we made up in Baltimore, who had taken it,
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