I quit the _Walnut Hills_ after three months, and shipped with
Captain Patterson on the _Cicero_, bound for Nashville. The first trip
up the Cumberland River the boat was full of passengers, and I had a
fight with the pantryman. The Captain said I should go ashore.
They brought me up to the office, and the clerk was told to pay me
my wages, which amounted to the large sum of one dollar and fifty
cents. I was told to get my baggage; but as two blue cotton shirts
and what I had on my back was all I possessed, it did not take me
long to pack. My trunk was a piece of brown paper with a pin lock.
They landed me at a point where the bank was about one hundred feet
high, and so steep that a goat could not climb it. They commenced
to pull in the plank, when the steward yelled out to the Captain,
"that he could not get along without that boy," and asked him to
let me go as far as Nashville. I was told to come aboard, which
I did, and I remained on that boat for one year, during which time
I learned to play "seven-up," and to "steal card," so that I could
cheat the boys, and I felt as if I was fixed for life. I quit the
_Cicero_, and shipped with Captain Mason on the steamer _Tiago_.
Bill Campbell, afterward the first captain of the _Robert E. Lee_,
was a cabin boy on the same boat. He is now a captain in the
Vicksburg Packet Line. During the time I was on the _Tiago_ the
Mexican War broke out.