But they did not go to sleep yet, although they did not talk, every one being occupied with his own thoughts.
Paul sat at the stern of the boat leaning against the side, and his eyes were on New Orleans, where he saw the formless shapes of buildings and twinkling lights here and there.

The city, in a way, attracted him and, in another way, it repelled him.

It interested him, but he had no desire to live there.

It was a port, a gate, as it were, opening into the vast old world, to which belonged the centuries, and of which he had read and thought so much, but the single taste of it turned Paul's heart with a stronger affection than ever toward the New World to which he belonged.
The great forests of the north seemed clean and fresh to him as they had seemed to Jim.

There, at least, a man could know who were his friends and who were his enemies.
He saw boats passing on the turbid, brown current of the Mississippi and he heard snatches of strange, foreign songs.