CHAPTER XVI.
_Stratagem to get on board, the steamer .-- My Irish friends .-- My success in reaching Cincinnati .-- Reflections on again seeing Kentucky .-- I get employment in a hotel .-- My fright at seeing the gambler who sold me .-- I leave Ohio with Mr.Smith .-- His letter .-- My education._ The greatest of my adventures came off when I arrived at Jefferson City.

There I expected to meet an advertisement for my person; it was there I must cross the river or take a steamboat down; it was there I expected to be interrogated and required to prove whether I was actually a free man or a slave.

If I was free, I should have to show my free papers; and if I was a slave I should be required to tell who my master was.
I stopped at a hotel, however, and ascertained that there was a steamboat expected down the river that day for St.Louis.I also found out that there were several passengers at that house who were going down on board of the first boat.

I knew that the captain of a steamboat could not take a colored passenger on board of his boat from a slave state without first ascertaining whether such person was bond or free; I knew that this was more than he would dare to do by the laws of the slave states--and now to surmount this difficulty it brought into exercise all the powers of my mind.

I would have got myself boxed up as freight, and have been forwarded to St.Louis, but I had no friend that I could trust to do it for me.