- Having sailed down the Ohio River on a Mississippi steamboat, Miriam Margolyes arrives in St Louis. She attempts to teach at a high school, visits the inspiration for Martin Chuzzlewit and meets the United Houma Indian Nation on a sacred burial ground.
- Margolyes takes a steam-powered paddle boat, the Delta Queen, down the Ohio River, which turns into the Mississippi River. Dickens also took a steamboat.
Dickens did not like the journey at all. By this time in his journey he was disillusioned, tired and cross. His traveling companions were uncommunicative and he thought Mississippi River like an "enormous ditch."
The Midwest in general was not to his liking.
Margolyes on the other hand, has a wonderful time and we see her partying with her co-travelers, learning about paddle boat history from Master Buddy Muirhed, and entertaining the guests with Dickensian stories.
She notes that Dickens and his wife, Catherine, celebrated their 6th wedding anniversary while on the Mississippi and comments on Dickens's shabby treatment of Catherine. She closes the segment with the plea, "Let's remember Catherine."
Margolyes stops off in Cairo, Illinois. Jerome Meckier, Professor of English at the University of Kentucky, explains that Cairo was not at all what Dickens had expected. It had been advertised to him as "up and coming, with a great future." It was anything but that and Dickens used Cairo as a model for the disastrous development of Eden in Martin Chuzzlewitt.
Margolyes discusses Cairo's history with Preston Ewing, Jr., a local historian and former civil rights activist. He tells her that Cairo's population reached its zenith in the 1920s when it was 15,000. Now it is 3,000. There is a local belief that Dickens cursed Cairo. But Cairo in many ways cursed itself. It dragged its heels when desegregating. When desegregation finally came in 1976 there was a massive white flight. Today the streets are empty. One can rent a store on the main street for a dollar a year. It is still, "dismal Cairo." Margolyes sees no hope for the town.
Ranger Bob Moore of the US National Park Service tells her that many today think Dickens was rather snobby when describing St. Louis of 1842, but he thinks Dickens was just being honest about what he saw and experienced.
Dickens visited an American Free School in St. Louis and Miriam visits a 9th grade class at the Duchesne High School (Missouri). They are reading Great Expectations and some think the novel is too long. She explains to them how the book originally came out in installments. She then does a short performance of Miss Havisham talking about love.
Dickens had a chance encounter with Chief Pitchlynn of the Choctaw tribe and discussed American Indian conditions with him. Margolyes meets two Native American, from separate nations, Dana Klar and Noel Frazer, both from the Buder Center for American Indian Studies. They meet at a burial mound and compare conditions now and what they were like in 1842.
Dickens wanted to see a prairie and a day was arranged for him to do so. Margolyes and a companion take a picnic basket, similar to Dickens's and visit the Looking Glass Prairie. Although Dickens found the scenery somewhat disappointing, he enjoyed the company and devoted a whole chapter of American Notes to the trip.
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