Natchez was always two cities: the mansions on the bluff and the chaos below. Under-the-Hill was the riverfront landing where Kaintuck flatboatmen ended their trip downriver and started the overland walk home on the Natchez Trace. Gamblers, prostitutes, con men, and slave traders mixed with boatmen, merchants, and soldiers in a stretch of wooden buildings that hung over the water. It was one of the most dangerous places on the 19th-century frontier. Floods washed most of it into the Mississippi. What survives — a single block on Silver Street — still has the feel of a place that exists outside the rules of the city above it. The Under the Hill Saloon anchors it. Steamboats still dock there. The bluff still rises behind it like a wall between worlds.