LIFE ON TSTJS MISSISSIPPI,
CHAPTER  XXIX.
A   FEW  SPECIMEN"  BRICKS.
passed through bhe Plum Point region, turned Craighead's Poinl^
and glided unchallenged by what was once the formidable Port
Pillow, memorable because of the massacre perpetrated there during
the war. Massacres are sprinkled with some frequency through the
histories of several Christian nations, bnt this is almost the only one
that can be found in American history; perhaps it is the only one
which rises to a size correspondent to that huge and sombre title.
We have the * Boston Massacre/ where two or three people were
killed; but we must bunch Anglo-Saxon history together to find the
fellow to the Fort Pillow tragedy; and doubtless even then we must
travel back to the days and the performances of Cceur de Lion, that
fine ^€ hero,* before we accomplish it.
More of the river's freaks. In times past, the channel used to
strike above Island 37, by Brandywine Bar, and down towards
Island 39. Afterward, changed its course and went from Brandy-
wine down through "Vbgelman's chute in the Devil's Elbow, to Island
$9—part of this course reversing the old order; the river running
up four or five miles, instead of down, and cutting of£ throughout,
some fifteen miles of distance. This in 1876. All that region is
now called Centennial Island.
There is a tradition that Island 37 was one of the principal
aihififng places of the oncft celebrated *Murel*s Gang.' This was a
aokesal combination of robbers, horse-thieves, negro-stealers, and
counterfeiters, engaged in business along the river some fifty or sixty
years ago. "While our journey across the country towards St. Louis
was in progress we had had no end of Jesse James and his stirring