20 LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI,

CHAPTER III.
FRESCOES FROM THE PAST.
APPARENTLY the river was ready for business, now. But no, the
distribution of a population along its banks was as calm and
deliberate and time-devouring a process as the discovery and explo-
ration had been.
Seventy years elapsed, after the exploration, before the river's
borders had a white population worth considering; and nearly fifty
more before the river had a commerce. Between La Salle's opening
of the river and the time when it may be said to have become the
vehicle of anything like a regular and active commerce, seven
sovereigns had occupied the throne of England, America had become
an independent nation, Louis XIV. and Louis XV. had rotted and
died, the French monarchy had gone down in the red tempest of the
revolution, and Napoleon was a name that was beginning to be talked
about. Truly, there were snails in those days.
The river's earliest commerce was in great barges—keelboats,
broadhorns. They floated arid sailed from the upper rivers to New
Orleans, changed cargoes there, and were tediously warped and poled
back by hand. A voyage down and back sometimes occupied nine
months. In time thia commerce increased until it gave employment
to hordes of rough and hardy men; rude, uneducated, brave, suffering
terrific hardships with sailor-like stoicism; heavy drinkers, coarse
frolickers in moral sties like the Natchez-under-the-hill of that day,
heavy fighters, reckless fellows, every one, elephantinely jolly, foul-
witted, profane; prodigal of their money, bankrupt at the end of the
trip, fond of barbaric finery, prodigious braggarts; yet, in the main,
honest, trustworthy, faithful to promises and duty, and often pic-
turesquely magnanimous.