FRESCOES FROM THE PAST, * 29
ought to be done witli the Injuns; and next about -what a king had to do,
and how much he got; and next about how to make cats fight; and next
about -what to do when a man has fits ; and next about differences betwixt
clear-water rivers and muddy-water ones. The man they called Ed said
the muddy Mississippi water was wholesomer to drink than the clear water
of the Ohio ; he said if you let a pint of this yaller Mississippi water settle,
you would have about a half to three quarters of an inch of mud in the
bottom, according to the stage of the river, and then it warn't no better
than Ohio water—what you wanted to do was to keep it stirred up—and
when the river was low, keep mud on hand to put in and thicken the water
up the way it ought to be.
The Child of Calamity said that was so ; he said there was nutritiousness
in the mud, and a man that drunk Mississippi water could grow corn in his
stomach if he wanted to. He says—
' You look at the graveyards; that tells the tale. Trees won't grow
worth chucks in a Cincinnati graveyard, but in a Sent Louis graveyard they
grow upwards of eight hundred foot high. It's all on account of the water
the people drunk before they laid up. A Cincinnati corpse don't richen a soil
any.'
And they talked about how Ohio water didn't like to mix with Missis-
sippi water. Ed said if you take the Mississippi on a rise when the Ohio is
low, you'll find a wide band of clear water all the way down the east side
of the Mississippi for a hundred mile or more, and the minute you get out a
quarter of a mile from shore and pass the line, it is all thick and yaller the
rest of the way across. Then they talked about how to keep tobacco from
getting mouldy, and from that they went into ghosts and told about a lot
that other folks had seen; but Ed says—
* Why don't you tell something that you've seen yourselves ? Now let
me have a say. Five years ago I was on a raft as big as this, and right
along here it was a bright moonshiny night, and I was on watch and boss of
the stabboard oar forrard, and one of my pards was a man named Dick All-
bright, and he come along to where I was sitting, forrard—gaping and
stretching, he was—and stooped down on the edge of the raft and washed
his face in the river, and come and set down by me and got out Ms pipe, and
had just got it filled, when he looks up and says—
<" Why looky-here," he says, " ain't that Buck Miller's place, over yander
in the bend? "
'"Yes," says I, "it is—why?" He laid his pipe down and leant his
head on his hand, and says—
* "I thought we'd be furder down." I says—
**' I thought it too, when I went off watch "—we was standing six hours
on and six off—" but the boys told me," I says, " that the raft didn't seem