54 LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI.
Well, the finding of that plantation was the luckiest accident thai
ever happened; but it couldn't happen again in a hundred years/
And I fully believed it was an accident, too.
By the time we had gone seven or eight hundred miles up the
river, I had learned to be a tolerably plucky upstream steersman, in
daylight, and before we reached St. Louis I had made a trifle of
progress in night-work, but only a trifle. I had a note-book that
fairly bristled with the names of towns, * points,* bars, islands, bends,
reaches, etc.; but the information was to be found only in the note-
book—none of it was in my head. It made my heart ache to think
1 had only got half of the river set down; for as our watch was four
hours off and four hours on, day and night, there was a long four-
hour gap in my book for every time I had slept since the voyage
began.
My chief was presently hired to go on a big New Orleans boat,
and I packed my satchel and went with him. She was a grand
affair. When I stood in her pilot-house I was so far above the water
that I seemed perched on a mountain; and her decks stretched so far
away, fore and aft, below me, that I wondered how I could ever have
considered the little * Paul Jones ' a large craft. There were other
differences, too. The * Paul Jones's' pilot-house was a cheap, dingy,
battered rattle-trap, cramped for room: but here was a sumptuous
glass temple; room enough to have a dance in; showy red and gold
window-curtains; an imposing sofa j leather cushions and a back to
the high bench where visiting pilots sit, to spin yarns and * look at
the river; * bright, fanciful * cuspadores' instead of a broad wooden
box filled with sawdust; nice new oil-cloth on the floor; a hospitable
big stove for winter; a wheel as high as my head, costly with inlaid
work; a wire tiller-rope; bright brass knobs for the bells; and a
tidy, white-aproned, black * texas-tender,' to bring up tarts and ices
and coffee during mid-watch, day and night. Now this was * some--
thing like; * and so I began to take heart once more to believe that
piloting was a romantic sort of occupation after all. The moment we
were under way I began to prowl about the great steamer and fill
myself with joy. She was as dean and as dainty as a drawing-room ;
when I looked down her long, gilded saloon, it was like gazing
through a splendid tunnel; sne had an oil-picture, by some gifted