100

LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI.

fishing, then, to get away from the obstruction* "We often hit white
logs, in the dark, for we could not see them till we were right on
them; but a black log is a pretty distinct object at night. A white
snag is a& ugly customer when the daylight is gone.

Of course, on the great rise, down came a swarm of prodigious
timber-rafts from the head waters of the Mississippi, coal barges from
Pittsburgh, little trading scows from everywhere, and broad-horns
from e Posey County,' Indiana, freighted with ' fruit and furniture'—
the usual term for describing it, though in plain English the freight

thus aggrandised was hoop-poles and
pumpkins. Pilots bore a mortal hatred
to these craft; and it was returned
with usury. The law required all such
helpless traders to keep a light burning,
but it was a law that was often broken.
All of a sudden, on a murky night, a
light would hop up, right under our bows, almost, and an agonised
voice, with the backwoods * whang' to it, would wail out—
* "Whar'n the ------ you goin' to ! Cain't you see nothin', you
dash-dashed aig-suckin', sheep-stealin', one-eyed son of a stuffed
monkey!'
Then for an instant, as we whistled by, the red glare from our
furnaces would reveal the scow and the form of the gesticulating
orator as if under a lightning-flash, and in that instant our firemen
and deck-hands wauld send and receive a tempest of missiles and