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CHAPTER XI.
THE RIVER RISES.
DURING this big rise these small-fry craft were an intolerable nuisance.
We were running chute after chute,—a new world to me,—and if
there was a particularly cramped place in a chute, we would be pretty
sure to meet a broad-horn there; and if he failed to be there, we
would find him in a still worse locality, namely, the head of the chute,
on the shoal water. And tihen there would be no end of profane
cordialities exchanged.
Sometimes, in the big- river, when we would be feeling our way
cautiously along through a fog, the deep hush would suddenly be
broken by yells and a clamour of tin pans, and all in instant a log
raft would appear vaguely through the webby veil, close upon us;
and then we did not wait to swap knives, but snatched our engine
bells out by the roots and piled on all the steam we had, to scramble
out of the way! One doesn't hit a rock or a solid log raft with a
steamboat when he can get excused-
You will hardly believe it, but many steamboat clerks always
carried a large assortment of religions tracts with them in those old
departed steamboating days. Indeed they did. Twenty times a day
we would be cramping np around a bar, while a string of these small-
fry rascals were drifting down into the head of the bend away above
and beyond us a couple of miles. Now a skiff would dart away from
one of them, and come fighting its laborious way across the desert of
water. It would * ease all/ in the shadow of our forecastle, and the
panting oarsmen would shout, * Gimme a pa-a-per!' as the skiff
drifted swiftly astern. The clerk would throw over a file of New
^ Orleans journals. If these were picked up without commeitf, yon