UNCLE

UNLOADS.

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you prefer. As this was the first time I had ever encountered this
species of honour, it seems excusable to mention it, and at the same
time call the attention of the auiihorities to the tardiness of my recog-
nition of it.

Noted a big change in the river, at Island 21. It was a very
large island, and used to lie out toward mid-stream ; but it is joined
fast to the main shore now, and has retired from business as an
island.

As we approached famous and formidable Plum Point, darkness
fell, but that was nothing to shudder
about—in these modern times. For
now the national government has
turned the Mississippi into a sort of
two-thousand-mile torchlight proces-
sion. In the head of every crossing,
and in the foot of every crossing, the
government has set up a clear-burning
lamp. You are never entirely in the
dark, now; there is always a beacon
in sight, either before you, or behind
you, or abreast. One might almost
say that lamps have been squandered
there. Dozens of crossings are lighted
which were not shoal when they were
created, and have never been shoal
since ; crossings so plain, too, and also
so straight, that a steamboat can take

herself through them without any help, after she has been through
once. Tjamps in such places are of course not wasted; it is much
more convenient and comfortable for a pilot to hold on them than on
a spread of formless blackness that won't stay still • and money is
saved to the boat, at the same time, for she can of course make more
miles with her rudder amidships than she can with it squared across
her stern and holding her back.

But this thing has knocked the romance out of piloting, to a large
extent. It, and some other things together, have knocked all tihe
romance out of it. For instance, the peril from snags is not now

A GOYEBNMENT LAJV1P.