264 LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI. world at their back, cannot tame that lawless stream, cannot curb it or confine it, cannot say to it, Go here, or Go there, and make it obey ; cannot save a shore which it has sentenced ; cannot bar its path with an obstruction which it will not tear down, dance over, and laugh at. Bat a discreet man will not put these things into spoken words ; for the West Point engineers hare not their superiors anywhere ; they know all that can be known of their abstruse science ; and so, since the} conceive that they can fetter and handcuff that river and boss him it is but wisdom for the unscientific ma,n to keep still, lie low, auct wait till they do it. Captain Eads, with his jetties, has done a work at the mouth of the Mississippi which seemed clearly impossible ; so we do not feel full confidence now to prophesy against like impos- sibilities. Otherwise one would pipe out and say the Commission might as well bully the comets in their courses and undertake to make them behave, as try to bully the Mississippi into right and reasonable conduct. I consulted Uncle Mumford concerning this and cognate matters ; and I give here the result, stenographically reported, and therefore to be relied on as being full and correct; except that I have here and there left out remarks which were addressed to the men, such as * where in blazes are you going with that barrel now 1 ' and which seemed to me to break the flow of the written statement, without compensating by adding to its information or its clearness. Not that I have ventured to strike out all such interjections ; I have removed only those which were obviously irrelevant; wherever one occurred which I felt any question about, I have judged it safest to let it 1^fi[T¥Mtl T} K HUMFOEI/8 IMPRESSIONS. Uncle Mmnford said — *As long as I have been mate of a steamboat — thirty years — 1 have watched this river and studied it. Maybe I could have learnt about it at West Point, but if I believe it I wish I may be ons $mt sucking your fingers there for f— Collar that leag of Four years at West P