286 LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI.
meant that the keeper of the light must come in a skiff a great
distance to discharge his trust,—and often in desperate weather. Yet
I was told that the work is faithfully performed, in all weathers; and
not always by men, sometimes by women, if the man is sick or absent.
The Government furnishes oil, and pays ten or fifteen dollars a month
for the lighting and tending, A Government boat distributes oil and
pays wages once a month.
The Ship Island region was as woodsy and tenantless as ever.
The island has ceased to be an island ; has joined itself compactly to
the ma™ shore, and wagons travel, now, where the steamboats used
to navigate. ITo signs left of the wreck of the ' Pennsylvania.'
Some farmer will turn up her bones with his plough one day, no doubt,
and be surprised.
We were getting down now into the migrating negro region.
These poor people could never travel when they were slaves; so they
make up for the privation now. They stay on a plantation till the
desire to travel seizes them; then they pack up, hail a steamboat, and
clear out. Not for any particular place; no, nearly any place will
answer; they only want to be moving. The amount of money on
hand will answer the rest of the conundrum for them. If it will
take them fifty miles, very well; let it be fifty. If not, a shorter
flight will do.
During a couple of days, we frequently answered these hails.
Sometimes there was a group of high-water-stained, tumble-down
cabins, populous with coloured folk, and no whites visible ; with grass-
less patches of dry ground here and there; a few felled trees, with
skeleton cattle, mules, and horses, eating the leaves and gnawing the
bark—no other food for them in the flood-wasted land. Sometimes
there was a single lonely landing-cabin; near it the coloured family
that had hailed us; little and big, old and young, roosting on the scant
pile of household goods; these consisting of a rusty gun, some bed-
tacks, chests, tinware, stools, a crippled looking-glass, a venerable
arm-chair, and six or eight base-born and spiritless yellow curs,
attached to the family by strings, They must have their dogs; can't
go without; their dogs. Yet the dogs are never willing; they always
object; so, one after another, in ridiculous procession, they are
aboard; all four feet braced and sliding along the stage,