321 LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI.

CHAPTER XXXHX
REFRESHMENTS AKD ETHICS.
IN regard to Island 74t which is situated not far from the former
Napoleon, a freak of the river here has sorely perplexed the laws ol
men and made them a vanity and a jest. When the State of Arkansas
was chartered, she controlled 'to the centre of the river'—a most
unstable line. The State of Mississippi claimed ' to the channel'—
another shifty and unstable line. No. 74 belonged to Arkansas. By
and by a cut-off threw this big island out of Arkansas, and yet not
witMn Mississippi. ' Middle of the river * on one side of it, * channel'
on the other. That is as I understand the problem. Whether I have
got the details right or wrong, this fact remains: that here is this
big and exceedingly valuable island of four thousand acres, thrust out
in. the cold, and belonging to neither the one State nor the other;
paying taxes to neither, owing allegiance to neither. One man owns
the whole island, and of right is * the man without a country/
Island 92 belongs to Arkansas. The river moved it over and
joined it to Mississippi A chap established a whiskey shop there,
without a Mississippi licence, and enriched himself upon Mississippi
custom under Arkansas protection (where no licence was in those
days required).
We glided steadily down the river in the usual privacy—steam-
boat or other moving thing seldom seen. Scenery as always: stretch
upon stretch of almost unbroken, forest, on both sides of the river;
soundless solitude. Here and there a cabin or two, standing in
small openings on the grey and grassless banks—cabins which had
formerly stood a quarter or half-mile farther to the front, and gra-
dually been pulled farther and farther back as the shores caved in.
As at Pitcher's Point, for instance, where the cabins had been moved