44*

CHAPTER I*
THE 'OBIGIKAJL JACOBS/
WB had some talk about Captain Isuiah Sellers, now many years
dead. He was a fine man, a high-minded man, and greatly respected
both ashore and on the river. He was very tall, well built, and
handsome ; and in his old age—as I remember Kim—his hair was aa
black as an Indian's, and his eye and hand were as strong and steady
and his nerve and judgment as firm and clear as anybody's, young or
old, among the fraternity of pilots. He was the patriarch of the
craft; he had been a keelboat pilot before the day of steamboats;
and a steamboat pilot before any other steamboat pilot, still surviving
at the time I speak of, had ever turned a wheel. Consequently his
brethren held him in the sort of awe in which illustrious survivors
of a bygone age are always held by their associates. He knew how
he was regarded, and perhaps this fact added some trifle of stiffening
to his natural dignity, which had been sufficiently stiff in its original
state.
He left a diary behind him; but apparently it did not date back
to his first steamboat trip, which was said to be 1811, the year the
first steamboat disturbed the waters of the Mississippi. At the time
of his death a correspondent of the * St. Lotus Republican' culled
the following items from the diary—
' In February, 1825, he shipped on board the steamer ** TtamHer," at
Florence, Ala., and made during that year three tripe to New Orleans and
back—this on the u Gen, Carrol," between Nashville and New Orleans. It
was during his stay on this boat that Captain Sellers introduced the tap of
die belt as & signal to heave the lead, previous to which time it was the
custom for the pilot to speak to the men below when soundings were wanted-