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GIFT OF
W. H. Smyth

STEAMBOAT TIME

LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI

MARK TWAIN &***

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK AND LONDON

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1905

BY \ g

s. L. CLEMENS) >

MARK TWAIN / W
[TRADE MARK]

THE "BODY OF THE NATION"

BUT the basin of the Mississippi is the BODY OF
THE NATION. All the other parts are but members,
important in themselves, yet more important in their
relations to this. Exclusive of the Lake basin and of
300,000 square miles in Texas and New Mexico, which
in many aspects form a part of it, this basin contains
about 1,250,000 square miles. In extent it is the
second great valley of the world, being exceeded only by
that of the Amazon. The valley of the frozen Obi
approaches it in extent; that of the La Plata comes
next in space, and probably in habitable capacity,
having about f of its area; then comes that of the
Yenisei, with about | ; the Lena, Amoor, Hoang-ho,
Yang-tse-kiang, and Nile, \ ; the Ganges, less than \\
the Indus, less than \ ; the Euphrates, \ ; the Rhine,
•^-g-. It exceeds in extent the whole of Europe, ex
clusive of Russia, Norway, and Sweden. It would
contain Austria four times, Germany or Spain five

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M101118

iv The "Body of the Nation"

times, France six times, the British Islands or Italy ten
times. Conceptions formed from the river-basins of
Western Europe are rudely shocked when we consider
the extent of the valley of the Mississippi; nor are
those formed from the sterile basins of the great rivers
of Siberia, the lofty plateaus of Central Asia, or the
mighty sweep of the swampy Amazon more adequate.
Latitude, elevation, and rainfall all combine to render
every part of the Mississippi Valley capable of support
ing a dense population. As a dwelling-place for
civilized man it is by far the first upon our globe. —
EDITOR'S TABLE, Harper's Magazine, February, 1863,

ILLUSTRATIONS

STEAMBOAT TIME Erontispiece

HE SWORE AT THE CAPTAIN Facing p. 126

"I'VE BEEN LAYING FOR YOU!" " 2QO

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.

The Mississippi River — First Seen in 1542 — De Soto has the Pull —
Older than the Atlantic Coast and some European History —
Some Half-breeds Chip in — La Salle Thinks he will Take a Hand 1 5

CHAPTER II.

La Salle again, also a Cat-fish — Buffaloes — Indian Paintings on the
Rocks — Some Curious Performances — More History and In
dians — Natchez, or the Site of it, is Approached 23

CHAPTER III.

A Little History — Early Commerce — A Voyage — Trouble Begins —
The Captain Speaks — Mystery Settled — I am Discovered — I
Give an Account of Myself — Released 29

CHAPTER IV. O

The Boys' Ambition — Village Scenes — Steamboat Pictures — A

Heavy Swell — A Runaway 43

CHAPTER V.

A Traveler — A Lively Talker — A Wild-cat Victim 48

CHAPTER VI.

Besieging the Pilot — Taken Along — Spoiling a Nap — Fishing for a

Plantation — "Points ' on the River — A Gorgeous Pilot-house . 53

CHAPTER VII.

River Inspectors — Ccttonwoods and Plum Point — Hat-Island Cross
ing — Touch and Go — It is a Go — A Lightning Pilot ... 62

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viii Contents

CHAPTER VIII.

A Heavy-loaded Big Gun — Sharp Sights in Darkness — Abandoned

to his Fate — Scraping the Banks — Learn him or Kill him . . 70

CHAPTER IX.

Shake the Reef— Reason Dethroned— The Face of the Water— A

Bewitching Scene — Romance and Beauty 78

CHAPTER X.

Putting on Airs — Taken Down a Bit — Learn it as it is — The River

Rising 86

CHAPTER XI.

In the Tract Business — Effects of the Rise — Plantations Gone — A
Measureless Sea — A Somnambulist Pilot — Supernatural Piloting

— Nobody There — Ail Saved 93

CHAPTER XII.

Low Water — Yawl Sounding — Buoys and Lanterns — Cubs and

Soundings — The Boat Sunk — Seeking the Wrecked . . . . 101

CHAPTER XIII.

A Pilot's Memory — Wages Soaring — A Universal Grasp — Skill and
Nerve — Testing a "Cub" — ''Back her for Life"— A Good
Lesson 109

CHAPTER XIV.

Pilots and Captains — High-priced Pilots — Pilots in Demand — A

Whistler — A Cheap Trade— Two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar speed 119

CHAPTER XV.

New Pilots Undermining the Pilots' Association — Crutches and Wages

— The Captains Weaken — Secret Sign — Admirable System —
Rough on Outsiders — No Loophole — Railroads and the War . 127

CHAPTER XVI.

All Aboard — A Glorious Start — Loaded to Win — Bands and Bugles

— Boats and Boats — Racers and Racing 141

Contents i*

CHAPTER XVII.

Cut-offs — Ditching and Shooting — Mississippi Changes — A Wild
Night — Stephen in Debt — Confuses his Creditors — Will Pay
them Alphabetically 149

CHAPTER XVIII.

Sharp Schooling — Shadows — I am Inspected — Where did you get
them Shoes? — Pull her Down — I Want to Kill Brown — I Try
to Run Her — I am Complimented 158

CHAPTER XIX.

A Question of Veracity — A Little Unpleasantness — I have an

Audience with the Captain — Mr. Brown retires 165

CHAPTER XX.

I Become a Passenger — A Thunderous Crash — They Stand to their
Posts — In the Blazing Sun — A Grewsome Spectacle — His
Hour has Struck 170

CHAPTER XXI.

I Get my License — The War Begins — I Become a Jack-of -all-Trades 177
CHAPTER XXII.

Trying the Alias Business — Region of Goatees — Boots Begin to
Appear — The River Man is Missing — Specimen Water — A
Supreme Mistake — We Inspect the Town — A Woodyard . . 1 78

CHAPTER XXIII.

Old French Settlements — We Start for Memphis — Young Ladies and

Russia-leather Bags 187

CHAPTER XXIV.

I Receive Some Information — Alligator Boats — Alligator Talk —

She was a Rattler to go — I am Found Out . . . . . . .191

CHAPTER XXV.

The Devil's Oven and Table — Bombshell Falls — No Whitewash —
Thirty Years on the River — Accidents — Two Hundred Wrecks
— A Loss to Literature — Sunday Schools and Brick Masons . .198

Contents

XXVI.

War Talk— Fifteen Shot-holes — A Plain Story — Wars and Feuds —
Darnell versus Watson — A Gang and a Wood-pile — River
Changes — New Madrid . . . „ 205

CHAPTER XXVII.

Tourists and their Note-books — Captain Hall — Sensations of Mrs.
Trollope, Hon. Charles Augustus Murray, Captain Marryat,
Alexander Mackay, and Mr. Parkman 213

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Swinging Down the River — Named for Me — Plum Point Again —
Changes and Jetties — Uncle Mumford Testifies — What the
Government does — " Had them Bad " — Jews and Prices . . . 218

CHAPTER XXIX.

Murel's Gang — A Consummate Villain — Stewart Turns Traitor — I
Start a Rebellion — We Cover our Tracks — Pluck and Capacity —
A Good Samaritan City — The Old and the New 228

CHAPTER XXX.

A Melancholy Picture — River Gossip — She Went By a-Sparklin* —
A World of Misinformation — Eloquence of Silence — Striking a
Snag — Photographically Exact — Plank Sidewalks 237

CHAPTER XXXI.

Mutinous Language — The Dead-house — Bound and Gagged, I get
Free — The Man with One Thumb — Fright and Gratitude —
A Grisly Spectacle — Shout, Man, Shout — The Hidden Money 246

CHAPTER XXXII.

Ritter's Narrative — A Question of Money — Napoleon — Somebody is

Serious— Where the Prettiest Girl Used to Live 263

CHAPTER XXXIII.

Question of Division — Place where there was no License — The Cal-
houn Land Company — Cotton-planter's Estimate — Halifax and
Watermelons — Jeweled-up Barkeepers . 268

Contents xi

CHAPTER XXXIV.

An Austere Man — A Mosquito Policy — Facts Dressed in Tights —

A Swelled Left Ear 274

CHAPTER XXXV.

Signs and Scars — Cave-dwellers — A Ton of Iron and no Glass —
Mule Meat — A Dog and a Shell — Vicksburg versus the "Gold
Dust" • • 277

CHAPTER XXXVI.

The Professor Spins a Yarn — An Enthusiast in Cattle — Makes a
Proposition — Loading Beeves at Acapulco — He wasn't Raised to
it — Roped in — Four Aces — He doesn't Care for Gores . . . 285

CHAPTER XXXVII.

A Terrible Disaster — The " Gold Dust " Explodes her Boilers — The

End of a Good Man * 292

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

Mr. Dickens has a Word — -Best Dwellings and their Furniture —
Albums and Music — Pantalettes and Conch-shells — Horse-hair
Sofas and Snuffers — Rag Carpets and Bridal Chambers ....

CHAPTER XXXIX.

Rowdies and Beauty — Ice Manufacture — More Statistics — Some
Drummers — Oleomargarine versus Butter — Olive Oil versus
Cotton Seed — A Terrific Episode — The Demons of War . . .301

CHAPTER XL.

In Flowers, like a Bride — A White-washed Castle — A Southern

Prospectus — Pretty Pictures— An Alligator's Meal .... 308

CHAPTER XLI.

The Approaches to New Orleans — A Stirring Street — Sanitary Im
provements — Journalistic Achievements — Cisterns and Wells .314

CHAPTER XLII.
Beautiful Graveyards — Chameleons and Panaceas — Inhumation and

Infection — Mortality and Epidemics — The Cost of Funerals .319

xii Contents

CHAPTER XLIII.

I Meet an Acquaintance — Coffins and Swell Houses — Mrs. O'Flaherty
Goes One Better — Epidemics and " Embamming"— Six Hundred
for a Good Case — Joyful High Spirits 323

CHAPTER XLIV.

French and Spanish Quarters — Cabbages and Bouquets — The Shell
Road — The West End — The Pompano — The Broom Brigade-
Historical Painting — Southern Speech — Lagniappe . . . .328

CHAPTER XLV.

" Waw" Talk — Cock Fighting — Too Much to Bear — Fine Writing

— Mule Racing „ 336

CHAPTER XLVI.

i Gras — The Mystic Crew — Rex and Relics — Sir Walter Scott

— A World Set BacK — Titles and Decorations — A Change . . 345

CHAPTER XLVII.

Uncle Remus — The Children Disappointed — We Read Aloud — Mr.
Cable and Jean-ah Poquelin — The Gilded Age — An Impossible
Combination — The Owner Materializes and Protests .... 350

CHAPTER XLVIII.

Tight Curls and Springy Steps — Steam-plows — " No. I " Sugar —
A Frankenstein Laugh — Spiritual Postage — A Place without
Butchers or Plumbers — Idiotic Spasms 353

CHAPTER XLIX.

Pilot-Farmers — Working on Shares — Consequences — Men who
Stick to their Posts — He Saw what he would Do — A Day after
the Fair 361

CHAPTER L.

A Patriarch — Leaves from a Diary — A Tongue-stopper — The

Ancient Mariner— Pilloried in Print — Petrified Truth , . . .367

Contents xiii

CHAPTER LI.

A Fresh "Cub" at the Wheel — A Valley Storm — Some Remarks
on Construction — Sock and Buskin — The Man who Never
Played Hamlet — I got Thirsty — Sunday Statistics 373

CHAPTER LII.

I Collar an Idea — A Penitent Thief— His Story in the Pulpit — A
Literary Artist— A Model Epistle — Pumps again Working —
The "Nub" of the Note 381

CHAPTER LIII.

A Masterly Retreat — A Town at Rest — Boyhood's Pranks — Friends
of my Youth — The Refuge for Imbeciles — I am Presented with
my Measure 392

CHAPTER LIV.

A Special Judgment — Celestial Interest — A Night of Agony —
Another Bad Attack — I Become Convalescent — I Address a
Sunday-school — A Model Boy 398

CHAPTER LV.

A Secqnd_Generation_— A Hundred Thousand Tons of Saddles — A
Large Family — A Golden-haired Darling — The Mysterious Cross
— My Idol is Broken — An Interesting Cave 407

CHAPTER LVI.

Perverted History — A Guilty Conscience — A Supposititious Case — A

Habit to be Cultivated— I Drop my Burden — Difference in Time 414

CHAPTER LVII.

A Model Town — A Town that comes up to Blow in the Summer —
The Scare-CiOW Dean — Spouting Smoke and Flame — An At
mosphere that Tastes Good — The Sunset Land 421

CHAPTER LVIII.

An Independent Race — Twenty-four-hour Towns — Enchanting Scen
ery — The Home of the Plow — Black Hawk — Fluctuating
Securities — A Contrast — Electric Lights 428

xiv Contents

CHAPTER LIX.

Indian Traditions and Rattlesnakes — A Three-ton Word — Chimney
Rock — The Panorama Man — A Good Jump — The Undying
Head — Peboan and Seegwun 435

CHAPTER LX.

The Head of Navigation — From Roses to Snow — Climatic Vaccina
tion — Jug of Empire — Siamese Twins — The Sugar-bush — He
Wins His Bride — Home Again 443

APPENDIX.

A 453

B 402

C 466

D .,.«,.•*.. 470

LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI

CHAPTER L i

THE RIVER AND ITS HISTORY

"HTHE Mississippi is well worth reading about. It is
I not a commonplace river, but on the contrary is
in all ways remarkable. Considering the Missouri its
main branch, it is the longest river in the world — four
thousand three hundred miles. It seems safe to say
that it is also the crookedest river in the world, since
in one part of its journey it uses up one thousand three
hundred miles to cover the same ground that the crow
would fly over in six hundred and seventy-five. It dis
charges three times as much water as the St. Lawrence,
twenty-five times as much as the Rhine, and three hun
dred and thirty-eight times as much as the Thames.
No other river has so vast a drainage-basin ; it draws
its water supply from twenty-eight States and Terri
tories; from Delaware, on the Atlantic seaboard, and
from all the country between that and Idaho on the
Pacific slope — a spread of forty-five degrees of longi
tude. The Mississippi receives and carries to the Gulf
water from fifty-four subordinate rivers that are naviga
ble by steamboats, and from some hundreds that are
navigable by flats and keels. The area of its drainage-
basin is as great as the combined areas of England,
Wales, Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal,
Germany, Austria, Italy, and Turkey; and almost all
this wide region is fertile ; the Mississippi valley, proper,
is exceptionally so.

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16 Life on the Mississippi

It is a remarkable river in this: that instead of
widening toward its mouth, it grows narrower ; grows
narrower and deeper. From the junction of the Ohio
to \a point half-way down to the sea, the width averages
a mile in nigh1 -water; thence to the sea the width
steadily dimhiisrAes,';until, at the "Passes," above the
rnbuth, it is b u tf little over half a mile. At the junction
of the Ohio the Mississippi's depth is eighty-seven feet;
the depth increases gradually, reaching one hundred
and twenty-nine just above the mouth.

The difference in rise and fall is also remarkable —
not in the upper, but in the lower river. The rise is
tolerably uniform down to Natchez (three hundred and
sixty miles above the mouth) — about fifty feet. But
at Bayou La Fourche the river rises only twenty-four
feet; at New Orleans only fifteen, and just above the
mouth only two and one-half.

An article in the New Orleans Times-Democrat, based
upon reports of able engineers, states that the river
annually empties four hundred and six million tons of
mud into the Gulf of Mexico — which brings to mind
Captain Marryat's rude name for the Mississippi — " the
Great Sewer." This mud, solidified, would make a mass
a mile square and two hundred and forty-one feet high.

The mud deposit gradually extends the land — but
only gradually ; it has extended it not quite a third of
a mile in the two hundred years which have elapsed
since the river took its place in history.

The belief of the scientific people is that the mouth
used to be at Baton Rouge, where the hills cease, and
that the two hundred miles of land between there and
the Gulf was built by the river. This gives us the age
of that piece of country, without any trouble at all —
one hundred and twenty thousand years. Yet it is
much the youthfulest batch of country that lies around
there anywhere.

Life on the Mississippi 17

The Mississippi is remarkable in still another way —
its disposition to make prodigious jumps by cutting
through narrow necks of land, and thus straightening
and shortening itself. More than once it has shortened
itself thirty miles at a single jump ! These cut-offs
have had curious effects : they have thrown several river
towns out into the rural districts, and built up sand-bars
and forests in front of them. The town of Delta used
to be three miles below Vicksburg ; a recent cut-off has
radically changed the position, and Delta is now two
miles above Vicksburg.

Both of these river towns have been retired to the
country by that cut-off. A cut-off plays havoc with
boundary lines and jurisdictions: for instance, a man is
living in the State of Mississippi to-day, a cut-off occurs
to-night, and to-morrow the man finds himself and his
land over on the other side of the river, within the
boundaries and subject to the laws of the State of
Louisiana ! Such a thing, happening in the upper
river in the old times, could have transferred a slave
from Missouri to Illinois and made a free man of him.

The Mississippi does not alter its locality by cut-offs
alone: it is always changing its habitat bodily — is
always moving bodily sidewise. At Hard Times, La.,
the river is two miles west of the region it used to oc
cupy. As a result, the original site of that settlement
is not now in Louisiana at all, but on the other side of
the river, in the State of Mississippi. Nearly the whole
of that one thottsand three hundred miles of old Missis
sippi River which La Salle floated down in his canoes,
two hundred years ago, is good solid dry ground now.
The river lies to the right of it, in places, and to the
left of it in other places.

Although the Mississippi's mud builds land but
slowly, down at the mouth, where the Gulf's billows
interfere with its work, it builds fast enough in better
2

18 Life on the Mississippi

protected regions higher up : for instance, Prophet's
Island contained one thousand five hundred acres of
land thirty years ago ; since then the river has added
seven hundred acres to it.

But enough of these examples of the mighty stream's
eccentricities for the present — I will give a few more
of them further along in the book.

Let us drop the Mississippi's physical history, and
say a word about its historical history — so to speak.
We can glance briefly at its slumbrous first epoch in a
couple of short chapters ; at its second and wider-awake
epoch in a couple more; at its flushest and widest-
awake epoch in a good many succeeding chapters ; and
then talk about its comparatively tranquil present epoch
in what shall be left of the book.

The world and the books are so accustomed to use,
and over-use, the word " new " in connection with our
country, that we early get and permanently retain the
impression that there is nothing old about it. We do
of course know that there are several comparatively old
dates in American history, but the mere figures convey
to our minds no just idea, no distinct realization, of the
stretch of time which they represent. To say that De
Soto, the first white man who ever saw the Mississippi
River, saw it in 1542, is a remark which states a fact
without interpreting it : it is something like giving the
dimensions of a sunset by astronomical measurements,
and cataloguing the colors by their scientific names —
as a result, you get the bald fact of the sunset, but you
don't see the sunset. It would have been better to
paint a picture of it.

The date 1542, standing by itself, means little or
nothing to us ; but when one groups a few neighboring
historical dates and facts around it, he adds perspective
and color, and then realizes that this is one of the
American dates which is quite respectable for age.

Life on the Mississippi 19

For instance, when the Mississippi was first seen by
a white man, less than a quarter of a century had
elapsed since Francis I.'s defeat at Pavia; the death
of Raphael; the death of Bayard, sans peur et sans
reproche ; the driving out of the Knights-Hospitallers
from Rhodes by the Turks; and the placarding of the
Ninety-five Propositions — the act which began the
Reformation. When De Soto took his glimpse of the
river, Ignatius Loyola was an obscure name ; the order
of the Jesuits was not yet a year old ; Michael Angelo's
paint was not yet dry on the " Last Judgment " in the
Sistine Chapel; Mary Queen of Scots was not yet
born, but would be before the year closed. Catherine
de Medici was a child ; Elizabeth of England was not
yet in her teens; Calvin, Benvenuto Cellini, and the
Emperor Charles V. were at the top of their fame, and
each was manufacturing history after his own peculiar
fashion ; Margaret of Navarre was writing the * * Hep-
tameron " and some religious books — the first survives,
the others are forgotten, wit and indelicacy being some
times better literature-preservers than holiness; lax
court morals and the absurd chivalry business were in
full feather, and the joust and the tournament were the
frequent pastime of titled fine gentlemen who could
fight better than they could spell, while religion was
the passion of their ladies, and the classifying their off
spring into children of full rank and children by brevet
their pastime. In fact, all around, religion was in a
peculiarly blooming condition: the Council of Trent
was being called ; the Spanish Inquisition was roasting,
and racking, and burning, with a free hand ; elsewhere
on the Continent the nations were being persuaded to
holy living by the sword and fire; in England, Henry
VIII. had suppressed the monasteries, burned Fisher
and another bishop or two, and was getting his English
Reformation and his harem effectively started. When

20 Life on the Mississippi

De Soto stood on the banks of the Mississippi, it was
still two years before Luther's death; eleven years
before the burning of Servetus; thirty years before
the St. Bartholomew slaughter ; Rabelais had not yet
published; "Don Quixote" was not yet written;
Shakespeare was not yet born ; a hundred long years
must still elapse before Englishmen would hear the
name of Oliver Cromwell.

Unquestionably the discovery of the Mississippi is a
datable fact which considerably mellows and modifies
the shiny newness of our country, and gives her a most
respectable outside aspect of rustiness and antiquity.

De Soto merely glimpsed the river, then died and
was buried in it by his priests and soldiers. One would
expect the priests and the soldiers to multiply the
river's dimensions by ten — the Spanish custom of the
day — and thus move other adventurers to go at once
and explore it. On the contrary, their narratives,
when they reached home, did not excite that amount
of curiosity. The Mississippi was left unvisited by
whites during a term of years which seems incredible in
our energetic days. One may " sense " the interval to
his mind, after a fashion, by dividing it up in this way:
after De Soto glimpsed the river, a fraction short of a
quarter of a century elapsed, and then Shakespeare was
born ; lived a trifle more than half a century, then died ;
and when he had been in his grave considerably more
than half a century, the second white man saw the
Mississippi. In our day we don't allow a hundred and
thirty years to elapse between glimpses of a marvel. If
somebody should discover a creek in the county next to
the one that the North Pole is in, Europe and America
would start fifteen costly expeditions thither; one to
explore the creek, and the other fourteen to hunt for
each other.

For more than a hundred and fifty years there had

Life on the Mississippi 21

been white settlements on our Atlantic coasts. These
people were in intimate communication with the Indi
ans : in the south the Spaniards were robbing, slaugh
tering, enslaving, and converting them; higher up, the
English were trading beads and blankets to them for a
consideration, and throwing in civilization and whisky,
"for lagniappe";* and in Canada the French were
schooling them in a rudimentary way, missionarying
among them, and drawing whole populations of them
at a time to Quebec, and later to Montreal, to buy furs
of them. Necessarily, then, these various clusters of
whites must have heard of the great river of the Far
West; and indeed, they did hear of it vaguely — so
vaguely and indefinitely that its course, proportions,
and locality were hardly even guessable. The mere
mysteriousness of the matter ought to have fired
curiosity and compelled exploration ; but this did not
occur. Apparently nobody happened to want such a
river, nobody needed it, nobody was curious about it;
so, for a century and a half the Mississippi remained
out of the market and undisturbed. When De Soto
found it, he was not hunting for a river, and had no
present occasion for one; consequently, he did not
value it or even take any particular notice of it.

But at last, La Salle, the Frenchman, conceived the
idea of seeking out that river and exploring it. It
always happens that when a man seizes upon a
neglected and important idea, people inflamed with
the same notion crop up all around. It happened so
in this instance.

Naturally the question suggests itself, Why did these
people want the river now when nobody had wanted it
in the five preceding generations? Apparently it was
because at this late day they thought they had dis-

* See p. 334.

22 Life on the Mississippi

covered a way to make it useful ; for it had come to be
believed that the Mississippi emptied into the Gulf of
California, and therefore afforded a short cut from
Canada to China. Previously the supposition had been
that it emptied into the Atlantic, or Sea of Virginia.

CHAPTER II.

THE RIVER AND ITS EXPLORERS

LA SALLE himself sued for certain high privileges,
and they were graciously accorded him by Louis
XIV. of inflated memory. Chief among them was the
privilege to explore, far and wide, and build forts, and
stake out continents, and hand the same over to the
king, and pay the expenses himself ; receiving, in re
turn, some little advantages of one sort or anothei ;
among them the monopoly of buffalo hides. He spent
several years, and about all of his money, in making
perilous and painful trips between Montreal and a fort
which he had built on the Illinois, before he at last suc
ceeded in getting his expedition in such a shape that he
could strike for the Mississippi.

And meantime other parties had had better fortune.
In 1673, Joliet the merchant, and Marquette the priest,
crossed the country and reached the banks of the
Mississippi. They went byway of the Great Lakes;
and from Green Bay, in canoes, by the way of Fox
River and the Wisconsin. Marquette had solemnly
contracted, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception,
that if the Virgin would permit him to discover the
great river, he would name it Conception, in her honor.
He kept his word. In that day, all explorers traveled
with an outfit of priests. De Soto had twenty-four
with him. La Salle had several, also. The expeditions
were often out of meat, and scant of clothes, but they

(23)

24 Life on the Mississippi

always had the furniture and other requisites for the
mass; they were always prepared, as one of the quaint
chronicles of the time phrased it, to ' ' explain hell to
the salvages."

On the i /th of June, 1673, the canoes of Joliet and
Marquette and their five subordinates reached the junc
tion of the Wisconsin with the Mississippi. Mr. Park-
man says: " Before them a wide and rapid current
coursed athwart their way, by the foot of lofty heights
wrapped thick in forests." He continues: " Turning
southward, they paddled down the stream, through a
solitude unrelieved by the faintest trace of man."

A big cat-fish collided with Marquette's canoe, and
startled him; and reasonably enough, for he had been
warned by the Indians that he was on a foolhardy jour
ney, and even a fatal one, for the river contained a
demon " whose roar could be heard at a great distance,
and who would engulf them in the abyss where he
dwelt." I have seen a Mississippi cat-fish that was
more than six feet long, and weighed two hundred and
fifty pounds; and if Marquette's fish was the fellow to
that one, he had a fair right to think the river's roaring
demon was come.

At length the buffalo began to appear, grazing in herds on the great
prairies which then bordered the river; and Marquette describes the fierce
and stupid look of the old bulls as they stared at the intruders through the
tangled mane which nearly blinded them.

The voyagers moved cautiously :

Landed at night and made a fire to cook their evening meal; then ex
tinguished it, embarked again, paddled some way farther, and anchored in
the stream, keeping a man on the watch till morning.

They did this day after day and night after night ; and
at the end of two weeks they had not seen a human
being. The river was an awful solitude, then. And
it is now, over most of its stretch.

Life on the Mississippi 25

But at the close of the fortnight they one day came
upon the footprints of men in the mud of the western
bank — a Robinson Crusoe experience which carries an
electric shiver with it yet, when one stumbles on it in
print. They had been warned that the river Indians
were as ferocious and pitiless as the river demon, and
destroyed all comers without waiting for provocation ;
but no matter, Joliet and Marquette struck into the
country to hunt up the proprietors of the tracks. They
found them by and by, and were hospitably received . .
and well treated — if to be received by an Indian chief £* \ *
who has taken off his last rag in order to appear at his
level best is to be received hospitably ; and if to be **? ^\
treated abundantly to fish, porridge, and other game,
including dog, and have these things forked into one's
mouth by the ungloved fingers of Indians, is to be well
treated. In the morning the chief and six hundred of
his tribesmen escorted the Frenchmen to the river and
bade them a friendly farewell.

On the rocks above the present city of Alton they
found some rude and fantastic Indian paintings, which
they describe. A short distance below " a torrent of
yellow mud rushed furiously athwart the calm blue
current of the Mississippi, boiling and surging and
sweeping in its course logs, branches, and uprooted
trees." This was the mouth of the Missouri, "that
savage river," which " descending from its mad career
through a vast unknown of barbarism, poured its turbid
floods into the bosom of its gentle sister."

By and by they passed the mouth of the Ohio ; they
passed canebrakes; they fought mosquitoes; they
floated along, day after day, through the deep silence
and loneliness of the river, drowsing in the scant shade
of make-shift awnings, and broiling with the heat; they
encountered and exchanged civilities with another party
of Indians ; and at last they reached the mouth of the

26 Life on the Mississippi

Arkansas (about a month out from their starting-point),
where a tribe of war-whooping savages swarmed out to
meet and murder them ; but they appealed to the Virgin
for help ; so in place of a fight there was a feast, and
plenty of pleasant palaver and fol-de-rol.

They had proved to their satisfaction that the
Mississippi did not empty into the Gulf of California,
or into the Atlantic. They believed it emptied into the
Gulf of Mexico. They turned back now, and carried
their great news to Canada.

But belief is not proof. It was reserved for La Salle
to furnish the proof. He was provokingly delayed by
one misfortune after another, but at last got his ex
pedition under way at the end of the year 1681. In
the dead of winter he and Henri de Tonty, son of
Lorenzo Tonty, who invented the tontine, his lieuten
ant, started down the Illinois, with a following of
eighteen Indians brought from New England, and
twenty-three Frenchmen. They moved in procession
down the surface of the frozen river, on foot, and drag
ging their canoes after them on sledges.

At Peoria Lake they struck open water, and paddled
thence to the Mississippi and turned their prows south
ward. They plowed through the fields of floating ice,
past the mouth of the Missouri ; past the mouth of
the Ohio, by and by; " and, gliding by the wastes of
bordering swamp, landed on the 24th of February near
the Third Chickasaw Bluffs," where they halted and
built Fort Prudhomme.

"Again," says Mr. Parkman, *' they embarked; and
with every stage of their adventurous progress, the
mystery of this vast new world was more and more
unveiled. More and more they entered the realms of
spring. The hazy sunlight, the warm and drowsy air,
the tender foliage, the opening flowers, betokened the
reviving life of nature,"

Life on the Mississippi 27

Day by day they floated down the great bends, in
the shadow of the dense forests, and in time arrived at
the mouth of the Arkansas. First they were greeted
by the natives of this locality as Marquette had before
been greeted by them — with the booming of the war-
drum and a flourish of arms. The Virgin composed
the difficulty in Marquette's case; the pipe of peace
did the same office for La Salle. The white man and
the red man struck hands and entertained each other
during three days. Then, to the admiration of the
savages, La Salle set up a cross with the arms of France
on it, and took possession of the whole country for the
king, — the cool fashion of the time, — while the priest
piously consecrated the robbery with a hymn. The
priest explained the mysteries of the faith " by signs,"
for the saving of the savages ; thus compensating them
with possible possessions in heaven for the certain ones
on earth which they had just been robbed of. And
also, by signs, La Salle drew from these simple children
of the forest acknowledgments of fealty to Louis the
Putrid, over the water. Nobody smiled at these
colossal ironies.

These performances took place on the site of the
future town of Napoleon, Ark., and there the first con
fiscation cross was raised on the banks of the great
river. Marquette's and Joliet's voyage of discovery
ended at the same spot — the site of the future town of
Napoleon. When De Soto took his fleeting glimpse of
the river, away back in the dim early days, he took it
from that same spot — the site of the future town of
Napoleon, Ark. Therefore, three out of the four mem
orable events connected with the discovery and explora
tion of the mighty river occurred, by accident, in one and
the same place. It is a most curious distinction, when
one comes to look at it and think about it. France stole
that vast country on that spot, the future Napoleon ;

28 Life on the Mississippi

and by and by Napoleon himself was to give the country
back again — make restitution, not to the owners, but
to their white American heirs.

The voyagers journeyed on, touching here and there ;
" passed the sites, since become historic, of Vicksburg
and Grand Gulf; " and visited an imposing Indian
monarch in the Teche country, whose capital city was
a substantial one of sun-baked bricks mixed with straw

— better houses than many that exist there now. The
chief's house contained an audience-room forty feet
square; and there he received Tonty in state, sur
rounded by sixty old men clothed in white cloaks.
There was a temple in the town, with a mud wall about
it ornamented with skulls of enemies sacrificed to the sun.

The voyagers visited the Natchez Indians, near the
site of the present city of that name, where they found
a " religious and political depotism, a privileged class
descended from the sun, a temple, and a sacred fire."
It must have been like getting home again; it was
home again; it was home with an advantage, in fact,
for it lacked Louis XIV.

A few more days swept swiftly by, and La Salle stood
in the shadow of his confiscating cross, at a meeting of
the waters from Delaware, and from Itasca, and from
the mountain ranges close upon the Pacific, with the
waters of the Gulf of Mexico, his task finished, his
prodigy achieved. Mr. Parkman, in closing his fas
cinating narrative, thus sums up :

On that day the realm of France received on parchment a stupendous
accession. The fertile . plains of Texas; the vast basin of the Mississippi,
from its frozen northern springs to the sultry borders of the Gulf; from the
woody ridges of the Alleghanies to the bare peaks of the Rocky Mountains

— a region of savannas and iorests, sun-cracked deserts and grassy prairies,
watered by a thousand rivers, ranged by a thousand warlike tribes, passed
beneath the scepter of the Sultan of Versailles; and all by virtue of a feeble
human voice, inaudible a half a mile.

CHAPTER III.

FRESCOS FROM THE PAST

7TPPARENTLY the river was ready for business,
/~\ now. But no ; the distribution of a population
along its banks was as calm and deliberate and time-
devouring a process as the discovery and exploration
had been.

Seventy years elapsed after the exploration before
the river's borders had a white population worth
considering; and nearly fifty more before the river had
a commerce. Between La Salle's opening of the river
and the time when it may be said to have become the
vehicle of anything like a regular and active commerce,
seven sovereigns had occupied the throne of England,
America had become an independent nation, Louis
XIV. and Louis XV. had rotted and died, the French
monarchy had gone down in the red tempest of the
Revolution, and Napoleon was a name that was begin
ning to be talked about. Truly, there were snails in
those days.

The river's earliest commerce was in great barges —
keel-boats, broadhorns. They floated and sailed from
the upper rivers to New Orleans, changed cargoes there,
and were tediously warped and poled back by hand.
A voyage down and back sometimes occupied nine
months. In time this commerce increased until it
gave employment to hordes of rough and hardy men ;
rude, uneducated, brave, suffering terrific hardships

3 (29)

30 Life on the Mississippi

with sailor-like stoicism; heavy drinkers, coarse frolick-
ers in moral sties like the Natchez-under-the-hill of that
day, heavy fighters, reckless fellows, every one, ele-
phantinely jolly, foul-witted, profane, prodigal of their
money, bankrupt at the end of the trip, fond of bar
baric finery, prodigious braggarts; yet, in the main,
honest, trustworthy, faithful to promises and duty, and
often picturesquely magnanimous.

By and by the steamboat intruded. Then, for fifteen
or twenty years, these men continued to run their keel-
boats down-stream, and the steamers did all of the up
stream business, the keelboatmen selling their boats in
New Orleans, and returning home as deck passengers
in the steamers.

But after a while the steamboats so increased in num
ber and in speed that they were able to absorb the en
tire commerce ; and then keelboating died a permanent
death. The keelboatman became a deck-hand, or a
mate, or a pilot on the steamer; and when steamer-
berths were not open to him, he took a berth on a Pitts-
burg coal-flat, or on a pine raft constructed in the
forests up toward the sources of the Mississippi.

In the heyday of the steamboating prosperity, the
river from end to end was flaked with coal-fleets and
timber-rafts, all managed by hand, and employing hosts
of the rough characters whom I have been trying to
describe. I remember the annual processions of mighty
rafts that used to glide by Hannibal when I was a boy,
— an acre or so of white, sweet-smelling boards in each
raft, a crew of two dozen men or more, three or four
wigwams scattered about the raft's vast level space for
storm-quarters, — and I remember the rude ways and
the tremendous talk of their big crews, the ex-keelboat-
men and their admiringly patterning successors ; for we
used to swim out a quarter or a third of a mile and get
on these rafts and have a ride.

Life on the Mississippi 31

By way of illustrating keelboat talk and manners, and
that now departed and hardly-remembered raft-life, I
will throw in, in this place, a chapter from a book
which I have been working at, by fits and starts, dur
ing the past five or six years, and may possibly finish
in the course of five or six more. The book is a story
which details some passages in the life of an ignorant
village boy, Huck Finn, son of the town drunkard of
my time out West, there. He has run away from his
persecuting father, and from a persecuting good widow
who wishes to make a nice, truth-telling, respectable
boy of him; and with him a slave of the widow's has
also escaped. They have found a fragment of a lumber
raft (it is high water and dead summer time), and are
floating down the river by night, and hiding in the
willows by day — bound for Cairo, whence the negro
will seek freedom in the heart of the free States. But,
in a fog, they pass Cairo without knowing it. By and
by they begin to suspect the truth, and Huck Finn
is persuaded to end the dismal suspense by swimming
down to a huge raft which they have seen in the dis
tance ahead of them, creeping aboard under cover of
the darkness, and gathering the needed information by
eavesdropping :

But you know a young person can't wait very well when he is impatient
to find a thing out. We talked it over, and by and by Jim said it was such
a black night, now, that it would n't be no risk to swim down to the big raft
and crawl aboard and listen — they would talk about Cairo, because they
would be calculating to go ashore there for a spree, maybe ; or anyway
they would send boats ashore to buy whisky or fresh meat or something.
Jim had a wonderful level head, for a nigger: he could most always start a
good plan when you wanted one.

I stood up and shook my rags off and jumped into the river, and struck
out for the raft's light. By and by, when I got down nearly to her, I eased
up and went slow and cautious. But everything was all right — nobody at
the sweeps. So I swum down along the raft till I was most abreast the
camp fire in the middle, then I crawled aboard and inched along and got

32 Life on the Mississippi

in among some bundles of shingles on the weather side of the fire. There
was thirteen men there — they was the watch on deck of course. And a
mighty rough-looking lot, too. They had a jug, and tin cups, and they kept
the jug moving. One man was singing — roaring, you may say; and it
wasn't a nice song — for a parlor, anyway. He roared through his nose,
and strung out the last word of every line very long. When he was done
they all fetched a kind of Injun war-whoop, and then another was sung. It
begun :

" There was a woman in our towdn,

In our towdn did dwed'l [dwell],
She loved her husband dear-i-lee,
But another man twyste as wed'l.

" Singing too, riloo, riloo, riloo,

Ri-too, riloo, rilay - - - e,
She loved her husband dear-i-lee,
But another man twyste as wed'l.'

And so on — fourteen verses. It was kind of poor, and when he was go
ing to start on the next verse one of them said it was the tune the old cow
died on; and another one said: '• Oh, give us a rest ! " And another one
told him to take a walk. They made fun of him till he got mad and jumped
up and begun to cuss the crowd, and said he could lam any thief in the lot.

They was all about to make a break for him, but the biggest man there
jumped up and says :

" Set whar you are, gentlemen. Leave him to me; he's my meat."

Then he jumped up in the air three times, and cracked his heels together
every time. He flung off a buckskin coat that was all hung with fringes,
and says, "You lay thar tell the chawin-up's done; " and flung his hat
down, which was all over ribbons, and says, " You lay thar tell his sufferin's
is over."

Then he jumped up in the air and cracked his heels together again, and
shouted out :

" Whoo-oop ! I'm the old original iron-jawed, brass-mounted, copper-
bellied corpse-maker from the wilds of Arkansaw ! Look at me ! I'm the
man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation ! Sired by a hurricane,
dam'd by an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly related to the
small-pox on the mother's side ! Look at me ! I take nineteen alligators
and a bar'l of whiskey for breakfast when I'm in robust health, and a bushel
of rattlesnakes and a dead body when I'm ailing. I split the everlasting
rocks with my glance, and I squench the thunder when I speak ! Whoo-

Life on the Mississippi 33

oop ! Stand back and give me room according to my strength ! Blood's
my natural drink, and the wails of the dying is music to my ear ! Cast your
eye on me, gentlemen I and lay low and noid your breath, for I'm 'bout to
turn myself loose ! "

All the time he was getting this oft, he was shaking his head and look
ing fierce, and kind of swelling around in a little circle, tucking up his wrist
bands, and now and then straightening up and beating his breast with his
fist, saying, " Look at me, gentlemen ! " When he got through, he jumped
up and cracked his heels together three times, and let off a roaring
" Whoo-oop ! I'm the bloodiest son of a wildcat that lives ! "

Then the man that had started the row tilted his old slouch hat down
over his right eye; then he bent stooping forward, with his back sagged
and his south end sticking out far, and his fists a-shoving out and drawing
in in front of him, and so went around in a little circle about three times,
swelling himself up and breathing hard. Then he straightened, and
jumped up and cracked his heels together three times before he lit again
(that made them cheer), and he began to shout like this:

" Whoo-oop ! bow your neck and spread, for the kingdom of sorrow's
a-coming ! Hold me down to the earth, for I feel my powers a- working !
whoo-oop ! I'm a child of sin, don't let me get a start ! Smoked glass,
here, for all ! Don't attempt to look at me with the naked eye, gentlemen !
When I'm playful I use the meridians of longitude and parallels of latitude
for a seine, and drag the Atlantic Ocean for whales ! I scratch my head
with the lightning and purr myself to sleep with the thunder ! When I'm
cold, I bile the Gulf of Mexico and bathe in it; when I'm hot I fan myself
with an equinoctial storm; when I'm thirsty I reach up and suck a cloud
dry like a sponge; when I range the earth hungry, famine follows in my
tracks ! Whoo-oop ! Bow your neck and spread ! I put my hand on the
sun's face and make it night in the earth; I bite a piece out of the moon
and hurry the seasons; I shake myself and crumble the mountains ! Con»
template me through leather — don't use the naked eye ! I'm the man with
a petrified heart and biler-iron bowels! The massacre of isolated com
munities is the pastime of my idle moments, the destruction of nationalities
the serious business of my life ! The boundless vastness of the great Amer
ican desert is my enclosed property, and I bury my dead on my own prem-
ises! " He jumped up and cracked his heels together three times before
he lit (they cheered him again), and as he come down he shouted out:
" Whoo-oop ! bow your neck and spread, for the Pet Child of Calamity's
a-coming! "
3

34 Life on the Mississippi

Then the other one went to swelling around and blowing again — the
first one — the one they called Bob; next, the Child of Calamity chipped in
again, bigger than ever; then they both got at it at the same time, swelling
round and round each other and punching their fists most into each other's
faces, and whooping and jawing like Injuns; then Bob called the Child
names, and the Child called him names back again; next, Bob called him
a heap rougher names, and the Child come back at him with the very worst
kind of language; next, Bob knocked the Child's hat off, and the Child
picked it up and kicked Bob's ribbony hat about six foot; Bob went and
got it and said never mind, this warn't going to be the last of this thing,
because he was a man that never forgot and never forgive, and so the Child
better look out, for there was a time a-coming, just as sure as he was a
living man, that he would have to answer to him with the best blood in his
body. The Child said no man was willinger than he for that time to come,
and he would give Bob fair warning, now, never to cross his path again, for
he could never rest till he had waded in his blood, for such was his nature,
though he was sparing him now on account of his family, if he had one.

Both of them was edging away in different directions, growling and
skaking their heads and going on about what they was going to do; but a
little black- whiskered chap skipped up and says :

" Come back here, you couple of chicken-livered cowards, and I'll
thrash the two of ye ! "

And he done it, too. He snatched them, he jerked them this way and
that, he booted them around, he knocked them sprawling faster than they
could get up. Why, it warn't two minutes till they begged like dogs —
and how the other lot did yell and laugh and clap their hands all the way
through, and shout, " Sail in, Corpse-Maker ! " " Hi ! at him again, Child
of Calamity! " "Bully for you, little Davy!" Well, it was a perfect
pow-wow for a while. Bob and the Child had red noses and black eyes
when they got through. Little Davy made them own up that they was
sneaks and cowards and not fit to eat with a dog or drink with a nigger;
then Bob and the Child shook hands with each other, very solemn, and said
they had always respected each other and was willing to let bygones be by
gones. So then they washed their faces in the river; and just then there
was a loud order to stand by for a crossing, and some of them went forward
to man the sweeps there, and the rest went aft to handle the after sweeps.

I lay still and waited for fifteen minutes, and had a smoke out of a pipe
that one of them left in reach; then the crossing was finished, and they
stumped back and had a drink around and went to talking and singing

Life on the Mississippi 35

again. Next they got out an old fiddle, and one played, and another patted
juba, and the rest turned themselves loose on a regular old-fashioned keel*
boat breakdown. They couldn't keep that up very long without getting
winded, so by and by they settled around the jug again.

They sung " Jolly, Jolly Raftsman's the Life for Me," with a rousing
chorus, and then they got to talking about differences betwixt hogs, and
their different kind of habits; and next about women and their different
ways; and next about the best ways to put out houses that was afire; and
next about what ought to be done with the Injuns; and next about what a
king had to do, and how much he got; and next about how to make cats
fight; and next about what to do when a man has fits; and next about dif
ferences betwixt clear-water rivers and muddy-water ones. The man they
called Ed said the muddy Mississippi water was wholesomer to drink than
the clear water of the Ohio; he said if you let a pint of this yaller Missis
sippi water settle, you would have about a half to three-quarters of an inch
of mud in the bottom, according to the stage of the river, and then it warn't
no better than Ohio water — what you wanted to do was to keep it stirred
up — and when the river was low, keep mud on hand to put in and thicken
the water up the way it ought to be.

The Child of Calamity said that was so; he said there was nutritiousness
in the mud, and a man that drunk Mississippi water could grow corn in his
stomach if he wanted to. He says:

"You look at the graveyards; that tells the tale. Trees won't grow
worth shucks in a Cincinnati graveyard, but in a Sent Louis graveyard they
grow upwards of eight hundred foot high. It's all on account of the water
the people drunk before they laid up. A Cincinnati corpse don't richen a
soil any."

And they talked about how Ohio water didn't like to mix with Missis
sippi water. Ed said if you take the Mississippi on a rise when the Ohio is
low, you'll find a wide band of clear water all the way down the east side of
the Mississippi for a hundred mile or more, and the minute you get out a
quarter of a mile from shore and pass the line, it is all thick and yaller the
rest of the way across. Then they talked about how to keep tobacco from
getting mouldy, and from that they went into ghosts and told about a lot
that other folks had seen; but Ed says:

" Why don't you tell something that you've seen yourselves ? Now let

me have a say. Five years ago I was on a raft as big as this, and right

along here it was a bright moonshiny night, and I was on watch and

boss of the stabboard oar forrard, and one of my pards was a man named

36 Life on the Mississippi

Dick Allbright, and he come along to where I was sitting, forrard — gaping
and stretching, he was — and stooped down on the edge of the raft and
washed his face in the river, and come and set down by me and got out his
pipe, and had just got it filled, when he looks up and says:

" ' Why looky-here,' he says, * ain't that Buck Miller's place, over
yander in the bend?'

" ' Yes,' says I, ' it is — why? ' He laid his pipe down and leant his
head on his hand, and says :

'"I thought we'd be furder down.' I says:

'"I thought it, too, when I went off watch' — we was standing six
hours on and six off — * but the boys told me,' I says, * that the raft didn't
seem to hardly move, for the last hour,' says I, * though she's a-slipping
along all right now,' says I. He give a kind of a groan, and says:

" ' I've seed a raft act so before, along here,' he says, * 'pears to me the
current has most quit above the head of this bend durin' the last two years,1
he says.

" Well, he raised up two or three times, and looked away off and
around on the water. That started me at it, too. A body is always doing
what he sees somebody else doing, though there mayn't be no sense in it.
Pretty soon I see a black something floating on the water away off to stab*
board and quartering behind us. I see he was looking at it, too. I says:

" ' What's that ? ' He says, sort of pettish :

" 'Tain't nothing but an old empty bar'l.'

" 'An empty bar'l! ' says I, 'why,' says I, ' a spy-glass is a fool to
your eyes. How can you tell it's an empty bar'l?' He says:

" ' I don't know; I reckon it ain't a bar'l, but I thought it might be,'
says he.

" 'Yes,' I says, 'so it might be, and it might be anything else, too; a
body can't tell nothing about it, such a distance as that,' I says.

" We hadn't nothing else to do, so we kept on watching it. By and
by I says:

" ' Why looky-here, Dick Allbright, that thing's a-gaining on us, I
believe.'

" He never said nothing. The thing gained and gained, and I judged
it must be a dog that was about tired out. Well, we swung down into the
crossing, and the thing floated across the bright streak of the moonshine,
and, by George, it was a bar'l. Says I :

" « Dick Allbright, what made you think that thing was a bar'l, when it
was half a mile off ? ' says I. Says he:

Life on the Mississippi 37

" ' I don't know.' Says I :

" « You tell me, Dick Allbright.' Says he:

" « Well, I knowed it was a bar'l; I've seen it before; lots has seen h;
they says it's a ha'nted bar'l.'

" I called the rest of the watch, and they come and stood there, and I
told them what Dick said. It floated right along abreast, now, and didn't
gain any more. It was about twenty foot off. Some was for having it
aboard, but the rest didn't want to. Dick Allbright said rafts that had
fooled with it had got bad luck by it. The captain of the watch said he
didn't believe in it. He said he reckoned the bar'l gained on us because it
was in a little better current than what we was. He said it would leave
by and by.

" So then we went to talking about other things, and we had a song,
and then a breakdown; and after that the captain of the watch called for
another song; but it was clouding up now, and the bar'l stuck right thar
in the same place, and the song didn't seem to have much warm-up to it,
somehow, and so they didn't finish it, and there warn't any cheers, but it
sort of dropped flat, and nobody said anything for a minute. Then every
body tried to talk at once, and one chap got off a joke, but it warn't no
use, they didn't laugh, and even the chap that made the joke didn't laugh
at it, which ain't usual. We all just settled down glum, and watched the
bar'l, and was oneasy and oncomfortable. Well, sir, it shut down black
and still, and then the wind began to moan around, and next the lightning
began to play and the thunder to grumble. And pretty soon there was a
regular storm, and in the middle of it a man that was running aft stumbled
and fell and sprained his ankle so that he had to lay up. This made the
boys shake their heads. And every time the lightning come, there was that
bar'l with the blue lights winking around it. We was always on the look
out for it. But by and by, toward dawn, she was gone. When the day
come we couldn't see her anywhere, and we warn't sorry, either.

" But next night about half-past nine, when there was songs and high
jinks going on, here she comes again, and took her old roost on the stab-
board side. There warn't no more high jinks. Everybody got solemn;
nobody talked; you couldn't get anybody to do anything but set around
moody and look at the bar'l. It begun to cloud up again. When the
watch changed, the off watch stayed up, 'stead of turning in. The storm
ripped and roared around all night, and in the middle of it another man
tripped and sprained his ankle, and had to knock off. The bar'l left toward
day, and nobody see it go.

)8 Life on the Mississippi

" Everybody was sober and down in the mouth all day. I don't mean
the kind of sober that comes of leaving liquor alone — not that. They was
quiet, but they all drunk more than usual — not together, but each man
sidled off and took it private, by himself.

" After dark the off watch didn't turn in; nobody sung, nobody talked;
the boys didn't scatter around, neither; they sort of huddled together, for-
rard; and for two hours they set there, perfectly still, looking steady in the
one direction, and heaving a sigh once in a while. And then, here comes
the bar'l again. She took up her old place. She stayed there all night;
nobody turned in. The storm come on again, after midnight. It got awful
dark; the rain poured down; hail, too; the thunder boomed and roared
and bellowed; the wind blowed a hurricane; and the lightning spread over
everything in big sheets of glare, and showed the whole raft as plain as day;
and the river lashed up white as milk as far as you could see for miles, and
there was that bar'l jiggering along, same as ever. The captain ordered
the watch to man the after sweeps for a crossing, and nobody would go —
no more sprained ankles for them, they said. They wouldn't even walk
aft. Well, then, just then the sky split wide open, with a crash, and
the lightning killed two men of the after watch, and crippled two more.
Crippled them how, say you? Why, sprained their ankles !

" The bar'l left in the dark betwixt lightnings, toward dawn. Well, not
a body eat a bite at breakfast that morning. After that the men loafed
around, in twos and threes, and talked low together. But none of them
herded with Dick Allbright. They all give him the cold shake. If he
come around where any of the men was, they split up and sidled away. They
wouldn't man the sweeps with him. The captain had all the skiffs hauled
up on the raft, alongside of his wigwam, and wouldn't let the dead men
be took ashore to be planted; he didn't believe a man that got ashore would
come back; and he was right.

" After night come,you could see pretty plain that there was going to be
trouble if that bar'l come again; there was such a muttering going on. A
good many wanted to kill Dick Allbright, because he'd seen the bar'l on
other trips, and that had an ugly look. Some wanted to put him ashore.
Some said: ' Let's all go ashore in a pile, if the bar'l comes again.'

"This kind of whispers was still going on, the men being bunched
together forrard watching for the bar'l, when lo and behold you ! here she
comes again. Down she comes, slow and steady, and settles into her old
tracks. You could 'a' heard a pin drop. Then up comes the captain, and
says:

Life on the Mississippi 39

" ' Boys, don't be a pack of children and fools; I don't want this bar'I
to be dogging us all the way to Orleans, and you don't: Well, then, how's
the best way to stop it? Burn it up — that's the way. Fro going to fetch
it aboard,' he says. And before anybody could say a word, in he went.

" He swum to it, and as he come pushing it to the raft, the men spread
to one side. But the old man got it aboard and busted in the head, and
there was a baby in it ! Yes, sir; a stark-naked baby. It was Dick All-
bright 's baby; he owned up and said so.

" 'Yes,' he says, a-leaning over it, 'yes, it is my own lamented darling,
my poor lost Charles William Allbright deceased,' says he — for he could
curl his tongue around the bulliest words in the language when he was a
mind to, and lay them before you without a jint started anywheres. Yes, he
said, he used to live up at the head of this bend, and one night he choked
his child, which was crying, not intending to kill it, — which was prob'ly a
lie, — and then he was scared, and buried it in a bar'I, before his wife got
home, and off he went, and struck the northern trail and went to rafting;
and this was the third year that the bar'I had chased him. He said the
bad luck always begun light, and lasted till four men was killed, and then
the bar'I didn't come any more after that. He said if the men would
stand it one more night, — and was a-going on like that, — but the men
had got enough. They started to get out a boat to take him ashore and
lynch him, but he grabbed the little child all of a sudden and jumped over
board with it hugged up to his breast and shedding tears, and we never see
him again in this life, poor old suffering soul, nor Charles William neither."

" Who was shedding tears?" says Bob; "was it Allbright or the
baby?"

" Why, Allbright, of course ; didn't I tell you the baby was dead?
Been dead three years — how could it cry? "

" Well, never mind how it could cry — how could it keep all that time? "
says Davy. " You answer me that."

" I don't know how it done it," says Ed. " It done it, though — that's
all I know about it."

" Say— what did they do with the bar'I? " says the Child of Calamity.

"Why, they hove it overboard, and it sunk like a chunk of lead."

" Edwaid, did the child look like it was choked? " says one.

"Did it have its hair parted ? " says another.

" What was the brand on that bar'I, Eddy ? " says a fellow they called
BUI.

" Have you got the papers for them statistics, Edmund? " says Jimmy.

40 Life on the Mississippi

" Say, Edwin, was you one of the men that was killed by the light
ning? " says Davy.

" Him? Oh, no ! he was both of 'em," says Bob. Then they all haw-
hawed.

" Say, Edward, don't you reckon you'd better take a pill ? You look
bad — don't you feel pale? " says the Child of Calamity.

"Oh, come, now, Eddy," says Jimmy, "show up; you must 'a' kept
part of that bar'l to prove the thing by. Show us the bung-hole — do —
and we'll all believe you."

' ' Say, boys, * ' says BUI, « ' less divide it up. Thar's thirteen of us. I can
swaller a thirteenth of the yarn, if you can worry down the rest."

Ed got up mad and said they could all go to some place which he
ripped out pretty savage, and then walked off aft, cussing to himself, and
they yelling and jeering at him, and roaring and laughing so you could hear
them a mile.

" Boys, we'll split a watermelon on that," says the Child of Calamity;
and he came rummaging around in the dark amongst the shingle bundles
where I was, and put his hand on me. I was warm and soft and naked;
so he says "Ouch!" and jumped back.

" Fetch a lantern or a chunk of fire here, boys — there's a snake here
as big as a cow! "

So they run there with a lantern, and crowded up and looked in on me.

"Come out of that, you beggar! " says one.

" Who are you? " says another.

" What are you after here? Speak up prompt, or overboard you go."

" Snake him out, boys. Snatch him out by the heels."

I began to beg, and crept out amongst them trembling. They looked me
over, wondering, and the Child of Calamity says :

" A cussed thief ! Lend a hand and less heave him overboard ! "

" No," says Big Bob, " less get out the paint-pot and paint him a sky-
blue all over from head to heel, and then heave him over."

"Good! that's it. Go for the paint, Jimmy."

When the paint come, and Bob took the brush and was just going to
begin, the others laughing and rubbing their hands, I begun to cry, and
that sort of worked on Davy, and he says :

" 'Vast there. He's nothing but a cub. I'll paint the man that teches
him!"

So I looked around on them, and some of them grumbled and growled,
and Bob put down the paint, and the others didn't take it up.

Life on the Mississippi 41

"Come here to the fire, and less see what you're up to here," says
Davy. " Now set down there and give an account of yourself. How long
have you been aboard here?"

" Not over a quarter of a minute, sir," says I.

" How did you get dry so quick? "

" I don't know, sir. I'm always that way, mostly."

" Oh, you are, are you? What's your name? "

I warn't going to tell my name. I didn't know what to say, so I just
says:

" Charles William Allbright, sir."

Then they roared — the whole crowd; and I was mighty glad I said that,
because, maybe, laughing would get them in a better humor.

When they got done laughing, Davy says :

" It won't hardly do, Charles William. You couldn't have growed this
much in five year, and you was a baby when you come out of the bar'l, you
know, and dead at that. Come, now, tell a straight story, and nobody '11
hurt you, if you ain't up to anything wrong. What is your name? "
• "Aleck Hopkins, sir. Aleck James Hopkins."

" Well, Aleck, where did you come from, here? "

" From a trading scow. She lays up the bend yonder. I was born on
her. Pap has traded up and down here all his life; and he told me to swim
off here, because when you went by he said he would like to get some of
you to speak to a Mr. Jonas Turner, in Cairo, and tell him "

"Oh, come!"

" Yes, sir, it's as true as the world. Pap he says "

"Oh, your grandmother ! "

They all laughed, and I tried again to talk, but they broke in on me and
stopped me.

" Now, looky-here," says Davy; "you're scared, and so you talk wild.
Honest, now, do you live in a scow, or is it a lie? "

" Yes, sir, in a trading scow. She lays up at the head of the bend.
But I warn't born in her. It's our first trip."

" Now you're talking ! What did you come aboard here for? To steal?"

" No, sir, I didn't. It was only to get a ride on the raft. All boys
does that."

" Well, I know that. But what did you hide for?"

" Sometimes they drive the boys off."

" So they do. They might steal. Looky-here; if we let you off this
time, will you keep out of these kind of scrapes hereafter? "

42 Life on the Mississippi

"'Deed I will, boss. You try me.'*

" All right, then. You ain't but little ways from shore. Overboard
with you, and don't you make a fool of yourself another time this way.
Blast it, boy, some raftsmen would rawhide you till you were black and
blue!"

I didn't wait to kiss good-by, but went overboard and broke for shore.
When Jim come along by and by, the big raft was away out of sight around
the point. I swum out and got aboard, and was mighty glad to see home
again.

The boy did not get the information he was after,
but his adventure has furnished the glimpse of the
departed raftsman and keelboatman which I desire to
offer in this place.

I now come to a phase of the Mississippi River life
of the flush times of steamboating, which seems to me
to warrant full examination — the marvelous science of
piloting, as displayed there. I believe there has been
nothing like it elsewhere in the world.

CHAPTER IV.

THE BOYS' AMBITION

WHEN I was a boy, there was but one permanent
ambition among my comrades in our village* on
the west bank of the Mississippi River. That was, to
be a steamboatman. We had transient ambitions of
other sorts, but they were only transient. When a
circus came and went, it left us all burning to become
clowns ; the first negro minstrel show that ever came
to our section left us all suffering to try that kind of
life ; now and then we had a hope that, if we lived and
were good, God would permit us to be pirates. These
ambitions faded out, each in its turn ; but the ambition
to be a steamboatman always remained.

Once a day a cheap, gaudy packet arrived upward
from St. Louis, and another downward from Keokuk.
Before these events, the day was glorious with expect
ancy; after them, the day was a dead and empty
thing. Not only the boys, but the whole village, felt
this. After all these years I can picture that old time
to myself now, just as it was then : the white town
drowsing in the sunshine of a summer's morning; the
streets empty, or pretty nearly so ; one or two clerks
sitting in front of the Water street stores, with their
splint-bottomed chairs tilted back against the walls,
chins on breasts, hats slouched over their faces, asleep
— with shingle-shavings enough around to show what

* Hannibal, Mo. .

(43)

44 Life on the Mississippi

broke them down ; a sow and a litter of pigs loafing
along the sidewalk, doing a good business in water
melon rinds and seeds ; two or three lonely little freight
piles scattered about the ' ' levee " ; a pile of * ' skids ' '
on the slope of the stone-paved wharf, and the fragrant
town drunkard asleep in the shadow of them ; two or
three wood flats at the head of the wharf, but nobody
to listen to the peaceful lapping of the wavelets against
them; the great Mississippi, the majestic, the magnifi
cent Mississippi, rolling its mile- wide tide along, shining
in the sun ; the dense forest away on the other side ;
the *' point " above the town, and the " point " below,
bounding the river-glimpse and turning it into a sort of
sea, and withal a very still and brilliant and lonely one.
Presently a film of dark smoke appears above one of
those remote "points"; instantly a negro drayman,
famous for his quick eye and prodigious voice, lifts up
the cry, * * S-t-e-a-m-boat a-comin' !" and the scene
changes ! The town drunkard stirs, the clerks wake up,
a furious clatter of drays follows, every house and store
pours out a human contribution, and all in a twinkling
the dead town is alive and moving. Drays, carts, men,
boys, all go hurrying from many quarters to a common
center, the wharf. Assembled there, the people fasten
their eyes upon the coming boat as upon a wonder
they are seeing for the first time. And the boat is
rather a handsome sight, too. She is long and sharp
and trim and pretty; she has two tall, fancy- topped
chimneys, with a gilded device of some kind swung
beween them; a fanciful pilot-house, all glass and
'* gingerbread," perched on top of the " texas " deck
behind them; the paddle-boxes are gorgeous with a
picture or with gilded rays above the boat's name; the
boiler deck, the hurricane deck, and the texas deck are
fenced and ornamented with clean white railings ; there
is a flag gallantly flying from the jack-staff ; the furnace

Life on the Mississippi 45

doors are open and the fires glaring bravely ; the upper
decks are black with passengers ; the captain stands by
the big bell, calm, imposing, the envy of all; great
volumes of the blackest smoke are rolling and tumbling
out of the chimneys — a husbanded grandeur created
with a bit of pitch pine just before arriving at a town ;
the crew are grouped on the forecastle; the broad
stage is run far out over the port bow, and an envied
deck-hand stands picturesquely on the end of it with a
coil of rope in his hand ; the pent steam is screaming
through the gauge-cocks; the captain lifts his hand, a
bell rings, the wheels stop; then they turn back,
churning the water to foam, and the steamer is at rest.
Then such a scramble as there is to get aboard, and to get
ashore, and to take in freight and to discharge freight,
all at one and the same time ; and such a yelling and
cursing as the mates facilitate it all with ! Ten minutes
later the steamer is under way again, with no flag on the
jack-staff and no black smoke issuing from the chimneys.
After ten more minutes the town is dead again, and
the town drunkard asleep by the skids once more.

My father was a justice of the peace, and I supposed
he possessed the power of life and death over all men,
and could hang anybody that offended him. This was
distinction enough for me as a general thing; but the
desire to be a steamboatman kept intruding, neverthe
less. I first wanted to be a cabin-boy, so that I could
come out with a white apron on and shake a table-cloth
over the side, where all my old comrades could see
me ; later I thought I would rather be the deck-hand
who stood on the end of the stage-plank with the coil
of rope in his hand, because he was particularly con
spicuous. But these were only day-dreams — they
were too heavenly to be contemplated as real possi
bilities. By and by one of our boys went away. He
was not heard of for a long time. At last he turned

46 Life on the Mississippi

up as apprentice engineer or "striker" on a steam
boat. This thing shook the bottom out of all my
Sunday-school teachings. That boy had been notori
ously worldly, and I just the reverse ; yet he was ex
alted to this eminence, and I left in obscurity and
misery. There was nothing generous about this fellow
in his greatness. He would always manage to have a
rusty bolt to scrub while his boat tarried at our town,
and he would sit on the inside guard and scrub it,
where we all could see him and envy him and loathe
him. And whenever his boat was laid up he would
come home and swell around the town in his blackest
and greasiest clothes, so that nobody could help re
membering that he was a steamboatman ; and he used
all sorts of steamboat technicalities in his talk, as if he
were so used to them that he forgot common people
could not understand them. He would speak of the
11 labboard " side of a horse in an easy, natural way
that would make one wish he was dead. And he was
always talking about " St. Looy " like an old citizen;
he would refer casually to occasions when he was
11 coming down Fourth street," or when he was " pass
ing by the Planter's House," or when there was a fire
and he took a turn on the brakes of " the old Big Mis
souri" ; and then he would go on and lie about how
many towns the size of ours were burned down there
that day. Two or three of the boys had long been
persons of consideration among us because they had
been to St. Louis once and had a vague general
knowledge of its wonders, but the day of their glory
was over now. They lapsed into a humble silence, and
learned to disappear when the ruthless " cub "-engineer
approached. This fellow had money, too, and hair-
oil. Also an ignorant silver watch and a showy brass
watch-chain. He wore a leather belt and used no sus
penders. If ever a youth was cordially admired and

Life on the Mississippi 47

hated by his comrades, this one was. No girl could
withstand his charms. He "cut out" every boy in
the village. When his boat blew up at last, it diffused
a tranquil contentment among us such as we had not
known for months. But when he came home the next
week, alive, renowned, and appeared in church all bat
tered up and bandaged, a shining hero, stared at and
wondered over by everybody, it seemed to us that the
partiality of Providence for an undeserving reptile had
reached a point where it was open to criticism.

This creature's career could produce but one result,
and it speedily followed. Boy after boy managed to get
on the river. The minister's son became an engineer.
The doctor's and the postmaster's sons became " mud
clerks"; the wholesale liquor dealer's son became a
barkeeper on a boat; four sons of the chief merchant,
and two sons of the county judge, became pilots. Pilot
was the grandest position of all. The pilot, even in
those days of trivial wages, had a princely salary —
from a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty dol
lars a month, and no board to pay. Two months of
his wages would pay a preacher's salary for a year.
Now some of us were left disconsolate. We could not
get on the river — at least our parents would not let us.

So, by and by, I ran away. I said I would never
come home again till I was a pilot and could come in
glory. But somehow I could not manage it. I went
meekly aboard a few of the boats that lay packed
together like sardines at the long St. Louis wharf, and
humbly inquired for the pilots, but got only a cold
shoulder and short words from mates and clerks. I
had to make the best of this sort of treatment for the
time being, but I had comforting day-dreams of a
future when I should be a great and honored pilot,
with plenty of money, and could kill some of these
mates and clerks and pay for them,

CHAPTER V.

1 WANT TO BE A CUB-PILOT

MONTHS afterward the hope within me struggled
to a reluctant death, and I found myself without
an ambition. But I was ashamed to go home. I was
in Cincinnati, and I set to work to map out a new
career. I had been reading about the recent explora
tion of the river Amazon by an expedition sent out by
our government. It was said that the expedition,
owing to difficulties, had not thoroughly explored a
part of the country lying about the headwaters, some
four thousand miles from the mouth of the river. It
was only about fifteen hundred miles from Cincinnati
to New Orleans, where I could doubtless get a ship. I
had thirty dollars left ; I would go and complete the
exploration of the Amazon. This was all the thought
I gave to the subject. I never was great in matters of
detail. I packed my valise, and took passage on an
ancient tub called the Paul Jones, for New Orleans.
For the sum of sixteen dollars I had the scarred and
tarnished splendors of " her" main saloon principally
to myself, for she was not a creature to attract the eye
of wiser travelers.

When we presently got under way and went poking
down the broad Ohio, I became a new being, and the
subject of my own admiration. I was a traveler ! A
word never had tasted so good in my mouth before. I

(48)

Life on the Mississippi 49

had an exultant sense of being bound for mysterious
lands and distant climes which I never have felt in so
uplifting a degree since. I was in such a glorified con
dition that all ignoble feelings departed out of me, and
I was able to look down and pity the untraveled with a
compassion that had hardly a trace of contempt in it.
Still, when we stopped at villages and wood-yards, I
could not help lolling carelessly upon the railings of
the boiler-deck to enjoy the envy of the country boys
on the bank. If they did not seem to discover me, I
presently sneezed to attract their attention, or moved
to a position where they could not help seeing me.
And as soon as I knew they saw me I gaped and
stretched, and gave other signs of being mightily bored
with traveling.

I kept my hat off all the time, and stayed where the
wind and the sun could strike me, because I wanted to
get the bronzed and weather-beaten look of an old
traveler. Before the second day was half gone I ex
perienced a joy which filled me with the purest grati
tude ; for I saw that the skin had begun to blister and
peel off my face and neck. I wished that the boys and
girls at home could see me now.

We reached Louisville in time — at least the neigh
borhood of it. We stuck hard and fast on the rocks
in the middle of the river, and lay there four days. I
was now beginning to feel a strong sense of being
a part of the boat's family, a sort of infant son to the
captain and younger brother to the officers. There is
no estimating the pride I took in this grandeur, or the
affection that began to swell and grow in me for those
people. I could not know how the lordly steamboat-
man scorns that sort of presumption in a mere lands
man. I particularly longed to acquire the least trifle
of notice from the big stormy mate, and I was on the
alert for an opportunity to do him a service to that
4

50 Life on the Mississippi

end. It came at last. The riotous powwow of setting
a spar was going on down on the forecastle, and I went
down there and stood around in the way — or mostly
skipping out of it — till the mate suddenly roared a
general order for somebody to bring him a capstan
bar. I sprang to his side and said: " Tell me where
it is— I'll fetch it!"

If a rag-picker had offered to do a diplomatic service
for the Emperor of Russia, the monarch could not
have been more astounded than the mate was. He
even stopped swearing. He stood and stared down at
me. It took him ten seconds to scrape his disjointed
remains together again. Then he said impressively:

"Well, if this don't beat h 1!" and turned to his

work with the air of a man who had been confronted
with a problem too abstruse for solution.

I crept away, and courted solitude for the rest of
the day. I did not go to dinner ; I stayed away from
supper until everybody else had finished. I did not
feel so much like a member of the boat's family now
as before. However, my spirits returned, in install
ments, as we pursued our way down the river. I was
sorry I hated the mate so, because it was not in
(young) human nature not to admire him. He was
huge and muscular, his face was bearded and whiskered
all over ; he had a red woman and a blue woman tat
tooed on his right arm — one on each side of a blue
anchor with a red rope to it ; and in the matter of pro
fanity he was sublime. When he was getting out
cargo at a landing, I was always where I could see and
hear. He felt all the majesty of his great position,
and made the world feel it, too. When he gave even
the simplest order, he discharged it like a blast of
lightning, and sent a long, reverberating peal of pro
fanity thundering after it. I could not help contrast
ing the way in which the average landsman would give

Life on the Mississippi 51

an order with the mate's way of doing it. If the
landsman should wish the gang-plank moved a foot
farther forward, he would probably say: " James, or
William, one of you push that plank forward, please;"
but put the mate in his place, and he would roar out:
"Here, now, start that gang-plank for'ard ! Lively,
now! Whafrz you about! Snatch it! snatch it!
There ! there ! Aft again ! aft again ! Don't you
hear me ? Dash it to dash ! are you going to sleep
over it! ' Vast heaving. 'Vast heaving, I tell you!
Going to heave it clear astern? WHERE're you
going with that barrel ! for'ard with it 'fore I make
you swallow it, you dash-dash-dash-afos^/ split be
tween a tired mud-turtle and a crippled hearse-horse!"

I wished I could talk like that.

When the soreness of my adventure with the mate
had somewhat worn off, I began timidly to make up to
the humblest official connected with the boat — the
night watchman. He snubbed my advances at first,
but I presently ventured to offer him a new chalk pipe,
and that softened him. So he allowed me to sit with
him by the big bell on the hurricane deck, and in time
he melted into conversation. He could not well have
helped it, I hung with such homage on his words and
so plainly showed that I felt honored by his notice.
He told me the names of dim capes and shadowy
islands as we glided by them in the solemnity of the
night, under the winking stars, and by and by got to
talking about himself. He seemed over-sentimental
for a man whose salary was six dollars a week — or
rather he might have seemed so to an older person
than I. But I drank in his words hungrily, and with a
faith that might have moved mountains if it had been
applied judiciously. What was it to me that he was
soiled and seedy and fragrant with gin ? What was it
to me that his grammar was bad, his construction

52 Life on the Mississippi

worse, and his profanity so void of art that it was an
element of weakness rather than strength in his conver
sation? He was a wronged man, a man who had seen
trouble, and that was enough for me. As he mellowed
into his plaintive history his tears dripped upon the
lantern in his lap, and I cried, too, from sympathy.
He said he was the son of an English nobleman —
either an earl or an alderman, he could not remember
which, but believed was both; his father, the noble
man, loved him, but his mother hated him from the
cradle ; and so while he was still a little boy he was
sent to "one of them old, ancient colleges" — he
couldn't remember which ; and by and by his father
died and his mother seized the property and " shook "
him, as he phrased it. After his mother shook him,
members of the nobility with whom he was acquainted
used their influence to get him the position of
"loblolly-boy in a ship"; and from that point my
watchman threw off all trammels of date and locality
and branched out into a narrative that bristled all along
with incredible adventures; a narrative that was so
reeking with bloodshed, and so crammed with hair
breadth escapes and the most engaging and unconscious
personal villainies, that I sat speechless, enjoying, shud
dering, wondering, worshiping.

It was a sore blight to find out afterward that he was
a low, vulgar, ignorant, sentimental, half-witted hum
bug, an untraveled native of the wilds of Illinois, who
had absorbed wildcat literature and appropriated its
marvels, until in time he had woven odds and ends of
the mess into this yarn, and then gone on telling it to
fledglings like me, until he had come to believe it
himself.

CHAPTER VI.

A CUB-PILOT'S EXPERIENCE

WHAT with lying on the rocks four days at Louis
ville, and some other delays, the poor old Paul
Jones fooled away about two weeks in making the
voyage from Cincinnati to New Orleans. This gave
me a chance to get acquainted with one of the pilots,
and he taught me how to steer the boat, and thus
made the fascination of river life more potent than
ever for me.

It also gave me a chance to get acquainted with a
youth who had taken deck passage — more's the pity;
for he easily borrowed six dollars of me on a promise
to return to the boat and pay it back to me the day
after we should arrive. But he probably died or for
got, for he never came. It was doubtless the former,
since he had said his parents were wealthy, and he only
traveled deck passage because it was cooler.*

I soon discovered two things. One was that a vessel
would not be likely to sail for the mouth of the
Amazon under ten or twelve years ; and the other was
that the nine or ten dollars still left in my pocket would
not suffice for so impossible an exploration as I had
planned, even if I could afford to wait for a ship.
Therefore it followed that I must contrive a new
career. The Paid Jones was now bound for St. Louis.

Deck" passage — *. *., steerage passage.

(53)

54 Life on the Mississippi

I planned a siege against my pilot, and at the end of
three hard days he surrendered. He agreed to teach
me the Mississippi River from New Orleans to St.
Louis for five hundred dollars, payable out of the first
wages I should receive after graduating. I entered
upon the small enterprise of "learning" twelve or
thirteen hundred miles of the great Mississippi River
with the easy confidence of my time of life. If I had
really known what I was about to require of my facul
ties, I should not have had the courage to begin. I
supposed that all a pilot had to do was to keep his
boat in the river, and I did not consider that that could
be much of a trick, since it was so wide.

The boat backed out from New Orleans at four in
the afternoon, and it was "our watch" until eight.
Mr. Bixby, my chief , " straightened her up," ploughed
her along past the sterns of the other boats that lay at
the Levee, and then said, "Here, take her; shave
those steamships as close as you'd peel an apple." I
took the wheel, and my heart-beat fluttered up into the
hundreds ; for it seemed to me that we were about to
scrape the side off every ship in the line, we were so
close. I held my breath and began to claw the boat
away from the danger ; and I had my own opinion of
the pilot who had known no better than to get us into
such peril, but I was too wise to express it. In half a
minute I had a wide margin of safety intervening be
tween the Paul Jones and the ships ; and within ten
seconds more I was set aside in disgrace, and Mr.
Bixby was going into danger again and flaying me
alive with abuse of my cowardice. I was stung, but I
was obliged to admire the easy confidence with which
my chief loafed from side to side of his wheel, and
trimmed the ships so closely that disaster seemed cease
lessly imminent. When he had cooled a little he told
me that the easy water was close ashore and the current

Life on tht Mississippi 55

outside, and therefore we must hug the bank, up-
stream, to get the benefit of the former, and stay well
out, down-stream, to take advantage of the latter. In
rfiy own mind 1 resolved to be a down-stream pilot and
leave the up-streaming to people dead to prudence.

Now and then Mr. Bixby called my attention to
certain things. Said he, "This is Six-Mile Point."
I assented. It was pleasant enough information, but I
could not see the bearing of it. I was not conscious
that it was a matter of any interest to me. Another
time he said, "This is Nine-Mile Point." Later he
said, "This is Twelve-Mile Point." They were all
about level with the water's edge; they all looked
about alike to me ; they were monotonously unpictur-
esque. I hoped Mr. Bixby would change the subject.
But no ; he would crowd up around a point, hugging
the shore with affection, and then say: "The slack
water ends here, abreast this bunch of China-trees;
now we cross over." So he crossed over. He gave
me the wheel once or twice, but I had no luck. I
either came near chipping off the edge of a sugar plan
tation, or I yawed too far from shore, and so dropped
back into disgrace again and got abused.

The watch was ended at last, and we took supper
and went to bed. At midnight the glare of a lantern
shone in my eyes, and the night watchman said :

" Come, turn out!"

And then he left. I could not understand this
extraordinary procedure ; so I presently gave up try
ing to, and dozed off to sleep. Pretty soon the watch
man was back again, and this time he was gruff. I
was annoyed. I said :

" What do you want to come bothering around here
in the middle of the night for? Now, as like as not,
I'll not get to sleep again to-night."

The watchman said :

56 Life on the Mississippi

" Well, if this ain't good, I'm blessed."

The "off-watch" was just turning in, and I heard
some brutal laughter from them, and such remarks as
" Hello, watchman ! ain't the new cub turned out yet?
He's delicate, likely. Give him some sugar in a rag,
and send for the chambermaid to sing * Rock-a-by
Baby,' to him."

About this time Mr. Bixby appeared on the scene.
Something like a minute later I was climbing the pilot
house steps with some of my clothes on and the rest in
my arms. Mr. Bixby was close behind, commenting.
Here was something fresh — this thing of getting up in
the middle of the night to go to work. It was a detail
in piloting that had never occurred to me at all. I
knew that boats ran all night, but somehow I had never
happened to reflect that somebody had to get up out
of a warm bed to run them. I began to fear that
piloting was not quite so romantic as I had imagined it
was ; there was something very real and worklike about
this new phase of it.

It was a rather dingy night, although a fair number
of stars were out. The big mate was at the wheel, and
he had the old tub pointed at a star and was holding
'her straight up the middle of the river. The shores
on either hand were not much more than half a mile
apart, but they seemed wonderfully far away and ever
so vague and indistinct. The mate said :

l< We've got to land at Jones' plantation, sir."

The vengeful spirit in me exulted. I said to myself,
"" I wish you joy of your job, Mr. Bixby; you'll have
a good time finding Mr. Jones' plantation such a night
as this ; and I hope you never will find it as long as
you live."

Mr. Bixby said to the mate:

" Upper end of the plantation, or the lower?"

"Upper."

Life on the Mississippi 57

i «

I can't do it. The stumps there are out of water
at this stage. It's no great distance to the lower, and
you'll have to get along with that."

*' All right, sir. If Jones don't like it, he'll have to
lump it, I reckon."

And then the mate left. My exultation began to
cool and my wonder to come up. Here was a man
who not only proposed to find this plantation on such
a night, but to find either end of it you preferred. I
dreadfully wanted to ask a question, but I was carrying
about as many short answers as my cargo-room would
admit of, so I held my peace. All I desired to ask
Mr. Bixby was the simple question whether he was ass
enough to really imagine he was going to find that
plantation on a night when all plantations were exactly
alike and all of the same color. But I held in. I used
to have fine inspirations of prudence in those days.

Mr. Bixby made for the shore and soon was scraping
it, just the same as if it had been daylight. And not
only that, but singing:

" Father in heaven, the day is declining," etc.

It seemed to me that I had put my life in the keeping
of a peculiarly reckless outcast. Presently he turned
on me and said :

"What's the name of the first point above New
Orleans?"

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I
did. I said I didn't know.

" Don't know ?"

This manner jolted me. I was down at the foot
again, in a moment. But I had to say just what I had
said before.

"Well, you're a smart one!" said Mr. Bixby.
" What's the name of the next point?"

Once more I didn't know.

58 Life on the Mississippi

"Well, this beats anything. Tell me the name of
any point or place I told you."

I studied a while and decided that I couldn't.

"Look here! What do you start out from, above
Twelve-Mile Point, to cross over?"

"I — I — don't know."

"You — you — don't know?" mimicking my drawl
ing manner of speech. " What do you know?"

"I — I — nothing, for certain. ' '

" By the great Caesar's ghost, I believe you ! You're
the stupidest dunderhead I ever saw or ever heard of,
so help me Moses! The idea of you being a pilot —
you / Why, you don't know enough to pilot a cow
down a lane."

Oh, but his wrath was up ! He was a nervous man,
and he shuffled from one side of his wheel to the other
as if the floor was hot. He would boil a while to him
self, and then overflow and scald me again.

1 ' Look here ! What do you suppose I told you the
names of those points for?"

I tremblingly considered a moment, and then the
devil of temptation provoked me to say :

'•Well — to — to — be entertaining, I thought."

This was a red rag to the bull. He raged and
stormed so (he was crossing the river at the time) that
I judge it made him blind, because he ran over the
steering-oar of a trading-scow; Of course the traders
sent up a volley of red-hot profanity. Never was a
man so grateful as Mr. Bixby was; because he was
brimful, and here were subjects who could talk back.
He threw open a window, thrust his head out, and such
an irruption followed as I never had heard before.
The fainter and farther away the scowmen's curses
drifted, the higher Mr. Bixby lifted his voice and the
weightier his adjectives grew. When he closed the
window he was empty. You could have drawn a seine

Life on the Mississippi 59

through his system and not caught curses enough to
disturb your mother with. Presently he said to me in
the gentlest way:

" My boy, you must get a little memorandum-book;
and every time I tell you a thing, put it down right
away. There's only one way to be a pilot, and that is
to get this entire river by heart. You have to know it
just like A B C."

That was a dismal revelation to me ; for my memory
was never loaded with anything but blank cartridges.
However, I did not feel discouraged long. I judged
that it was best to make some allowances, for doubtless
Mr. Bixby was "stretching." Presently he pulled a
rope and struck a few strokes on the big bell. The
stars were all gone now, and the night was as black as
ink. I could hear the wheels churn along the bank,
but I was not entirely certain that I could see the
shore. The voice of the invisible watchman called up
from the hurricane deck:

"What's this, sir?"

** Jones' plantation."

I said to myself, " I wish I might venture to offer a
jmall bet that it isn't." But I did not chirp. I only
waited to see. Mr. Bixby handled the engine-bells,
and in due time the boat's nose came to the land, a
torch glowed from the forecastle, a man skipped
ashore, a darkey's voice on the bank said, "Gimme
de k'yarpet-bag, Mass' Jones," and the next moment
we were standing up the river again, all serene. I re
flected deeply a while, and then said — but not aloud —
"Well, the finding of that plantation was the luckiest
accident that ever happened ; but it couldn't happen
again in a hundred years." And I fully believed it
was an accident, too.

By the time we had gone seven or eight hundred
miles up the river, I had learned to be a tolerably

60 Life on the Mississippi

plucky up-stream steersman, in daylight, and before we
reached St. Louis I had made a trifle of progress in
night-work, but only a trifle. I had a note-book that
fairly bristled with the names of towns, "points,"
bars, islands, bends, reaches, etc. ; but the information
was to be found only in the note-book — none of it
was in my head. It made my heart ache to think I
had only got half of the river set down ; for as our
watch was four hours off and four hours on, day and
night, there was a long four-hour gap in my book for
every time I had slept since the voyage began.

My chief was presently hired to go on a big New
Orleans boat, and I packed my satchel and went with
him. She was a grand affair. When I stood in her
pilot-house I was so far above the water that I seemed
perched on a mountain ; and her decks stretched so far
away, fore and aft, below me, that I wondered how I
could ever have considered the little Paul Jones a large
craft. There were otheY differences, too. The Paul
Jones' pilot-house was a cheap, dingy, battered rattle
trap, cramped for room ; but here was a sumptuous
glass temple ; room enough to have a dance in ; showy
red and gold window-curtains; an imposing sofa;
leather cushions and a back to the high bench where
visiting pilots sit, to spin yarns and ' ' look at the
river"; bright, fanciful " cuspadores," instead of a
broad wooden box filled with sawdust ; nice new oil
cloth on the floor ; a hospitable big stove for winter ;
a wheel as high as my head, costly with inlaid work; a
wire tiller-rope ; bright brass knobs for the bells ; and
a tidy, white-aproned, black " texas-tender," to bring
up tarts and ices and coffee during mid-watch, day and
night. Now this was ' ' something like ' ' ; and so I
began to take heart once more to believe that piloting
was a romantic sort of occupation after all. The
moment we were under way I began to prowl about

Life on the Mississippi 61

the great steamer and fill myself with joy. She was as
clean and as dainty as a drawing-room ; when I looked
down her long, gilded saloon, it was like gazing
through a splendid tunnel; she had an oil-picture, by
some gifted sign-painter, on every state-room door;
she glittered with no end of prism-fringed chandeliers ;
the clerk's office was elegant, the bar was marvelous,
and the barkeeper had been barbered and upholstered
at incredible cost. The boiler-deck (i. e., the second
story of the boat, so to speak), was as spacious as a
church, it seemed to me; so with the forecastle; and
there was no pitiful handful of deck-hands, firemen,
and roustabouts down there, but a whole battalion of
men. The fires were fiercely glaring from a long row
of furnaces, and over them were eight huge boilers !
This was unutterable pomp. The mighty engines —
but enough of this. I had never felt so fine before.
And when I found that the regiment of natty servants
respectfully *'sir'd" me, my satisfaction was com
plete.

CHAPTER VII.

A DARING DEED

WHEN I returned to the pilot-house St. Louis was
gone, and I was lost. Here was a piece of river
which was all down in my book, but I could make
neither head nor tail of it: you understand, it was
turned around. I had seen it when coming up-stream,
but I had never faced about to see how it looked when
/ it was behind me. My heart broke again, for it was
\J plain that I had got to learn this troublesome river both
ways.

The pilot-house was full of pilots, going down to
"look at the river." What is called the "upper
river3' (the two hundred miles between St. Louis and
Cairo, where the Ohio comes in) was low; and the
Mississippi changes its channel so constantly that the
pilots used to always find it necessary to run down to
Cairo to take a fresh look, when their boats were to
lie in port a week ; that is, when the water was at a
low stage. A deal of this " looking at the river" was
done by poor fellows who seldom had a berth, and
whose only hope of getting one lay in their being
always freshly posted and therefore ready to drop into
the shoes of some reputable pilot, for a single trip, on
account of such pilot's sudden illness, or some other
necessity. And a good many of them constantly ran
up and down inspecting the river, not because they

(62)

Life on the Mississippi 63

ever really hoped to get a berth, but because (they
being guests of the boat) it was cheaper to " look at
the river" than stay ashore and pay board. In time
these fellows grew dainty in their tastes, and only
infested boats that had an established reputation for
setting good tables. All visiting pilots were useful,
for they were always ready 'and willing, winter or sum
mer, night or day, to go out in the yawl and help buoy
the channel or assist the boat's pilots in any way they
could. They were likewise welcome because all pilots
are tireless talkers, when gathered together, and as
they talk only about the river they are always under
stood and are always interesting. Your true pilot cares
nothing about anything on earth but the river, and his
pride in his occupation surpasses the pride of kings.

We had a fine company of these river inspectors
along this trip. There were eight or ten, and there
was abundance of room for them in our great pilot
house. Two or three of them wore polished silk hats,
elaborate shirt-fronts, diamond breastpins, kid gloves,
and patent-leather boots. They were choice in their
English, and bore themselves with a dignity proper to
men of solid means and prodigious reputation as pilots.
The others were more or less loosely clad, and wore
upon their heads tall felt cones that were suggestive of
the days of the Commonwealth.

I was a cipher in this august company, and felt sub
dued, not to say torpid. I was not even of sufficient
consequence to assist at the wheel when it was neces
sary to put the tiller hard down in a hurry ; the guest
that stood nearest did that when occasion required —
and this was pretty much all the time, because of the
crookedness of the channel and the scant water. I
stood in a corner; and the talk I listened to took the
hope all out of me. One visitor said to another:

"Jim, how did you run Plum Point, coming up?"

64 Life on the Mississippi

" It was in the night, there, and I ran it the way one
of the boys on the Diana told me ; started out about
fifty yards above the wood-pile on the false point, and
held on the cabin under Plum Point till I raised the
reef — quarter less twain — then straightened up for
the middle bar till I got well abreast the old one-
limbed cottonwood in the bend, then got my stern on
the cottonwood, and head on the low place above the
point, and came through a-booming — nine and a
half."

" Pretty square crossing, an't it?"

" Yes, but the upper bar's working down fast."

Another pilot spoke up and said :

* ' I had better water than that, and ran it lower
down; started out from the false point — mark twain
— raised the second reef abreast the big snag in the
bend, and had quarter less twain."

One of the gorgeous ones remarked :

" I don't want to find fault with your leadsmen, but
that's a good deal of water for Plum Point, it seems to
me."

There was an approving nod all around as this qiuet
snub dropped on the boaster and " settled" him.
And so they went on talk-talk-talking. Meantime, the
thing that was running in my mind was, " Now, if my
ears hear aright, I have not only to get the names of
all the towns and islands and bends, and so on, by
heart, but I must even get up a warm personal ac
quaintanceship with every old snag and one-limbed
cottonwood and obscure wood-pile that ornaments the
banks of this river for twelve hundred miles ; and more
than that, I must actually know where these things are
in the dark, unless these guests are gifted with eyes
that can pierce through two miles of solid blackness.
I wish the piloting business was in Jericho and I had
never thought of it."

Life on the Mississippi 65

At dusk Mr. Bixby tapped the big bell three times
(the signal to land), and the captain emerged from his
drawing-room in the forward end of the " texas," and
looked up inquiringly. Mr. Bixby said :

" We will lay up here all night, captain.1'
* Very well, sir."

That was all. The boat came to shore and was tied
up for the night. It seemed to me a fine thing that
the pilot could do as he pleased, without asking so
grand a captain's permission. I took my supper and
went immediately to bed, discouraged by my day's
observations and experiences. My late voyage's note-
booking was but a confusion of meaningless names. It
had tangled me all up in a knot every time I had
looked at it in the daytime. I now hoped for respite
in sleep ; but no, it reveled all through my head till
sunrise again, a frantic and tireless nightmare.

Next morning I felt pretty rusty and low-spirited.
We went booming along, taking a good many chances,
for we were anxious to "get out of the river" (as
getting out to Cairo was called) before night should
overtake us. But Mr. Bixby 's partner, the other
pilot, presently grounded the boat, and we lost so
much time getting her off that it was plain the darkness
would overtake us a good long way above the mouth.
This was a great misfortune, especially to certain of
our visiting pilots, whose boats would have to wait for
their return, no matter how long that might be. It
sobered the pilot-house talk a good deal. Coming up
stream, pilots did not mind low water or any kind of
darkness ; nothing stopped them but fog. But down
stream work was different ; a boat was too nearly help
less, with a stiff current pushing behind her; so it was
not customary to run down-stream at night in low
water.

There seemed to be one small hope, however : if we
5

66 Life on the Mississippi

could get through the intricate and dangerous Hat
Island crossing before night, we could venture the rest,
for we would have plainer sailing and better water.
But it would be insanity to attempt Hat Island at
night. So there was a deal of looking at watches all
the rest of the day, and a constant ciphering upon the
speed we were making; Hat Island was the eternal
subject ; sometimes hope was high and sometimes we
were delayed in a bad crossing, and down it went
again. For hours all hands lay under the burden .of
this suppressed excitement ; it was even communicated
to me, and I got to feeling so solicitous about Hat
Island, and under such an awful pressure of responsi
bility, that I wished I might have five minutes on shore
to draw a good, full, relieving breath, and start over
again. We were standing no regular watches. Each
of our pilots ran such portions of the river as he had
run when coming up-stream, because of his greater
familiarity with it; but both remained in the pilot
house constantly.

An hour before sunset Mr. Bixby took the wheel,
and Mr. W. stepped aside. For the next thirty min
utes every man held his watch in his hand and was
restless, silent, and uneasy. At last somebody said,
with a doomful sigh :

"Well, yonder's Hat Island — and we can't make
it."

All the watches closed with a snap, everybody sighed
and muttered something about its being "too bad,
too bad — ah, if we could only have got here half an
hour sooner! " and the place was thick with the atmo
sphere of disappointment. Some started to go out,
but loitered, hearing no bell-tap to land. The sun
dipped behind the horizon, the boat went on. Inquir
ing looks passed from one guest to another; and one
who had his hand on the door-knob and had turned it,

Life on the Mississippi 67

waited, then presently took away his hand and let the
knob turn back again. We bore steadily down the
bend. More looks were exchanged, and nods of sur
prised admiration — but no words. Insensibly the
men drew together behind Mr. Bixby, as the sky
darkened and one or two dim stars came out. The
dead silence and sense of waiting became oppressive.
Mr. Bixby pulled the cord, and two deep, mellow notes
from the big bell floated off on the night. Then a
pause, and one more note was struck. The watch
man's voice followed > from the hurricane deck:

" Labboard lead, there ! Stabboard lead !"

The cries of the leadsmen began to rise out of the
distance, and were gruffly repeated by the word-passers
on the hurricane deck.

" M-a-r-k three ! M-a-r-k three ! Quarter-less-three !
Half twain ! Quarter twain ! M-a-r-k twain ! Quar
ter-less "

Mr. Bixby pulled two bell-ropes, and was answered
by faint jinglings far below in the engine-room, and
our speed slackened. The steam began to whistle
through the gauge-cocks. The cries of the leadsmen
went on — and it is a weird sound, always, in the
night. Every pilot in the lot was watching now, with
fixed eyes, and talking under his breath. Nobody was
calm and easy but Mr. Bixby. He would put his
wheel down and stand on a spoke, and as the steamer
swung into her (to me) utterly invisible marks — for
we seemed to be in the midst of a wide and gloomy
sea — he would meet and fasten her there. Out of the
murmur of half-audible talk, one caught a coherent
sentence now and then — such as :

" There; she's over the first reef all right!"

After a pause, another subdued voice :

" Her stern's coming down just exactly right, by
George /"

68 Life on the Mississippi

" Now she's in the marks; over she goes!"

Somebody else muttered :

" Oh, it was done beautiful — beautiful /"

Now the engines were stopped altogether, and we
drifted with the current. Not that I could see the boat
drift, for I could not, the stars being all gone by this
time. This drifting was the dismalest work ; it held
one's heart still. Presently I discovered a blacker
gloom than that which surrounded us. It was the
head of the island. We were closing right down upon
it. We entered its deeper shadow, and so imminent
seemed the peril that I was likely to suffocate ; and I
had the strongest impulse to do something, anything,
to save the vessel. But still Mr. Bixby stood by his
wheel, silent, intent as a cat, and all the pilots stood
shoulder to shoulder at his back.

" She'll not make it!" somebody whispered.

The water grew shoaler and shoaler, by the leads
man's cries, till it was down to:

' * Eight-and-a-half ! E-i-g-h-t feet ! E-i-g-h-t feet !
" Seven-and "

Mr. Bixby said warningly through his speaking tube
to the engineer :

" Stand by, now!"

"Ay, ay, sir!"

"Seven-and-a-half! Seven feet ! Six-and "

We touched bottom ! Instantly Mr. Bixby set a lot
of bells ringing, shouted through the tube, " Now, let
her have it — every ounce you've got!" then to his
partner, "Put her hard down! snatch her! snatch
her!" The boat rasped and ground her way through
the sand, hung upon the apex of disaster a single
tremendous instant, and then over she went! And
such a shout as went up at Mr. Bixby's back never
loosened the roof of a pilot-house before !

There was no more trouble after that. Mr. Bixby

Life on the Mississippi 69

was a hero that night; and it was some little time,
too, before his exploit ceased to be talked about by
river men.

Fully to realize the marvelous precision required in
laying the great steamer in her marks in that murky
waste of water, one should know that not only must
she pick her intricate way through snags and blind
reefs, and then shave the head of the island so closely as
to brush the overhanging foliage with her stern, but at
one place she must pass almost within arm's reach of a
sunken and invisible wreck that would snatch the hull
timbers from under her if she should strike it, and
destroy a quarter of a million dollars' worth of steam
boat and cargo in five minutes, and maybe a hundred
and fifty human lives into the bargain.

The last remark I heard that night was a compliment
to Mr. Bixby, uttered in soliloquy and with unction by
one of our guests. He said :

"By the Shadow of Death, but he's a lightning
pilot!"

CHAPTER VIII.

PERPLEXING LESSONS

AT the end of what seemed a tedious while, I had
managed to pack my head full of islands, towns,
bars, " points," and bends; and a curiously inanimate
mass of lumber it was, too. However, inasmuch as I
could shut my eyes and reel off a good long string of
these names without leaving out more than ten miles of
river in every fifty, I began to feel that I could take a
boat down to New Orleans if I could make her skip
those little gaps. But of course my complacency
could hardly get start enough to lift my nose a trifle
into the air, before Mr. Bixby would think of some
thing to fetch it down again. One day he turned on
me suddenly with this settler :

" What is the shape of Walnut Bend?"
He might as well have asked me my grandmother's
opinion of protoplasm. I reflected respectfully, and
then said I didn't know it had any particular shape.
My gun-powdery chief went off with a bang, of course,
and then went on loading and firing until he was out
of adjectives.

I had learned long ago that he only carried just so
many rounds of ammunition, and was sure to subside
into a very placable and even remorseful old smooth
bore as soon as they were all gone. That word " old "
is merely affectionate ; he was not more than thirty-
four. I waited. By and by he said:

(70)

Liie on the Mississippi 71

" My boy, you've got to know the shape of the
river perfectly. It is all there is left to steer by on a
very dark night. Everything else is blotted out and
gone. But mind you, it hasn't the same shape in the
night that it has in the daytime."

" How on earth am I ever going to learn it, then?"

11 How do you follow a hall at home in the dark?
Because you know the shape of it. You can't see it."

" Do you mean to say that I've got to know all the
million trifling variations of shape in the banks of this
interminable river as well as I know the shape of the
front hall at home?"

" On my honor, you've got to know them better
than any man ever did know the shapes of the halls in
his own house."

"I wish I was dead!"

" Now I don't want to discourage you, but "

11 Well, pile it on me; I might as well have it now
as another time."

"You see, this has got to be learned; there isn't
any getting around it. A clear starlight night throws
such heavy shadows that, if you didn't know the shape
of a shore perfectly, you would claw away from every
bunch of timber, because you would take the black
shadow of it for a solid cape ; and you see you would
be getting scared to death every fifteen minutes by the
watch. You would be fifty yards from shore all the
time when you ought to be within fifty feet of it. You
can't see a snag in one of those shadows, but you
know exactly where it is, and the shape of the river
tells you when you are coming to it. Then there's
your pitch-dark night; the river is a very different
shape on a pitch-dark night from what it is on a star
light night. All shores seem to be straight lines, then,
and mighty dim ones, too; and you'd run them for
straight lines, only you know better. You boldly

72 Life on the Mississippi

drive your boat right into what seems to be a solid,
straight wall (you knowing very well that in reality
there is a curve there), and that wall falls back and
makes way for you. Then there's your gray mist.
You take a night when there's one of these grisly,
drizzly, gray mists, and then there isn't any particular
shape to a shore. A gray mist would tangle the head
of the oldest man that ever lived. Well, then, different
kinds of moonlight change the shape of the river in
different ways. You see "

4< Oh, don't say any more, please! Have I got to
learn the shape of the river according to all these five
hundred thousand different ways? If I tried to carry
all that cargo in my head it would make me stoop-
shouldered."

1 ' No / you only learn the shape of the river ; and
you learn it with such absolute certainty that you can
always steer by the shape that's in your head, and
never mind the one that's before your eyes."

"Very well, I'll try it; but, after I have learned it,
can I depend on it? Will it keep the same form and
not go fooling around?"

Before Mr. Bixby could answer, Mr. W. came in to
take the watch, and he said :

"Bixby, you'll have to look out for President's
Island, and all that country clear away up above the
Old Hen and Chickens. The banks are caving and
the shape of the shores changing like everything.
Why, you wouldn't know the point above 40. You
can go up inside the old sycamore snag, now."

So that question was answered. Here were leagues
of shore changing shape. My spirits were down in the
mud again. Two things seemed pretty apparent to
me. One was, that in order to be a pilot a man had

* It may not be necessary, but still it can do no harm to explain that
11 inside " means between the snag and the shore. — M. T.

Life on the Mississippi 73

got to learn more than any one man ought to be
allowed to know; and the other was, that he must
learn it all over again in a different way every twenty-
four hours.

That night we had the watch until twelve. Now it
was an ancient river custom for the two pilots to chat
a bit when the watch changed. While the relieving
pilot put on his gloves and lit his cigar, his partner,
the retiring pilot, would say something like this :

" I judge the upper bar is making down a little at
Hale's Point; had quarter twain with the lower lead
and mark twain* with the other."

"Yes, I thought it was making down a little, last
trip. Meet any boats?"

4 * Met one abreast the head of 2 1 , but she was away
over hugging the bar, and I couldn't make her out
entirely. I took her for the Sunny South — hadn't
any skylights forward of the chimneys."

And so on. And as the relieving pilot took the
wheel his partnerf would mention that we were in
such-and-such a bend, and say we were abreast of
such-and-such a man's woody ard or plantation. This
was courtesy; I supposed it was necessity. But Mr.
W. came on watch full twelve minutes late on this
particular night — a tremendous breach of etiquette ; in
fact, it is the unpardonable sin among pilots. So Mr.
Bixby gave him no greeting whatever, but simply sur
rendered the wheel and marched out of the pilot-house
without a word. I was appalled; it was a villainous
night for blackness, we were in a particularly wide and
blind part of the river, where there was no shape or
substance to anything, and it seemed incredible that
Mr. Bixby should have left that poor fellow to kill the

•Two fathoms. Quarter twain is 2# fathoms, 13^ feet. Mark three
is three fathoms.

t " Partner " is technical for " the other pilot."

74 Life on the Mississippi

boat, trying to find out where he was. But I resolved
that 1 would stand by him anyway. He should find
that he was not wholly friendless. So I stood around,
and waited to be asked where we were. But Mr. W.
plunged on serenely through the solid firmament of
black cats that stood for an atmosphere, and never
opened his mouth. " Here is a proud devil!" thought
I ; " here is a limb of Satan that would rather send us
all to destruction than put himself under obligations to
me, because I am not yet one of the salt of the earth
and privileged to snub captains and lord it over every
thing dead and alive in a steamboat." I presently
climbed up on the bench ; I did not think it was safe
to go to sleep while this lunatic was on watch.

However, I must have gone to sleep in the course of
time, because the next thing I was aware of was the
fact that day was breaking, Mr. W. gone, and M,r.
Bixby at the wheel again. So it was four o'clock and
all well — but me; I felt like a skinful of dry bones,
and all of them trying to ache at once.

Mr. Bixby asked me what I had stayed up there for.
I confessed that it was to do Mr. W. a benevolence —
tell him where he was. It took five minutes for the
entire preposterousness of the thing to filter into Mr.
Bixby 's system, and then I judge it filled him nearly
up to the chin; because he paid me a compliment —
and not much of a one either. He said :

" Well, taking you by and large, you do seem to be
more different kinds of an ass than any creature I ever
saw before. What did you suppose he wanted to know
for?"

I said I thought it might be a convenience to him.

"Convenience! D nation! Didn't I tell you

that a man's got to know the river in the night the
same as he'd know his own front hall?"

"Well, I can follow the front hall in the dark if I

Life ou the Mississippi 75

know it is the front hall; but suppose you set me
down in the middle of it in the dark and not tell me
which hall it is; how am / to know?"

" Well, you've got to, on the river!"

'* All right. Then I'm glad I never said anything to
Mr. W."

" I should say so! Why, he'd have slammed you
through the window and utterly ruined a hundred
dollars' worth of window-sash and stuff."

I was glad this damage had been saved, for it would
have made me unpopular with the owners. They
always hated anybody who had the name of being
careless and injuring things.

I went to work now to learn the shape of the river ;
and of all the eluding and ungraspable objects that
ever I tried to get mind or hands on, that was the
chief. I would fasten my eyes upon a sharp, wooded
point that projected far into the river some miles
ahead of me, and go to laboriously photographing its
shape upon my brain ; and just as I was beginning to
succeed to my satisfaction, we would draw up toward
it and the exasperating thing would begin to melt away
and fold back into the bank ! If there had been a
conspicuous dead tree standing upon the very point of
the cape, I would find that tree inconspicuously merged
into the general forest, and occupying the middle of a
straight shore, when I got abreast of it ! No prominent
hill would stick to its shape long enough for me to
make up my mind what its form really was, but it was
as dissolving and changeful as if it had been a moun
tain of butter in the hottest corner of the tropics.
Nothing ever had the same shape when I was coming
down-stream that it had borne when I went up. I
mentioned these little difficulties to Mr. Bixby. He
said :

"That's the very main virtue of the thing. If the

76 Life on the Mississippi

shapes didn't change every three seconds they wouldn't
be of any use. Take this place where we are now, for
instance. As long as that hill over yonder is only one
hill, I can boom right along the way I'm going; but
the moment it splits at the top and forms a V, I know
I've got to scratch to starboard in a hurry, or I'll
bang this boat's brains out against a rock; and then
the moment one of the prongs of the V swings behind
the other, I've got to waltz to larboard again, or I'll
have a misunderstanding with a snag that would snatch
the keelson out of this steamboat as neatly as if it were
a sliver in your hand. If that hill didn't change its
shape on bad nights there would be an awful steam
boat graveyard around here inside of a year."

It was plain that I had got to learn the shape of the
river in all the different ways that could be thought of,
— upside down, wrong end first, inside out, fore-and-
aft, and " thort-ships," — and then know what to do
on gray nights when it hadn't any shape at all. So I
set about it. In the course of time I began to get the
best of this knotty lesson, and my self-complacency
moved to the front once more. Mr. Bixby was all
fixed, and ready to start it to the rear again. He
opened on me after this fashion :

'* How much water did we have in the middle cross
ing at Hole-in-the-Wall, trip before last?"

I considered this an outrage. I said:

" Every trip, down and up, the leadsmen are singing
through that tangled place for three-quarters of an
hour on a stretch. How do you reckon I can remem
ber such a mess as that?"

'* My boy, you've got to remember it. You've got
to remember the exact spot and the exact marks the
boat lay in when we had the shoalest water, in every
one of the five hundred shoal places between St. Louis
and New Orleans; and you mustn't get the shoal

Life on the Mississippi 77

soundings and marks of one trip mixed up with the
shoal soundings and marks of another, either, for
they're not often twice alike. You must keep them
separate."

When I came to myself again, I said :

" When I get so that I can do that, I'll be able to
raise the dead, and then I won't have to pilot a steam
boat to make a living. I want to retire from this busi
ness. I want a slush-bucket and a brush; I'm only fit
for a roustabout. I haven't got brains enough to be a
pilot; and if I had I wouldn't have strength enough to
carry them around, unless I went on crutches."

"Now drop that! When I say I'll learn* a man
the river, I mean it. And you can depend on it, I'll
learn him or kill him."

* " Teach " is not in the river vocabulary.
6

CHAPTER IX.

CONTINUED PERPLEXITIES

rERE was no use in arguing with a person like this.
I promptly put such a strain on my memory that
by and by even the shoal water and the countless cross
ing-marks began to stay with me. But the result was
just the same. I never could more than get one knotty
thing learned before another presented itself. Now I
had often seen pilots gazing at the water and pretending
to read it as if it were a book ; but it was a book that
told me nothing. A time came at last, however, when
Mr. Bixby seemed to think me far enough advanced to
bear a lesson on water-reading. So he began :

' * Do you see that long, slanting line on the face of
the water? Now, that's a reef. Moreover, it's a bluff
reef. There is a solid sand-bar under it that is nearly
as straight up and down as the side of a house. There
is plenty of water close up to it, but mighty little on
top of it. If you were to hit it you would knock the
boat's brains out. Do you see where the line fringes
out at the upper end and begins to fade away? "
'Yes, sir."

" Well, that is a low place; that is the head of the
reef. You can climb over there, and not hurt any
thing. Cross over, now, and follow along close under
the reef — easy water there — not much current. ' '

I followed the reef along till I approached the
fringed end. Then Mr. Bixby said:

(78)

Life on the Mississippi 79

" Now get ready. Wait till I give the word. She
won't want to mount the reef ; a boat hates shoal water.
Stand by — wait — wait — keep her well in hand.
Now cramp her down ! Snatch her ! snatch her ! ' '

He seized the other side of the wheel and helped to
spin it around until it was hard down, and then we held
it so. The boat resisted, and refused to answer for a
while, and next she came surging to starboard, mounted
the reef, and sent a long, angry ridge of water foaming
away from her bows.

*' Now watch her; watch her like a cat, or she'll get
away from you. When she fights strong and the tiller
slips a little, in a jerky, greasy sort of way, let up on
her a trifle ; it is the way she tells you at night that the
water is too shoal; but keep edging her up, little by
little, toward the point. You are well up on the bar
now; there is a barjimder every point, because the
water that comes down around it forms an eddy and
allows the sed'ment to sink. Do you see those fine
lines on the face of the water that branch out like the
ribs of a fan? Well, those are little reefs; you want to
just miss the ends of them, but run them pretty close.
Now look out — look out! Don't you crowd that
slick, greasy-looking place; there ain't nine feet there;
she won't stand it. She begins to smell it; look sharp,
I tell you ! Oh, blazes, there you go ! Stop the star
board wheel ! Quick ! Ship up to back ! Set hei
back!"

The engine bells jingled and the engines answered
promptly, shooting white columns of steam far aloft
out of the 'scape-pipes, but it was too late. The boat
had " smelt " the bar in good earnest; the foamy ridges
that radiated from her bows suddenly disappeared, a
great dead swell came rolling forward, and swept ahead
of her, she careened far over to larboard, and went
tearing away toward the shore as if she were about

80 Life on the Mississippi

scared to death. We were a good mile from where we
ought to have been when we finally got the upper hand
of her again.

During the afternoon watch the next day, Mr. Bixby
asked me if I knew how to run the next few miles. I
said:

1 ' Go inside the first snag above the point, outside
the next one, start out from the lower end of Higgins's
woodyard, make a square crossing, and — "

" That's all right. I'll be back before you close up
on the next point.'*

But he wasn't. He was still below when I rounded
it and entered upon a piece of the river which I had
some misgivings about. I did not know that he was
hiding behind a chimney to see how I would perform.
I went gayly along, getting prouder and prouder, for
he had never left the boat in my sole charge such a
length of time before. I even got to " setting ' ' her and
letting the wheel go entirely, while I vaingloriously
turned my back and inspected the stern marks and
hummed a tune, a sort of easy indifference which I had
prodigiously admired in Bixby and other grea* pilots.
Once I inspected rather long, and when I faced to the
front again my heart flew into my mouth so suddenl}'
that if I hadn't clapped my teeth together I should
have lost it. One of those frightful bluff reefs was
stretching its deadly length right across our bows ! My
head was gone in a moment; I did not know which
end I stood on ; I gasped and could not get my breath ;
I spun the wheel down with such rapidity that it wove
itself together like a spider's web; the boat answered
and turned square away from the reef, but the reef fol
lowed her! I fled, but still it followed, still it kept —
right across my bows ! I never looked to see where I
was going, I only fled. The awful crash was imminent.
Why didn't that villain come? If I committed the

Life on the Mississippi 81

crime of ringing a bell I might get thrown overboard.
But better that than kill the boat. So in blind despera
tion, I started such a rattling " shivaree " down below
as never had astounded an engineer in this world before,
I fancy. Amidst the frenzy of the bells the engines
began to back and fill in a curious way, and my reason
forsook its throne — we were about to crash into the
woods on the other side of the river. Just then Mr.
Bixby stepped calmly into view on the hurricane deck.
My soul went out to him in gratitude. My distress
vanished ; I would have felt safe on the brink of Niagara
with Mr. Bixby on the hurricane deck. He blandly
and sweetly took his toothpick out of his mouth be
tween his fingers, as if it were a cigar, — we were just
in the act of climbing an overhanging big tree, and the
passengers were scudding astern like rats, — and lifted
up these commands to me ever so gently :

" Stop the starboard! Stop the larboard! Set her
back on both! "

The boat hesitated, halted, pressed her nose among
the boughs a critical instant, then reluctantly began to
back awayc

" Stop the larboard ! Come ahead on it ! Stop the
starboard ! Come ahead on it ! Point her for the
bar!"

I sailed away as serenely as a summer's morning.
Mr. Bixby came in and said, with mock simplicity:

'* When you have a hail, my boy, you ought to tap
the big bell three times before you land, so that the
engineers can get ready."

I blushed under the sarcasm, and said I hadn't had
any hail.

"Ah! Then it was for wood, I suppose. The
officer of the watch will tell you when he wants to
wood up."

I went on consuming, and said I wasn't after wood.
6

82 Life on the Mississippi

" Indeed? Why, what could you want over here in
the bend, then? Did you ever know of a boat follow
ing a bend up-stream at this stage of the river? "

" No, sir — and / wasn't trying to follow it. I was
getting away from a bluff reef."

"No, it wasn't a bluff reef; there isn't one within
three miles of where you were."

" But I saw it. It was as bluff as that one yonder."

" Just about. Run over it ! "

" Do you give it as an order? "

"Yes. Run over it!"

"If I don't, I wish I may die."

"All right; I am taking the responsibility."

I was just as anxious to kill the boat, now, as I had
been to save it before. I impressed my orders upon
my memory, to be used at the inquest, and made a
straight break for the reef. As it disappeared under
our bows I held my breath ; but we slid over it like oil.

" Now, don't you see the difference? It wasn't any
thing but a wind reef. The wind does that. ' '

" So I see. But it is exactly like a bluff reef. How
am I ever going to tell them apart ? ' '

" I can't tell you. It is an instinct. By and by you
will just naturally know one from the other, but you
never will be able to explain why or how you know
them apart."

It turned out to be true. The face of the water, in
time, became a wonderful book — a book that was a
dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which
told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most
cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with
a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and
thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.
Throughout the long twelve hundred miles there was
never a page that was void of interest, never one that
you could leave unread without loss, never one that you

Life on the Mississippi 8>

would want to skip, thinking you could find higher en
joyment in some other thing. There never was so
wonderful a book written by man; never one whose
interest was so absorbing, so unflagging, so sparklingly
renewed with every re-perusal. The passenger who
could not read it was charmed with a peculiar sort of
faint dimple on its surface (on the rare occasions when
he did not overlook it altogether) ; but to the pilot that
was an italicized passage; indeed, it was more than
that, it was a legend of the largest capitals, with a string
of shouting exclamation points at the end of it, for it
meant that a wreck or a rock was buried there that
could tear the life out of the strongest vessel that ever
floated. It is the faintest and simplest expression the
water ever makes, and the most hideous to a pilot's eye.
In truth, the passenger who could not read this book
saw nothing but all manner of pretty pictures in it,
painted by the sun and shaded by the clouds, whereas
to the trained eye these were not pictures at all, but the
grimmest and most dead-earnest of reading matter.

Now when I had mastered the language of this water,
and had come to know every trifling feature that bor
dered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters
of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition.
But I had lost something, too. I had lost something
which could never be restored to me while I lived. All
the grace, the beauty, the poetry, had gone out of the
majestic river ! I still kept in mind a certain wonderful
sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new
to me. A broad expanse of the river was turned to
blood ; in the middle distance the red hue brightened
into gold, through which a solitary log came floating,
black and conspicuous; in one place a long, slanting
mark lay sparkling upon the water ; in another the sur
face was broken by boiling, tumbling rings, that were
as many-tinted as an opal ; where the ruddy flush was

84 Life on the Mississippi

faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered with grace
ful circles and radiating lines, ever so delicately traced ;
the shore on our left was densely wooded, and the
somber shadow that fell from this forest was broken in
one place by a long, ruffled trail that shone like silver;
and high above the forest wall a clean-stemmed dead
tree waved a single leafy bough that glowed like a flame
in the unobstructed splendor that was flowing from the
sun. There were graceful curves, reflected images,
woody heights, soft distances; and over the whole
scene, far and near, the dissolving lights drifted steadily,
enriching it every passing moment with new marvels of
coloring.

I stood like one bewitched. I drank it in, in a
speechless rapture. The world was new to me, and I
had never seen anything like this at home. But as I
have said, a day came when I began to cease from
noting the glories and the charms which the moon and
the sun and the twilight wrought upon the river's face;
another day came when I ceased altogether to note
them. Then, if that sunset scene had been repeated,
I should have looked upon it without rapture, and
should have commented upon it, inwardly, after this
fashion: ;* This sun means that we are going to have
wind to-morrow ; that floating log means that the river
is rising, small thanks to it ; that slanting mark on the
water refers to a bluff reef which is going to kill some
body's steamboat one of these nights, if it keeps on
stretching out like that ; those tumbling ' boils ' show a
dissolving bar and a changing channel there ; the lines
and circles in the slick water over yonder are a warn
ing that that troublesome place is shoaling up danger
ously ; that silver streak in the shadow of the forest is
the ' break ' from a new snag, and he has located him
self in the very best place he could have found to fish
for steamboats ; that tall dead tree, with a single living

Life on the Mississippi 85

branch, is not going to last long, and then how is a
body ever going to get through this blind place at night
without the friendly old landmark? "

No, the romance and the beauty were all gone from
the river. All the value any feature of it had for me
now was the amount of usefulness it could furnish
toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat.
Since those days, I have pitied doctors from my heart.
What does the lovely flush in a beauty's cheek mean
to a doctor but a ' ' break ' ' that ripples above some
deadly disease? Are not all her visible charms sown
thick with what are to him the signs and symbols of
hidden decay? Does he ever see her beauty at all, or
doesn't he simply view her professionally, and comment
upon her unwholesome condition all to himself? And
doesn't he sometimes wonder whether he has gained
most or lost most by learning his trade?

CHAPTER X.

COMPLETING MY EDUCATION

\ V /HOSOEVER has done me the courtesy to read
W my chapters which have preceded this may pos
sibly wonder that I deal so minutely with piloting as a
science. It was the prime purpose of those chapters;
and I am not quite done yet. I wish to show, in the
most patient and painstaking way, what a wonderful
science it is. Ship channels are buoyed and lighted,
and therefore it is a comparatively easy undertaking to
learn to run them ; clear water rivers, with gravel bot
toms, change their channels very gradually, and there
fore one needs to learn them but once ; but piloting be
comes another matter when you apply it to vast streams
like the Mississippi and the Missouri, whose alluvial
banks cave and change constantly, whose snags are
always hunting up new quarters, whose sandbars are
never at rest, whose channels are forever dodging and
shirking, and whose obstructions must be confronted in
all nights and all weathers without the aid of a single
lighthouse or a single buoy ; for there is neither light
nor buoy to be found anywhere in all this three or
four thousand miles of villainous river.* I feel justified
in enlarging upon this great science for the reason that
I feel sure no one has ever yet written a paragraph
about it who had piloted a steamboat himself, and so

*True at the time referred to; not true now (1882).

(86)

Life on the Mississippi 87

had a practical knowledge of the subject. If the theme
was hackneyed, I should be obliged to deal gently with
the reader; but since it is wholly new, I have felt at
liberty to take up a considerable degree of room with
it.

When I had learned the name and position of every
visible feature of the river ; when I had so mastered its
shape that I could shut my eyes and trace it from St.
Louis to New Orleans ; when I had learned to read the
face of the water as one would cull the news from the
morning paper; and finally, when I had trained my
dull memory to treasure up an endless array of sound
ings and crossing-marks, and keep fast hold of them,
I judged that my education was complete ; so I got to
tilting my cap to the side of my head, and wearing a
toothpick in my mouth at the wheel. Mr. Bixby had
his eye on these airs. One day he said:

"What is the height of that bank yonder, at
Burgess's?"

" How can I tell, sir? It is three-quarters of a mile
away."

' Very poor eye — very poor. Take the glass."

I took the glass and presently said :

" I can't tell. I suppose that that bank is about a
foot and a half high."

" Foot and a half ! That's a six foot bank. How
high was the bank along here last trip? "

" I don't know; I never noticed."

"You didn't? Well, you must always do it
hereafter."

"Why?"

" Because you'll have to know a good many things
that it tells you. For one thing, it tells you the stage
of the river — tells you whether there's more water or
less in the river along here than there was last trip."

88 Life on the Mississippi

"The leads tell me that." I rather thought I had
the advantage of him there.

4 Yes, but suppose the leads lie? The bank would
tell you so, and then you would stir those leadsmen up
a bit. There was a ten-foot bank here last trip, and
there is only a six-foot bank now. What does that
signify ? ' '

' ' That the river is four feet higher than it was last
trip."

" Very good. Is the river rising or falling? "

"Rising."

"No, it ain't."

" I guess I am right, sir. Yonder is some drift-wood
floating down the stream."

"A rise starts the drift-wood, but then it keeps on
floating a while after the river is done rising. Now the
bank will tell you about this. Wait till you come to a
place where it shelves a little. Now here: do you see
this narrow belt of fine sediment? That was deposited
while the water was higher. You see the drift-wood
begins to strand, too. The bank helps in other ways.
Do you see that stump on the false point? "

"Ay, ay, sir."

" Well, the water is just up to the roots of it. You
must make a note of that."

"Why?"

" Because that means that there's seven feet in the
chute of 103."

" But 103 is a long way up the river yet."

"That's where the benefit of the bank comes in.
There is water enough in 103 now, yet there may not
be by the time we get there, but the bank will keep us
posted all along. You don't run close chutes on a
falling river, up-stream, and there are precious few of
them that you are allowed to run at all down-stream.
There's a law of the United States against it. The

Life on the Mississippi 89

river may be rising by the time we get to 103, and in
that case we'll run it. We are drawing — how much? "

" Six feet aft — six and a half forward."

" Well, you do seem to know something.'1

" But what I particularly want to know is, if I have
got to keep up an everlasting measuring of the banks
of this river, twelve hundred miles, month in and
month out? "

"Of course!"

My emotions were too deep for words for a while.
Presently I said :

"And how about these chutes? Are there many of
them?"

" I should say so ! I fancy we shan't run any of the
river this trip as you've ever seen it run before — so to
speak. If the river begins to rise again, we'll go up
behind bars that you've always seen standing out of the
river, high and dry, like a roof of a house; we'll cut
across low places that you've never noticed at all, right
through the middle of bars that cover three hundred
acres of river; we'll creep through cracks where you've
always thought was solid land; we'll dart through the
woods and leave twenty-five miles of river off to one
side; we'll see the hind side of every island between
New Orleans and Cairo."

' Then I've got to go to work and learn just as much
more river as I already know."

"' Just about twice as much more, as near as you can
come at it."

11 Well, one lives to find out. I think I was a fool
when I went into this business."

"Yes, that is true. And you are yet. But you'll
not be when you've learned it."

"Ah, I never can learn it! "

"I will see that you do"

By and by I ventured again :

90 Life on the Mississippi

" Have I got to learn all this thing just as I know the
rest of the river — shapes and all — and so I can run it
at night?"

"Yes. And you've got to have good fair marks
from one end of the river to the other, that will help
the bank tell you when there is water enough in each
of these countless places — like that stump, you know.
When the river first begins to rise, you can run half a
dozen of the deepest of them; when it rises a foot
more you can run another dozen; the next foot will
add a couple of dozen, and so on: so you see you
have to know your banks and marks to a dead moral
certainty, and never get them mixed ; for when you
start through one of those cracks, there's no backing
out again, as there is in the big river; you've got to go
through, or stay there six months if you get caught on
a falling river. There are about fifty of these cracks
which you can't run at all except when the river is
brimful and over the banks."

' This new lesson is a cheerful prospect."

"'Cheerful enough. And mind what I've just told
you; when you start into one of those places you've
got to go through. They are too narrow to turn
around in, too crooked to back out of, and the shoal
water is always up at the head; never elsewhere. And
the head of them is always likely to be filling up, little
by little, so that the marks you reckon their depth by,
this season, may not answer for next."

" Learn a new set, then, every year? "

"Exactly. Cramp her up to the bar! What are
you standing up through the middle of the river for? "

The next few months showed me strange things.
On the same day that we held the conversation above
narrated we met a great rise coming down the river.
The whole vast face of the stream was black with drift
ing dead logs, broken boughs, and great trees that had

Life on the Mississippi 91

caved in and been washed away. It required the nicest
steering to pick one's way through this rushing raft,
even in the daytime, when crossing from point to point;
and at night the difficulty was mightily increased;
every now and then a huge log, lying deep in the
water, would suddenly appear right under our bows,
coming head-on ; no use to try to avoid it then ; we
could only stop the engines, and one wheel would walk
over that log from one end to the other, keeping up a
thundering racket and careening the boat in a way that
was very uncomfortable to passengers. Now and then
we would hit one of these sunken logs a rattling bang,
dead in the center, with a full head of steam, and it
would stun the boat as if she had hit a continent.
Sometimes this log would lodge and stay right across
our nose, and back the Mississippi up before it; we
would have to do a little crawfishing, then, to get away
from the obstruction. We often hit white logs in the
dark, for we could not see them until we were right on
them, but a black log is a pretty distinct object at
night. A white snag is an ugly customer when the
daylight is gone.

Of course, on the great rise, down came a swarm
of prodigious timber-rafts from the headwaters of the
Mississippi, coal-barges from Pittsburg, little trading-
scows from everywhere, and broadhorns from " Posey
County," Indiana, freighted with " fruit and furniture "
— the usual term for describing it, though in plain
English the freight thus aggrandized was hoop-poles
and pumpkins. Pilots bore a mortal hatred to
these craft, and it was returned with usury. The law
required all such helpless traders to keep a light burn
ing, but it was a law that was often broken. All of
a sudden, on a murky night, a light would hop up,
right under our bows, almost, and an agonized voice,
with the backwoods ' ' whang ' ' to it, would wail out :

92 Life on the Mississippi

" Whar'n the you goin' to! Cain't you see

nothin', you dash-dashed aig-suckin', sheep-stealin',
one-eyed son of a stuffed monkey ! ' '

Then for an instant, as we whistled by, the red glare
from our furnaces would reveal the scow and the form
of the gesticulating orator, as if under a lightning flash,
and in that instant our firemen and deck-hands would
send and receive a tempest of missiles and profanity,
one of our wheels would walk off with the crashing
fragments of a steering-oar, and down the dead black
ness would shut again. And that flatboatman would
be sure to go into New Orleans and sue our boat,
swearing stoutly that he had a light burning all the time,
when in truth his gang had the lantern down below to
sing and lie and drink and gamble by, and no watch on
deck. Once, at night, in one of those forest-bordered
crevices (behind an island) which steamboatmen in
tensely describe with the phrase ' ' as dark as the inside
of a cow," we should have eaten up a Posey County
family, fruit, furniture, and all, but that they hap
pened to be fiddling down below and we just caught the
sound of the music in time to sheer off, doing no
serious damage, unfortunately, but coming so near it
that we had good hopes for a moment. These people
brought up their lantern, then, of course; and as we
backed and filled to get away, the precious family stood
in the light of it — both sexes and various ages — and
cursed us till everything turned blue. Once a coalboat-
man sent a bullet through our pilot-house when we
borrowed a steering-oar of him in a very narrow place.

CHAPTER XL

THE RIVER RISES

DURING this big rise these small-fry craft were an
intolerable nuisance. We were running chute
after chute, — a new world to me, — and if there was a
particularly cramped place in a chute, we would be
pretty sure to meet a broadhorn there ; and if he failed
to be there, we would find him in a still worse locality,
namely, the head of the chute, on the shoal water.
And then there would be no end of profane cordialities
exchanged.

Sometimes, in the big river, when we would be feel
ing our way cautiously along through a fog, the deep
hush would suddenly be broken by yells and a clamor
of tin pans, and all in an instant a log raft would ap
pear vaguely through the webby veil, close upon us;
and then we did not wait to swap knives, but snatched
our engine-bells out by the roots and piled on all the
steam we had, to scramble out of the way! One
doesn't hit a rock or a solid log raft with a steamboat
when he can get excused.

You will hardly believe it, but many steamboat clerks
always carried a large assortment of religious tracts
with them in those old departed steamboating days.
Indeed they did ! Twenty times a day we would be
cramping up around a bar, while a string of these
small-fry rascals were drifting down into the head of
the bend away above and beyond us a couple of miles.

* (93)

94 Life on the Mississippi

Now a skiff would dart away from one of them, and
come fighting its laborious way across the desert of
water. It would ' ' ease all ' ' in the shadow of our
forecastle, and the panting oarsmen would shout,
* ' Gimme a pa-a-per ! " as the skiff drifted swiftly
astern. The clerk would throw over a file of New
Orleans journals. If these were picked up without
comment, you might notice that now a dozen other
skiffs had been drifting down upon us without saying
anything. You understand, they had been waiting to
see how No. I was going to fare. No. I making no
comment, all the rest would bend to their oars and
come on, now; and as fast as they came the clerk
would heave over neat bundles of religious tracts, tied
to shingles. The amount of hard swearing which
twelve packages of religious literature will command
when impartially divided up among twelve raftsmen's
crews, who have pulled a heavy skiff two miles on a
hot day to get them, is simply incredible.

As I have said, the big rise brought a new world
under my vision. By the time the river was over its
banks we had forsaken our old paths and were hourly
climbing over bars that had stood ten feet out of water
before; we were shaving stumpy shores, like that at
the foot of Madrid Bend, which I had always seen
avoided before ; we were clattering through chutes like
that of 82, where the opening at the foot was an un
broken wall of timber till our nose was almost at the
very spot. Some of these chutes were utter solitudes.
("The dense, untouched forest overhung both banks of
/ the crooked little crack, and one could believe that
I human creatures had never intruded there before. The
swinging grape-vines, the grassy nooks and vistas
glimpsed as we swept by, the flowering creepers
waving their red blossoms from the tops of dead
trunks, and all the spendthrift richness of the forest

Life on the Mississippi 95

foliage, were wasted and thrown away there. The
chutes were lovely places to steer in; they were deep,
except at the head; the current was gentle; under the
4 * points" the water was absolutely dead, and the in
visible banks so bluff that where the tender willow
thickets projected you could bury your boat's broad
side in them as you tore along, and then you seemed
fairly to fly.

Behind other islands we found wretched little farms,
and wretcheder little log-cabins ; there were crazy rail
fences sticking a foot or two above the water, with one
or two jeans-clad, chills-racked, yellow-faced male
miserables roosting on the top rail, elbows on knees,
jaws in hands, grinding tobacco and discharging the
result at floating chips through crevices left by lost
teeth ; while the rest of the family and the few farm-
animals were huddled together in an empty wood-flat
riding at her moorings close at hand. In this flatboat
the family would have to cook and eat and sleep for a
lesser or greater number of days (or possibly weeks),
until the river should fall two or three feet and let
them get back to their log-cabins and their chills again
— chills being a merciful provision of an all-wise Provi
dence to enable them to take exercise without exertion.
And this sort of watery camping out was a thing which
these people were rather liable to be treated to a couple
of times a year: by the December rise out of the
Ohio, and the June rise out of the Mississippi. And
yet these were kindly dispensations, for they at least
enabled the poor things to rise from the dead now and
then, and look upon life when a steamboat went by.
They appreciated the blessing, too, for they spread
their mouths and eyes wide open and made the most
of these occasions. Now what could these banished
creatures find to do to keep from dying of the blues
during the low-water season !

96 Life on the Mississippi

Once, in one of these lovely island chutes, we found
our course completely bridged by a great fallen tree.
This will serve to show how narrow some of the chutes
were. The passengers had an hour's recreation in a
virgin wilderness, while the boat-hands chopped the
bridge away; for there was no such thing as turning
back, you comprehend.

From Cairo to Baton Rouge, when the river is over
its banks, you have no particular trouble in the night;
for the thousand-mile wall of dense forest that guards
the two banks all the way is only gapped with a farm
or wood-yard opening at intervals, and so you can't
" get out of the river "much easier than you could get
out of a fenced lane ; but from Baton Rouge to New
Orleans it is a different matter. The river is more than
a mile wide, and very deep — as much as two hundred
feet, in places. Both banks, for a good deal over a
hundred miles, are shorn of their timber and bordered
by continuous sugar plantations, with only here and
there a scattering sapling or row of ornamental China-
trees. The timber is shorn .off clear to the rear of the
plantations, from two to four miles. When the first
frost threatens to come, the planters snatch off their
crops in a hurry. When they have finished grinding
the cane, they form the refuse of the stalks (which
they call bagasse) into great piles and set fire to them,
though in other sugar countries the bagasse is used for
fuel in the furnaces of the sugar-mills. Now the piles
of damp bagasse burn slowly, and smoke like Satan's
own kitchen.

An embankment ten or fifteen feet high guards both
banks of the Mississippi all the way down that lower
end of the river, and this embankment is set back from
the edge of the shore from ten to perhaps a hundred
feet, according to circumstances; say thirty or forty
feet, as a general thing. Fill that whole region with

Life on the Mississippi 97

an impenetrable gloom of smoke from a hundred miles
of burning bagasse piles, when the river is over the
banks, and turn a steamboat loose along there at mid
night and see how she will feel. And see how you will
feel, too ! You find yourself away out in the midst of
a vague, dim sea that is shoreless, that fades out and
loses itself in the murky distances; for you cannot
discern the thin rib of embankment, and you are always
imagining you see a straggling tree when you don't.
The plantations themselves are transformed by the
smoke, and look like a part of the sea. All through
your watch you are tortured with the exquisite misery
of uncertainty. You hope you are keeping in the
river, but you do not know. All that you are sure
about is that you are likely to be within six feet of the
bank and destruction, when you think you are a good
half-mile from shore. And you are sure, also, that if
you chance suddenly to fetch up against the embank
ment and topple your chimneys overboard, you will
have the small comfort of knowing that it is about
what you were expecting to do. One of the great
Vicksburg packets darted out into a sugar plantation
one night, at such a time, and had to stay there a
week. But there was no novelty about it; it had often
been done before.

I thought I had finished this chapter, but I wish to
add a curious thing, while it is in my mind. It is only
relevant in that it is connected with piloting. There
used to be an excellent pilot on the river,' a Mr. X.,
who was a somnambulist. It was said that if his mind
was troubled about a bad piece of river, he was pretty
sure to get up and walk in his sleep and do strange
things. He was once fellow-pilot for a trip or two
with George Ealer, on a great New Orleans passenger
packet. During a considerable part of the first trip
George was uneasy, but got over it by and by, as X.
7

*H -t >Ur

9& Life on the Mississippi

seemed content to stay in his bed when asleep. Late
one night the boat was approaching Helena, Ark. ; the
water was low, and the crossing above the town in a
very blind and tangled condition. X. had seen the
crossing since Ealer had, and as the night was particu
larly drizzly, sullen, and dark, Ealer was considering
whether he had not better have X. called to assist
in running the place, when the door opened and ^£.
walked in. Now, on very dark nights, light is a deadly
enemy to piloting; you are aware that if you stand in
a lighted room, on such a night, you cannot see things
in the street to any purpose ; but if you put out the
lights and stand in the gloom you can make out objects
in the street pretty well. So, on very dark nights,
pilots do not smoke ; they allow no fire in the pilot
house stove, if there is a crack which .oan allow the
least ray to escape ; they order the furnaces to be
curtained with huge tarpaulins and the skylights to be
closely blinded. Then no light whatever issues from
the boat. The undefinable shape that-aew entered the
pilot-house had Mr. X.'b voice. This said:

"Let me take her, George; I've seen this place
since you have, and it is so crooked that I reckon I
can run it myself easier than I could tell you how to
do it.'1

"It is kind of you, and I swear / am willing.
I haven't got another drop of perspiration left in me.
I have been spinning around and around the wheel
like a squirrel. It is so dark I can't tell which way
she is swinging till she is coming around like a
whirligig."

So Ealer took a seat on the bench, panting and
breathless. The black phantom assumed the wheel
without saying anything, steadied the waltzing steamer
with a turn or two, and then stood at ease, coaxing
her a little to this side and then to that, as gently and

Life on the Mississippi 99

as sweetly as if the time had been noonday. When
Ealer observed this marvel of steering, he wished he
had not confessed ! He stared, and wondered, and
finally said :

" Well, I thought I knew how to steer a steamboat,
but that was another mistake of mine."

X. said nothing, but went serenely on with his work.
He rang for the leads; he rang to slow down the
steam ; he worked the boat carefully and neatly into
invisible marks, then stood at the center of the wheel
and peered blandly out into the blackness, fore and
aft, to verify his position ; as the leads shoaled more
and more, he stopped the engines entirely, and the
dead silence and suspense of "drifting" followed;
when the shoalest water was struck, he cracked on the
steam, carried her handsomely over, and then began to
work her warily into the next system of shoal marks ;
the same patient, heedful use of leads and engines fol
lowed, the boat slipped through without touching bot
tom, and entered upon the third and last intricacy of
the crossing; imperceptibly she moved through the
gloom, crept by inches into her marks, drifted tediously
till the shoalest water was cried, and then, under a
tremendous head of steam, went swinging over the reef
and away into deep water and safety !

Ealer let his long-pent breath pour out in a great
relieving sigh , and said :

' That's the sweetest piece of piloting that was ever
done on the Mississippi River! I wouldn't believe it
could be done, if I hadn't seen it."

There was no reply, and he added :

"Just hold her five minutes longer, partner, and let
me run down and get a cup of coffee."

A minute later Ealer was biting into a pie, down in
the " texas," and comforting himself with coffee. Just
then the night watchman happened in, and was about

100 Life on the Mississippi

to happen out again, when he noticed Ealer and ex
claimed :

44 Who is at the wheel, sir?0

MX."

44 Dart for the pilot-house, quicker than lightning \"

The next moment both men were flying up the pilot
house companion-way, three steps at a jump ! Nobody
there ! The great steamer was whistling down the
middle of the river at her own sweet will ! The watch
man shot out of the place again ; Ealer seized the
wheel, set an engine back with power, and held his
breath while the boat reluctantly swung away from a
"towhead," which she was about to knock into the
middle of the Gulf of Mexico !

By and by the watchman came back and said : ,

"Didn't that lunatic tell you he was asleep, when
he first came up here?"

"No."

14 Well, he was. I found him walking along on top
of the railings, just as unconcerned as another man
would walk a pavement ; and I put him to bed ; now
just this minute there he was again, away astern, going
through that sort of tight-rope deviltry the same as
before."

14 Well, I think I'll stay by next time he has one of
those fits. But I hope he'll have them often. You
just ought to have seen him take this boat through
Helena crossing. / never saw anything so gaudy be
fore. And if he can do such gold-leaf, kid-glove,
diamond-breastpin piloting when he is sound asleep,
what couldn't he do if he was dead •!"

CHAPTER XII.

SOUNDING

WHEN the river is very low, and one's steamboat is
"drawing all the water" there is in the chan
nel, — or a few inches more, as was often the case in
the old times, — one must be painfully circumspect in
his piloting. We used to have to " sound " a number
of particularly bad places almost every trip when the
river was at a very low stage.

Sounding is done in this way : The boat ties up at
the shore, just above the shoal crossing; the pilot not
on watch takes his ' ' cub ' ' or steersman and a picked
crew of men (sometimes an officer also), and goes out
in the yawl — provided the boat has not that rare and
sumptuous luxury, a regularly devised "sounding-
boat" — and proceeds to hunt for the best water, the
pilot on duty watching his movements through a spy
glass, meantime, and in some instances assisting by
signals of the boat's whistle, signifying "try higher
up" or "try lower down"; for the surface of the
water, like an oil-painting, is more expressive and in
telligible when inspected from a little distance than
very close at hand. The whistle signals are seldom
necessary, however; never, perhaps, except when the
wind confuses the significant ripples upon the water's
surface. When the yawl has reached the shoal place,
the speed is slackened, the pilot begins to sound the
depth with a pole ten or twelve feet long, and the

(101)

102 Life on the Mississippi

steersman at ttfe tiller obeys the order to " hold her up
to: starboard:"; or "let her fall off to larboard ";* or
'- steady'-^- steady as 'you go. "

When the measurements indicate that the yawl is
approaching the shoalest part of the reef, the command
is given to "Ease all!" Then the men stop rowing
and the yawl drifts with the current. The next order
is, "Stand by with the buoy!" The moment the
shallowest point is reached, the pilot delivers the order,
" Let go the buoy!" and over she goes. If the pilot
is not satisfied, he sounds the place again; if he finds
better water higher up or lower down, he removes the
buoy to that place. Being finally satisfied, he gives
the order, and all the men stand their oars straight up
in the air, in line; a blast from the boat's whistle indi
cates that the signal has been seen ; then the men
" give way " on their oars and lay the yawl alongside
the buoy; the steamer comes creeping carefully down,
is pointed straight at the buoy, husbands her power for
the coming struggle, and presently, at the critical mo
ment, turns on all her steam and goes grinding and
wallowing over the buoy and the sand, and gains the
deep water beyond. Or maybe she doesn't; maybe
she "strikes and swings." Then she has to while
away several hours (or days) sparring herself off.

Sometimes a buoy is not laid at all, but the yawl
goes ahead, hunting the best water, and the steamer
follows along in its wake. Often there is a deal of fun
and excitement about sounding, especially if it is a
glorious summer day, or a blustering night. But in
winter the cold and the peril take most of the fun out
of it.

A buoy is nothing but a board four or five feet long,

* The term "larboard" is never used at sea, now, to signify the left
hand; but was always used on the river in my time.

Life on the Mississippi 103

with one end turned up ; it is a reversed schoolhouse
bench, with one of the supports left and the other re
moved. It is anchored on the shoalest part of the reef
by a rope with a heavy stone made fast to the end of
it. But for the resistance of the turned-up end of the
reversed bench, the current would pull the buoy under
water. At night, a paper lantern with a candle in it is
fastened on top of the buoy, and this can be seen a
mile or more, a little glimmering spark in the waste of
blackness.

Nothing delights a cub so much as an opportunity
to go out sounding. There is such an air of adventure
about it; often there is danger; it is so gaudy and
man-of-war-like to sit up in the stern-sheets and steer a
swift yawl ; there is something fine about the exultant
spring of the boat when an experienced old sailor crew
throw their souls into the oars ; it is lovely to see the
white foam stream away from the bows ; there is music
in the rush of the water ; it is deliciously exhilarating, in
summer, to go speeding over the breezy expanses of
the river when the world of wavelets is dancing in the
sun. It is such grandeur, too, to the cub, to get a
chance to give an order ; for often the pilot will simply
say, "Let her go about!" and leave the rest to the
cub, who instantly cries, in his sternest tone of com
mand, "Ease, starboard! Strong on the larboard!
Starboard, give way! With a will, men!" The cub
enjoys sounding for the further reason that the eyes of
the passengers are watching all the yawl's movements
with absorbing interest, if the time be daylight; and if
it be night, he knows that those same wondering eyes
are fastened upon the yawl's lantern as it glides out
into the gloom and dims away in the remote dis
tance.

One trip a pretty girl of sixteen spent her time in
our pilot-house with her uncle and aunt, every day and

104 Life on the Mississippi

all day long. I fell in love with her. So did Mr.
Thornburg's cub, Tom G. Tom and I had been
bosom friends until this time ; but now a coolness
began to arise. I told the girl a good many of my
river adventures, and made myself out a good deal of a
hero; Tom tried to make himself appear to be a hero,
too, and succeeded to some extent, but then he always
had a way of embroidering. However, virtue is its
own reward, so I was a barely perceptible trifle ahead
in the contest. About this time something happened
which promised handsomely for me : the pilots decided
to sound the crossing at the head of 2 1 . This would
occur about nine or ten o'clock at night, when the
passengers would be still up ; it would be Mr. Thorn-
burg's watch, therefore my chief would have to do the
sounding. We had a perfect love of a sounding-boat —
long, trim, graceful, and as fleet as a greyhound; her
thwarts were cushioned ; she carried twelve oarsmen ;
one of the mates was always sent in her to transmit
orders to her crew, for ours was a steamer where no
end of " style " was put on.

We tied up at the shore above 21, and got ready.
It was a foul night, and the river was so wide, there,
that a landsman's uneducated eyes could discern no
opposite shore through such a gloom. The passengers
were alert and interested ; everything was satisfactory.
As I hurried through the engine-room, picturesquely
gotten up in storm toggery, I met Tom, and could not
forbear delivering myself of a mean speech :

" Ain't you glad you don't have to go out sound-
ing?"

Tom was passing on, but he quickly turned, and
said:

" Now just for that, you can go and get the sound
ing-pole yourself. I was going after it, but I'd see
you in Halifax, now, before I'd do it."

Life on the Mississippi 105

"Who wants you to get it? I don't. It's in the
sounding-boat."

"It ain't, either. It's been new-painted; and it's
been up on the ladies' cabin guards two days, drying."

I flew back, and shortly arrived among the crowd of
watching and wondering ladies just in time to hear the
command :

14 Give way, men !"

I looked over, and there was the gallant sounding-
boat booming away, the unprincipled Tom presiding at
the tiller, and my chief sitting by him with the sound
ing-pole which I had been sent on a fool's errand to
fetch. Then that young girl said to me:

** Oh, how awful to Jiave to go out in that little boat
on such a night! Do you think there is any danger?"

I would rather have been stabbed. I went off, full
of venom, to help in the pilot-house. By and by the
boat's lantern disappeared, and after an interval a
wee spark glimmered upon the face of the water a mile
away. Mr. Thornburg blew the whistle in acknowledg
ment, backed the steamer out, and made for it. We
flew along for a while, then slackened steam and went
cautiously gliding toward the spark. Presently Mr.
Thornburg exclaimed :

" Hello, the buoy-lantern's out!'1

He stopped the engines. A moment or two later he
said :

" Why, there it is again !"

So he came ahead on the engines once more, and
rang for the leads. Gradually the water shoaled up,
and then began to deepen again ! Mr. Thornburg
muttered :

'* Well, I don't understand this. I believe that buoy
has drifted off the reef. Seems to be a little too far to
the left. No matter, it is safest to run over it, any
how."

106 Life on the Mississippi

So, in that solid world of darkness we went creeping
down on the light. Just as our bows were in the act
of plowing over it, Mr. Thornburg seized the bell-
ropes, rang a startling peal, and exclaimed :

" My soul, it's the sounding-boat!"

A sudden chorus of wild alarms burst out far below
— a pause — and then a sound of grinding and crash
ing followed. Mr. Thornburg exclaimed :

' There ! the paddle-wheel has ground the sounding-
boat to lucifer matches ! Run ! See who is killed ! ' '

I was on the main-deck in the twinkling of an eye.
My chief and the third mate and nearly all the men
were safe. They had discovered their danger when it
was too late to pull out of the way; then, when the
great guards overshadowed them a moment later, they
were prepared and knew what to do; at my chief's
order they sprang at the right instant, seized the
guard, and were hauled aboard. The next moment
the sounding-yawl swept aft to the wheel and was
struck and splintered to" atoms. Two of the men and
the cub Tom were missing — a fact which spread like
wildfire over the boat. The passengers came flocking
to the forward gangway, ladies and all, anxious-eyed,
white-faced, and talked in awed voices of the dreadful
thing. And often and again I heard them say, ' ' Poor
fellows ! poor boy, poor boy !"

By this time the boat's yawl was manned and away,
to search for the missing. Now a faint call was heard,
off to the left. The yawl had disappeared in the other
direction. Half the people rushed to one side to en
courage the swimmer with their shouts ; the other half
rushed the other way to shriek to the yawl to turn
about. By the callings the swimmer was approaching,
but some said the sound showed failing strength. The
crowd massed themselves against the boiler-deck rail
ings, leaning over and staring into the gloom ; and

Life on the Mississippi 107

every faint and fainter cry wrung from them such
words as "Ah, poor fellow, poor fellow! is there no
way to save him?"

But still the cries held out, and drew nearer, and
presently the voice said pluckily :

' ' I can make it ! Stand by with a rope ! ' '

What a rousing cheer they gave him ! The chief
mate took his stand in the glare of a torch- basket, a
coil of rope in his hand, and his men grouped about
him. The next moment the swimmer's face appeared
in the circle of light, and in another one the owner of
it was hauled aboard, limp and drenched, while cheer
on cheer went up. It was that devil Tom.

The yawl crew searched everywhere, but found no
sign of the two men. They probably failed to catch
the guard, tumbled back, and were struck by the wheel
and killed. Tom had never jumped for the guard at
all, but had plunged head-first into the river and dived
under the wheel. It was nothing; I could have done
it easy enough, and I said so ; but everybody went on
just the same, making a wonderful to-do over that ass,
as if he had done something great. That girl couldn't
seem to have enough of that pitiful " hero " the rest of
the trip ; but little I cared ; I loathed her, anyway.

The way we came to mistake the sounding-boat's
lantern for the buoy-light was this : My chief said that
after laying the buoy he fell away and watched it till it
seemed to be secure ; then he took up a position a
hundred yards below it and a little to one side of the
steamer's course, headed the sounding-boat up-stream,
and waited. Having to wait some time, he and the
officer got to talking; he looked up when he judged
that the steamer was about on the reef ; saw that the
buoy was gone, but supposed that the steamer had
already run over it; he went on with his talk; he
noticed that the steamer was getting very close down to

108 Life on the Mississippi

him, but that was the correct thing; it was her business
to shave him closely, for convenience in taking him
aboard ; he was expecting her to sheer off, until the
last moment; then it flashed upon him that she was
trying to run him down, mistaking his lantern for the
buoy-light; so he sang out, "Stand by to spring for
the guard, men!" and the next instant the jump was
made.

CHAPTER XIII.

A PILOT'S NEEDS

BUT I am wandering from what I was intending to
do ; that is, make plainer than perhaps appears in
the previous chapters some of the peculiar require
ments of the science of piloting. First of all, there is
one faculty which a pilot must incessantly cultivate
until he has brought it to absolute perfection. Nothing
short of perfection will do. That faculty is memory.
He cannot stop with merely thinking a thing is so and
so ; he must know it ; for this is eminently one of the
4 'exact" sciences. With what scorn a pilot was
looked upon, in the old times, if he ever ventured to
deal in that feeble phrase "I think," instead of the
vigorous one, "I know!" One cannot easily realize
what a tremendous thing it is to know every trivial
detail of twelve hundred miles of river and know it
with absolute exactness. If you will take the longest
street in New York, and travel up and down it, con
ning its features patiently until you know every house
and window and lamp-post and big and little sign by
heart, and know them so accurately that you can in
stantly name the one you are abreast of when you are
jet down at random in that street in the middle of an
inky black night, you will then have a tolerable notion
of the amount and the exactness of a pilot's knowledge
who carries the Mississippi River in his head. And
8 CIOQ)

110 Life on the Mississippi

then, if you will go on until you know every street
crossing, the character, size, and position of the cross
ing-stones, and the varying depth of mud in each of
those numberless places, you will have some idea of
what the pilot must know in order to keep a Mississippi
steamer out of trouble. Next, if you will take half of
the signs in that long street, and change their places
once a month, and still manage to know their new
positions accurately on dark nights, and keep up with
these repeated changes without making any mistakes,
you will understand what is required of a pilot's peer
less memory by the fickle Mississippi.

I think a 'pilot's memory is about the most wonderful
thing in the world. To know the Old and New Testa
ments by heart, and be able to recite them glibly, for
ward or backward, or begin at random anywhere in
the book and recite both ways and never trip or make
a mistake, is no extravagant mass of knowledge, and
no marvelous facility, compared to a pilot's massed
knowledge of the Mississippi and his marvelous facility
in the handling of it. I make this comparison deliber
ately, and believe I am not expanding the truth when
I do it. Many will think my figure too strong, but
pilots will not.

And how easily and comfortably the pilot's memory
does its work ; how placidly effortless is its way ; how
unconsciously it lays up its vast stores, hour by hour,
day by day, and never loses or mislays a single valu
able package of them all ! Take an instance. Let a
leadsman cry, ' ' Half twain ! half twain ! half twain !
half twain! half twain!" until it becomes as monoto
nous as the ticking of a clock; let conversation be
going on all the time, and the pilot be doing his share
of the talking, and no longer consciously listening to
the leadsman ; and in the midst of this endless string
of half twains let a single ' ' quarter twain ! " be inter-

Life on the Mississippi 111

jected, without emphasis, and then the half twain cry
go on again, just as before : two or three weeks later
that pilot can describe with precision the boat's posi
tion in the river when that quarter twain was uttered,
and give you such a lot of head-marks, stern-marks,
and side-marks to guide you, that you ought to be able
to take the boat there and put her in that same spot
again yourself! The cry of " quarter twain " did not
really take his mind from his talk, but his trained
faculties instantly photographed the bearings, noted
the change of depth, and laid up the important details
for future reference without requiring any assistance
from him in the matter. If you were walking and
talking with a friend, and another friend at your side
kept up a monotonous repetition of the vowel sound
A, for a couple of blocks, and then in the midst inter
jected an R, thus, A, A, A, A, A, R, A, A, A,
etc., and gave the R no emphasis, you would not be
able to state, two or three weeks afterward, that the R
had been put in, nor be able to tell what objects you
were passing at the moment it was done. But you
could if your memory had been patiently and labori
ously trained to do that sort of thing mechanically.

Give a man a tolerably fair memory to start with,
and piloting will develop it into a very colossus of
capability. But only in the matters it is daily drilled
in. A time would come when the man's faculties
could not help noticing landmarks and soundings, and
his memory could not help holding on to them with
the grip of a vice ; but if you asked that same man at
noon what he had had for breakfast, it would be ten
chances to one that he could not tell you. Astonish
ing things can be done with the human memory if you
will devote it faithfully to one particular line of
business.

At the time that wages soared so high on the Mis*

112 Life on the Mississippi

souri River, my chief, Mr. Bixby, went up there and
learned more than a thousand miles of that stream with
an ease and rapidity that were astonishing. When he
had seen each division once in the daytime and once at
night, his education was so nearly complete that he
took out a "daylight" license; a few trips later he
took out a full license, and went to piloting day and
night — and he ranked A I, too.

Mr. Bixby placed me as steersman for a while under
a pilot whose feats of memory were a constant marvel
to me. However, his memory was born in him, I
think, not built. For instance, somebody would men
tion a name. Instantly Mr. Brown would break in :

" Oh, I knew him. Sallow-faced, red-headed fel
low, with a little scar on the side of his throat, like a
splinter under the flesh. He was only in the Southern
trade six months. That was thirteen years ago. I
made a trip with him. There was five feet in the
upper river then ; the Henry Blake grounded at the
foot of Tower Island drawing four and a half; the
George Elliott unshipped her rudder on the wreck of
the Sunflower-

" Why, the Sunflower didn't sink until

/ know when she sunk ; it was three years before
that, on the 2d of December; Asa Hardy was captain
of her, and his brother John was first clerk ; and it was
his first trip in her, too; Tom Jones told me these
things a week afterward in New Orleans ; he was first
mate of the Sunflower. Captain Hardy stuck a nail in
his foot the 6th of July of the next year, and died of
the lockjaw on the I5th. His brother John died two
years after, — 3d of March, — erysipelas. I never saw
either of the Hardys, — they were Alleghany River
men, — but people who knew them told me all these
things. And they said Captain Hardy wore yarn
socks winter and summer just the same, and his first

Life on the Mississippi 113

wife's name was Jane Shook, — she was from New
England, — and his second one died in a lunatic
asylum. It was in the blood. She was from Lexing
ton, Kentucky. Name was Horton before she was
married."

And so on, by the hour, the man's tongue would
go. He could not forget anything. It was simply
impossible. The most trivial details remained as dis
tinct and luminous in his head, after they had lain
there for years, as the most memorable events. His
was not simply a pilot's memory; its grasp was uni
versal. If he were talking about a trifling letter he
had received seven years before, he was pretty sure to
deliver you the entire screed from memory. And
then, without observing that he was departing from the
true line of his talk, he was more than likely to hurl in
a long-drawn parenthetical biography of the writer of
that letter ; and you were lucky indeed if he did not
take up that writer's relatives, one by one, and give
you their biographies, too.

Such a memory as that is a great misfortune. To
it, all occurrences are of the same size. Its possessor
cannot distinguish an interesting circumstance from an
uninteresting one. As a talker, he is bound to clog
his narrative with tiresome details and make himself an
insufferable bore. Moreover, he cannot stick to his
subject. He picks up every little grain of memory he
discerns in his way, and so is led aside. Mr. Brown
would start out with the honest intention of telling you
a vastly funny anecdote about a dog. He would be
" so full of laugh " that he could hardly begin; then
his memory would start with the dog's breed and
personal appearance ; drift into a history of his owner ;
of his owner's family, with descriptions of weddings
and burials that had occurred in it, together with reci
tals of congratulatory verses and obituary poetry pro-
8

114 Life on the Mississippi

yoked by the same ; then this memory would recollect
that one of these events occurred during /the celebrated
" hard winter " of such and such a year, and a minute
description of that winter would follow, along with the
names of people who were frozen to death, and statis
tics showing the high figures which pork and hay went
up to. Pork and hay would suggest corn and fodder;
corn and fodder would suggest cows and horses ; cows
and horses would suggest the circus and certain cele
brated bare-back riders ; the transition from the circus to
the menagerie was easy and natural ; from the elephant
to equatorial Africa was but a step ; then of course the
heathen savages would suggest religion ; and at the
end of three or four hours' tedious jaw, the watch
would change, and Brown would go out of the pilot
house muttering extracts from sermons he had heard
years before about the efficacy of prayer as a means of
grace. And the original first mention would be all
you had learned about that dog, after all this waiting
and hungering.

A pilot must have a memory; but there are two
higher qualities which he must also have. He must
have good and quick judgment and decision, and a
cool, calm courage thnt no peril can shake. Give a
man the merest trifle of pluck to start with, and by the
time he has become a pilot he cannot be unmanned by
any danger a steamboat can get into ; but one cannot
quite say the same for judgment. Judgment is a
matter of brains, and a man must start with a good
stock of that article or he will never succeed as a
pilot.

The growth of courage in the pilot-house is steady
all the time, but it does not reach a high and satisfac
tory condition until some time after the young pilot
has been " standing his own watch" alone and under
the staggering weight of all the responsibilities con-

Life on the Mississippi 115

nected with the position. When an apprentice has be
come pretty thoroughly acquainted with the river, he
goes clattering along so fearlessly with his steamboat,
night or day, that he presently begins to imagine that
it is his courage that animates him ; but the first time
the pilot steps out and leaves him to his own devices
he finds out it was the other man's. He discovers
that the article has been left out of his own cargo
altogether. The whole river is bristling with exigencies
in a moment ; he is not prepared for them ; he does
not know how to meet them ; all his knowledge for
sakes him ; and within fifteen minutes he is as white as
a sheet and scared almost to death. Therefore pilots
wisely train these cubs by various strategic tricks to
look danger in the face a little more calmly. A favor
ite way of theirs is to play a friendly swindle upon the
candidate.

Mr. Bixby served me in this fashion once, and for
years afterward I used to blush, even in my sleep,
when I thought of it. I had become a good steers
man ; so good, indeed, that I had all the work to do
on our watch, night and day. Mr. Bixby seldom
made a suggestion to me ; all he ever did was to take
the wheel on particularly bad nights or in particularly
bad crossings, land the boat when she needed to be
landed, play gentleman of leisure nine-tenths of the
watch, and collect the wages. The lower river was
about bank-full, and if anybody had questioned my
ability to run any crossing between Cairo and New
Orleans without help or instruction, I should have felt
irreparably hurt. The idea of being afraid of any
crossing in the lot, in the daytime, was a thing too
preposterous for contemplation. Well, one matchless
summer's day I was bowling down the bend above
Island 66, brimful of self-conceit and carrying my
nose as high as a giraffe's, when Mr. Bixby said:
H

116 Life on the Mississippi

" I am going below a while. I suppose you know
the next crossing?"

This was almost an affront. It was about the plain
est and simplest crossing in the whole river. One
couldn't come to any harm, whether he ran it right or
not; and as for depth, there never had been any
bottom there. I knew all this, perfectly well.

" Know how to run it? Why, I can run it with my
eyes shut."

" How much water is there in it?"

" Well, that is an odd question. I couldn't get bot
tom there with a church steeple."

" You think so, do you?"

The very tone of the question shook my confidence.
That was what Mr. Bixby was expecting. He left,
without saying anything more. I began to imagine all
sorts of things. Mr. Bixby, unknown to me, of
course, sent somebody down to the forecastle with
some mysterious instructions to the leadsmen, another
messenger was sent to whisper among the officers, and
then Mr. Bixby went into hiding behind a smoke-stack
where he could observe results. Presently the
captain stepped out on the hurricane deck; next the
chief mate appeared ; then a clerk. Every moment or
two a straggler was added to my audience ; and before
I got to the head of the island I had fifteen or twenty
people assembled down there under my nose. I began
to wonder what the trouble was. As I started across,
the captain glanced aloft at me and said, with a sham
uneasiness in his voice :

"Where is Mr. Bixby?"

" Gone below, sir."

But that did the business for me. My imagination
began to construct dangers out of nothing, and they
multiplied faster than I could keep the run of them.
All at once I imagined I saw shoal water ahead ! The

Life on the Mississippi 117

wave of coward agony that surged through me then
came near dislocating every joint in me. All my con
fidence in that crossing vanished. I seized the bell-
rope ; dropped it, ashamed ; seized it again ; dropped
it once more ; clutched it tremblingly once again, and
pulled it so feebly that I could hardly hear the stroke
myself. Captain and mate sang out instantly, and
both together :

1 ' Starboard lead there ! and quick about it ! "

This was another shock. I began to climb the
wheel like a squirrel ; but I would hardly get the boat
started to port before I would see new dangers on that
side, and away I would spin to the other; only to find
perils accumulating to starboard, and be crazy to get
to port again. Then came the leadsman's sepulchral
cry:

;'D-e-e-p four!"

Deep four in a bottomless crossing ! The terror of
it took my breath away.

' ' M-a-r-k three ! M-a-r-k three ! Quarter-less-
three ! Half twain!"

This was frightful ! I seized the bell-ropes and
stopped the engines.

"Quarter twain! Quarter twain! Mark twain!"

I was helpless. I did not know what in the world
to do. I was quaking from head to foot, and I could
have hung my hat on my eyes, they stuck out so far.

' ' Quarter-/*^- twain ! Nine-and-a-//# //" /' '

We were drawing nine ! My hands were in a nerve
less flutter. I could not ring a bell intelligibly with
them. I flew to the speaking-tube and shouted to the
engineer :

'4 Oh, Ben, if you love me, back her ! Quick, Ben !
Oh, back the immortal soul out of her!"

I heard the door close gently. I looked around,
and there stood Mr. Bixby, smiling a bland, sweet

118 Life on the Mississippi

smile. Then the audience on the hurricane deck sent
up a thundergust of humiliating laughter. I saw it all,
now, and I felt meaner than the meanest man in human
history. I laid in the lead, set the boat in her marks,
came ahead on the engines, and said :

" It was a fine trick to play on an orphan, wasn't
it? I suppose I'll never hear the last of how I was ass
enough to heave the lead at the head of 66."

'Well, no, you won't, maybe. In fact I hope you
won't; for I want you to learn something by that ex
perience. Didn't you know there was no bottom in
that crossing?"

"Yes, sir, I did."

" Very well, then. You shouldn't have allowed me
or anybody else to shake your confidence in that
knowledge. Try to remember that. And another
thing: when you get into a dangerous place, don't
turn coward. That isn't going to help matters any."

It was a good enough lesson, but pretty hardly
learned. Yet about the hardest part of it was that for
months I so often had to hear a phrase which I had
conceived a particular distaste for. It was, "Oh,
Ben, if you love me, back her!"

CHAPTER XIV.

RANK AND DIGNITY OF PILOTING

IN my preceding chapters I have tried, by going into
the minutiae of the science of piloting, to carry the
reader step by step to a comprehension of what the
science consists of ; and at the same time I have tried
to show him that it is a very curious and wonderful
science, too, and very worthy of his attention. If I
have seemed to love my subject, it is no surprising
thing, for I loved the profession far better than any I
have followed since, and I took a measureless pride in
it. The reason is plain : a pilot, in those days, was the
only unfettered and entirely independent human being v
that lived in the earth. Kings are but the hampered
servants of parliament and the people ; parliaments sit
in chains forged by their constituency ; the editor of a
newspaper cannot be independent, but must work with
one hand tied behind him by party and patrons, and
be content to utter only half or two-thirds of his mind ;
no clergyman is a free man and may speak the whole
truth, regardless of his parish's opinions; writers of all
kinds are manacled servants of the public. We write
frankly and fearlessly, but then we " modify " before
we print. In truth, every man and woman and child
has a master, and worries and frets in servitude ; but,
in the day I write of, the Mississippi pilot had none.
The captain could stand upon the hurricane-deck, in

120 Life on the Mississippi

the pomp of a very brief authority, and give him five
or six orders while the vessel backed into the stream,
and then that skipper's reign was over. -The moment
that the boat was under way in the river, she was under
the sole and unquestioned control of the pilot. He
could do with her exactly as he pleased, run her when
and whither he chose, and tie her up to the bank when
ever his judgment said that that course was best. His
movements were entirely free; he consulted no one, he
received commands from nobody, he promptly resented
even the merest suggestions. Indeed, the law of the
United States forbade him to listen to commands or
suggestions, rightly considering that the pilot necessarily
knew better how to handle the boat than anybody
could tell him. So here was the novelty of a king
without a keeper, an absolute monarch who was abso
lute in sober truth and not by a fiction of words. I
have seen a boy of eighteen taking a great steamer
serenely into what seemed almost certain destruction,
and the aged captain standing mutely by, filled with
apprehension but powerless to interfere. His interfer
ence, in that particular instance, might have been an
excellent thing, but to permit it would have been to
establish a most pernicious precedent. It will easily
be guessed, considering the pilot's boundless authority,
that he was a great personage in the old steamboating
days. He was treated with marked courtesy by 'the
captain and with marked deference by all the officers
and servants; and this deferential spirit was quickly
communicated to the passengers, too. I think pilots
were about the only people I ever knew who failed to
show, in some degree, embarrassment in the presence
of traveling foreign princes. But then, people in one's
own grade of life are not usually embarrassing objects.
By long habit, pilots came to put all their wishes in
the form of commands. It " gravels " me, to this day,

Life on the Mississippi 121

to put my will in the weak shape of a request, instead
of launching it in the crisp language of an order.

In those old days, to load a steamboat at St. Louis,
take her to New Orleans and back, and discharge
cargo, consumed about twenty-five days, on an average.
Seven or eight of these days the boat spent at the
wharves of St. Louis and New Orleans, and every soul
on board was hard at work, except the two pilots; they
did nothing but play gentleman up town, and receive
the same wages for it as if they had been on duty.
The moment the boat touched the wharf at either city
they were ashore ; and they were not likely to be seen
again till the last bell was ringing and everything in
readiness for another voyage.

When a captain got hold of a pilot of particularly
high reputation, he took pains to keep him. When
wages were four hundred dollars a month on the Upper
Mississippi, I have known a captain to keep such a
pilot in idleness, under full pay, three months at a time,
while the river was frozen up. And one must re
member that in those cheap times four hundred dollars
was a salary of almost inconceivable splendor. Few
men on shore got such pay as that, and when they did
they were mightily looked up to. When pilots from
either end of the river wandered into our small Missouri
village, they were sought by the best and the fairest,
and treated with exalted respect. Lying in port under
wages was a thing which many pilots greatly enjoyed
and appreciated ; especially if they belonged in the
Missouri River in the heyday of that trade (Kansas
times), and got nine hundred dollars a trip, which was
equivalent to about eighteen hundred dollars a month.
Here is a conversation of that day. A chap out of the
Illinois River, with a little stern -wheel tub, accosts a
couple of ornate and gilded Missouri River pilots :

" Gentlemen, I've got a pretty good trip for the up-

122 Life on the Mississippi

country, and shall want you about a month. How
much will it be? "

" Eighteen hundred dollars apiece."

" Heavens and earth! You take my boat, let me
have your wages, and I'll divide! "

I will remark, in passing, that Mississippi steamboat-
men were important in landsmen's eyes (and in their
own, too, in a degree) according to the dignity of the
boat they were on. For instance, it was a proud thing
to be of the crew of such stately craft as the Aleck
Scott or the Grand Turk. Negro firemen, deck-hands,
and barbers belonging to those boats were distinguished
personages in their grade of life, and they were well
aware of that fact, too. A stalwart darky once gave
offense at a negro ball in New Orleans by putting on a
good many airs. Finally one of the managers bustled
up to him and said :

" Who is you, any way? Who is you? dat's what
/ wants to know ! ' '

The offender was not disconcerted in the least, but
swelled himself up and threw that into his voice which
showed that he knew he was not putting on all those
airs on a stinted capital.

"Who is I? Who is I? I- let you know mighty
quick who I is ! I want you niggers to understan' dat
I fires de middle do'*on de Aleck Scott ! "

That was sufficient.

The barber of the Grand Turk was a spruce young
negro, who aired his importance with balmy com
placency, and was greatly courted by the circle in
which he moved. The young colored population of
New Orleans were much given to flirting, at twilight,
on the banquettes of the back streets. Somebody saw
and heard something like the following, one evening,

*Door.

Life on the Mississippi 123

in one of those localities. A middle-aged negro woman
projected her head through a broken pane and shouted
(very willing that the neighbors should hear and envy),
"You Mary Ann, come in de house dis minute!
Stannin' out dah foolin' 'long wid dat low trash, an'
heah's de barber off' n de Gran Turk wants to con-
werse wid you ! "

My reference, a moment ago, to the fact that a
pilot's peculiar official position placed him out of the
reach of criticism or command, brings Stephen W.
naturally to my mind. He was a gifted pilot, a good
fellow, a tireless talker, and had both wit and humor in
him. He had a most irreverent independence, too, and
was deliciously easy-going and comfortable in the
presence of age, official dignity, and even the most
august wealth. He always had work, he never saved
a penny, he was a most persuasive borrower, he was in
debt to every pilot on the river, and to the majority of
the captains. He could throw a sort of splendor around
a bit of harum-scarum, devil-may-care piloting, that
made it almost fascinating — but not to everybody.
He made a trip with good old Captain Y. once, and
was ' ' relieved ' ' from duty when the boat got to New
Orleans. Somebody expressed surprise at the dis
charge c Captain Y. shuddered at the mere mention of
Stephen. Then his poor, thin old voice piped out
something like this :

"Why, bless me! I wouldn't have such a wild
creature on my boat for the world — not for the whole
world! He swears, he sings, he whistles, he yells —
I never saw such an Injun to yell. All times of the
night — it never made any difference to him. He
would just yell that way, not for anything in particular,
but merely on account of a kind of devilish comfort he
got out of it. I never could get into a sound sleep but
he would fetch me out of bed, all in a cold sweat, with

124 Life on the Mississippi

one of those dreadful war-whoops. A queer being —
very queer being ; no respect for anything or anybody.
Sometimes he called me 'Johnny.' And he kept a
fiddle and a cat. He played execrably. This seemed
to distress the cat, and so the cat would howl. No
body could sleep where that man — and his family —
was. And reckless? There never was anything like
it. Now you may believe it or not, but as sure as I
am sitting here, he brought my boat a-tilting down
through those awful snags at Chicot under a rattling
head of steam, and the wind a-blowing like the very
nation, at that! My officers will tell you so. They
saw it. And, sir, while he was a- tearing right down
through those snags, and I a-shaking in my shoes and
praying, I wish I may never speak again if he didn't
pucker up his mouth and go to whistling ! Yes, sir;
whistling ' Buffalo gals, can't you come out to-night,
can't you come out to-night, can't you come out to
night ; ' and doing it as calmly as if we were attending
a funeral and weren't related to the corpse. And when
I remonstrated with him about it, he smiled down on
me as if I was his child, and told me to run in the
house and try to be good, and not be meddling with
my superiors ! "*

Once a pretty mean captain caught Stephen in New
Orleans out of work and as usual out of money. He
laid steady siege to Stephen, who was in a very " close
place," and finally persuaded him to hire with him at
one hundred and twenty-five dollars per month, just
half wages, the captain agreeing not to divulge the
secret and so bring down the contempt of all the guild
upon the poor fellow. But the boat was not more than

* Considering a captain's ostentatious but hollow chieftainship, and a
pilot's real authority, there was something impudently apt and happy about
that way of phrasing it.

Life on the Mississippi 125

a day out of New Orleans before Stephen discovered
that the captain was boasting of his exploit, and that
all the officers had been told. Stephen winced, but
said nothing. About the middle of the afternoon the
captain stepped out on the hurricane-deck, cast his eye
around, and looked a good deal surprised. He glanced
inquiringly aloft at Stephen, but Stephen was whistling
placidly and attending to business. The captain stood
around a while in evident discomfort, and once or
twice seemed about to make a suggestion; but the
etiquette of the river taught him to avoid that sort of
rashness, and so he managed to hold his peace. He
chafed and puzzled a few minutes longer, then retired
to his apartments. But soon he was out again, and
apparently more perplexed than ever. Presently he
ventured to remark, with deference :

" Pretty good stage of the river now, ain't it, sir? "

1 ' Well, I should say so! Bank full is a pretty
liberal stage."

" Seems to be a good deal of current here."

"Good deal don't describe it! It's worse than a
mill-race."

" Isn't it easier in toward shore than it is out here in
the middle?"

'* Yes, I reckon it is; but a body can't be too care
ful with a steamboat. It's pretty safe out here; can't
strike any bottom here, you can depend on that."

The captain departed, looking rueful enough. At
this rate, he would probably die of old age before his
boat got to St. Louis. Next day he appeared on deck
and again found Stephen faithfully standing up the
middle of the river, righting the whole vast force of
the Mississippi, and whistling the same placid tune.
This thing was becoming serious. In by the shore was
a slower boat clipping along in the easy water and gain
ing steadily ; she began to make for an island chute ;

126 Life on the Mississippi

Stephen stuck to the middle of the river. Speech was
wrung from the captain. He said :

" Mr. W., don't that chute cut off a good deal of
distance ? ' '

" I think it does, but I don't know."

" Don't know! Well, isn't there water enough in it
now to go through ? ' '

" I expect there is, but I am not certain."

" Upon my word this is odd ! Why, those pilots on
that boat yonder are going to try it. Do you mean to
say that you don't know as much as they do? "

" They ! Why, they are two hundred-and-fifty-
dollar pilots! But don't you be uneasy; I know as
much as any man can afford to know for a hundred and
twenty-five ! ' '

The captain surrendered.

Five minutes later Stephen was bowling through the
chute and showing the r.Val boat a two-hundred-and
fifty-dollar pair of heels.

HE SWORE AT THE CAPTAIN

CHAPTER XV.

THE PILOTS' MONOPOLY

ONE day, on board the Aleck Scott, my chief, Mr.
Bixby, was crawling carefully through a close
place at Cat Island, both leads going, and everybody
holding his breath. The captain, a nervous, appre
hensive man, kept still as long as he could, but finally
broke down and shouted from the hurricane-deck:

"For gracious' sake, give her steam, Mr. Bixby \
give her steam! She'll never raise the reef on this
headway ! ' '

For all the effect that was produced upon Mr. Bixby,
one would have supposed that no remark had been
made. But five minutes later, when the danger was
past and the leads laid in, he burst instantly into a con
suming fury, and gave the captain the most admirable
cursing I ever listened to. No bloodshed ensued, but
that was because the captain's cause was weak, for
ordinarily he was not a man to take correction quietly.

Having now set forth in detail the nature of the
science of piloting, and likewise described the rank
which the pilot held among the fraternity of steam-
boatmen, this seems a fitting place to say a few words
about an organization which the pilots once formed for
the protection of their guild. It was curious and note
worthy in this, that it was perhaps the compactest, the
completest, and the strongest commercial organization
ever formed among men.

(127)

128 Life on the Mississippi

For a long time wages had been two hundred and
fifty dollars a month; but curiously enough, as steam
boats multiplied and business increased, the wages
began to fall little by little. It was easy to discover
the reason of this. Too many pilots were being
" made." It was nice to have a " cub," a steersman,
to do all the hard work for a couple of years, gratis,
while his master sat on a high bench and smoked ; all
pilots and captains had sons or nephews who wanted to
be pilots. By and by it came to pass that nearly every
pilot on the river had a steersman. When a steersman
had made an amount of progress that was satisfactory
to any two pilots in the trade, they could get a pilot's
license for him by signing an application directed to
the United States Inspector. Nothing further was
needed; usually no questions were asked, no proofs of
capacity required.

Very well, this growing swarm of new pilots presently
began to undermine the wages in order to get berths.
Too late — apparently — the knights of the tiller per
ceived their mistake. Plainly, something had to be
done, and quickly, but what was to be the needful
thing? A close organization. Nothing else would
answer. To compass this seemed an impossibility;
so it was talked and talked and then dropped. It was
too likely to ruin whoever ventured to move in the
matter. But at last about a dozen of the boldest —
and some of them the best — pilots on the river
launched themselves into the enterprise and took all
the chances. They got a special charter from the
legislature, with large powers, under the name of the
Pilots' Benevolent Association; elected their officers,
completed their organization, contributed capital, put
' ' association ' ' wages up to two hundred and fifty dol
lars at once — and then retired to their homes, for they
were promptly discharged from employment. But

Life on the Mississippi 129

there were two or three unnoticed trifles in their by
laws which had the seeds of propagation in them. For
instance, all idle members of the association, in good
standing, were entitled to a pension of twenty-five dol
lars per month. This began to bring in one straggler
after another from the ranks of the new-fledged pilots,
in the dull (summer) season. Better have twenty-five
dollars than starve ; the initiation fee was only twelve
dollars, and no dues required from the unemployed.

Also, the widows of deceased members in good
standing could draw twenty-five dollars per month,
and a certain sum for each of their children. Also,
the said deceased would be buried at the association's
expense. These things resurrected all the superan
nuated and forgotten pilots in the Mississippi Valley.
They came from farms, they came from interior villages,
they came from everywhere. They came on crutches,
on drays, in ambulances, — any way, so they got there.
They paid in their twelve dollars, and straightway
began to draw out twenty-five dollars a month and
calculate their burial bills.

By and by all the useless, helpless pilots, and a dozen
first-class ones, were in the association, and nine-tenths
of the best pilots out of it and laughing at it. It was
the laughing-stock of the whole river. Everybody
joked about the by-law requiring members to pay ten
per cent, of their wages, every month, into the treasury
for the support of the association, whereas all the
members were outcast and tabooed, and no one would .
employ them . Everybody was derisively grateful to the
association for taking all the worthless pilots out of the
way and leaving the whole field to the excellent and the
deserving; and everybody was not only jocularly grate
ful for that, but for a result which naturally followed,
namely, the gradual advance of wages as the busy season
approached. Wages had gone up from the low figure
9

130 Life on the Mississippi

of one hundred dollars a month to one hundred and
twenty-five, and in some cases to one hundred and
fifty; and it was great fun to enlarge upon the fact
that this charming thing had been accomplished by a
body of men not one of whom received a particle of
benefit from it. Some of the jokers used to call at the
association rooms and have a good time chaffing the
members and offering them the charity of taking them as
steersmen for a trip, so that they could see what the
forgotten river looked like. However, the association
was content; or at least gave no sign to the contrary.
Now and then it captured a pilot who was "out of
luck," and added him to its list; and these later
additions were very valuable, for they were good
pilots; the incompetent ones had all been absorbed
before. As business freshened, wages climbed grad
ually up to two hundred and fifty dollars — the associa
tion figure — and became firmly fixed there ; and still
without benefiting a member of that body, for nc
member was hired. The hilarity at the association's
expense burst all bounds, now. There was no end to
the fun which that poor martyr had to put up with.

However, it is a long lane that has no turning.
Winter approached, business doubled and trebled,
and an avalanche of Missouri, Illinois, and Upper
Mississippi boats came pouring down to take a chance
in the New Orleans trade. All of a sudden pilots were
in great demand, and were correspondingly scarce.
The time for revenge was come. It was a bitter pill to
have to accept association pilots at last, yet captains
and owners agreed that there was no other way. But
none of these outcasts offered ! So there was a still
bitterer pill to be swallowed : they must be sought out

and asked for their services. Captain was the

first man who found it necessary to take the dose, and
he had been the loudest derider of the organization.

Life on the Mississippi 131

He hunted up one of the best of the association pilots
and said :

" Well, you boys have rather got the best of us for a
little while, so I'll give in with as good a grace as I can.
I've come to hire you; get your trunk aboard right
away. I want to leave at twelve o'clock. "

"I don't know about that. Who is your other
pilot?"

"I've got I. S. Why?"

"I can't go with him. He don't belong to the
association."

"What?"

"It's so."

"Do you mean to tell me that you won't turn a
wheel with one of the very best and oldest pilots on the
river because he don't belong to your association ? "

"Yes, I do."

"Well, if this isn't putting on airs ! I supposed I
was doing you a benevolence ; but I begin to think
that I am the party that wants a favor done. Are you
acting under a law of the concern? "

"Yes."

" Show it to me."

So they stepped into the association rooms, and the
secretary soon satisfied the captain, who said:

" Well, what am I to do? I have hired Mr. S. for
the entire season."

" I will provide for you," said the secretary. "I
will detail a pilot to go with you, and he shall be on
board at twelve o'clock."

" But if I discharge S., he will come on me for the
whole season's wages."

" Of course that is a matter between you and Mr. S.,
captain. We cannot meddle in your private affairs."

The captain stormed, but to no purpose. In the end
he had to discharge S., pay him about a thousand dol-

132 Life on the Mississippi

lars, and take an association pilot in his place. The
laugh was beginning to turn the other way, now.
Every day, thenceforward, a new victim fell; every
day some outraged captain discharged a non-association
pet, with tears and profanity, and installed a hated
association man in his berth. In a very little while idle
non-associationists began to be pretty plenty, brisk as
business was, and much as their services were desired.
The laugh was shifting to the other side of their mouths
most palpably. These victims, together with the cap
tains and owners, presently ceased to laugh altogether,
and began to rage about the revenge they would take
when the passing business *' spurt " was over.

Soon all the laughers that were left were the owners
and crews of boats that had two non-association pilots.
But their triumph was not very long-lived. For this
reason : It was a rigid rule of the association that its mem
bers should never, under any circumstances whatever,
give information about the channel to any " outsider."
By this time about half the boats had none but associa
tion pilots, and the other half had none but outsiders.
At the first glance one would suppose that when it came to
forbidding information about the river these two parties
could play equally at that game; but this was not so.
At every good-sized town from one end of the river to
the other, there was a " wharf-boat " to land at, instead
of a wharf or a pier. Freight was stored in it for
transportation ;* waiting passengers slept in its cabins.
Upon each of these wharf-boats the association's officers
placed a strong box, fastened with a peculiar lock
which was used in no other service but one — the
United States mail service. It was the letter-bag lock,
a sacred governmental thing. By dint of much be
seeching the Government had been persuaded to allow
the association to use this lock. Every association man
carried a key which would open these boxes. That

Life on the Mississippi 133

key, or rather a peculiar way of holding it in the hand
when its owner was asked for river information by a
stranger, — for the success of the St. Louis and New
Orleans association had now bred tolerably thriving
branches in a dozen neighboring steamboat trades, —
was the association man's sign and diploma of mem
bership; and if the stranger did not respond by
producing a similar key, and holding it in a certain
manner duly prescribed, his question was politely
ignored.

From the association's secretary each member re
ceived a package of more or less gorgeous blanks,
printed like a billhead, on handsome paper, properly
ruled in columns; a billhead worded something like
this:

STEAMER GREAT REPUBLIC.

JOHN SMITH, MASTER.
Pilots, John Jones and Thomas Brown.

CROSSINGS.

SOUNDINGS.

MARKS.

REMARKS.

These blanks were filled up, day by day, as the
voyage progressed, and deposited in the several wharf-
boat boxes. For instance, as soon as the first crossing
out from St. Louis was completed, the items would be
entered upon the blank, under the appropriate head
ings, thus :

"St. Louis. Nine and a half (feet). Stern on
courthouse, head on dead cottonwood above wood-
yard, until you raise the first reef, then pull up
square." Then under head of remarks: "Go just
outside the wrecks ; this is important. New snag just
where you straighten down; go above it."

The pilot who deposited that blank in the Cairo box

134 Life on tne Mississippi

(after adding to it the details of every crossing all the
way down from St. Louis) took out and read half a
dozen fresh reports (from upward-bound steamers)
concerning the river between Cairo and Memphis,
posted himself thoroughly, returned them to the box,
and went back aboard his boat again so armed against
accident that he could not possibly get his boat into
trouble without bringing the most ingenious careless
ness to his aid.

Imagine the benefits of so admirable a system in a
piece of river twelve or thirteen hundred miles long,
whose channel was shifting every day ! The pilot who
had formerly been obliged to put up with seeing a shoal
place once or possibly twice a month, had a hundred
sharp eyes to watch it for him now, and bushels of
intelligent brains to tell him how to run it. His informa
tion about it was seldom twenty-four hours old. If the
reports in the last box chanced to leave any misgivings
on his mind concerning a treacherous crossing, he had
his remedy ; he blew his steam whistle in a peculiar way
as soon as he saw a boat approaching ; the signal was
answered in a peculiar way if that boat's pilots were
association men; and then the two steamers ranged
alongside and all uncertainties were swept away by fresh
information furnished to the inquirer by word of mouth
and in minute detail.

The first thing a pilot did when he reached New
Orleans or St. Louis was to take his final and elaborate
report to the association parlors and hang it up there
— after which he was free to visit his family. In these
parlors a crowd was always gathered together, discuss
ing changes in the channel, and the moment there was
a fresh arrival everybody stopped talking till this witness
had told the newest news and settled the latest uncer
tainty. Other craftsmen can "sink the shop" some
times, and interest themselves in other matters. Not

Life on the Mississippi 135

so with a pilot ; he must devote himself wholly to his
profession and talk of nothing else; for it would be
small gain to be perfect one day and imperfect the next.
He has no time or words to waste if he would keep
4 'posted."

But the outsiders had a hard time of it. No particular
place to meet and exchange information, no wharf-boat
reports, none but chance and unsatisfactory ways of
getting news. The consequence was that a man some
times had to run five hundred miles of river on informa
tion that was a week or ten days old. At a fair stage
of the river that might have answered, but when the
dead low water came it was destructive.

Now came another perfectly logical result. The out
siders began to ground steamboats, sink them, and get
rnto all sorts of trouble, whereas accidents seemed to
keep entirely away from the association men. Where
fore even the owners and captains of boats furnished
exclusively with outsiders, and previously considered to
be wholly independent of the association and free to
comfort themselves with brag and laughter, began to
feel pretty uncomfortable. Still, they made a show of
keeping up the brag, until one black day when every
captain of the lot was formally ordered to immediately
discharge his outsiders and take association pilots in
their stead. And who was it that had the dashing pre
sumption to do that? Alas ! it came from a power be
hind the throne that was greater than the throne itself.
It was the underwriters !

It was no time to " swap knives." Every outsider
had to take his trunk ashore at once. Of course
it was supposed that there was collusion between the
association and the underwriters, but this was not
so. The latter had come to comprehend the excel
lence of the ' * report ' ' system of the association and
the safety it secured, and so they had made their de-

136 Life on the Mississippi

cision among themselves and upon plain business
principles.

There was weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth
in the camp of the outsiders now. But no matter,
there was but one course for them to pursue, and they
pursued it. They came forward in couples and groups,
and proffered their twelve dollars and asked for mem
bership. They were surprised to learn that several new
by-laws had been long ago added. For instance, the
initiation fee had been raised to fifty dollars ; that sum
must be tendered, and also ten per cent, of the wages
which the applicant had received each and every month
since the founding of the association. In many cases
this amounted to three or four hundred dollars. Still,
the association would not entertain the application until
the money was present. Even then a single adverse
vote killed the application. Every member had to vote
yes or no in person and before witnesses ; so it took
weeks to decide a candidacy, because many pilots were
so long absent on voyages. However, the repentant
sinners scraped their savings together, and one by one,
by our tedious voting process, they were added to the
fold. A time came, at last, when only about ten re
mained outside. They said they would starve before
they would apply. They remained idle a long while,
because of course nobody could venture to employ
them.

By and by the association published the fact that
upon a certain date the wages would be raised to five
hundred dollars per month. All the branch associa
tions had grown strong now, and the Red River one had
advanced wages to seven hundred dollars a month.
Reluctantly the ten outsiders yielded, in view of these
things, and made application. There was another new
by-law, by this time, which required them to pay dues
not only on all the wages they had received since the

Life on the Mississippi 137

association was born, but also on what they would have
received if they had continued at work up to the time
of their application, instead of going off to pout in
idleness. It turned out to be a difficult matter to elect
them, but it was accomplished at last. The most
virulent sinner of this batch had stayed out and
allowed "dues" to accumulate against him so long
that he had to send in six hundred and twenty-five dol
lars with his application.

The association had a good bank account now and
was very strong. There was no longer an outsider.
A by-law was added forbidding the reception of any
more cubs or apprentices for five years ; after which
time a limited number would be taken, not by indi
viduals, but by the association, upon these terms: the
applicant must not be less than eighteen years old,
and of respectable family and good character; he
must pass an examination as to education, pay a thou
sand dollars in advance for the privilege of becoming an
apprentice, and must remain under the commands of
the association until a great part of the membership
(more than half, I think) should be willing to sign his
application for a pilot's license.

All previously articled apprentices were now taken
away from their masters and adopted by the associa
tion. The president and secretary detailed them for
service on one boat or another, as they chose, and
changed them from boat to boat according to certain
rules. If a pilot could show that he was in infirm
health and needed assistance, one of the cubs would be
ordered to go with him.

The widow and orphan list grew, but so did the
association's financial resources. The association at
tended its own funerals in state and paid for them.
When occasion demanded, it sent members down the
river upon searches for the bodies of brethren lost by

138 Life on the Mississippi

steamboat accidents ; a search of this kind sometimes
cost a thousand dollars.

The association procured a charter and went into the
insurance business also. It not only insured the lives
of its members, but took risks on steamboats.

The organization seemed indestructible. It was the
tightest monopoly in the world. By the United States
law no man could become a pilot unless two duly
licensed pilots signed his application, and now there
was nobody outside of the association competent to
sign. Consequently the making of pilots was at an end.
Every year some would die and others become
incapacitated by age and infirmity; there would be
no new ones to take their places. In time the asso
ciation could put wages up to any figure it chose;
and as long as it should be wise enough not to carry
the thing too far and provoke the national govern
ment into amending the licensing system, steamboat
owners would have to submit, since there would be no
help for it.

The owners and captains were the only obstruction
that lay between the association and absolute power,
and at last this one was removed. Incredible as it may
seem, the owners and captains deliberately did it them
selves. When the pilots' association announced,
months beforehand, that on the first day of September,
1 86 1, wages would be advanced to five hundred dollars
per month, the owners and captains instantly put
freights up a few cents, and explained to the farmers
along the river the necessity of it, by calling their atten
tion to the burdensome rate of wages about to be estab
lished. It was a rather slender argument, but the
farmers did not seem to detect it. It looked reasonable
to them that to add five cents freight on a bushel of
corn was justifiable under the circumstances, overlook
ing the fact that this advance on a cargo of forty thou-

Life on the Mississippi 139

sand sacks was a good deal more than necessary to
cover the new wages.

So, straightway the captains and owners got up an
association of their own, and proposed to put captains'
wages up to five hundred dollars, too, and move for
another advance in freights. It was a novel idea, but
of course an effect which had been produced once could
be produced again. The new association decreed (for
this was before all the outsiders had been taken into the
pilots' association) that if any captain employed a non-
association pilot, he should be forced to discharge him,
and also pay a fine of five hundred dollars. Several of
these heavy fines were paid before the captains' organ
ization grew strong enough to exercise full authority
over its membership; but all that ceased, presently.
The captains tried to get the pilots to decree that no
member of their corporation should serve under a non-
association captain; but this proposition was declined.
The pilots saw that they would be backed up by the
captains and the underwriters anyhow, and so they
wisely refrained from entering into entangling alliances.

As I have remarked, the pilots' association was now
the compactest monopoly in the world, perhaps, and/
seemed simply indestructible. And yet the days of its
glory were numbered. First, the new railroad, stretch
ing up through Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky,
to Northern railway centers, began to divert the
passenger travel from the steamboats; next the war
came and almost entirely annihilated the steamboating
industry during several years, leaving most of the
pilots idle and the cost of living advancing all the time ;
then the treasurer of the St. Louis association put his
hand into the till and walked off with every dollar of
the ample fund ; and finally, the railroads intruding
everywhere, there was little for steamers to do, when
the war was over, but carry freights ; so straightway

140 Life on the Mississippi

some genius from the Atlantic coast introduced the
plan of towing a dozen steamer cargoes down to New
Orleans at the tail of a vulgar little tug-boat ; and be
hold, in the twinkling of an eye, as it were, the associa
tion and the noble science of piloting were things of
the dead and pathetic past !

CHAPTER XVI.

RACING DAYS

IT was always the custom for the boats to leave New
Orleans between four and five o'clock in the after
noon. From three o'clock onward they would be
burning rosin and pitch-pine (the sign of preparation),
and so one had the picturesque spectacle of a rank,
some two or three miles long, of tall, ascending col
umns of coal-black smoke; a colonnade which sup
ported a sable roof of the same smoke blended together
and spreading abroad over the city. Every outward-
bound boat had its flag flying at the jack-staff, and
sometimes a duplicate on the verge-staff astern. Two
or three miles of mates were commanding and swear
ing with more than usual emphasis : countless proces
sions of freight barrels and boxes were spinning athwart
the levee and flying aboard the stage-planks ; belated pas
sengers were dodging and skipping among these frantic
things, hoping to reach the forecastle companion-way
alive, but having their doubts about it; women with
reticules and bandboxes were trying to keep up with
husbands freighted with carpet-sacks and crying babies,
and making a failure of it by losing their heads in the
whirl and roar and general distraction ; drays and
baggage-vans were clattering hither and thither in a
wild hurry, every now and then getting blocked and
jammed together, and then during ten seconds one
could not see them for the profanity, except vaguely

142 Life on the Mississippi

and dimly ; every windlass connected with every fore-
hatch, from one end of that long array of steamboats to
the other, was keeping up a deafening whiz and whir,
lowering freight into the hold, and the half-naked crews
of perspiring negroes that worked them were roaring
such songs as " De Las' Sack! De Las' Sack!" —
inspired to unimaginable exaltation by the chaos of
turmoil and racket that was driving everybody else
mad. By this time the hurricane and boiler decks of
the steamers would be packed black with passengers.
The "last bells" would begin to clang, all down the
line, and then the powwow seemed to double ; in a mo
ment or two the final warning came — a simultaneous
din of Chinese gongs, with the cry, "All dat ain't
goin', please to git asho' !" — and behold the powwow
quadrupled ! People came swarming ashore, overturn
ing excited stragglers that were trying to swarm
aboard. One more moment later a long array of
stage-planks was being hauled in, each with its cus
tomary latest passenger clinging to the end of it with
teeth, nails, and everything else, and the customary
latest procrastinator making a wild spring shoreward
over his head.

Now a number of the boats slide backward into the
stream, leaving wide gaps in the serried rank of steam
ers. Citizens crowd the decks of boats that are not to
go, in order to see the sight. Steamer after steamer
straightens herself up, gathers all her strength, and
presently comes swinging by, under a tremendous head
of steam, with flag flying, black smoke rolling, and
her entire crew of firemen and deck-hands (usually
swarthy negroes) massed together on the forecastle,
the best * ' voice ' ' in the lot towering from the midst
(being mounted on the capstan), waving his hat or a
flag, and all roaring a mighty chorus, while the parting
cannons boom and the multitudinous spectators wave

Life on the Mississippi 143

their hats and huzza ! Steamer after steamer falls into
line, and the stately procession goes winging its flight
up the river.

In the old times, whenever two fast boats started out
on a race, with a big crowd of people looking on, it
was inspiring to hear the crews sing, especially if the
time were nightfall, and the forecastle lit up with th<s
red glare of the torch-baskets. Racing was royal fun.
The public always had an idea that racing was danger
ous; whereas the opposite was the case — that is, after
the laws were passed which restricted each boat to just
so many pounds of steam to the square inch. No
engineer was ever sleepy or careless when his heart was
in a race. He was constantly on the alert, trying gauge-
cocks and watching things. The dangerous place was
on slow, plodding boats, where the engineers drowsed
around and allowed chips to get into the ' * doctor ' '
and shut off the water-supply from the boilers.

In the " flush times" of steamboating, a race be
tween two notoriously fleet steamers was an event of
vast importance. The date was set for it several weeks
in advance, and from that time forward the whole Mis
sissippi Valley was in a state of consuming excitement.
Politics and the weather were dropped, and people
talked only of the coming race. As the time ap
proached, the two steamers " stripped " and got ready.
Every incumbrance that added weight, or exposed a
resisting surface to wind or water, was removed, if the
boat could possibly do without it. The " spars," and
sometimes even their supporting derricks, were sent
ashore, and no means left to set the boat afloat in case
she got aground. When the Eclipse and thev4. L.
Shotwell ran their great race many years ago, it was
said that pains were taken to scrape the gilding off the
fanciful device which hung between the Eclipse' s
chimneys, and that for that one trip the captain left off

144 Life on the Mississippi

his kid gloves and had his head shaved. But I always
doubted these things.

If the boat was known to make her best speed when
drawing five and a half feet forward and five feet aft,
she carefully loaded to that exact figure — she wouldn't
enter a dose of homoeopathic pills on her manifest after
that. Hardly any passengers were taken, because they
not only add weight but they never will '* trim boat."
They always run to the side when there is anything to
see, whereas a conscientious and experienced steam-
boatman would stick to the center of the boat and part
his hair in the middle with a spirit level.

No way-freights and.no way-passengers were allowed,
for the racers would stop only at the largest towns, and
then it would be only "touch and go." Coal-flats
and wood-flats were contracted for beforehand, and
these were kept ready to hitch on to the flying steamers
at a moment's warning. Double crews were carried,
so that all work could be quickly done.

The chosen date being come, and all things in readi
ness, the two great steamers back into the stream, and
lie there jockeying a moment, apparently watching
each other's slightest movement, like sentient creatures ;
flags drooping, the pent steam shrieking through
safety-valves, the black smoke rolling and tumbling
from the chimneys and darkening all the air. People,
people everywhere; the shores, the house-tops, the
steamboats, the ships, are packed with them, and you
know that the borders of the broad Mississippi are
going to be fringed with humanity thence northward
twelve hundred miles, to welcome these racers.

Presently tall columns of steam burst from the
'scape-pipes of both steamers, two guns boom a good-
by, two red-shirted heroes mounted on capstans wave
their small flags above the massed crews on the fore
castles, two plaintive solos linger on the air a few wait-

Life on the Mississippi 145

ing seconds, two mighty choruses burst forth — and
here they come! Brass bands bray " Hail Columbia,"
huzza after huzza thunders from the shores, and the
stately creatures go whistling by like the wind.

Those boats will never ncilt a moment between New
Orleans an>d St. Louis, except for a second or two at
large towns, or to hitch thirty-cord wood-boats along
side. You should be on board when they take a
couple of those wood-boats in tow and turn a swarm
of men into each ; by the time you have wiped your
glasses and put them on, you will be wondering what
has become of that wood.

Two nicely-matched steamers will stay in sight of
each other day after day. They might even stay side
by side, but for the fact that pilots are not all alike,
and the smartest pilots will win the race. If one of
the boats has a " lightning " pilot, whose " partner "
is a trifle his inferior, you can tell which one is on
watch by noting whether that boat has gained ground
or lost some during each four-hour stretch. The
shrewdest pilot can delay a boat if he has not a fine
genius for steering. Steering is a very high art. One
must not keep a rudder dragging across a boat's stern
if he wants to get up the river fast.

There is a great difference in boats, of course. For
a long time I was on a boat that was so slow we used
to forget what year it was we left port in. But of
course this was at rare intervals. Ferry-boats used to
lose valuable trips because their passengers grew old
and died, waiting for us to get by. This was at still
rarer intervals. I had the documents for these occur
rences, but through carelessness they have been mis
laid. This boat, the John J. Roe, was so slow that
when she finally sunk in Madrid Bend it was five years
before the owners heard of it. That was always a
confusing fact to me, but it is according to the record,
lu

146 Life on the Mississippi

anyway. She was dismally slow; still, we often had
pretty exciting times racing with islands, and rafts, and
such things. One trip, however, we did rather well.
We went to St. Louis in sixteen days. But even at
this rattling gait I think we changed watches three
times in Fort Adams reach, which is five miles long.
A " reach " is a piece of straight river, and of course
the current drives through such a place in a pretty
lively way.

That trip we went to Grand Gulf, from New Orleans,
in four days (three hundred and forty miles) ; the
Eclipse and Shotwell did it in one. We were nine
days out, in the chute of 63 (seven hundred miles) ;
the Eclipse and Shotwell went there in two days.
Something over a generation ago, a boat called the
y. M. White went from New Orleans to Cairo in three
days, six hours, and forty-four minutes. In 1853 the
Eclipse made the same trip in three days, three hours,
and twenty minutes.* In 1870 the R. E. Lee did it in
three days and one hour. This last is called the fastest
trip on record. I will try to show that it was not.
For this reason : the distance between New Orleans
and Cairo, when the J. M. White ran it, was about
eleven hundred and six miles ; consequently her aver
age speed was a trifle over fourteen miles per hour.
In the Eclipse' s day the distance between the two ports
had become reduced to one thousand and eighty miles ;
consequently her average speed was a shade under
fourteen and three-eighths miles per hour. In the
R. E. Lee 's time the distance had diminished to about
one thousand and thirty miles ; consequently her aver
age was about fourteen and one-eighth miles per hour.
Therefore the Eclipse' s was conspicuously the fastest
time that has ever been made.

Time disputed. Some authorities add I hour and 1 6 minutes to this.

Life on the Mississippi

THE RECORD OF SOME FAMOUS TRIPS,

[From Commodore Rollingpiri's Almanac .]
FAST TIME ON THE WESTERN WATERS.

FROM NEW ORLEANS TO NATCHEZ— 268 MILES.

147

Run made in

D. H. M.

H. M.

1814. Orleans

6 6 40

1844. Sultana

• 19 45

1814. Comet .
1815. Enterprise .

5 10 o
4 ii 20

1851. Magnolia .
1853. A. L. Shotwell

. 19 5o
. 19 49

1817. Washington

400

1853. Southern Belle

. 20 3

1817. Shelby .

3 20 o

1853. Princess (No. 4)

. 20 25

1819. Paragon
1828. Tecumseh .

3 8 o
3 I 20

1853. Eclipse
1855. Princess (New)

. 19 47

• 18 53

1834. Tuscarora .
1838. Natchez

I 21 0

i 17 o

1855. Natchez (New)
1856. Princess (New)

. 17 3o
. i? 3o

1840. Ed. Shippen

I 8 o

1870. Natchez

. 17 17

1842. Belle of the West

i 18 o

1870. R. E. Lee .

. 17 "

FROM NEW ORLEANS TO CAIRO— 1024 MILES.

Run made in

D. H. M.

1844. J. M. White

3 6 44

1869. Dexter. . .

3 6 20

1852. Reindeer

3 12 25

1870. Natchez

3 4 34

1853. Eclipse

344

1870. R. E. Lee .

3 i o

1853. A. L. Shotwell .

3 3 4°

FROM NEW ORLEANS TO LOUISVILLE — 1440 MILES.

Run made in

D. H. M.

1815. Enterprise .
1817. Washington

25 2 40

25 o o

1840. Ed. Shippen
1842. Belle of the West

5 14
6 14

1817. Shelby .

20 4 20

1843. Duke of Orleans

5 23

1819. Paragon

18 10 o

1844. Sultana

5 I2

1828. Tecumseh .

840

1849. Bostona

5 8

1834. Tuscarora .

7 16 o

1851. Belle Key

4 23

1837. Gen. Brown

6 22 0

1852. Reindeer

4 20 45

1837. Randolph .
1837. Empress

6 22 O

6 17 o

1852. Eclipse
1853. A. L. Shotwell

4 19 o
4 10 20

1837. Sultana

6 15 o

1853. Eclipse

4 9 3°

FROM NEW ORLEANS TO DONALDSONVILLE — 78 MILES.

Run made in

H. M.

1852. A. L. Shotwell .

5 42

1860. Atlantic

5 ii

1855. Eclipse

. 5 42

1860. Gen. Quitman .

. 5 6

1854. Sultana . .

c T2

1865 Ruth

4J7

1856. Princess

• * D *•*

• 4 5i

1870. R. E. Lee .

• 4 59

FROM

NEW ORLEANS TO ST. LOUIS — I2l8 MILES.

Run made in

D. H. M.

1844. J. M. White

3 23 9

1870. Natchez

3 21 57

1849. Missouri . .

4 19 o

1870. R. E. Lee .

3 18 14

1869. Dexter . .

490

FROM

LOUISVILLE TO CINCINNATI — 141 MILES.

Run made in

D. H. M.

H. M.

1819. Gen. Pike .

i 16 o

1843. Congress

12 20

1819. Paragon
1822. Wheeling Packet
1837. Moselle

I 14 20
I 10 0
12 0

1846. Ben Franklin (No. 6)
1852. Alleghaney .
i8s2. Pittsburgh .

ii 45
10 38
10 23

1843. Duke of Orleans

12 o i 1853. Telegraph (No. 3)

9 52

148

Life on the Mississippi

1842. Congress
1854. Pike .

FROM LOUISVILLE TO ST. LOUIS — 750 MILES.

Run made in

D. H. M.

1854. Northerner .

1855. Southerner .

1850. Telegraph (No. 2)

1851. Buckeye State .

FROM CINCINNATI TO PITTSBURG — 490 MILES.

Run made in

D. H.

1852. Pittsburgh

Altona .
Golden Eagle

FROM ST. LOUIS TO ALTON — 30 MILES.

Run made in

H. M.

1876. War Eagle .

Run made in

D. H. M.
I 22 30

* I 19 o

Run made in

D. H.

. . I 15

Run made in

H. M.

. i 37

MISCELLANEOUS RUNS.

In June, 1859, the St. Louis and Kepkuk Packet, City of Louisiana, made the run
from St. Louis to Keokuk (214 miles) in 16 hours and 20 minutes, the best time on
record.

In 1868 the steamer Hawkey e State, of the Northern Line Packet Company,
made the run from St. Louis to St. Paul (800 miles) in 2 days and 20 hours. Never
was beaten.

In 1853 the steamer Polar Star made the run from St. Louis to St. Joseph, on the
Missouri River, in 64 hours. In July, 1856, the steamer Jas. H. Lucas, Andy Wine-
land, Master, made the same run in 60 hours and 57 minutes. The distance between
the ports is 600 miles, and when the difficulties of navigating the turbulent Missouri
are taken into consideration, the performance of the Lucas deserves especial men
tion.

THE RUN OF THE ROBERT E. LEE.

The time made by the R. E. Lee from New Orleans to St. Louis in 1870, in her
famous race with the Natchez, is the best on record, and, inasmuch as the race
created a national interest, we give below her time-table from port to port.

Left New Orleans, Thursday, June 30, 1870, at 4 o'clock and 55 minutes, P. M.;
reached

Carrollton .
Harry Hills .
Red Church .
Bonnet Carre
College Point
Donaldsonville
Plaquemine .
Baton Rouge
Bayou Sara .
Red River .
Stamps .
Bryaro . .

D. H. M.

.•a

2 g

3 5°y*

4 59

8 ?%
10 26

12 56

13 56

je ^1^4

Vicksburg .
Milliken's Bend .
Bailey's. . .
Lake Providence.
Greenville . .
Napoleon . .
White River . .
Australia
Helena

»
end „

X H. M.

o 38
2 37
3 48
5 47
10 55
16 22
16 56
19 o
23 25

0 O

6 9
9 o
13 3°
17 23
19 50
20 37
21 25

} O 0
J I 0

5 18 14

Half Mile below St. Fr
Memphis
F'oot of Island 37 .
Foot of Island 26 .
Tow-head, Island 14
New Madrid
Dry Bar No. 10 .
Foot of Island 8 .
Upper Tow-head — Luc
Cairo

anci
asB

Hinderson's .
Natchez
Cole's Creek .
Waterproof .
Rodney .

*O OL/2

16 29
17 II

19 21

18 53
20 45

21 2
22 6
22 18
1 I O O

St. Joseph .
Grand Gulf .
Hard Times .
Half Mile below \

Varr

entoi

St. Louis

The Lee landed at St. Louis at 11.25 A.M., on July 4, 1870 — six hours and thirty-
six minutes ahead of the Natchez. The officers of the Natchez claimed seven hours
and one minute stoppage on account of fog and repairing machinery. The R. E.
Lee was commanded by Captain John W. Cannon, and the Natchez was in charge
of that veteran Southern boatman, Captain Thomas P. Leathers.

CHAPTER XVII.

CUT-OFFS AND STEPHEN

THESE dry details are of importance in one particu
lar. They give me an opportunity of introducing
one of the Mississippi's oddest peculiarities — that of
shortening its length from time to time. If you will
throw a long, pliant apple-paring over your shoulder,
it will pretty fairly shape itself into an average section
of the Mississippi River; that is, the nine or ten hun
dred miles stretching from Cairo, 111., southward to
New Orleans, the same being wonderfully crooked,
with a brief straight bit here and there at wide inter
vals. The two-hundred-mile stretch from Cairo north
ward to St. Louis is by no means so crooked, that
being a rocky country which the river cannot cut much.
The water cuts the alluvial banks of the " lower"
river into deep horseshoe curves; so deep, indeed,
that in some places if you were to get ashore at one
extremity of the horseshoe and walk across the neck,
half or three-quarters of a mile, you could sit down
and rest a couple of hours while your steamer was
coming around the long elbow at a speed of ten miles
an hour to take you on board again. When the river
is rising fast, some scoundrel whose plantation is back
in the country, and therefore of inferior value, has
only to watch his chance, cut a little gutter across the
narrow neck of land some dark night, and turn the

(149)

150 Life on the Mississippi

water into it, and in a wonderfully short time a miracle
has happened : to wit, the whole Mississippi has taken
possession of that little ditch, and placed the country
man's plantation on its bank (quadrupling its value),
and that other party's formerly valuable plantation
finds itself away out yonder on a big island ; the old
watercourse around it will soon shoal up, boats cannot
approach within ten miles of it, and down goes its
value to a fourth of its former worth. Watches are
kept on those narrow necks at needful times, and if a
man happens to be caught cutting a ditch across them,
the chances are all against his ever having another op
portunity to cut a ditch.

Pray observe some of the effects of this ditching
business. Once there was a neck opposite Port Hud
son, La., which was only half a mile across in its
narrowest place. You could walk across there in
fifteen minutes ; but if you made the journey around
the cape on a raft, you traveled thirty-five miles to
accomplish the same thing. In 1722 the river darted
through that neck, deserted its old bed, and thus
shortened itself thirty-five miles. In the same way it
shortened itself twenty-five miles at Black Hawk Point
in 1699. Below Red River Landing, Raccourci cut-off
was made (forty or fifty years ago, I think). This
shortened the river twenty-eight miles. In our day, if
you travel by river from the southernmost of these
three cut-offs to the northernmost, you go only seventy
miles. To do the same thing a hundred and seventy-
six years ago, one had to go a hundred and fifty-eight
miles — a shortening of eighty-eight miles in that
trifling distance. At some forgotten time in the past,
cut-offs were made above Vidalia, La., at Island 92,
at Island 84, and at Hale's Point. These shortened
the river, in the aggregate, seventy-seven miles.

Since my own day on the Mississippi, cut-offs have

Life on the Mississippi 151

been made at Hurricane Island, at Island 100, at
Napoleon, Ark., at Walnut Bend, and at Council
Bend. These shortened the river, in the aggregate,
sixty-seven miles. In my own time a cut-off was made
at American Bend, which shortened the river ten miles
or more.

Therefore the Mississippi between Cairo and New
Orleans was twelve hundred and fifteen miles long one
hundred and seventy-six years ago. It was eleven
hundred and eighty after the cut-off of 1722. It was
one thousand and forty after the American Bend cut
off. It has lost sixty-seven miles since. Consequently,
its length is only nine hundred and seventy-three miles
at present.

Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous
scientific people, and "let on" to prove what had
occurred in the remote past by what had occurred in a
given time in the recent past, or what will occur in the
far future by what has occurred in late years, what an
opportunity is here ! Geology never had such a
chance, nor such exact data to argue from ! Nor
"development of species," either! Glacial epochs are
great things, but they are vague — vague. Please
observe :

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years
the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred
and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over
one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm
person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the
Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago
next November, the Lower Mississippi River was up
ward of one million three hundred thousand miles
long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a
fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can
see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now
the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-

152 Life on the Mississippi

quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have
joined their streets together, and be plodding comfort
ably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of
aldermeny/ There is something fascinating about
science7^L)ne gets such wholesale returns of conjec
ture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

When the water begins to flow through one of those
ditches I have been speaking of, it is time for the peo
ple thereabouts to move. The water cleaves the banks
away like a knife. By the time the ditch has become
twelve or fifteen feet wide, the calamity is as good as
accomplished, for no power on earth can stop it now.
When the width has reached a hundred yards, the
banks begin to peel off in slices half an acre wide.
The current flowing around the bend traveled formerly
only five miles an hour ; now it is tremendously in
creased by the shortening of the distance. I was on
board the first boat that tried to go through the cut-off
at American Bend, but we did not get through. It
was toward midnight, and a wild night it was —
thunder, lightning, and torrents of rain. It was esti
mated that the current in the cut-off was making about
fifteen or twenty miles an hour ; twelve or thirteen was
the best our boat could do, even in tolerably slack
water, therefore perhaps we were foolish to try the
cut-off. However, Mr. Brown was ambitious, and he
kept on trying. The eddy running up the bank, under
the " point," was about as swift as the current out in
the middle ; so we would go flying up the shore like a
lightning express train, get on a big head of steam,
and " stand by for a surge " when we struck the cur
rent that was whirling by the point. But all our
preparations were useless. The instant the current
hit us it spun us around like a top, the water deluged
the forecastle, and the boat careened so far over that
one could hardly keep his feet. The next instant we

Life on the Mississippi 153

were away down the river, clawing with might and
main to keep out of the woods. We tried the experi
ment four times. I stood on the forecastle companion-
way to see. It was astonishing to observe how sud
denly the boat would spin around and turn tail the
moment she emerged from the eddy and the current
struck her nose. The sounding concussion and the
quivering would have been about the same if she had
come full speed against a sand-bank. Under the
lightning flashes one could see the plantation cabins
and the goodly acres tumble into the river, and the
crash they made was not a bad effort at thunder.
Once, when we spun around, we only missed a house
about twenty feet that had a light burning in the
window, and in the same instant that house went over
board. Nobody could stay on our forecastle; the
water swept across it in a torrent every time we
plunged athwart the current. At the end of our
fourth effort we brought up in the woods two miles
below the cut-off; all the country there was over
flowed, of course. A day or two later the cut-off was
three quarters of a mile wide, and boats passed up
through it without much difficulty, and so saved ten
miles.

The old Raccourci cut-off reduced the river's length
twenty-eight miles. There used to be a tradition
connected with it. It was said that a boat came along
there in the night and went around the enormous
elbow the usual way, the pilots not knowing that the
cut-off had been made. It was a grisly, hideous
night, and all shapes were vague and distorted. The
old bend had already begun to fill up, and the boat
got to running away from mysterious reefs, and occa
sionally hitting one. The perplexed pilots fell to
swearing, and finally uttered the entirely unnecessary
wish that they might never get out of that place. As

154 Life on the Mississippi

always happens in such cases, that particular prayer was
answered, and the others neglected. So to this day
that phantom steamer is still butting around in that
deserted river, trying to find her way out. More than
one grave watchman has sworn to me that on drizzly,
dismal nights, he has glanced fearfully down that for
gotten river as he passed the head of the island, and
seen the faint glow of the specter steamer's lights drift
ing through the distant gloom, and heard the muffled
cough of her 'scape-pipes and the plaintive cry of her
leadsmen.

In the absence of further statistics, I beg to close
this chapter with one more reminiscence of " Stephen."

Most of the captains and pilots held Stephen's note
for borrowed sums, ranging from two hundred and fifty
dollars upward. Stephen never paid one of these
notes, but he was very prompt and very zealous about
renewing them every twelve months.

Of course there came a time, at last, when Stephen
could no longer borrow of his ancient creditors ; so he
was obliged to lie in wait for new men who did not
know him. Such a victim was good-hearted, simple-
natured Young Yates (I use a fictitious name, but
the real name began, as this one does, with a Y).
Young Yates graduated as a pilot, got a berth, and
when the month was ended and he stepped up to the
clerk's office and received his two hundred and fifty
dollars in crisp new bills, Stephen was there ! His
silvery tongue began to wag, and in a very little while
Yates' two hundred and fifty dollars had changed
hands. The fact was soon known at pilot headquarters,
and the amusement and satisfaction of the old creditors
were large and generous. But innocent Yates never
suspected that Stephen's promise to pay promptly at
the end of the week was a worthless one. Yates
called for his money at the stipulated time ; Stephen

Life on the Mississippi 155

sweetened him up and put him off a week. He called
then, according to agreement, and carne away sugar-
coated again, but suffering under another postpone
ment. So the thing went on. Yates haunted Stephen
week after week, to no purpose, and at last gave it up.
And then straightway Stephen began to haunt Yates !
Wherever Yates appeared, there was the inevitable
Stephen. And not only there, but beaming with affec
tion and gushing with apologies for not being able to
pay. By and by, whenever poor Yates saw him com
ing, he would turn and fly, and drag his company with
him, if he had company; but it was of no use; his
debtor would run him down and corner him. Panting
and red-faced, Stephen would come, with outstretched
hands and eager eyes, invade the conversation, shake
both of Yates' arms loose in their sockets, and begin :
41 My, what a race I've had ! I saw you didn't see
me, and so I clapped on all steam for fear I'd miss
you entirely. And here you are i there, just stand
so, and let me look at you I Just the same old noble
countenance. [To Yates' friend :] Just look at him !
Look at him ! Ain't it just good to look at him !
Ain't it now? Ain't he just a picture! Some call
him a picture; /call him a panorama! That's what
he is — an entire panorama. And now I'm reminded !
How I do wish I could have seen you an hour earlier !
For twenty-four hours I've been saving up that two
hundred and fifty dollars for you; been looking for
you everywhere. I waited at the Planter's from six
yesterday evening till two o'clock this morning, with
out rest or food. My wife says, * Where have you
been all night?' I said, 'This debt lies heavy on my
mind.' She says, ' In all my days I never saw a man
take a debt to heart the way you do.' I said, 'It's
my nature; how can /change it?' She says, 'Well,
do go to bed and get some rest.' I said, ' Not till

156 Life on the Mississippi

that poor, noble young man has got his money.' So
I set up all night, and this morning out I shot, and
the first man I struck told me you had shipped on the
Grand Turk and gone to New Orleans. Well, sir, I
had to lean up against a building and cry. So help
me goodness, I couldn't help it. The man that owned
the place come out cleaning up with a rag, and said he
didn't like to have people cry against his building, and
then it seemed to me that the whole world had turned
against me, and it wasn't any use to live any more ;
and coming along an hour ago, suffering no man knows
what agony, I met Jim Wilson and paid him the two
hundred and fifty dollars on account; and to think
that here you are, now, and I haven't got a cent!
But as sure as I am standing here on this ground on
this particular brick, — there, I've scratched a mark on
the brick to remember it by, — I'll borrow that money
and pay it over to you at twelve o'clock sharp, to
morrow! Now, stand so; let me look at you just
once more."

And so on. Yates' life became a burden to him.
He could not escape his debtor and his debtor's awful
sufferings on account of not being able to pay. He
dreaded to show himself in the street, lest he should
find Stephen lying in wait for him at the corner.

Bogart's billiard saloon was a great resort for pilots
in those days. They met there about as much to ex
change river news as to play. One morning Yates was
there; Stephen was there, too, but kept out of sight.
But by and by, when about all the pilots had arrived
who were in town, Stephen suddenly appeared in the
midst, and rushed for Yates as for a long-lost brother.

11 Oh, I am so glad to see you! Oh my soul, the
sight of you is such a comfort to my eyes ! Gentle
men, I owe all of you money; among you I owe
probably forty thousand dollars. I want to pay it; I

Life on the Mississippi 157

intend to pay it — every last cent of it. You all know,
without my telling you, what sorrow it has cost me to
remain so long under such deep obligations to such
patient and generous friends ; but the sharpest pang I
suffer — by far the sharpest — is from the debt I owe
to this noble young man here ; and I have come to
this place this morning especially to make the an
nouncement that I have at last found a method where
by I can pay off all my debts ! And most especially I
wanted him to be here when I announced it. Yes, my
faithful friend, my benefactor, I've found the method !
I've found the method to pay off all my debts, and
you'll get your money!" Hope dawned in Yates'
eye; then Stephen, beaming benignantly, and placing
his hand upon Yates' head, added, "I am going to
pay them off in alphabetical order!'*

Then he turned and disappeared. The full signifi
cance of Stephen's ** method " did not dawn upon the
perplexed and musing crowd for some two minutes;
and then Yates murmured with a sigh :

"Well, the Y's stand a gaudy chance. He won't
get any further than the C's in this world, and I
reckon that after a good deal of eternity has wasted
away in the next one, I'll still be referred to up there
as ' that poor, ragged pilot that came here from St.
Louis in the early days! ' "

CHAPTER XVIII.

I TAKE A FEW EXTRA LESSONS

DURING the two or two and a half years of my
apprenticeship I served under many pilots, and
had experience of many kinds of steamboatmen and
many varieties of steamboats; for it was not always
convenient for Mr. Bixby to have me with him, and in
such cases he sent me with somebody else. I am to
this day profiting somewhat by that experience ; for in
that brief, sharp schooling, I got personally and
familiarly acquainted with about all the different types
of human nature that are to be found in fiction,
biography, or history. The fact is daily borne in
upon me that the average shore-employment requires
as much as forty years to equip a man with this sort
of an education. When I say I am still profiting by
this thing, I do not mean that it has constituted me a
judge of men — no, it has not done that, for judges of
men are born, not made. My profit is various in kind
and degree, but the feature of it which I value most is
the zest which that early experience has given to my
later reading. When I find a well-drawn character in
fiction or biography I generally take a warm personal
interest in him, for the reason that I have known him
before — met him on the river.

The figure that comes before me oftenest, out of the
shadows of that vanished time, is that of Brown, of the
steamer Pennsylvania — the man referred to in a

(158)

Life on the Mississippi 159

former chapter, whose memory was so good and tire
some. He was a middle-aged, long, slim, bony,
smooth-shaven, horse-faced, ignorant, stingy, mali
cious, snarling, fault-hunting, mote-magnifying tyrant.
I early got the habit of coming on watch with dread
at my heart. No matter how good a time I might
have been having with the off-watch below, and no
matter how high my spirits might be when I started
aloft, my soul became lead in my body the moment I
approached the pilot-house.

I still remember the first time I ever entered the
presence of that man. The boat had backed out from
St. Louis and was " straightening down." I ascended
to the pilot-house in high feather, and very proud to
be semi-officially a member of the executive family of
so fast and famous a boat. Brown was at the wheel.
I paused in the middle of the room, all fixed to make
my bow, but Brown did not look around. I thought
he took a furtive glance at me out of the corner of his
eye, but as not even this notice was repeated, I judged
I had been mistaken. By this time he was picking his
way among some dangerous * * breaks ' ' abreast the
wood-yards ; therefore it would not be proper to inter
rupt him ; so I stepped softly to the high bench and
took a seat.

There was silence for ten minutes; then my new
boss turned and inspected me deliberately and pains
takingly from head to heel for about — as it seemed to
me — a quarter of an Jiour. After which he removed
his countenance and I saw it no more for some
seconds; then it came around once more, and this
question greeted me:

"Are you Horace Bigsby's cub?"

"Yes, sir."

After this there was a pause and another inspection.
Then:

160 Life on the Mississippi

- " What's your name?"

I told him. He repeated it after me. It was
probably the only thing he ever forgot ; for although
I was with him many months he never addressed him
self to me in any other way than ' ' Here ! ' ' and then
his command followed.

" Where was you born?"

II In Florida, Missouri."
A pause. Then :

" Dern sight better stayed there !"

By means of a dozen or so of pretty direct ques
tions, he pumped my family history out of me.

The leads were going now in the first crossing. This
interrupted the inquest. When the leads had been laid
in he resumed :

" How long you been on the river?"

I told him. After a pause:

" Where'd you get them shoes?"

I gave him the information.

" Hold up your foot!"

I did so. He stepped back, examined the shoe
minutely and contemptuously, scratching his head
thoughtfully, tilting his high sugar-loaf hat well for
ward to facilitate the operation, then ejaculated,
"Well, I'll be dod derned!" and returned to his
wheel.

What occasion there was to be dod derned about it
is a thing which is still as much of a mystery to me
now as it was then. It must have been all of fifteen
minutes — fifteen minutes of dull, homesick silence —
before that long horse-face swung round upon me
again — and then what a change ! It was as red as
fire, and every muscle in it was working. Now came
this shriek:

" Here ! You going to set there all day?"

I lit in the middle of the floor, shot there by the

Life on the Mississippi 161

electric suddenness of the surprise. As soon as I
could get my voice I said apologetically: " I have had
no orders, sir."

' You've had no orders ! My, what a fine bird we
are ! We must have orders ! Our father was a gentle
man — owned slaves — and we've been to school. Yes,
we are a gentleman, too, and got to have orders !
ORDERS, is it? ORDERS is what you want! Dod
dern my skin- /'// learn you to swell yourself up and
blow around here about your dod-derned orders !
G'way from the wheel!" (I had approached it with
out knowing it.)

I moved back a step or two and stood as in a dream,
all my senses stupefied by this frantic assault.

* ' What you standing there for ? Take that ice-
pitcher down to the texas-tender ! Come, move along,
and don't you be all day about it!"

The moment I got back to the pilot-house Brown
said :

' ' Here ! What was you doing down there all this
time?"

"I couldn't find the texas-tender; I had to go all
the way to the pantry."

" Derned likely story! Fill up the stove."

I proceeded to do so. He watched me like a cat.
Presently he shouted :

" Put down that shovel! Derndest numskull I ever
saw — ain't even got sense enough to load up a
stove."

All through the watch this sort of thing went on.
Yes, and the subsequent watches were much like it
during a stretch of months. As I have said, I soon
got the habit of coming on duty with dread. The
moment I was in the presence, even in the darkest
night, I could feel those yellow eyes upon me, and
knew their owner was watching for a pretext to spit
11

162 Life on the Mississippi

out some venom on me. Preliminarily he would say :

11 Here! Take the wheel."

Two minutes later :

" Where in the nation you going to? Pull her
down ! pull her down !"

After another moment:

"Say! You going to hold her all day? Let her
go — meet her ! meet her !"

Then he would jump from the bench, snatch the
wheel from me, and meet her himself, pouring out
wrath upon me all the time.

George Ritchie was the other pilot's cub. He was
having good times now; for his boss, George Ealer,
was as kind-hearted as Brown wasn't. Ritchie had
steered for Brown the season before ; consequently, he
knew exactly how to entertain himself and plague me,
all by the one operation. Whenever I took the wheel
for a moment on Ealer 's watch, Ritchie would sit back
on the bench and play Brown, with continual ejacula
tions of ' ' Snatch her ! snatch her ! Derndest mud-cat
I ever saw ! " " Here ! Where are you going now ?
Going to run over that snag?" "Pull her down!
Don't you hear me? Pull her down /" ' There she
goes ! Just as I expected ! I told you not to cramp
that reef. G'way from the wheel !"

So I always had a rough time of it, no matter whose
watch it was; and sometimes it seemed to me that
Ritchie's good-natured badgering was pretty nearly as
aggravating as Brown's dead-earnest nagging.

I often wanted to kill Brown, but this would not
answer. A cub had to take everything his boss gave,
in the way of vigorous comment and criticism ; and we
all believed that there was a United States law making
't a penitentiary offence to strike or threaten a pilot
who was on duty. However, I could imagine myself
killing Brown; there was no law against that; and that

Life on the Mississippi 163

was the thing I used always to do the moment I was
abed. Instead of going over my river in my mind, as
was my duty, I threw business aside for pleasure, and
killed Brown. I killed Brown every night for months;
not in old, stale, commonplace ways, but in new and
picturesque ones — ways that were sometimes surprising
for freshness of design and ghastliness of situation and
environment.

Brown was always watching for a pretext to find
fault; and if he could find no plausible pretext, he
would invent one. He would scold you for shaving a
shore, and for not shaving it; for hugging a bar, and
for not hugging it; for "pulling down" when not
invited, and for not pulling down when not invited; for
firing up without orders, and for waiting for orders.
In a word, it was his invariable rule to find fault with
everything you did ; and another invariable rule of his
was to throw all his remarks (to you) into the form of
an insult.

One day we were approaching New Madrid, bound
down and heavily laden. Brown was at one side of
the wheel, steering; I was at the other, standing by to
"pull down" or "shove up." He cast a furtive
glance at me every now and then. I had long ago
learned what that meant; viz., he was trying to invent
a trap for me. I wondered what shape it was going to
take. By and by he stepped back from the wheel and
said in his usual snarly way :

"Here! See if you've got gumption enough to
round her to."

This was simply bound to be a success; nothing
could prevent it; for he had never allowed me to
round the boat to before; consequently, no matter
how I might do the thing, he could find free fault with
it. He stood back there with his greedy eye on me,
and the result was what might have been foreseen : J
K

164 Life on the Mississippi

lost my head in a quarter of a minute, and didn't
know what I was about ; I started too early to bring
the boat around, but detected a green gleam of joy in
Brown's eye, and corrected my mistake. I started
around once more while too high up, but corrected
myself again in time. I made other false moves, and
still managed to save myself; but at last I grew so
confused and anxious that I tumbled into the very
worst blunder of all - - 1 got too far down before begin
ning to fetch the boat around. Brown's chance was
come.

His face turned red with passion ; he made one
bound, hurled me across the house with a sweep of his
arm, spun the wheel down, and began to pour out a
stream of vituperation upon me which lasted till he
was out of breath. In the course of this speech he
called me all the different kinds of hard names he could
think of, and once or twice I thought he was even
going to swear — but he had never done that, and he
didn't this time. " Dod dern " was the nearest he
ventured to the luxury of swearing, for he had been
brought up with a wholesome respect for future fire
and brimstone.

That was an uncomfortable hour; for there was a
big audience on the hurricane-deck. When I went to
bed that night, I killed Brown in seventeen different
ways — all of them new.

CHAPTER XIX.

BROWN AND 1 EXCHANGE COMPLIMENTS

rVO trips later I got into serious trouble. Brown
was steering; I was "pulling down." My
younger brother appeared on the hurricane-deck, and
shouted to Brown to stop at some landing or other, a
mile or so below. Brown gave no intimation that he
had heard anything. But that was his way : he never
condescended to take notice of an under-clerk. The
wind was blowing; Brown was deaf (although he
always pretended he wasn't), and I very much doubted
if he had heard the order. If I had had two heads, I
would have spoken ; but as I had only one, it seemed
judicious to take care of it; so I kept still.

Presently, sure enough, we went sailing by that
plantation. Captain Klinefelter appeared on the deck,
and said :

" Let her come around, sir, let her come around.
Didn't Henry tell you to land here?'*

"No, sir!'1

" I sent him up to do it."

" He did come up; and that's all the good it done,
the dod-derned fool. He never said anything."

" Didn't you hear him?" asked the captain of me.

Of course I didn't want to be mixed up in this busi
ness, but there was no way to avoid it; so I said:

4 'Yes, sir."

(165)

166 Life on the Mississippi

I knew what Brown's next remark would be, before
he uttered it. It was :

" Shut your mouth! You never heard anything of
the kind."

I closed my mouth, according to instructions. An
hour later Henry entered the pilot-house, unaware of
what had been going on. He was a thoroughly in
offensive boy, and I was sorry to see him come, for I
knew Brown would have no pity on him. Brown
began, straightway:

" Here! Why didn't you tell me we'd got to land
at that plantation?"

" I did tell you, Mr. Brown."

"It's a lie!"

I said :

" You lie, yourself. He did tell you."

Brown glared at me in unaffected surprise; and
for as much as a moment he was entirely speechless ;
then he shouted to me:

"I'll attend to your case in a half a minute !" then
to Henry, " And you leave the pilot-house; out with
you!"

It was pilot law, and must be obeyed. The boy
started out, and even had his foot on the upper step
outside the door, when Brown, with a sudden access of
fury, picked up a ten-pound lump of coal and sprang
after him; but I was between, with a heavy stool, and
I hit Brown a good honest blow which stretched him
out.

I had committed the crime of crimes — I had lifted
my hand against a pilot on duty ! I supposed I was
booked for the penitentiary sure, and couldn't be
booked any surer if I went on and squared my long
account with this person while I had the chance;
consequently I stuck to him and pounded him with
my fists a considerable time. I do not know how

Life on the Mississippi 167

long, the pleasure of it probably made it seem longer
than it really was ; but in the end he struggled free
and jumped up and sprang to the wheel: a very
natural solicitude, for, all this time, here was this
steamboat tearing down the river at the rate of fifteen
miles an hour and nobody at the helm ! However,
Eagle Bend was two miles wide at this bank-full stage,
and correspondingly long and deep : and the boat was
steering herself straight down the middle and taking
no chances. Still, that was only luck — a body might
have found her charging into the woods.

Perceiving at a glance that the Pennsylvania was in
no danger, Brown gathered up the big spy-glass, war-
club fashion, and ordered me out of the pilot-house
with more than Comanche bluster. But I was not afraid
of him now; so, instead of going, I tarried, and criti
cised his grammar. I reformed his ferocious speeches
for him, and put them into good English, calling his
attention to the advantage of pure English over the
bastard dialect of the Pennsylvania collieries whence he
was extracted. He could have done his part to ad
miration in a cross-fire of mere vituperation, of course;
but he was not equipped for this species of con
troversy ; so he presently laid aside his glass and took
the wheel, muttering and shaking his head ; and I re
tired to the bench. The racket had brought every
body to the hurricane-deck, and I trembled when I
saw the old captain looking up from amid the crowd.
I said to myself, " Now I am done for !" for although,
as a rule, he was so fatherly and indulgent toward the
boat's family, and so patient of minor shortcomings,
he could be stern enough when the fault was worth it,

I tried to imagine what he would do to a cub pilot
who had been guilty of such a crime as mine, com
mitted on a boat guard-deep with costly freight and
alive with passengers. Our watch was nearly ended.

168 Life on the Mississippi

I thought I would go and hide somewhere till I got a
chance to slide ashore. So I slipped out of the pilot
house, and down the steps, and around to the texas-
door, and was in the act of gliding within, when the
captain confronted me! I dropped my head, and he
stood over me in silence a moment or two, then said
impressively :

' 'Follow me. "

I dropped into his wake; he led the way to his
parlor in the forward end of the texas. We were
alone, now. He closed the after door; then moved
slowly to the forward one and closed that. He sat
down; I stood before him. He looked at me some
little time, then said :

" So you have been fighting Mr. Brown?"

I answered meekly:
'Yes, sir."

" Do you know that that is a very serious matter?"

"Yes, sir."

" Are you aware that this boat was plowing down
the river fully five minutes with no one at the wheel?"

4 'Yes, sir."

" I)id you strike him first?"

"Yes, sir."

"What with?"

" A stool, sir."

"Hard?"

"Middling, sir."

" Did it knock him down?"

"He — he fell, sir."

"Did you follow it up? Did you do anything
further?"

"Yes, sir."

"What did you do?"

"Pounded him, sir."

"Pounded him?"

Life on the Mississippi 169

"Yes, sir."

" Did you pound him much? that is, severely?"

" One might call it that, sir, maybe."

*4 I'm deuced glad of it! Hark ye, never mention
that I said that. You have been guilty of a great
crime; and don't you ever be guilty of it again, on
this boat. But — lay for him ashore! Give him a
good sound thrashing, do you hear? I'll pay the ex
penses. Now go — and mind you, not a word of this
to anybody. Clear out with you ! You've been guilty
of a great crime, you whelp !"

I slid out, happy with the sense of a close shave and a
mighty deliverance ; and I heard him laughing to himself
and slapping his fat thighs after I had closed his door.

When Brown came off watch he went straight to the
captain, who was talking with some passengers on the
boiler deck, and demanded that I be put ashore in New
Orleans — and added :

"I'll never turn a wheel on this boat again while
that cub stays."

The captain said :

" But he needn't come round when you are on
watch, Mr. Brown."

" I won't even stay on the same boat with him.
One of us has got to go ashore."

" Very well," said the captain, " let it be yourself,"
and resumed his talk with the passengers.

During the brief remainder of the trip I knew how
an emancipated slave feels, for I was an emancipated
slave myself. While we lay at landings I listened to
George Ealer's flute, or to his readings from his two
Bibles, that is to say, Goldsmith and Shakespeare, or I
played chess with him — and would have beaten him
sometimes, only he always took back his last move and
ran the game out differently.

CHAPTER XX.

A CATASTROPHE

\V/E lay three days in New Orleans, but the captain
\V did not succeed in finding another pilot, so he
proposed that I should stand a daylight watch and leave
the night watches to George Ealer. But I was afraid ;
I had never stood a watch of any sort by myself, and
I believed I should be sure to get into trouble in the head
of some chute, or ground the boat in a near cut through
some bar or other. Brown remained in his place, but
he would not travel with me. So the captain gave me
an order on the captain of the A. T. Lacey for a pass
age to 'St. Louis, and said he would find a new pilot
there and my steersman's berth could then be resumed.
The Lacey was to leave a couple of days after the
Pennsylvania.

The night before the Pennsylvania left, Henry and
I sat chatting on a freight pile on the levee till mid
night. The subject of the chat, mainly, was one
which I think we had not exploited before — steam
boat disasters. One was then on its way to us, little as
we suspected it; the water which was to make the
steam which should cause it was washing past some
point fifteen hundred miles up the river while we talked
— but it would arrive at the right time and the right
place v We doubted if persons not clothed with
authority were of much use in cases of disaster and
attendant panic, still they might be of some use ; so we

(170)

Life on the Mississippi 171

decided that if a disaster ever fell within our experience
we would at least stick to the boat, and give such minor
service as chance might throw in the way. Henry
remembered this, afterward, when the disaster came,
and acted accordingly.

The Lacey started up the river two days behind the
Pennsylvania. We touched at Greenville, Miss., a
couple of days out, and somebody shouted :

" The Pennsylvania is blown up at Ship Island, and
a hundred and fifty lives lost! "

At Napoleon, Ark., the same evening, we got an
extra, issued by a Memphis paper, which gave some
particulars. It mentioned my brother, and said he was
not hurt.

Further up the river we got a later extra. My
brother was again mentioned, but this time as being
hurt beyond help. We did not get full details of the
catastrophe until we reached Memphis. This is the
sorrowful story :

It was six o'clock on a hot summer morning. The
Pennsylvania was creeping along, north of Ship Island,
about sixty miles below Memphis, on a half-head of
steam, towing a wood flat which was fast being emptied.
George Ealer was in the pilot-house — alone, I think;
the second engineer and a striker had the watch in the
engine-room ; the second mate had the watch on deck ;
George Black, Mr. Wood, and my brother, clerks, were
asleep, as were also Brown and the head engineer, the
carpenter, the chief mate, and one striker; Captain
Klinefelter was in the barber's chair, and the barber
was preparing to shave him. There were a good
many cabin passengers aboard, and three or four hun
dred deck passengers — so it was said at the time — and
not very many of them were astir. The wood being
nearly all out of the flat now, Ealer rang to "come
ahead ' ' full steam, and the next moment four of the

172 Life on tne Mississippi

eight boilers exploded with a thunderous crash, and the
whole forward third of the boat was hoisted toward the
sky ! The main part of the mass, with the chimneys,
dropped upon the boat again, a mountain of riddled
and chaotic rubbish — and then, after a little, fire
broke out.

Many people were flung to considerable distances
and fell in the river; among these were Mr. Wood and
my brother and the carpenter. The carpenter was still
stretched upon his mattress when he struck the water
seventy-five feet from the boat. Brown, the pilot, and
George Black, chief clerk, were never seen or heard of
after the explosion. The barber's chair, with Captain
Klinefelter in it and unhurt, was left with its back
overhanging vacancy — everything forward of it, floor
and all, had disappeared; and the stupefied barber,
who was also unhurt, stood with one toe projecting over
space, still stirring his lather unconsciously and saying
not a word.

When George Ealer saw the chimneys plunging aloft
in front of him, he knew what the matter was; so he
muffled his face in the lapels of his coat, and pressed
both hands there tightly to keep this protection in its
place so that no steam could get to his nose or mouth.
He had ample time to attend to these details while he
was going up and returning. He presently landed on
top of the unexploded boilers, forty feet below the
former pilot-house, accompanied by his wheel and a rain
of other stuff, and enveloped in a cloud of scalding
steam. All of the many who breathed that steam died ;
none escaped. But Ealer breathed none of it. He
made his way to the free air as quickly as he could ;
and when the steam cleared away he returned and
climbed up on the boilers again, and patiently hunted
out each and every one of his chessmen and the several
joints of his flute.

Life on the Mississippi 173

By this time the fire was beginning to threaten.
Shrieks and groans filled the air. A great many per
sons had been scalded, a great many crippled; the ex
plosion had driven an iron crowbar through one man's
body — I think they said he was a priest. He did not die
at once, and his sufferings were very dreadful. A young
French naval cadet of fifteen, son of a French admiral,
was fearfully scalded, but bore his tortures manfully.
Both mates were badly scalded, but they stood to their
posts, nevertheless. They drew the wood-boat aft,
and they and the captain fought back the frantic herd
of frightened immigrants till the wounded could be
brought there and placed in safety first.

When Mr. Wood and Henry fell in the water they
struck out for shore, which was only a few hundred
yards away ; but Henry presently said he believed he
was not hurt (what an unaccountable error !) and there
fore would swim back to the boat and help save the
wounded. So they parted and Henry returned.

By this time the fire was making fierce headway, and
several persons who were imprisoned under the ruins
were begging piteously for help. All efforts to con
quer the fire proved fruitless, so the buckets were pre
sently thrown aside and the officers fell to with axes and
tried to cut the prisoners out. A striker was one of
the captives; he said he was not injured, but could not
free himself, and when he saw that the fire was likely
to drive away the workers he begged that some one
would shoot him, and thus save him from the more
dreadful death. The fire did drive the axemen away,
and they had to listen, helpless, to this poor fellow's
supplications till the flames ended his miseries.

The fire drove all into the wood-flat that could be
accommodated there ; it was cut adrift then, and it and
the burning steamer floated down the river toward Ship
Island. They moored the flat at the head of the island,

174 Life on the Mississippi

and there, unsheltered from the blazing sun, the half-
naked occupants had to remain, without food or stimu
lants, or help for their hurts, during the rest of the day.
A steamer came along, finally, and carried the unfortu
nates to Memphis, and there the most lavish assistance
was at once forthcoming. By this time Henry was in
sensible. The physicians examined his injuries and
saw that they were fatal, and naturally turned their
main attention to patients who could be saved.

Forty of the wounded were placed upon pallets on
the floor of a great public hall, and among these was
Henry. There the ladies of Memphis came every day,
with flowers, fruits, and dainties and delicacies of all
kinds, and there they remained and nursed the wounded.
All the physicians stood watches there, and all the
medical students; and the rest of the town furnished
money, or whatever else was wanted. And Memphis
knew how to do all these things well; for many a
disaster like the Pennsylvania s had happened near her
doors, and she was experienced, above all other cities
on the river, in the gracious office of the Good
Samaritan.

The sight I saw when I entered that large hall was new
and strange to me. Two long rows of prostrate forms
— more than forty in all — and every face and head a
shapeless wad of loose raw cotton. It was a grewsome
spectacle. I watched there six days and nights, and a
very melancholy experience it was. There was one
daily incident which was peculiarly depressing: this
was the removal of the doomed to a chamber apart.
It was done in order that the morale of the other
patients might not be injuriously affected by seeing one
of their number in the death-agony. The fated one
was always carried out with as little stir as possible,
and the stretcher was always hidden from sight by a
wall of assistants; but no matter: everybody knew

Life on the Mississippi 175

what that cluster of bent forms, with its muffled step
and its slow movement, meant; and all eyes watched
it wistfully, and a shudder went abreast of it like a wave.
I saw many poor fellows removed to the * ' death-
room/' and saw them no more afterward. But I saw
our chief mate carried thither more than once. His
hurts were frightful, especially his scalds. He was
clothed in linseed oil and raw cotton to his waist, and
resembled nothing human. He was often out of his
mind; and then his pains would make him rave and
shout and sometimes shriek. Then, after a period of
dumb exhaustion, his disordered imagination would sud
denly transform the great apartment into a forecastle,
and the hurrying throng of nurses into the crew ; and
he would come to a sitting posture and shout, ** Hump
yourselves, hump yourselves, you petrifactions, snail-
bellies, pall-bearers ! going to be all day getting that
hatful of freight out? " and supplement this explosion
with a firmament-obliterating irruption of profanity
which nothing could stay or stop till his crater was
empty. And now and then while these frenzies
possessed him, he would tear off handfuls of the
cotton and expose his cooked flesh to view. It was
horrible. It was bad for the others, of course — this
noise and these exhibitions ; so the doctors tried to give
him morphine to quiet him. But, in his mind or out
of it, he would not take it. He said his wife had been
killed by that treacherous drug, and he would die before
he would take it. He suspected that the doctors were
concealing it in his ordinary medicines and in his water
— so he ceased from putting either to his lips. Once,
when he had been without water during two sweltering
days, he took the dipper in his hand, and the sight of
the limpid fluid, and the misery of his thirst, tempted
him almost beyond his strength ; but he mastered him
self and threw it away, and after that he allowed no

176 Life on the Mississippi

more to be brought near him. Three times I saw him
carried to the death-room, insensible and supposed to
be dying; but each time he revived, cursed his attend
ants, and demanded to be taken back. He lived to be
mate of a steamboat again.

But he was the only one who went to the death-room
and returned alive. Dr. Peyton, a principal physician,
and rich in all the attributes that go to constitute high
and flawless character, did all that educated judgment
and trained skill could do for Henry ; but, as the news
papers had said in the beginning, his hurts were past
help. On the evening of the sixth day his wandering
mind busied itself with matters far away, and his nerve
less fingers "picked at his coverlet." His hour had
struck; we bore him to the death-room, poor boy.

CHAPTER XXL

A SECTION IN MY BIOGRAPHY

IN due course I got my license. I was a pilot now,
full fledged. I dropped into casual employments;
no misfortunes resulting, intermittent work gave place
to steady and protracted engagements. Time drifted
smoothly and prosperously on, and I supposed — and
hoped — that I was going to follow the river the rest
of my days, and die at the wheel when my mission was
ended. But by and by the war came, commerce was
suspended, my occupation was gone.

I had to seek another livelihood. So I became a
silver miner in Nevada; next, a newspaper reporter;
next, a gold miner in California; next, a reporter in
San Francisco; next, a special correspondent in the
Sandwich Islands; next, a roving correspondent in
Europe and the East; next, an instructional torch-
bearer on the lecture platform; and, finally, I became
a scribbler of books, and an immovable fixture among
the other rocks of New England.

In so few words have I disposed of the twenty-one
slow-drifting years that have come and gone since I last
looked from the windows of a pilot-house.

Let us resume, now.

CHAPTER XXII.

I RETURN TO MY MUTTONS

7TFTER twenty-one years' absence I felt a very
/~\ strong desire to see the river again, and the
steamboats, and such of the boys as might be left; so
I resolved to go out there. I enlisted a poet for com
pany, and a stenographer to "take him down," and
started westward about the middle of April.

As I proposed to make notes, with a view to print
ing, I took some thought as to methods of procedure.
I reflected that if I were recognized, on the river, I
should not be as free to go and come, talk, inquire,
and spy around, as I should be if unknown; I re
membered that it was the custom of steamboatmen in
the old times to load up the confiding stranger with the
most picturesque and admirable lies, and put the
sophisticated friend off with dull and ineffectual facts :
so I concluded that, from a business point of view, it
would be an advantage to disguise our party with
fictitious names. The idea was certainly good, but it
bred infinite bother; for although Smith, Jones, and
Johnson are easy names to remember when there is no
occasion to remember them, it is next to impossible to
recollect them when they are wanted. How do
criminals manage to keep a brand-new alias in mind ?
This is a great mystery. I was innocent; and yet
was seldom able to lay my hand on my new name

(178)

Life on the Mississippi 179

when it was needed ; and it seemed to me that if I had
had a crime on my conscience to further confuse me,
I could never have kept the name by me at all.

We left per Pennsylvania Railroad, at 8 A.M. April
1 8.

Evening. — Speaking of dress. Grace and picturesqueness drop gradu
ally out of it as one travels away from New York.

I find that among my notes. It makes no difference
which direction you take, the fact remains the same.
Whether you move north, south, east, or west, no
matter : you can get up in the morning and guess how
far you have come, by noting what degree of grace and
picturesqueness is by that time lacking in the costumes
of the new passengers — I do not mean of the women
alone, but of both sexes. It may be that carriage is
at the bottom of this thing ; and I think it is ; for there
are plenty of ladies and gentlemen in the provincial
cities whose garments are all made by the best tailors
and dressmakers of New York; yet this has no per
ceptible effect upon the grand fact: the educated eye
never mistakes those people for New Yorkers. No,
there is a godless grace and snap and style about a
born and bred New Yorker which mere clothing cannot
effect.

April 19. — This morning struck into the region of full goatees — some
times accompanied by a moustache, but only occasionally.

It was odd to come upon this thick crop of an obso
lete and uncomely fashion; it was like running sud
denly across a forgotten acquaintance whom you had
supposed dead for a generation. The goatee extends
over a wide extent of country, and is accompanied by
an iron-clad belief in Adam, and the biblical history
of creation, which has not suffered from the assaults of
the scientists.

Afternoon. — At the railway stations the loafers carry both hands in their
L

180 Life on the Mississippi

breeches pockets; it was observable, heretofore, that one hand was some
times out of doors — here, never. This is an important fact in geography.

If the loafers determined the character of a country,
it would be still more important, of course.

Heretofore, all along, the station loafer has been often observed to
scratch one shin with the other foot; here these remains of activity are
wanting. This has an ominous look.

By and by we entered the tobacco-chewing region.
Fifty years ago the tobacco-chewing region covered
the Union. It is greatly restricted now.

Next, boots began to appear. Not in strong force,
however. Later — away down the Mississippi — they
became the rule. They disappeared from other sections
of the Union with the mud ; no doubt they will disap
pear from the river villages, also, when proper pave
ments come in.

We reached St. Louis at ten o'clock at night. At
the counter of the hotel I tendered a hurriedly-invented
fictitious name, with a miserable attempt at careless
ease. The clerk paused, and inspected me in the com
passionate way in which one inspects a respectable
person who is found in doubtful circumstances; then
he said :

"It's all right; I know what sort of a room you
want. Used to clerk at the St. James, in New York.''

An unpromising beginning for a fraudulent career !
We started to the supper room, and met two other men
whom I had known elsewhere. How odd and unfair
it is : wicked impostors go around lecturing under my
nom de giierre, and nobody suspects them ; but when
an honest man attempts an imposture, he is exposed at
once.

One thing seemed plain : we must start down the
river the next day, if people who could not be deceived
were going to crop up at this rate : an unpalatable dis-

Life on the Mississippi 181

appointment, for we had hoped to have a week in St.
Louis. The Southern was a good hotel, and we could
have had a comfortable time there. It is large and
well conducted, and its decorations do not make one
cry, as do those of the vast Palmer House, in Chicago.
True, the billiard tables were of the Old Silurian Period,
and the cues and balls of the Post- Pliocene ; but there
was refreshment in this, not discomfort; for there are
rest and healing in the contemplation of antiquities.

The most notable absence observable in the billiard-
room was the absence of the river man. If he was
there, he had taken in his sign ; he was in disguise. I
saw there none of the swell airs and graces, and osten
tatious displays of money, and pompous squanderings
of it, which used to distinguish the steamboat crowd
from the dry-land crowd in the by-gone days, in the
thronged billiard-rooms of St. Louis. In those times
the principal saloons were always populous with river
men ; given fifty players present, thirty or thirty-five
were likely to be from the river. But I suspected that
the ranks were thin now, and the steamboatmen no
longer an aristocracy. Why, in my time they used to
call the" bar-keep " Bill, or Joe, or Tom, and slap him
on the shoulder ; I watched for that. But none of these
people did it. Manifestly, a glory that once was had
dissolved and vanished away in these twenty-one years.

When I went up to my room, I found there the
young man called Rogers, crying. Rogers was not his
name; neither was Jones, Brown, Dexter, Ferguson,
Bascom, nor Thompson ; but he answered to either of
these that a body found handy in an emergency; or to
any other name, in fact, if he perceived that you meant
him. He said:

" What is a person to do here when he wants a drink
-of water? drink this slush? "

" Can't you drink it? "

182 Life on the Mississippi

" I could if I had some other water to wash it with."
Here was a thing which had not changed ; a score of
years had not affected this water's mulatto complexion
in the least; a score of centuries would succeed no
better, perhaps. It comes out of the turbulent, bank-
caving Missouri, and every tumblerful of it holds nearly
an acre of land in solution. I got this fact from the
bishop of the diocese. If you will let your glass stand
half an hour, you can separate the land from the water
as easy as Genesis ; and then you will find them both
good: the one good to eat, the other good to drink.
The land is very nourishing, the water is thoroughly
wholesome. The one appeases hunger; the other,
thirst. But the natives do not take them separately,
but together, as nature mixed them. When they find
an inch of mud in the bottom of a glass, they stir it
up, and then take the draught as they would gruel. It
is difficult for a stranger to get used to this batter, but
once used to it he will prefer it to water. This is really
the case. It is good for steamboating, and good to
drink; but it is worthless for all other purposes, except
baptizing.

Next morning we drove around town in the rain.
The city seemed but little changed. It was greatly
changed, but it did not seem so; because in St. Louis,
as in London and Pittsburg, you can't persuade a new
thing to look new; the coal-smoke turns it into an
antiquity the moment you take your hand off it. The
place had just about doubled its size since I was a
resident of it, and was now become a city of four hun
dred thousand inhabitants; still, in the solid business
parts, it looked about as it had looked formerly. Yet
I am sure there is not as much smoke in St. Louis now
as there used to be. The smoke used to bank itself in
a dense billowy black canopy over the town, and hide
the sky from view. This shelter is very much thinner

Life on the Mississippi 183

now; still, there is a sufficiency of smoke there, I
think. I heard no complaint.

However, on the outskirts changes were apparent
enough ; notably in dwelling-house architecture. The
fine new homes are noble and beautiful and modern.
They stand by themselves, too, with green lawns around
them; whereas the dwellings of a former day are
packed together in blocks, and are all of one pattern,
with windows all alike, set in an arched framework of
twisted stone; a sort of house which was handsome
enough when it was rarer.

There was another change — the Forest Park. This
was new to me. It is beautiful and very extensive,
and has the excellent merit of having been made mainly
by nature. There are other parks, and fine ones,
notably Tower Grove and the Botanical Gardens ; for
St. Louis interested herself in such improvements at an
earlier day than did the most of our cities.

The first time I ever saw St. Louis I could have
bought it for six million dollars, and it was the mistake
of my life that I did not do it. It was bitter now to
look abroad over this domed and steepled metropolis,
this solid expanse of bricks and mortar stretching away
on every hand into dim, measure-defying distances,
and remember that I had allowed that opportunity to
go by. Why I should have allowed it to go by seems,
of course, foolish and inexplicable to-day, at a first
glance; yet there were reasons at the time to justify
this course.

A Scotchman, Hon. Charles Augustus Murray, writ
ing some forty-five or fifty years ago, said: 'The
streets are narrow, ill-paved, and ill-lighted." Those
streets are narrow still, of course ; many of them are
ill-paved yet; but the reproach of ill-lighting cannot
be repeated now. The " Catholic New Church" was
the only notable building then, and Mr. Murray was

184 Life on the Mississippi

confidently called upon to admire it, with its " species
of Grecian portico, surmounted by a kind of steeple,
much too diminutive in its proportions, and sur
mounted by sundry ornaments ' ' which the unimagina
tive Scotchman found himself * * quite unable to de
scribe ' ' ; and therefore was grateful when a German

tourist helped him out with the exclamation : ' ' By ,

they look exactly like bed-posts! " St. Louis is well
equipped with stately and noble public buildings now,
and the little church, which the people used to be so
proud of, lost its importance a long time ago. Still,
this would not surprise Mr. Murray, if he could come
back; for he prophesied the coming greatness of St.
Louis with strong confidence.

The further we drove in our inspection-tour, the
more sensibly I realized how the city had grown since
I had seen it last; changes in detail became steadily
more apparent and frequent than at first, too : changes
uniformly evidencing progress, energy, prosperity.

But the change of changes was on the "levee/'
This time, a departure from the rule. Half a dozen
sound-asleep steamboats where I used to see a solid
mile of wide-awake ones ! This was melancholy, this
was woeful. The absence of the pervading and jocund
steamboatman from the billiard-saloon was explained.
He was absent because he is no more. His occu
pation is gone, his power has passed away, he is
absorbed into the common herd ; he grinds at the mill,
a shorn Samson and inconspicuous. Half a dozen
lifeless steamboats, a mile of empty wharves, a negro,
fatigued with whisky, stretched asleep in a wide and
soundless vacancy, where the serried hosts of commerce
used to contend !* Here was desolation indeed.

* Captain Marryat, writing forty-five years ago, says: "St. Louis has
20,000 inhabitants. The river abreast of the town is crowded with steam
boats, lying in two or three tiers."

Life on the Mississippi 185

" The old, old sea, as one in tears,

Comes murmuring, with foamy lips,
And knocking at the vacant piers,

Calls for his long-lost multitude of ships."

The towboat and the railroad had done their work,
and done it well and completely. The mighty bridge,
stretching along over our heads, had done its share
in the slaughter and spoliation. Remains of former
steamboatmen told me, with wan satisfaction, that the
bridge doesn't pay. Still, it can be no sufficient com
pensation to a corpse to know that the dynamite that
laid him out was not of as good quality as it had been
supposed to be.

The pavements along the river front were bad ; the
sidewalks were rather out of repair ; there was a rich
abundance of mud. All this was familiar and satisfy
ing; but the ancient armies of drays, and struggling
throngs of men, and mountains of freight, were gone,
and Sabbath reigned in their stead. The immemorial
mile of cheap, foul doggeries remained, but business
was dull with them ; the multitudes of poison-swilling
Irishmen had departed, and in their places were a few
scattering handfuls of ragged negroes, some drink
ing, some drunk, some nodding, others asleep. St.
Louis is a great and prosperous and advancing city ;
but the river-edge of it seems dead past resurrection.

Mississippi steamboating was born about 1812; at
the end of thirty years it had grown to mighty pro
portions ; and in less than thirty more it was dead ! A
strangely short life for so majestic a creature. Of
course it is not -absolutely dead ; neither is a crippled
octogenarian who could once jump twenty-two feet on
level ground ; but as contrasted with what it was in its
prime vigor, Mississippi steamboating may be called
dead.

It killed the old-fashioned keel-boating, by reducing

186 Life on the Mississippi

the freight- trip to New Orleans to less than a week.
The railroads have killed the steamboat passenger traffic
by doing in two or three days what the steamboats
consumed a week in doing : and the towing fleets have
killed the through-freight traffic by dragging six or
seven steamer-loads of stuff down the river at a time,
at an expense so trival that steamboat competition was
out of the question.

Freight and passenger way traffic remains to the
steamers. This is in the hands — along the two thou
sand miles of river between St. Paul and New Orleans
— of two or three close corporations well fortified with
capital ; and by able and thoroughly businesslike man
agement and system, these make a sufficiency of money
out of what is left of the once prodigious steamboating
industry. I suppose that St. Louis and New Orleans
* have not suffered materially by the change, but alas for
the wood-yard man !

He used to fringe the river all the way ; his close-
ranked merchandise stretched from the one city to the
other, along the banks, and he sold uncountable cords
of it every year for cash on the nail ; but all the scat
tering boats that are left burn coal now, and the sel-
domest spectacle on the Mississippi to-day is a wood
pile. Where now is the once wood-yard man?

CHAPTER XXIII.

TRAVELING INCOGNITO

MY idea was to tarry a while in every town between
St. Louis and New Orleans. To do this, it
would be necessary to go from place to place by the
short packet lines. It was an easy plan to make, and
would have been an easy one to follow, twenty years
ago — but not now. There are wide intervals between
boats, these days.

I wanted to begin with the interesting old French
settlements of St. Genevieve and Kaskaskia, sixty miles
below St. Louis. There was only one boat advertised
for that section — a Grand Tower packet. Still, one
boat was enough ; so we went down to look at her.
She was a venerable rack-heap, and a fraud to boot;
for she was playing herself for personal property,
whereas the good honest dirt was so thickly caked all
over her that she was righteously taxable as real
estate. There are places in New England where her
hurricane-deck would be worth a hundred and fifty
dollars an acre. The soil on her forecastle was quite
good — the new crop of wheat was already springing
from the cracks in protected places. The companion-
way was of a dry sandy character, and would have
been well suited for grapes, with a southern exposure
and a little subsoiling. The soil of the boiler-deck was
thin and rocky, but good enough for grazing purposes.

(187)

188 Life on the Mississippi

A colored boy was on watch here — nobody else
visible. We gathered from him that this calm craft
would go as advertised, " if she got her trip " ; if she
didn't get it, she would wait for it.

" Has she got any of her trip?"

"Bless you, no, boss! She ain't unloadened, yit.
She only come in dis mawnin'."

He was uncertain as to when she might get her trip,
but thought it might be to-morrow or maybe next day.
This would not answer at all ; so we had to give up the
novelty of sailing down the river on a farm. We had
one more arrow in our quiver: a Vicksburg packet,
the Gold Dusty was to leave at 5 P. M. We took pas
sage in her for Memphis, and gave up the idea of
stopping off here and there, as being impracticable.
She was neat, clean, and comfortable. We camped on
the boiler deck, and bought some cheap literature to
kill time with. The vender was a venerable Irishman
with a benevolent face and a tongue that worked easily
in the socket, and from him we learned that he had
lived in St. Louis thirty-four years and had never been
across the river during that period. Then he wandered
into a very flowing lecture, filled with classic names
and allusions, which was quite wonderful for fluency
until the fact became rather apparent that this was not
the first time, nor perhaps the fiftieth, that the speech
had been delivered. He was a good deal of a char
acter, and much better company than the sappy litera
ture he was selling. A random remark, connecting
Irishmen and beer, brought this nugget of information
out of him :

' They don't drink it, sir. They can't drink it, sir.
Give an Irishman lager for a month, and he's a dead
man. An Irishman is lined with copper, and the beer
corrodes it. But whisky polishes the copper and is
the saving of him, sir."

Life on the Mississippi 189

At eight o'clock, promptly, we backed out and —
crossed the river. As we crept toward the shore, in
the thick darkness, a blinding glory of white electric
light burst suddenly from our forecastle, and lit up the
water and the warehouses as with a noonday glare.
Another big change, this — no more flickering, smoky,
pitch-dripping, ineffectual torch-baskets, now: their
day is past. Next, instead of calling out a score . of
hands to man the stage, a couple of men and a hatful
of steam lowered it from the derrick where it was sus
pended, launched it, deposited it in just the right spot,
and the whole thing was over and done with before a
mate in the olden time could have got his profanity-
mill adjusted to begin the preparatory services. Why
this new and simple method of handling the stages was
not thought of when the first steamboat was built is a
mystery which helps one to realize what a dull-witted
slug the average human being is.

We finally got away at two in the morning, and
when I turned out at six we were rounding to at a
rocky point where there was an old stone warehouse —
at any rate, the ruins of it; two or three decayed
dwelling-houses were near by in the shelter of the leafy
hills, but there were no evidences of human or other
animal life to be seen. I wondered if I had forgotten
the river, for I had no recollection whatever of this
place; the shape of the river, too, was unfamiliar;
there was nothing in sight anywhere that I could re
member ever having seen before. I was surprised,
disappointed, and annoyed.

We put ashore a well-dressed lady and gentleman,
and two well-dressed lady-like young girls, together
with sundry Russia-leather bags. A strange place for
such folk ! No carriage was waiting. The party
moved off as if they had not expected any, and struck

down a winding country road afoot.
13

190 Life on the Mississippi

But the mystery was explained when we got under
way again, for these people were evidently bound for a
large town which lay shut in behind a tow-head (i. e.>
new island) a couple of miles below this landing. I
couldn't remember that town ; I couldn't place it,
couldn't call its name. So I lost part of my temper.
I suspected that it might be St. Genevieve — and so it
proved to be. Observe what this eccentric river had
been about: it had built up this huge, useless tow-head
directly in front of this town, cut off its river communi
cations, fenced it away completely, and made a
" country " town of it. It is a fine old place, too, and
deserved a better fate. It was settled by the French,
and is a relic of a time when one could travel from the
mouths of the Mississippi to Quebec and be on French
territory and under French rule all the way.

Presently I ascended to the hurricane-deck and cast
a longing glance toward the pilot-house.

CHAPTER XXIV.

MY INCOGNITO IS EXPLODED

7TFTER a close study of the face of the pilot on
l\ watch, I was satisfied that I had never seen him
before, so I went up there. The pilot inspected me;
I reinspected the pilot. These customary preliminaries
over, I sat down on the high bench, and he faced
about and went on with his work. Every detail of the
pilot-house was familiar to me, with one exception — a
large-mouthed tube under the breast-board. I puzzled
over that thing a considerable time ; then gave up and
asked what it was for.

" To hear the engine-bells through."

It was another good contrivance which ought to have
been invented half a century sooner. So I was think
ing when the pilot asked :

" Do you know what this rope is for?"

I managed to get around this question without com
mitting myself.

4 ' Is this the first time you were ever in a pilot
house?"

I crept under that one.

4 'Where are you from?"

" New England."

" First time you have ever been West?"

I climbed over this one.

* ' If you take an interest in such things, I can tell
you what all these things are for."

(191)

192 Life on the Mississippi

I said I should like it.

"This," putting his hand on a backing-bell rope,
" is to sound the fire-alarm; this," putting his hand
on a go-ahead bell, " is to call the texas-tender; this
one," indicating the whistle-lever, " is to call the cap
tain " — and so he went on, touching one object after
another and reeling off his tranquil spool of lies.

I had never felt so like a passenger before. I
thanked him, with emotion, for each new fact, and
wrote it down in my note-book. The pilot warmed to
his opportunity, and proceeded to load me up in the
good old-fashioned way. At times I was afraid he
was going to rupture his invention ; but it always stood
the strain, and he pulled through all right. He drifted,
by easy stages, into revealments of the river's marvel
ous eccentricities of one sort and another, and backed
them up with some pretty gigantic illustrations. For
instance :

" Do you see that little bowlder sticking out of the
water yonder? Well, when I first came on the river,
that was a solid ridge of rock, over sixty feet high and
two miles long. All washed away but that." [This
with a sigh.]

I had a mighty impulse to destroy him, but it
seemed to me that killing, in any ordinary way, would
be too good for him.

Once, when an odd-looking craft, with a vast coal
scuttle slanting aloft on the end of a beam, was steam
ing by in the distance, he indifferently drew attention
to it, as one might to an object grown wearisome
through familiarity, and observed that it was an
"alligator boat."

" An alligator boat? What's it for?"

" To dredge out alligators with."

" Are they so thick as to be troublesome?"

M Well, not now, because the government keeps

Life on the Mississippi 193

them down. But they used to be. Not everywhere ;
but in favorite places, here and there, where the river
is wide and shoal — like Plum Point, and Stack Island,
and so on — places they call alligator beds."

" Did they actually impede navigation?"
'Years ago, yes, in very low water; there was
hardly a trip, then, that we didn't get aground on
alligators."

It seemed to me that I should certainly have to get
out my tomahawk. However, I restrained myself and
said :

11 It must have been dreadful."

11 Yes, it was one of the main difficulties about pilot
ing. It was so hard to tell anything about the water ;

the d d things shift around so — never lie still five

minutes at a time. You can tell a wind-reef, straight
off, by the look of it ; you can tell a break ; you can
tell a sand-reef — that's all easy; but an alligator reef
doesn't show up, worth anything. Nine times in ten
you can't tell where the water is; and when you do see
where it is, like as not it ain't there whenjtf^ get there,
the devils have swapped around so, meantime. Of
course there were some few pilots that could judge of
alligator water nearly as well as they could of any
other kind, but they had to have natural talent for it;
it wasn't a thing a body could learn, you had to be
born with it. Let me see : There was Ben Thornburg,
and Beck Jolly, and Squire Bell, and Horace Bixby,
and Major Downing, and John Stevenson, and Billy
Gordon, and Jim Brady, and George Ealer, and Billy
Youngblood — all A I alligator pilots. They could tell
alligator water as far as another Christian could tell
whisky. Read it? Ah, couldn't they, though! I
only wish I had as many dollars as they could read
alligator water a mile and a half off. Yes, and it paid
them to do it, too. A good alligator pilot could always
13

194 Life on the Mississippi

get fifteen hundred dollars a month. Nights, other
people had to lay up for alligators, but those fellows
never laid up for alligators; they never laid up for
anything but fog. They could smell the best alligator
water — so it was said. I don't know whether it was
so or not, and I think a body's got his hands full
enough if he sticks to just what he knows himself,
without going around backing up other people's say-
so's, though there's a plenty that ain't backward about
doing it, as long as they can roust out something
wonderful to tell. Which is not the style of Robert
Styles, by as much as three fathom — maybe quarter-
to."

[My! Was this Rob Styles? This mustached and
stately figure? A slim enough cub, in my time. How
he has improved in comeliness in five-and-twenty years
— and in the noble art of inflating his facts.] After
these musings, I said aloud:

"I should think that dredging out the alligators
wouldn't have done much good, because they could
come back again right away."

' * If you had had as much experience of alligators as
I have, you wouldn't talk like that. You dredge an
alligator once and he's convinced. It's the last you
hear of him. He wouldn't come back for pie. If
there's one thing that an alligator is more down on
than another, it's being dredged. Besides, they were
not simply shoved out of the way ; the most of the
scoopful were scooped aboard ; they emptied them
into the hold; and when they had got a trip, they
took them to Orleans to the government works."

"What for?"

"Why, to make soldier-shoes out of their hides.
All the government shoes are made of alligator hide.
It makes the best shoes in the world. They last five
years, and they won't absorb water. The alligator

Life on the Mississippi 195

fishery is a government monopoly. All the alligators
are government property — just like the live-oaks.
You cut down a live-oak, and government fines you
fifty dollars ; you kill an alligator, and up you go for
misprision of treason — lucky duck if they don't hang
you, too. And they will, if you're a Democrat. The
buzzard is the sacred bird of the South, and you can't
touch him; the alligator is the sacred bird of the
government, and you've got to let him alone."

" Do you ever get aground on the alligators now?'*
14 Oh, no ! it hasn't happened for years."
"Well, then, why do they still keep the alligator
boats in service?"

Just for police duty — nothing more. They merely
go up and down now and then. The present genera
tion of alligators know them as easy as a burglar knows
a roundsman ; when they see one coming, they break
camp and go for the woods."

After rounding-out and finishing-up and polishing-
off the alligator business, he dropped easily and com
fortably into the historical vein, and told of some
tremendous feats of half a dozen old-time steamboats
of his acquaintance, dwelling at special length upon a
certain extraordinary performance of his chief favorite
among this distinguished fleet — and then adding:

' That boat was the Cyclone — last trip she ever
made — she sunk, that very trip ; captain was Tom
Ballou, the most immortal liar that ever I struck. He
couldn't ever seem to tell the truth, in any kind of
weather. Why, he would make you fairly shudder.
He was the most scandalous liar! I left him, finally;
I couldn't stand it. The proverb says, ' like master,
like man ' ; and if you stay with that kind of a man,
you'll come under suspicion by and by, just as sure as
you live. He paid first-class wages ; but said I, * What's
wages when your reputation's in danger?' So I let

196 Life on the Mississippi

the wages go, and froze to my reputation. And I've
never regretted it. Reputation's worth everything,
ain't it? That's the way I look at it. He had more
selfish organs than any seven men in the world — all
packed in the stern-sheets of his skull, of course,
where they belonged. They weighed down the back
of his head so that it made his nose tilt up in the air.
People thought it was vanity, but it wasn't, it was
malice. If you only saw his foot, you'd take him to
be nineteen feet high, but he wasn't; it was because
his foot was out of drawing. He was intended to be
nineteen feet high, no doubt, if his foot was made
first, but he didn't get there; he was only five feet
ten. That's what he was, and that's what he is. You
take the lies out of him, and he'll shrink to the size of
your hat; you take the malice out of him, and he'll
disappear. That Cyclone was a rattler to go, and the
sweetest thing to steer that ever walked the waters.
Set her amidships, in a big river, and just let her go ;
it was all you had to do. She would hold herself on a
star all night, if you let her alone. You couldn't ever
feel her rudder. It wasn't any more labor to steer her
than it is to count the Republican vote in a South
Carolina election. One morning, just at daybreak, the
last trip she ever made, "they took her rudder aboard
to mend it; I didn't know anything about it; I backed
her out from the woodyard and went a-weaving down
the river all serene. When I had gone about twenty-
three miles, and made four horribly crooked cross
ings »

"Without any rudder?"

' Yes — old Captain Tom appeared on the roof and
began to find fault with me for running such a dark
night "

' ' Such a dark night ? Why, you said ' '

" Never mind what I said — 'twas as dark as Egypt

Life on the Mississippi 197

now, though pretty soon the moon began to rise,

and "

' You mean the sun — because you started out just
at break of — look here ! Was this before you quitted
the captain on account of his lying, or "

11 It was before — oh, a long time before. And as
I was saying, he "

44 But was this the trip she sunk, or was "

11 Oh, no ! months afterward. And so the old man,
he "

"Then she made two last trips, because you
said "

He stepped back from the wheel, swabbing away his
perspiration, and said:

11 Here!" (calling me by name) "you take her and
lie a while — you're handier at it than I am: Trying
to play yourself for a stranger and an innocent!
Why, I knew you before you had spoken seven words;
and I made up my mind to find out what was your
little game. It was to draw me out. Well, I let you,
didn't I? Now take the wheel and finish the watch;
and next time play fair, and you won't have to work
your passage."

Thus ended the fictitious-name business. And not
six hours out from St. Louis ! but I had gained a
privilege, anyway, for I had been itching to get my
hands on the wheel, from the beginning. I seemed to
have forgotten the river, but I hadn't forgotten how to
steer a steamboat, nor how to enjoy it, either.

CHAPTER XXV.

FROM CAIRO TO HICKMAN

HTHE scenery from St. Louis to Cairo — two hun-
I dred miles — is varied and beautiful. The hills
were clothed in the fresh foliage of spring now, and
were a gracious and worthy setting for the broad river
flowing between. Our trip began auspiciously, with a
perfect day, as to breeze and sunshine, and our boat threw
the miles out behind her with satisfactory dispatch.

We found a railway intruding at Chester, 111. ;
Chester has also a penitentiary now, and is otherwise
marching on. At Grand Tower, too, there was a rail
way; and another at Cape Girardeau. The former
town gets its name from a huge, squat pillar of rock,
which stands up out of the water on the Missouri side
of the river — a piece of nature's fanciful handiwork —
and is one of the most picturesque features of the
scenery of that region. For nearer or remoter neigh
bors, the Tower has the Devil's Bake-oven — so called,
perhaps, because it does not powerfully resemble any
body else's bake-oven; and the Devil's Tea-table —
this latter a great smooth-surfaced mass of rock, with
diminishing wine-glass stem, perched some fifty or
sixty feet above the river, beside a beflowered and
garlanded precipice, and sufficiently like a tea-table to
answer for anybody, Devil or Christian. Away down
the river we have the Devil's Elbow and the Devil's

(198)

Life on the Mississippi 199

Race-course, and lots of other property of his which I
cannot now call to mind.

The town of Grand Tower was evidently a busier
place than it had been in old times, but it seemed to
need some repairs here and there, and a new coat of
whitewash all over. Still, it was pleasant to me to see
the old coat once more. "Uncle" Mumford, our
second officer, said the place had been suffering from
high water and consequently was not looking its best
now. But he said it was not strange that it didn't
waste whitewash on itself, for more lime was made
there, and of a better quality, than anywhere in the
West; and added, "On a dairy farm you never can
get any milk for your coffee, nor any sugar for it on a
sugar plantation ; and it is against sense to go to a
lime town to hunt for whitewash." In my own ex
perience I knew the first two items to be true: and
also that people who sell candy don't care for candy;
therefore there was plausibility in Uncle Mumford's
final observation that "people who make lime run
more to religion than whitewash." Uncle Mumford
said, further, that Grand Tower was a great coaling
center and a prospering place.

Cape Girardeau is situated on a hillside, and makes
a handsome appearance. There is a great Jesuit
school for boys at the foot of the town by the river.
Uncle Mumford said it had as high a reputation for
thoroughness as any similar institution in Missouri.
There was another college higher up on an airy sum
mit — a bright new edifice, picturesquely and peculiarly
towered and pinnacled — a sort of gigantic casters,
with the cruets all complete. Uncle Mumford said
that Cape Girardeau was the Athens of Missouri, and
contained several colleges besides those already men
tioned ; and all of them on a religious basis of one
kind or another. He directed my attention to what he

200 Life on the Mississippi

called the ' ' strong and pervasive religious look of the
town," but I could not see that it looked more religious
than the other hill towns with the same slope and built
of the same kind of bricks. Partialities often make
people see more than really exists.

Uncle Mumford has been thirty years a mate on the
river. He is a man of practical sense and a level
head ; has observed ; has had much experience of one
sort and another; has opinions; has, also, just a per
ceptible dash of poetry in his composition, an easy
gift of speech, a thick growl in his voice, and an oath
or two where he can get at them when the exigencies
of his office require a spiritual lift. He is a mate of

the blessed old-time kind ; and goes gravely d ing

around, when there is work to the fore, in a way to
mellow the ex-steamboatman's heart with sweet, soft
longings for the vanished days that shall come no

more. " Git up, there, you ! Going to be

all day? Why d'n't you say you was petrified in your
hind legs, before you shipped?"

He is a steady man with his crew; kind and just,
but firm; so they like him, and stay with him. He is
still in the slouchy garb of the old generation of mates ;
but next trip the Anchor Line will have him in uni
form — a natty blue naval uniform, with brass buttons,
along with all the officers of the line — and then he
will be a totally different style of scenery from what he
is now.

Uniforms on the Mississippi ! It beats all the other
changes put together, for surprise. Still, there is
another surprise — that it was not made fifty years
ago. It is so manifestly sensible that it might have
been thought of earlier, one would suppose. During
fifty years, out there, the innocent passenger in need
of help and information has been mistaking the mate
for the cook, and the captain for the barber — and

Life on the Mississippi 201

being roughly entertained for it, too. But his troubles
are ended now. And the greatly improved aspect of
the boat's staff is another advantage achieved by the
dress-reform period.

Steered down the bend below Cape Girardeau.
They used to call it " Steersman's Bend " ; plain sail
ing and plenty of water in it, always ; about the only
place in the Upper River that a new cub was allowed to
take a boat through, in low water.

Thebes, at the head of the Grand Chain, and Com
merce at the foot of it, were towns easily remember-
able, as they had not undergone conspicuous altera
tion. Nor the Chain, either — in the nature of things;
for it is a chain of sunken rocks admirably arranged to
capture and kill steamboats on bad nights. A good
many steamboat corpses lie buried there, out of sight;
among the rest my first friend, the Paul Jones ; she
knocked her bottom out, and went down like a pot, so
the historian told me — Uncle Mumford. He said she
had a gray mare aboard, and a preacher. To me, this
sufficiently accounted for the disaster; as it did, of
course, to Mumford, who added:

4 ' But there are many ignorant people who would
scoff at such a matter, and call it superstition. But
you will always notice that they are people who have
never traveled with a gray mare and a preacher. I
went down the river in such company. We grounded
at Bloody Island ; we grounded at Hanging Dog ; we
grounded just below this same Commerce ; we jolted
Beaver Dam Rock ; we hit one of the worst breaks in
the ' Graveyard ' behind Goose Island ; we had a
roustabout killed in a fight ; we burst a boiler ; broke
a shaft; collapsed a flue; and went into Cairo with
nine feet of water in the hold — may have been more,
may have been less. I remember it as if it were
yesterday. The men lost their heads with terror.

202 Life on the Mississippi

They painted the mare blue, in sight of town, and
threw the preacher overboard, or we should not have
arrived at all. The preacher was fished out and saved.
He acknowledged, himself, that he had been to blame.
I remember it all, as if it were yesterday."

That this combination — of preacher and gray mare

— should breed calamity seems strange, and at first
glance unbelievable; but the fact is fortified by so
much unassailable proof that to doubt is to dishonor
reason. I myself remember a case where a captain
was warned by numerous friends against taking a gray
mare and a preacher with him, but persisted in his
purpose in spite of all that could be said; and the
same day — it may have been the next, and some say
it was, though I think it was the same day — he got
drunk and fell down the hatchway and was borne to
his home a corpse. This is literally true.

No vestige of Hat Island is left now ; every shred of
it is washed away. I do not even remember what part
of the river it used to be in, except that it was between
St. Louis and Cairo somewhere. It was a bad region

— all around and about Hat Island, in early days. A
farmer, who lived on the Illinois shore there, said that
twenty-nine steamboats had left their bones strung
along within sight from his house. Between St. Louis
and Cairo the steamboat wrecks average one to the
mile — two hundred wrecks, altogether.

I could recognize big changes from Commerce down.
Beaver Dam Rock was out in the middle of the river
now, and throwing a prodigious *' break " ; it used to
be close to the shore, and boats went down outside of
it. A big island that used to be away out in mid-river
has retired to the Missouri shore, and boats do not go
near it any more. The island called Jacket Pattern is
whittled down to a wedge now, and is booked for early
destruction. Goose Island is all gone but a little dab,

Life on the Mississippi 203

the size of a steamboat. The perilous :* Graveyard,"
among whose numberless wrecks we used to pick our
way so slowly and gingerly, is far away from the
channel now, and a terror to nobody. One of the
islands formerly called the Two Sisters is gone en
tirely ; the other, which used to lie close to the Illinois
shore, is now on the Missouri side, a mile away; it is
joined solidly to the shore, and it takes a sharp eye to
see where the seam is — but it is Illinois ground yet,
and the people who live on it have to ferry themselves
over and work the Illinois roads and pay Illinois taxes :
singular state of things !

Near the mouth of the river several islands were
missing — washed away. Cairo was still there — easily
visible across the long, flat point upon whose further
verge it stands; but we had to steam a long way
around to get to it. Night fell as we were going out
of the " Upper River" and meeting the floods of the
Ohio. We dashed along without anxiety; for the
hidden rock which used to lie right in the way has
moved up stream a long distance out of the channel ;
or rather, about one county has gone into the river
from the Missouri point, and the Cairo point has

made down ' ' and added to its long tongue of terri
tory correspondingly. The Mississippi is a just and
equitable river; it never tumbles one man's farm over
board without building a new farm just like it for that
man's neighbor. This keeps down hard feelings.

Going into Cairo, we came near killing a steamboat
which paid no attention to our whistle and then tried
to cross our bows. By doing some strong backing,
we saved him ; which was a great loss, for he would
have made good literature.

Cairo is a brisk town now; and is substantially
built, and has a city look about it which is in noticeable
contrast to its former estate, as per Mr. Dickens'

204 Life on the Mississippi

portrait of it. However, it was already building with
bricks when I had seen it last — which was when
Colonel (now General) Grant was drilling his first
command there. Uncle Mumford says the libraries
and Sunday-schools have done a good work in Cairo,
as well as the brick masons. Cairo has a heavy rail
road and river trade, and her situation at the junction
of the two great rivers is so advantageous that she
cannot well help prospering.

When I turned out in the morning, we had passed
Columbus, Ky., and were approaching Hickman, a
pretty town perched on a handsome hill. Hickman is
in a rich tobacco region, and formerly enjoyed a great
and lucrative trade in that staple, collecting it there in
her warehouses from a large area of country and ship
ping it by boat ; but Uncle Mumford says she built a
railway to facilitate this commerce a little more, and he
thinks it facilitated it the wrong way — took the bulk
of the trade out of her hands by * ' collaring it along
the line without gathering it at her doors."

CHAPTER XXVI.

UNDER FIRE

TALK began to run upon the war now, for we were
getting down into the upper edge of the former
battle-stretch by this time. Columbus was just behind
us, so there was a good deal said about the famous
battle of Belmont. Several of the boat's officers had
seen active service in the Mississippi war-fleet. I
gathered that they found themselves sadly out of their
element in that kind of business at first, but afterward
got accustomed to it, reconciled to it, and more or less
at home in it. One of our pilots had his first war ex
perience in the Belmont fight, as a pilot on a boat in
the Confederate service. I had often had a curiosity
to know how a green hand might feel, in his maiden
battle, perched all solitary and alone on high in a pilot
house, a target for Tom, Dick, and Harry, and nobody
at his elbow to shame him from showing the white
feather when matters grew hot and perilous around him ;
so to me his story was valuable — it filled a gap for me
which all histories had left till that time empty.

THE PILOT'S FIRST BATTLE

He said :

" It was the /th of November. The fight began at
seven in the morning. I was on the R. H. W. Hill.
Took over a load of troops from Columbus. Came
back, and took over a battery of artillery. My partner

14 (205)

206 Life on the Mississippi

said he was going to see the fight; wanted me to go
along. I said, No, I wasn't anxious, I would look at
it from the pilot-house. He said I was a coward, and
left.

" That fight was an awful sight. General Cheatham
made his men strip their coats off and throw them in a

pile, and said, ' Now follow me to h 1 or victory ! '

I heard him say that from the pilot-house ; and then he
galloped in, at the head of his troops. Old General
Pillow, with his white hair, mounted on a white horse,
sailed in, too; leading his troops as lively as a boy.
By and by the Federals chased the rebels back, and
here they came ! tearing along, everybody for himself
and Devil take the hindmost ! and down under the bank
they scrambled, and took shelter. I was sitting with
my legs hanging out of the pilot-house window. All
at once I noticed a whizzing sound passing my ear.
Judged it was a bullet. I didn't stop to think about
anything, I just tilted over backward and landed on the
floor, and stayed there. The balls came booming
around. Three cannon balls went through the chim
ney ; one ball took off the corner of the pilot-house ;
shells were screaming and bursting all around. Mighty
warm times — I wished I hadn't come. I lay there on
the pilot-house floor, while the shots came faster and
faster. I crept in behind the big stove, in the middle
of the pilot-house. Presently a minie-ball came through
the stove, and just grazed my head and cut my hat.
I judged it was time to go away from there. The cap
tain was on the roof with a red-headed major from
Memphis — a fine looking man. I heard him say he
wanted to leave here, but ' that pilot is killed.' I crept
over to the starboard side to pull the bell to set her
back; raised up and took a look, and I saw about
fifteen shot-holes through the window-panes ; had come
so lively I hadn't noticed them. I glanced out on the

Life on the Mississippi 207

water, and the spattering shot were like a hail-storm.
I thought best to get out of that place. I went down
the pilot-house guy head first — not feet first but head
first — slid down — before I struck the deck, the cap
tain said we must leave there. So I climbed up the
guy and got on the floor again. About that time they
collared my partner and were bringing him up to the
pilot-house between two soldiers. Somebody had said
I was killed. He put his head in and saw me on the
floor reaching for the backing-bells. He said, * Oh,

h 1! he ain't shot,' and jerked away from the men

who had him by the collar, and ran below. We were
there until three o'clock in the afternoon, and then got
away all right.

"The next time I saw my partner, I said, * Now,
come out; be honest, and tell me the truth. Where
did you go when you went to see that battle ? ' He
says, ' I went down in the hold.'

"All through that fight I was scared nearly to death.
I hardly knew anything, I was so frightened ; but you
see, nobody knew that but me. Next day General Polk
sent for me, and praised me for my bravery and gallant
conduct.

1 ' I never said anything, I let it go at that. I judged
it wasn't so, but it was not for me to contradict a
general officer.

" Pretty soon after that I was sick, and used up, and
had to go off to the Hot Springs. When there, I got
a good many letters from commanders saying they
wanted me to come back. I declined, because I wasn't
well enough or strong enough; but I kept still, and
kept the reputation I had made."

A plain story, straightforwardly told; but Mumford
told me that that pilot had ' * gilded that scare of his, in
spots ' ' ; that his subsequent career in the war was
proof of it.

208 Life on the Mississippi

We struck down through the chute of Island No. 8,
and I went below and fell into conversation with a
passenger, a handsome man, with easy carriage and an
intelligent face. We were approaching Island No. 10,
a place so celebrated during the war. This gentleman's
home was on the main shore in its neighborhood. I
had some talk with him about the war times; but
presently the discourse fell upon "feuds," for in no
part of the South has the vendetta flourished more
briskly, or held out longer between warring families,
than in this particular region. This gentleman said :

" There's been more than one feud around here, in
old times, but I reckon the first one was between the
Darnells and the Watsons. Nobody don't know now
what the first quarrel was about, it's so long ago; the
Darnells and the Watsons don't know, if there's any of
them living, which I don't think there is. Some says
it was about a horse or a cow — anyway, it was a little
matter; the money in it wasn't of no consequence —
none in the world — both families was rich. The
thing could have been fixed up, easy enough; but no,
that wouldn't do. Rough words had been passed;
and so, nothing but blood could fix it up after that.
That horse or cow, whichever it was, cost sixty years
of killing or crippling ! Every year or so somebody
was shot, on one side or the other; and as fast as one
generation was laid out, their sons took up the feud
and kept it a-going. And it's just as I say; they went
on shooting each other, year in and year out — making
a kind of a religion of it, you see — till they'd done
forgot, long ago, what it was all about. Wherever a
Darnell caught a Watson, or a Watson caught a
Darnell, one of 'em was going to get hurt — only
question was, which of them got the drop on the other.
They'd shoot one another down, right in the presence
of the family. They didn't hunt for each other, but

Life on the Mississippi 209

when they happened to meet, they pulled and begun.
Men would shoot boys, boys would shoot men. A
man shot a boy twelve years old — happened on him
in the woods, and didn't give him no chance. If he
had 'a' given him a chance, the boy'd 'a' shot him.
Both families belonged to the same church (everybody
around here is religious) ; through all this fifty or sixty
years' fuss, both tribes was there every Sunday, to wor
ship. They lived each side of the line, and the church
was at a landing called Compromise. Half the church
and half the aisle was in Kentucky, the other half
in Tennessee. Sundays you'd see the families drive
up, all in their Sunday clothes — men, women, and
children — and file up the aisle, and set down, quiet and
orderly, one lot on the Tennessee side of the church
and the other on the Kentucky side ; and the men and
boys would lean their guns up against the wall, handy,
and then all hands would join in with the prayer and
praise; though they say the man next the aisle didn't
kneel down, along with the rest of the family; kind
of stood guard. I don't know; never was at that
church in my life; but I remember that that's what
used to be said.

'Twenty or twenty-five years ago one of the feud
families caught a young man of nineteen out and killed
him. Don't remember whether it was the Darnells
and Watsons, or one of the other feuds ; but anyway,
this young man rode up — steamboat laying there at
the time — and the first thing he saw was a whole gang
of the enemy. He jumped down behind a wood-pile,
but they rode around and begun on him, he firing back,
and they galloping and cavorting and yelling and bang
ing away with all their might. Think he wounded a
couple of them ; but they closed in on him and chased
him into the river; and as he swum along down
stream, they followed along the bank and kept on
14

210 Life on the Mississippi

shooting at him, and when he struck shore he was
dead. Windy Marshall told me about it. He saw it.
He was captain of the boat.

"Years ago, the Darnells was so thinned out that
the old man and his two sons concluded they'd leave
the country. They started to take steamboat just above
No. 10; but the Watsons got wind of it; and they
arrived just as the two young Darnells was walking up
the companionway with their wives on their arms.
The fight begun then, and they never got no further —
both of them killed. After that, old Darnell got into
trouble with the man that run the ferry, and the ferry
man got the worst of it — and died. But his friends
shot old Darnell through and through — filled him full
of bullets, and ended him."

The country gentleman who told me these things
had been reared in ease and comfort, was a man of
good parts, and was college-bred. His loose grammar
was the fruit of careless habit, not ignorance. This
habit among educated men in the West is not universal,
but it is prevalent — prevalent in the towns, certainly,
if not in the cities ; and to a degree which one cannot
help noticing, and marveling at. I heard a Westerner,
who would be accounted a highly educated man in any
country, say, *' Never mind, it don't make no difference,
anyway." A life-long resident who was present heard
it, but it made no impression upon her. She was able
to recall the fact afterward, when reminded of it; but
she confessed that the words had not grated upon her
ear at the time — a confession which suggests that if
educated people can hear such blasphemous grammar,
from such a source, and be unconscious of the deed,
the crime must be tolerably common — so common
that the general ear has become dulled by familiarity
with it, and is no longer alert, no longer sensitive to
such affronts.

Life on the Mississippi 211

No one in the world speaks blemishless grammar;
no one has ever written it — no one, either in the world
or out of it (taking the Scriptures for evidence on the
latter point) ; therefore it would not be fair to exact
grammatical perfection from the peoples of the Valley ;
but they and all other peoples may justly be required
to refrain from knowingly and purposely debauching
their grammar.

I found the river greatly changed at Island No. 10.
The island which I remembered was some three miles
long and a quarter of a mile wide, heavily timbered,
and lay near the Kentucky shore — within two hundred
yards of it, I should say. Now, however, one had to
hunt for it with a spy-glass. Nothing was left of it but
an insignificant little tuft, and this was no longer near
the Kentucky shore; it was clear over against the
opposite shore, a mile away. In war times the island
had been an important place, for it commanded the
situation; and, being heavily fortified, there was no
getting by it. It lay between the upper and lower
divisions of the Union forces, and kept them separate,
until a junction was finally effected across the Missouri
neck of land ; but the island being itself joined to that
neck now, the wide river is without obstruction.

In this region the river passes from Kentucky into
Tennessee, back into Missouri, then back into Kentucky,
and thence into Tennessee again. So a mile or two of
Missouri sticks over into Tennessee.

The town of New Madrid was looking very unwell ;
but otherwise unchanged from its former condition and
aspect. Its blocks of frame houses were still grouped
in the same old flat plain, and environed by the same
old forests. It was as tranquil as formerly, and appar
ently had neither grown nor diminished in size. It was
said that the recent high water had invaded it and
damaged its looks. This was surprising news; for in

212 Life on the Mississippi

low water the river bank is very high there (fifty feet)f
and in my day an overflow had always been considered
an impossibility. This present flood of 1882 will
doubtless be celebrated in the river's history for
several generations before a deluge of like magnitude
shall be seen. It put all the unprotected low lands
under water, from Cairo to the mouth ; it broke down
the levees in a great many places, on both sides of the
river; and in some regions south, when the flood was
at its highest, the Mississippi was seventy miles wide !
a number of lives were lost, and the destruction of
property was fearful. The crops were destroyed,
houses washed away, and shelterless men and cattle
forced to take refuge on scattering elevations here and
there in field and forest, and wait in peril and suffering
until the boats put in commission by the national and
local governments, and by newspaper enterprise, could
come and rescue them. The properties of multitudes
of people were under water for months, and the poorer
ones must have starved by the hundred if succor had
not been promptly afforded.* The water had been
falling during a considerable time now, yet as a rule we
found the banks still under water.

* For a detailed and interesting description of the great flood, written on
board of the New Orleans Times- Democrat's relief boat, see Appendix A.

CHAPTER XXVII.

SOME IMPORTED ARTICLES

WE met two steamboats at New Madrid. Two
steamboats in sight at once ! An infrequent
spectacle now in the lonesome Mississippi. The lone
liness of this solemn, stupendous flood is impressive —
and depressing. League after league, and still league
after league, it pours its chocolate tide along, between
its solid forest walls, its almost untenanted shores, with
seldom a sail or a moving object of any kind to disturb
the surface and break the monotony of the blank,
watery solitude ; and so the day goes, the night comes,
and again the day — and still the same, night after
night and day after day, — majestic, unchanging same
ness of serenity, repose, tranquillity, lethargy, vacancy,
— symbol of eternity, realization of the heaven pictured
by priest and prophet, and longed for by the good and
thoughtless !

Immediately after the war of 1812 tourists began to
come to America, from England ; scattering ones at first,
then a sort of procession of them — a procession which
kept up its plodding, patient march through the land dur
ing many, many years. Each tourist took notes, and went
home and published a book — a book which was usually
calm, truthful, reasonable, kind ; but which seemed just
the reverse to our tender-footed progenitors. A glance
at these tourist-books shows us that in certain of its

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214 Life on the Mississippi

aspects the Mississippi has undergone no change since
those strangers visited it, but remains to-day about as
it was then. The emotions produced in those foreign
breasts by these aspects were not all formed on one
pattern, of course; they had to be various, along at
first, because the earlier tourists were obliged to origi
nate their emotions, whereas in older countries one can
always borrow emotions from one's predecessors. And,
mind you, emotions are among the toughest things in
the world to manufacture out of whole cloth; it is
easier to manufacture seven facts than one emotion.
Captain Basil Hall, R. N., writing fifty-five years ago,
says:

Here I caught the first glimpse of the object I had so long wished to be
hold, and felt myself amply repaid at that moment for all the trouble I had
experienced in coming so far; and stood looking at the river flowing past
till it was too dark to distinguish anything. But it was not until I had
visited the same spot a dozen times that I came to a right comprehension of
the grandeur of the scene.

Following are Mrs. Trollope's emotions. She is
writing a few months later in the same year, 1827, and
is coming in at the mouth of the Mississippi :

The first indication of our approach to land was the appearance of this
mighty river pouring forth its muddy mass of waters, and mingling with the
deep blue of the Mexican Gulf. I never beheld a scene so utterly desolate
as this entrance of the Mississippi. Had Dante seen it, he might have
drawn images of another Bolgia from its horrors. One only object rears
itself above the eddying waters; this is the mast of a vessel long since
wrecked in attempting to cross the bar, and it still stands, a dismal witness of
the destruction that has been, and a boding prophet of that which is to come.

Emotions of Hon. Charles Augustus Murray (near
St. Louis), seven years later:

It is only when you ascend the mighty current for fifty or a hundred
miles, and use the eye of imagination as well as that of nature, that you
begin to understand all his might and majesty. You see him fertilizing a

Life on the Mississippi 215

boundless valley, bearing along in his course the trophies of his thousand
victories over the shattered forest — here carrying away large masses of soil
with all their growth, and there forming islands destined at some future
period to be the residence of man; and while indulging in this prospect, it
is then time for reflection to suggest that the current before you has flowed
through two or three thousand miles, and has yet to travel one thousand
three hundred more before reaching its ocean destination.

Receive, now, the emotions of Captain Marryat,
R. N., author of the sea tales, writing in 1837, three
years after Mr. Murray:

Never, perhaps, in the records of nations, was there an instance of a
century of such unvarying and unmitigated crime as is to be collected from
the history of the turbulent and blood-stained Mississippi. The stream itself
appears as if appropriate for the deeds which have been committed. It is not
like most rivers, beautiful to the sight, bestowing fertility in its course; not one
that the eye loves to dwell upon as it sweeps along, nor can you wander upon
its bank, or trust yourself without danger to its stream. It is a furious, rapid,
desoiating torrent, loaded with alluvial soil ; and few of those who are
received into ks waters ever rise again,* or can support themselves long
upon its surface without assistance from some friendly log. It contains the
coarsest and most uneatable of fish, such as catfish and such genus, and, as
you descend, its banks are occupied with the fetid alligator, while the
panther basks at its edge in the cane-brakes, almost impervious to man.
Pouring its impetuous waters through wild tracts covered with trees of little
value except for firewood, it sweeps down whole forests in its course,
which disappear in tumultuous confusion, whirled away by the stream
now loaded with the masses of soil which nourished their roots,
often blocking up and changing for a time the channel of the river,
which, as if in anger at its being opposed, inundates and devastates the
whole country round; and as soon as it forces its way through its former
channel, plants in every direction the uprooted monarchs of the forest
(upon whose branches the bird will never again perch, or the raccoon, the
opossum, or the squirrel climb) as traps to the adventurous navigators of its
waters by steam, who, borne down by these concealed dangers which pierce

* There was a foolish superstition of some little prevalence in that day
that the Mississippi would neither buoy up a swimmer nor permit a drowned
person's body to rise to the surface.

216 Life on the Mississippi

through the planks, very often have not time to steer for and gain the shore
before they sink to the bottom. There are no pleasing associations con
nected with the great common sewer of the Western America, which pours
out its mud into the Mexican Gulf, polluting the clear blue sea for many
miles beyond its mouth. It is a river of desolation; and instead of remind
ing you, like other beautiful rivers, of an angel which has descended for the
benefit of man, you imagine it a devil, whose energies have been only over
come by the wonderful power of steam.

It is pretty crude literature for a man accustomed to
handling a pen; still, as a panorama of the emotions
sent weltering through this noted visitor's breast by
the aspect and traditions of the "great common
sewer," it has a value. A value, though marred in the
matter of statistics by inaccuracies ; for the catfish is a
plenty good enough fish for anybody, and there are no
panthers that are " impervious to man."

Later still comes Alexander Mackay, of the Middle
Temple, Barrister at Law, with a better digestion, and
no catfish dinner aboard, and feels as follows:

The Mississippi ! It was with indescribable emotions that I first felt
myself afloat upon its waters. How often in my schoolboy dreams, and in
my waking visions afterward, had my imagination pictured to itself
the lordly stream, rolling with tumultuous current through the boundless
region to which it has given its name, and gathering into itself, in its course
to the ocean, the tributary waters of almost every latitude in the temperate
zone ! Here it was then in its reality, and T, at length, steaming against its
tide. I looked upon it with that reverence with which every one must re
gard a great feature of external nature.

So much for the emotions. The tourists, one and
all, remark upon the deep, brooding loneliness and
desolation of the vast river. Captain Basil Hall, who
saw it at flood-stage, says :

Sometimes we passed along distances of twenty or thirty miles without
seeing a single habitation. An artist, in search of hints for a painting of
the deluge, would here have found them in abundance.

The first shall be last, etc. Just two hundred years

Life on the Mississippi 217

ago, the old original first and gallantest of all the foreign
tourists, pioneer, head of the procession, ended his
weary and tedious discovery voyage down the solemn
stretches of the great river — La Salle, whose name will
last as long as the river itself shall last. We quote
from Mr. Parkman:

And now they neared their journey's end. On the 6th of April, the river
divided itself into three broad channels. La Salle followed that of the west,
and D'Autray that of the east; while Tonty took the middle passage. As
he drifted down the turbid current, between the low and marshy shores, the
brackish water changed to brine, and the breeze grew fresh with the salt
breath of the sea. Then the broad bosom of the great Gulf opened on his
sight, tossing its restless billows, limitless, voiceless, lonely as when bom of
chaos, without a sail, without a sign of life.

Then, on a spot of solid ground, La Salle reared a
column " bearing the arms of France; the Frenchmen
were mustered under arms ; and while the New England
Indians and their squaws looked on in wondering
silence, they chanted the Te Deum, the Exaudiatt and
the Domine, salvum fac regem"

Then, while the musketry volleyed and rejoicing
shouts burst forth, the victorious discoverer planted
the column, and made proclamation in a loud voice,
taking formal possession of the river and the vast
countries watered by it, in the name of the King.
The column bore this inscription :

LOUIS LE GRAND, ROY DE FRANCE ET DE NAVARRE,
REGNE; LE NEUVIEME AVRIL, l682.

New Orleans intended to fittingly celebrate, this
present year, the bicentennial anniversary of this illus
trious event; but when the time came, all her energies
and surplus money were required in other directions,
for the flood was upon the land then, making havoc
and devastation everywhere.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

UNCLE MUMFORD UNLOADS

ALL day we swung along down the river, and had
the stream almost wholly to ourselves. Form
erly, at such a stage of the water, we should have
passed acres of lumber rafts, and dozens of big coal
barges; also occasional little trading-scows, peddling
along from farm to farm, with the peddler's family on
board; possibly a random scow, bearing a humble
Hamlet and Co. on an itinerant dramatic trip. But
these were all absent. Far along in the day we saw
one steamboat; just one, and no more. She was lying
at rest in the shade, within the wooded mouth of the
Obion River. The spyglass revealed the fact that she
was named for me — or he was named for me, which
ever you prefer. As this was the first time I had ever
encountered this species of honor, it seems excusable
to mention it, and at the same time call the attention
of the authorities to the tardiness of my recognition
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

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Life on the Mississippi 219

Government has turned the Mississippi into a sort of
two-thousand-mile torchlight procession. 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. Lamps in such places are of course
not wasted ; it is much more convenient and comfort
able for a pilot to hold on them than on a spread of
formless blackness that won't stay still; and money is
caved 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 pilot
ing, to a large extent. It and some other things
together have knocked all the romance out of it. For
instance, the peril from snags is not now what it once
was. The Government's snag-boats go patrolling up
and down, in these matter-of-fact days, pulling the
river's teeth; they have rooted out all the old clusters
which made many localities so formidable ; and they
allow no new ones to collect. Formerly, if your boat
got away from you, on a black night, and broke for
the woods, it was an anxious time with you ; so was
it, also, when you were groping your way through
solidified darkness in a narrow chute, but all that is
changed now — you flash out your electric light, trans
form night into day in the twinkling of an eye, and
your perils and anxieties are at an end. Horace Bixby

220 Life on the Mississippi

and George Ritchie have charted the crossings and laid
out the courses by compass; they have invented a
lamp to go with the chart, and have patented the
whole. With these helps, one may run in the fog
now, with considerable security, and with a confidence
unknown in the old days.

With these abundant beacons, and the banishment
of snags, plenty of daylight in a box and ready to be
turned on whenever needed, and a chart compass to
fight the fog with, piloting, at a good stage of water,
is now nearly as safe and simple as driving stage, and
is hardly more than three times as romantic.

And now, in these new days of infinite change, the
Anchor Line have raised the captain above the pilot
by giving him the bigger wages of the two. This was
going far, but they have not stopped there. They
have decreed that the pilot shall remain at his post,
and stand his watch clear through, whether the boat be
under way or tied up to the shore. We, that were
once the aristocrats of the river, can't go to bed now,
as we used to do, and sleep while a hundred tons of
freight are lugged aboard ; no, we must sit in the pilot
house; and keep awake, too. Verily we are being
treated like a parcel of mates and engineers. The
Government has taken away the romance of our call
ing; the Company has taken away its state and dignity.

Plum Point looked as it had always looked by night,
with the exception that now there were beacons to
mark the crossings, and also a lot of other lights on
the Point and along its shore; these latter glinting
from the fleet of the United States River Commission,
and from a village which the officials have built on the
land for offices and for the employes of the service.
The military engineers of the Commission have taken
upon their shoulders the job of making the Mississippi
over again — a job transcended IP size by only the

Life on the Mississippi 221

original job of creating it. They are building wing-
dams here and there, to deflect the current; and dikes
to confine it in narrower bounds ; and other dikes to
make it stay there ; and for unnumbered miles along
the Mississippi they are felling the timber-front for
fifty yards back, with the purpose of shaving the bank
down to low-water mark with the slant of a house-roof,
and ballasting it with stones ; and in many places they
have protected the wasting shores with rows of piles.
One who knows the Mississippi will promptly aver —
not aloud but to himself — that ten thousand River
Commissions, with the mines of the 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 obstruc
tion which it will not tear down, dance over, and laugh
at. But a discreet man will not put these things into
spoken words ; for the West Point engineers have not
their superiors anywhere ; they know all that can be
known of their abstruse science; and so, since they
conceive that they can fetter and handcuff that river
and boss him, it is but wisdom for the unscientific man
to keep still, lie low, and 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 impossibilities. 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, steno-
graphically reported, and therefore to be relied on as
being full and correct; except that I have here and

222 Life on the Mississippi

there left out remarks which were addressed to the
men, such as " Where in blazes are you going with
that barrel now?" and which seemed to me to break
the flow of the written statement, without compen
sating by adding to its information or its clearness.
Not that I have ventured to strike^ out all such inter
jections ; I have removed only those which were obvi
ously irrelevant; wherever one occurred which I felt
any question about, I have judged it safest to let it
remain.

UNCLE MUMFORD'S IMPRESSIONS

Uncle Mumford said :

' * As long as I have been mate of a steamboat —
thirty years — I have watched this river and studied it.
Maybe I could have learned more about it at West
Point, but if I believe it I wish I may beWHAT are
you sucking your fingers there for ? — Collar that kag
of nails ! Four years at West Point, and plenty of
books and schooling, will learn a man a good deal, I
reckon, but it won't learn him the river. You turn
one of those little European rivers 'over to this Com
mission, with its hard bottom and clear water, and it
would just be a holiday job for them to wall it, and
pile it, and dike it, and tame it down, and boss it
around, and make it go wherever they wanted it to,
and stay where they put it, and do just as they said,
every time. But this ain't that kind of a river. They
have started in here with big confidence, and the best
intentions in the world ; but they are going to get left.
What does Ecclesiastes vii. 13 say? Says enough to
knock their little game galley- west, don't it? Now
you look at their methods once. There at Devil's
Island, in the Upper River, they wanted the water to
go one way, the water wanted to go another. So they
put up a stone wall. But what does the river care for

Life on the Mississippi 223

a stone wall? When it got ready, it just bulged
through it. Maybe they can build another that will
stay; that is, up there — but not down here they
can't. Down here in the Lower River, they drive
some pegs to turn the water away from the shore and
stop it from slicing off the bank; very well, don't it go
straight over and cut somebody else's bank? Cer
tainly. Are they going to peg all the banks? Why,
they could buy ground and build a new Mississippi
cheaper. They are pegging Bulletin Tow-head now.
It won't do any good. If the river has got a mortgage
on that island, it will foreclose, sure; pegs or no pegs.
Away down yonder, they have driven two rows of
piles straight through the middle of a dry bar half a
mile long, which is forty foot out of the water when
the river is low. What do you reckon that is for? If
I know, I wish I may land inHUMP yourself, you son
of an undertaker ! — out with that coal-oil, now, lively,
LIVELY ! And just look at what they are trying to
do down there at Milliken's Bend. There's been a
cut-off in that section, and Vicksburg is left out in the
cold. It's a country town now. The river strikes in
below it; and a boat can't go up to the town except in
high water. Well, they are going to build wing-dams
in the bend opposite the foot of 103, and throw the
water over and cut off the foot of the island and plow
down into an old ditch where the river used to be in
ancient times ; and they think they can persuade the
water around that way, and get it to strike in above
Vicksburg, as it used to do, and fetch the town back
into the world again. That is, they are going to take
this whole Mississippi, and twist it around and make it
run several miles up stream. Well, you've got to
admire men that deal in ideas of that size and can tote
them around without crutches ; but you haven't got to
believe they can do such miracles, have you? And

"«*^V

224 Life on the Mississippi

yet you ain't absolutely obliged to believe they can't.
I reckon the safe way, where a man can afford it, is to
copper the operation, and at the same time buy enough
property in Vicksburg to square you up in case they
win. Government is doing a deal for the Mississippi,
now — spending loads of money on her. When there
used to be four thousand steamboats and ten thousand
acres of coal-barges, and rafts, and trading-scows,
there wasn't a lantern from St. Paul to New Orleans,
and the snags were thicker than bristles on a hog's
back; and now, when there's three dozen steamboats
and nary barge or raft, Government has snatched out
all the snags, and lit up the shores like Broadway, and
a boat's as safe on the river as she'd be in heaven.
And I reckon that by the time there ain't any boats
left at all, the Commission will have the old thing all,
reorganized, and dredged out, and fenced in, and tidied
up, to a degree that will make navigation just simply
perfect, and absolutely safe and profitable; and all
the days will be Sundays, and all the mates will be
Sunday-school suWHAT - in - the - nation - you-fooling-
around-there-for, you sons of unrighteousness •, heirs oj
perdition ! Going to be a YEAR getting that hogshead
ashore?"

During our trip to New Orleans and back, we had
many conversations with river men, planters, journalists,
and officers of the River Commission — with conflict
ing and confusing results. To wit:

1. Some believed in the Commission's scheme to
arbitrarily and permanently confine (and thus deepen)
the channel, preserve threatened shores, etc.

2. Some believed that the Commission's money
ought to be spent only on building and repairing the
great system of levees.

3. Some believed that the higher you build your

Life on the Mississippi 225

levee, the higher the river's bottom will rise; and that
consequently the levee system is a mistake.

4. Some believed in the scheme to relieve the river,
in flood-time, by turning its surplus waters off into
Lake Borgne, etc.

5 . Some believed in the scheme of northern lake-reser
voirs to replenish the Mississippi in low- water seasons.

Whenever you find a man down there who believes
in one of these theories you may turn to the next man
and frame your talk upon the hypothesis that he does
not believe in that theory; and after you have had
experience, you do not take this course doubtfully or
hesitatingly, but with the confidence of a dying mur
derer — converted one, I mean. For you will have
come to know, with a deep and restful certainty, that
you are not going to meet two people sick of the same
theory, one right after the other. No, there will
always be one or two with the other diseases along
between. And as you proceed, you will find out one
or two other things. You will find out that there is no
distemper of the lot but is contagious ; and you cannot
go where it is without catching it. You may vaccinate
yourself with deterrent facts as much as you please —
it will do no good; it will seem to "take," but it
doesn't; the moment you rub against any one of those
theorists, make up your mind that it is time to hang
out your yellow flag.

Yes, you are his sure victim : yet his work is not all
to your hurt — only part of it; for he is like your
family physician, who comes and cures the mumps,
and leaves the scarlet fever behind. If your man is a
Lake-Borgne-relief theorist, for instance, he will exhale
a cloud of deadly facts and statistics which will lay
you out with that disease, sure; but at the same time
he will cure you of any other of the five theories that
may have previously got into your system.
15

226 Life on the Mississippi

I have had all the five ; and had them ' ' bad ' ' ; but
ask me not, in mournful numbers, which one racked
me hardest, or which one numbered the biggest sick
list, for I do not know. In truth, no one can answer
the latter question. Mississippi Improvement is a
mighty topic, down yonder. Every man on the river
banks, south of Cairo, talks about it every day, during
such moments as he is able to spare from talking about
the war; and each of the several chief theories has its
host of zealous partisans; but, as I have said, it is not
possible to determine which cause numbers the most
recruits.

All were agreed upon one point, however : if Con
gress would make a sufficient appropriation, a colossal
benefit would result. Very well; since then the ap
propriation has been made — possibly a sufficient one,
certainly not too large a one. Let us hope that the
prophecy will be amply fulfilled.

One thing will be easily granted by the reader : that
an opinion from Mr. Edward Atkinson, upon any vast
national commercial matter, comes as near ranking as
authority as can the opinion of any individual in the
Union. What he has to say about Mississippi River
Improvement will be found in the Appendix.*

Sometimes half a dozen figures will reveal, as with a
lightning-flash, the importance of a subject which ten
thousand labored words, with the same purpose in
view, had left at last but dim and uncertain. Here is
a case of the sort — paragraph from the Cincinnati
Commercial :

The towboat Jos. B. Williams is on her way to New Orleans with a tow
of thirty-two barges, containing six hundred thousand bushels (seventy-six
pounds to the bushel) of coal exclusive of her own fuel, being the largest
tow ever taken to New Orleans or anywhere else in the world. Her freight

* See Appendix B.

Life on the Mississippi 227

bill, at three cents a bushel, amounts to $18,000. It would take eighteen
hundred cars, of three hundred and thirty-three bushels to the car, to trans
port this amount of coal. At $10 per ton, or $100 per car, which would be
a fair price for the distance by rail, the freight bill would amount to $180,-
ooo, or $162,000 more by rail than by river. The tow will be taken from
Pittsburg to New Orleans in fourteen or fifteen days. It would take one
hundred trains of eighteen cars to the train to transport this one tow of six
hundred thousand bushels of coal, and even if it made the usual speed of
fast freight lines, it would take one whole summer to put it through by
rail.

When a river in good condition can enable one to
save $162,000, and a whole summer's time, on a single
cargo, the wisdom of taking measures to keep the river
in good condition is made plain to even the uncommer
cial mind.

CHAPTER XXIX.

A FEW SPECIMEN BRICKS

WE passed through the Plum Point region, turned
Craig-head's Point, and glided unchallenged by
what was once the formidable Fort Pillow, memorable
because of the massacre perpetrated there during the
war. Massacres are sprinkled with some frequency
through the histories of several Christian nations, but
this is almost the only one that can be found in Ameri
can history ; perhaps it is the only one which rises to
a size correspondent to that huge and somber title.
We have the " Boston Massacre," where two or three
people were killed ; but we must bunch Anglo-Saxon
history together to find the fellow to the Fort Pillow
tragedy ; and doubtless even then we must travel back
to the days and the performances of Coeur de Lion,
that fine " hero," before we accomplish it.

More of the river's freaks. In times past the chan
nel used to strike above Island 37, by Brandy wine Bar,
and down toward Island 39. Afterward changed its
course and went from Brandywine down through
Vogelman's chute in the Devil's Elbow, to Island
39 — part of this course reversing the old order; the
river running up four or five miles, instead of down,
and cutting off, throughout, some fifteen miles of dis
tance. This in 1876. All that region is now called
Centennial Island.

(228)

Life on the Mississippi 229

There is a tradition that Island 37 was one of
the principal abiding places of the once celebrated
" Murel's Gang." This was a colossal combination
of robbers, horse-thieves, negro-stealers, and counter
feiters, engaged in business along the river some fifty
or sixty years ago. While our journey across the
country toward St. Louis was in progress we had had
no end of Jesse James and his stirring history ; for he
had just been assassinated by an agent of the Governor
of Missouri, and was in consequence occupying a good
deal of space in the newspapers. Cheap histories of
him were for sale by train boys. According to these,
he was the most marvelous creature of his kind that
had ever existed. It was a mistake. Murel was his
equal in boldness, in pluck, in rapacity; in cruelty,
brutality, heartlessness, treachery, and in general and
comprehensive vileness and shamelessness ; and very
much his superior in some larger aspects. James was
a retail rascal; Murel, wholesale. James' modest
genius dreamed of no loftier flight than the planning
of raids upon cars, coaches, and country banks.
Murel projected negro insurrections and the capture
of New Orleans; and furthermore, on occasion, this
Murel could go into a pulpit and edify the congrega
tion. What are James and his half-dozen vulgar ras
cals compared with this stately old-time criminal, with
his sermons, his meditated insurrections and city-
captures, and his majestic following of ten hundred
men, sworn to do his evil will !

Here is a paragraph or two concerning this big
operator, from a now forgotten book which was pub
lished half a century ago :

He appears to have been a most dexterous as well as consummate
villain. When he traveled, his usual disguise was that of an itinerant
preacher; and it is said that his discourses were very "soul-moving," —
interesting the hearers so much that they forgot to look after their horses,

230 Life on the Mississippi

which were carried away by his confederates while he was preaching. But
the stealing of horses in one State, and selling them in another, was but a
small portion of their business; the most lucrative was the enticing slaves
to run away from their masters that they might sell them in another quarter.
This was arranged as follows : they would tell a negro that if he would
run away from his master, and allow them to sell him, he should receive a
portion of the money paid for him, and that upon his return to them a sec
ond time they would send him to a free State, where he would be safe.
The poor wretches complied with this request, hoping to obtain money and
freedom; they would be sold to another master, and run away again to their
employers ; sometimes they would be sold in this manner three or four
times, until they had realized three or four thousand dollars by them; but
as, after this, there was fear of detection, the usual custom was to get rid
of the only witness that could be produced against them, which was the
negro himself, by murdering him and throwing his body into the Mississippi.
Even if it was established that they had stolen a negro, before he was mur
dered, they were always prepared to evade punishment; for they concealed
the negro who had run away until he was advertised and a reward offered to
any man who would catch him. An advertisement of this kind warrants the
person to take the property, if found. And then the negro becomes a
property in trust; when, therefore, they sold the negro, it only became a
breach of trust, not stealing; and for a breach of trust the owner of the
property can only have redress by a civil action, which was useless, as the
damages were never paid. It may be inquired how it was that Murel
escaped Lynch law under such circumstances. This will be easily understood
when it is stated that he had more than a thousand sworn confederates, all
ready at a moment's notice to support any of the gang who might be in
trouble. The names of all the principal confederates of Murel were
obtained from himself, in a manner which I shall presently explain. The
gang was composed of two classes : The Heads or Council, as they were
called, who planned and concerted, but seldom acted; they amounted to
about four hundred. The other class were the active agents, and were
termed strikers, and amounted to about six hundred and fifty. These were
the tools in the hands of the others; they ran all the risk, and received but
a small portion of the money; they were in the power of the leaders of the
gang, who would sacrifice them at any time by handing them over to justice,
or sinking their bodies in the Mississippi. The general rendezvous of this
gang of miscreants was on the Arkansas side of the river, where they con
cealed their negroes in the morasses and canebrakes.

Life on the Mississippi 231

The depredations of this extensive combination were severely felt; but
so well were their plans arranged that, although Murel, who was always
active, was everywhere suspected, there was no proof to be obtained. It
so happened, however, that a young man of the name of Stewart, who was
looking after two slaves which Murel had decoyed away, fell in with him
and obtained his confidence, took the oath, and was admitted into the gang
as one of the General Council. By this means all was discovered; for
Stewart turned traitor, although he had taken the oath, and having obtained
every information, exposed the whole concern, the names of all the parties,
and finally succeeded in bringing home sufficient evidence against Murel to
procure his conviction and sentence to the penitentiary (Murel was sen
tenced to fourteen years' imprisonment). So many people who were sup
posed to be honest, and bore a respectable name in the different States,
were found to be among the list of the Grand Council as published by
Stewart, that every attempt was made to throw discredit upon his assertions
— his character was villified, and more than one attempt was made to
assassinate him. He was obliged to quit the Southern States in conse
quence. It is, however, now well ascertained to have been all true; and
although some blame Mr. Stewart for having violated his oath, they no
longer attempt to deny that his revelations were correct. I will quote one
or two portions of Murel's confessions to Mr. Stewart, made to him when
they were journeying together. I ought to have observed that the ultimate
intentions of Murel and his associates were, by his own account, on a very
extended scale; having no less an object in view than raising the blacks
against the "whites, taking possession of and plundering New Orleans^
and making themselves possessors of the territory. The following are a
few extracts:

"I collected all my friends about New Orleans atone of our friends'
houses in that place, and we sat in council three days before we got all our
plans to our notion; we then determined to undertake the rebellion at every
hazard, and make as many friends as we could for that purpose. Every
man's business being assigned him, I started to Natchez on foot, having sold
my horse in New Orleans — with the intention of stealing another after I
started. I walked four days, and no opportunity offered for me to get a
horse. The fifth day, about twelve, I had become tired, and stopped at a
creek to get some water and rest a little. While I was sitting on a log,
looking down the road the way that I had come, a man came in sight riding
on a good-looking horse. The very moment I saw him, I was determined
to have his horse, if he was in the garb of a traveler. He rode up, and I

232 Life on the Mississippi

saw from his equipage that he was a traveler. I rose and drew an elegant
rifle pistol on him and ordered him to dismount. He did so, and I took his
horse by the bridle and pointed down the creek, and ordered him to walk
before me. He went a few hundred yards and stopped. I hitched his
horse, and then made him undress himself, all to his shirt and drawers,
and ordered him to turn his back to me. He said : ' If you are determined
to kill me, let me have time to pray before I die.' I told him I had no
time to hear him pray. He turned around and dropped on his knees, and I
shot him through the back of the head. I ripped open his belly, and took
out his entrails and sunk him in the creek. I then searched his pockets,
and found four hundred dollars and thirty-seven cents, and a number of
papers that I did not take time to examine. I sunk the pocketbook and
papers and his hat in the creek. His boots were brand new, and fitted me
genteelly; and I put them on and sunk my old shoes in the creek, to atone
for them. I rolled up his clothes and put them into his portmanteau, as
they were brand-new cloth of the best quality. I mounted as fine a horse
as ever I straddled, and directed my course for Natchez in much better style
than I had been for the last five days.

" Myself and a fellow by the name of Crenshaw gathered four good
horses and started for Georgia. We got in company with a young South
Carolinian just before we got to Cumberland Mountain, and Crenshaw soon
knew all about his business. He had been to Tennessee to buy a drove of
hogs, but when he got there pork was dearer than he calculated, and he
declined purchasing. We concluded he was a prize. Crenshaw winked at
me; I understood his idea. Crenshaw had traveled the road before, but I
never had; we had traveled several miles on the mountain, when we passed
near a great precipice; just before we passed it Crenshaw asked me for my
whip, which had a pound of lead in the butt; I handed it to him, and he
rode up by the side of the South Carolinian, and gave him a blow on the side
of the head and tumbled him from his horse ; we lit from our horses and
fingered his pockets; we got twelve hundred and sixty-two dollars. Cren
shaw said he knew a place to hide him, and he gathered him under his arms
and I by his feet, and conveyed him to a deep crevice in the brow of the
precipice, and tumbled him into it, and he went out of sight; we then tum
bled in his saddle, and took his horse with us, which was worth two hun
dred dollars.

" We were detained a few days, and during that time our friend went to
a little village in the neighborhood and saw the negro advertised (a negro in
our possession), and a description of the two men of whom he had been

Life on the Mississippi 233

purchased, and giving his suspicions of the men. It was rather squally
times, but any port in a storm; we took the negro that night on the bank of
a creek which runs by the farm of our friend, and Crenshaw shot hirp
through the head. We took out his entrails and sunk him in the creek.

" He had sold the other negro the third time on Arkansas River for up
ward of five hundred dollars; and then stole him and delivered him into the
hand of his friend, who conducted him to a swamp, and veiled the tragic
scene, and got the last gleanings and sacred pledge of secrecy; as a game
of that kind will not do unless it ends in a mystery to all but the fraternity.
He sold the negro, first and last, for nearly two thousand dollars, and then
put him forever out of the reach of all pursuers; and they can never graze
him unless they can find the negro; and that they cannot do, for his carcass
has fed many a tortoise and catfish before this time, and the frogs have sung
this many a long day to the silent repose of his skeleton."

We were approaching Memphis, in front of which
city, and witnessed by its people, was fought the most
famous of the river battles of the Civil War. Two
men whom I had served under, in my river days, took
part in that fight: Mr. Bixby, head pilot of the Union
fleet, and Montgomery, Commodore of the Confederate
fleet. Both saw a great deal of active service during
the war, and achieved high reputations for pluck and
capacity.

As we neared Memphis, we began to cast about for
an excuse to stay with the Gold Dust to the end of her
course — Vicksburg. We were so pleasantly situated
that we did not wish to make a change. I had an
errand of considerable importance to do at Napoleon,
Ark., but perhaps I could manage it without quitting
the Gold Dust. I said as much; so we decided to
stick to present quarters.

The boat was to tarry at Memphis till ten the next
morning. It is a beautiful city, nobly situated on a
commanding bluff overlooking the river. The streets
are straight and spacious, though not paved in a way
to incite distempered admiration. No, the admiration
must be reserved for the town's sewerage system,

234 Life on the Mississippi

which is called perfect; a recent reform, however, for
it was just the other way up to a few years ago — a
reform resulting from the lesson taught by a desolating
visitation of the yellow fever. In those awful days the
people were swept off by hundreds, by thousands; and
so great was the reduction caused by flight and by
death together, that the population was diminished
three-fourths, and so remained for a time. Business
stood nearly still, and the streets bore an empty Sun
day aspect.

Here is a picture of Memphis, at that disastrous
time, drawn by a German tourist who seems to have
been an eye-witness of the scenes which he described.
It is from chapter vii. of his book, just published in
Leipzig, " Mississippi-Fahrten," von Ernst von Hesse-
Wartegg:

In August the yellow fever had reached its extremest height. Daily
hundreds fell a sacrifice to the terrible epidemic. The city was become a
mighty graveyard, two-thirds of the population had deserted the place, and
only the poor, the aged, and the sick remained behind, a sure prey for the
insidious enemy. The houses were closed; little lamps burned in front of
many — a sign that here death had entered. Often several lay dead in a
single house; from the windows hung black crape. The stores were shut
up, for their owners were gone away or dead.

Fearful evil ! In the briefest space it struck down and swept away even
the most vigorous victim. A slight indisposition, then an hour of fever,
then the hideous delirium, then — the Yellow Death ! On the street corners,
and in the squares, lay sick men, suddenly overtaken by the disease ; and
even corpses, distorted and rigid. Food failed. Meat spoiled in a few
hours in the foetid and pestiferous air, and turned black.

Fearful clamors issue from many houses ! Then after a season they
cease, and all is still; noble, self-sacrificing men come with the coffin, nail
it up, and carry it away to the graveyard. In the night stillness reigns.
Only the physicians and the hearses hurry through the streets; and out of
the distance, at intervals, comes the muffled thunder of the railway train,
which with the' speed of the wind, as if hunted by furies, flies by the pest-
ridden city without halting.

Life on the Mississippi 235

But there is life enough there now. The population
exceeds forty thousand and is augmenting, and trade
is in a flourishing condition. We drove about the
city; visited the park and the sociable horde of squir
rels there; saw the fine residences, rose-clad and in
other ways enticing to the eye ; and got a good break
fast at the hotel.

A thriving place is the Good Samaritan City of the
Mississippi: has a great wholesale jobbing trade;
foundries, machine shops, and manufactories of
wagons, carriages, and cotton-seed oil; and is shortly
to have cotton-mills and elevators.

Her cotton receipts reached five hundred thousand
bales last year — an increase of sixty thousand over
the year before. Out from her healthy commercial
heart issue five trunk lines of railway ; and a sixth is
being added.

This is a very different Memphis from the one which
the vanished and unremembered procession of foreign
tourists used to put into their books long time ago.
In the days of the now forgotten but once renowned
and vigorously hated Mrs. Trollope, Memphis seems
to have consisted mainly of one long street of log-
houses, with some outlying cabins sprinkled around
rearward toward the woods ; and now and then a pig,
and no end of mud. That was fifty-five years ago.
She stopped at the hotel. Plainly it was not the one
which gave us our breakfast. She says :

The table was laid for fifty persons, and was nearly full. They ate in
perfect silence, and with such astonishing rapidity that their dinner was over
literally before ours was begun; the only sounds heard were those produced
by the knives and forks, with the unceasing chorus of coughing, etc.

"Coughing, etc." The "etc." stands for an un
pleasant word there, a word which she does not always
charitably cover up, but sometimes prints. You will

236 Life on the Mississippi

find it in the following description of a steamboat
dinner which she ate in company with a lot of aristo
cratic planters; wealthy, well-born, ignorant swells
they were, tinseled with the usual harmless military
and judicial titles of that old day of cheap shams and
windy pretence:

The total want of all the usual courtesies of the table ; the voracious
rapidity with which the viands were seized and devoured; the strange un
couth phrases and pronunciation ; the loathsome spitting, from the con
tamination of which it was absolutely impossible to protect our dresses; the
frightful manner of feeding with their knives, till the whole blade seemed
to enter into the mouth; and the still more frightful manner of cleaning
the teeth afterward with a pocket knife, soon forced us to feel that we were
not surrounded by the generals, colonels, and majors of the Old World, and
that the dinner hour was to be anything rather than an hour of enjoyment.

CHAPTER XXX.

SKETCHES BY THE WAY

IT was a big river, below Memphis ; banks brimming
full, everywhere, and very frequently more than
full, the waters pouring out over the land, flooding the
woods and fields for miles into the interior; and in
places to a depth of fifteen feet; signs all about of
men's hard work gone to ruin, and all to be done over
again, with straitened means and a weakened courage.
A melancholy picture, and a continuous one; hundreds
of miles of it. Sometimes the beacon lights stood in
water three feet deep, in the edge of dense forests
which extended for miles without farm, wood-yard,
clearing, or break of any kind ; which meant that the
keeper of the light must come in a skiff a great dis
tance 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 main shore, and wagons

16 (237)

238 Life on the Mississippi

travel now where the steamboats used to navigate.
No signs left of the wreck of the Pennsylvania. Some
farmer will turn up her bones with his plow 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
colored folk, and no whites visible; with grassless
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 colored 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 bedticks, chests, tin
ware, 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
dragged aboard ; all four feet braced and sliding along
the stage, head likely to be pulled off; but the tugger
marching determinedly forward, bending to his work,

Life on the Mississippi 239

with the rope over his shoulder for better purchase.
Sometimes a child is forgotten and left on the bank:
but never a dog.

The usual river-gossip going on in the pilot-house.
Island No. 63 — an island with a lovely "chute," or
passage, behind it in the former times. They said
Jesse Jamieson, in the Skylark, had a visiting pilot
with him one trip — a poor old broken-down, superan
nuated fellow — left him at the wheel, at the foot of
63, to run off the watch. The ancient manner went
up through the chute, and down the river outside ; and
up the chute and down the river again ; and yet again
and again ; and handed the boat over to the relieving
pilot, at the end of three hours of honest endeavor, at
the same old foot of the island where he had originally
taken the wheel ! A darky on shore who had observed
the boat go by, about thirteen times, said, " 'clar to
gracious, I wouldn't be s'prised if dey's a whole line
o' dem Skylarks /"

Anecdote illustrative of influence of reputation in
the changing of opinion. The Eclipse was renowned
for her swiftness. One day she passed along; an old
darky on shore, absorbed in his own matters, did not
notice what steamer it was. Presently some one asked :

" Any boat gone up?"

"Yes, sah."

"Was she going fast?"

" Oh, so-so — loafin' along."

" Now, do you know what boat that was?"

"No, sah."

" Why, uncle, that was the Eclipse."

"No! Is dat so? Well, I bet it was — cause she
jes* went by here ^-sparklin' '/"

Piece of history illustrative of the violent style of
some of the people down along here. During the
early weeks of high water, A.'s fence rails washed

240 Life on the Mississippi

down on B.'s ground, and B.'s rails washed up in the
eddy and landed on A.'s ground. A. said, "Let
the thing remain so ; I will use your rails, and you use
mine." But B. objected — wouldn't have it so. One
day, A. came down on B.'s grounds to get his rails.
B. said, "I'll kill you!" and proceeded for him with
his revolver. A. said, "I'm not armed." So B.,
who wished to do only what was right, threw down
his revolver; then pulled a knife, and cut A.'s throat
all around, but gave his principal attention to the front,
and so failed to sever the jugular. Struggling around,
A. managed to get his hands on the discarded revolver,
and shot B. dead with it — and recovered from his own
injuries.

Further gossip; after which, everybody went below
to get afternoon coffee, and left me at the wheel, alone.
Something presently reminded me of our last hour in
St. Louis, part of which I spent on this boat's hurri
cane-deck, aft. I was joined there by a stranger, who
dropped into conversation with me — a brisk young
fellow, who said he was born in a town in the interior
of Wisconsin, and had never seen a steamboat until a
week before. Also said that on the way down from
La Crosse he had inspected and examined his boat so
diligently and with such passionate interest that he had
mastered the whole thing from stem to rudder-blade.
Asked me where I was from. I answered, "New
England." " Oh, a Yank!" said he; and went chat
ting straight along, without waiting for assent or
denial. He immediately proposed to take me all over
the boat and tell me the names of her different parts,
and teach me their uses. Before I could enter protest
or excuse, he was already rattling glibly away at his
benevolent work ; and when I perceived that he was
misnaming the things, and inhospitably amusing him
self at the expense of an innocent stranger from a far

Life on the Mississippi 241

country, I held my peace and let him have his way.
He gave me a world of misinformation ; and the further
he went, the wider his imagination expanded, and the
more he enjoyed his cruel work of deceit. Sometimes,
after palming off a particularly fantastic and outrageous
lie upon me, he was so " full of laugh " that he had to
step aside for a minute, upon one pretext or another,
to keep me from suspecting. I stayed faithfully by
him until his comedy was finished. Then he remarked
that he had undertaken to *' learn" me all about a
steamboat, and had done it; but that if he had over
looked anything, just ask him and he would supply the
lack. "Anything about this boat that you don't
know the name of or the purpose of, you come to me
and I'll tell you." I said I would, and took my de
parture, disappeared, and approached him from another
quarter, whence he could not see me. There he sat,
all alone, doubling himself up and writhing this way
and that, in the throes of unappeasable laughter. He
must have made himself sick ; for he was not publicly
visible afterward for several days. Meantime, the
episode dropped out of my mind.

The thing that reminded me of it now, when I was
alone at the wheel, was the spectacle of this young
fellow standing in the pilot-house door, with the knob
in his hand, silently and severely inspecting me. I
don't know when I have seen anybody look so injured
as he did. He did not say anything — simply stood
there and looked; reproachfully looked and pondered.
Finally he shut the door and started away: halted on
the texas a minute ; came slowly back and stood in
the door again, with that grieved look on his face;
gazed upon me a while in meek rebuke, then said :

" You let me learn you all about a steamboat, didn't
you?"

"Yes," I confessed.
10

242 Life on the Mississippi

" Yes, you did — didn't you?"

"Yes."

" You are the feller that — that "

Language failed. Pause — impotent struggle for
further words — then he gave it up, choked out a
deep, strong oath, and departed for good. Afterward
I saw him several times below during the trip ; but he
was cold — would not look at me. Idiot! if he had
not been in such a sweat to play his witless, practical
joke upon me, in the beginning, I would have per
suaded his thoughts into some other direction, and
saved him from committing that wanton and silly
impoliteness.

I had myself called with the four o'clock watch,
mornings, for one cannot see too many summer sun
rises on the Mississippi. They are enchanting. First,
there is the eloquence of silence; for a deep hush
broods everywhere. Next, there is the haunting sense
of loneliness, isolation, remoteness from the worry and
bustle of the world. The dawn creeps in stealthily;
the solid walls of black forest soften to gray, and vast
stretches of the river open up and reveal themselves ;
the water is glass-smooth, gives off spectral little
wreaths of white mist, there is not the faintest breath
of wind, nor stir of leaf; the tranquillity is profound
and infinitely satisfying. Then a bird pipes up,
another follows, and soon the pipings develop into a
jubilant riot of music. You see none of the birds ;
you simply move through an atmosphere of song which
seems to sing itself. When the light has become a
little stronger, you have one of the fairest and softest
pictures imaginable. You have the intense green of
the massed and crowded foliage near by; you see it
paling shade by shade in front of you ; upon the next
projecting cape, a mile off or more, the tint has light
ened to the tender young green of spring; the cape

Life on the Mississippi 243

beyond that one has almost lost color, and the furthest
one, miles away under the horizon, sleeps upon the
water a mere dim vapor, and hardly separable from
the sky above it and about it. And all this stretch of
river is a mirror, and you have the shadowy reflections
of the leafage and the curving shores and the receding
capes pictured in it. Well, that is all beautiful; soft
and rich and beautiful; and when the sun gets well
up, and distributes a pink flush here and a powder of
gold yonder and a purple haze where it will yield the
best effect, you grant that you have seen something
that is worth remembering.

We had the Kentucky Bend country in the early
morning — scene of a strange and tragic accident in
the old times. Captain Poe had a small stern-wheel
boat, for years the home of himself and his wife. One
night the boat struck a snag in the head of Kentucky
Bend, and sank with astonishing suddenness; water
already well above the cabin floor when the captain
got aft. So he cut into his wife's stateroom from
above with an axe ; she was asleep in the upper berth,
the roof a flimsier one than was supposed ; the first
blow crashed down through the rotten boards and
clove her skull.

This bend is all filled up now — result of a cut-off ;
and the same agent has taken the great and once
much-frequented Walnut Bend, and set it away back
in a solitude far from the accustomed track of passing
steamers.

Helena we visited, and also a town I had not heard
of before, it being of recent birth — Arkansas City. It
was born of a railway; the Little Rock, Mississippi
River, and Texas Railroad touches the river there.
We asked a passenger who belonged there what sort of
a place it was. "Well," said he, after considering,
and with the air of one who wishes to take time and be

244 Life on the Mississippi

accurate, " it's a h — 1 of a place." A description which
was photographic for exactness. There were several
rows and clusters of shabby frame houses, and a
supply of mud sufficient to insure the town against a
famine in that article for a hundred years; for the
overflow had but lately subsided. There were stagnant
ponds in the streets, here and there, and a dozen rude
scows were scattered about, lying aground wherever
they happened to have been when the waters drained
off and people could do their visiting and shopping on
foot once more. Still, it is a thriving place, with a
rich country behind it, an elevator in front of it, and
also a fine big mill for the manufacture of cotton-seed
oil. I had never seen this kind of a mill before.

Cotton-seed was comparatively valueless in my time ;
but it is worth twelve or thirteen dollars a ton now,
and none of it is thrown away. The oil made from it
is colorless, tasteless, and almost, if not entirely, odor
less. It is claimed that it can, by proper manipula
tion, be made to resemble and perform the office of
any and all oils, and be produced at a cheaper rate
than the cheapest of the originals. Sagacious people
shipped it to Italy, doctored it, labeled it, and brought
it back as olive oil. This trade grew to be so formi
dable that Italy was obliged to put a prohibitory impost
upon it to keep it from v/orking serious injury to her
oil industry.

Helena occupies one of the prettiest situations on
the Mississippi. Her perch is the last, the southern
most group of hills which one sees on that side of the
river. In its normal condition it is a pretty town ; but
the flood (or possibly the seepage) had lately been
ravaging it ; whole streets of houses had been invaded
by the muddy water, and the outsides of the buildings
were still belted with a broad stain extending upward
from the foundations. Stranded and discarded scows

Life on the Mississippi 24*

lay all about ; plank sidewalks on stilts four feet high
were still standing; the broad sidewalks on the ground
level were loose and ruinous — a couple of men trotting
along them could make a blind man think a cavalry
charge was coming; everywhere the mud was black
and deep, and in many places malarious pools of stag
nant v/ater were standing. A Mississippi inundation is J ^
the next most wasting and desolating infliction to a>~
fire.

We had an enjoyable time here, on this sunny
Sunday; two full hours' liberty ashore while the boat
discharged freight. In the back streets but few white
people were visible, but there were plenty of colored
folk — mainly women and girls; and almost without
exception upholstered in bright new clothes of swell
and elaborate style and cut — a glaring and hilarious
contrast to the mournful mud and the pensive puddles.

Helena is the second town in Arkansas, in point of
population — which is placed at five thousand. The
country about it is exceptionally productive. Helena -
has a good cotton trade ; handles from forty to sixty
thousand bales annually ; she has a large lumber and
grain commerce; has a foundry, oil-mills, machine
shops, and wagon factories — in brief, has one million
dollars invested in manufacturing industries. She has
two railways, and is the commercial center of a broad
and prosperous region. Her gross receipts of money,
annually, from all sources, are placed by the New
Orleans Times- Democrat at four million dollars.

CHAPTER XXXI.

A THUMBHPRINT AND WHAT CAME OF IT

XV FE were approaching Napoleon, Ark. So I began
W to think about my errand there. Time, noon
day; and bright and sunny. This was bad — not
best, anyway; for mine was not (preferably) a noon
day kind of errand. The more I thought, the more
that fact pushed itself upon me — now in one form,
now in another. Finally, it took the form of a distinct
question : Is it good common sense to do the errand in
daytime, when, by a little sacrifice of comfort and
inclination, you can have night for it, and no inquisi
tive eyes around? This settled it. Plain question and
plain answer make the shortest road out of most per
plexities.

I got my friends into my stateroom, and said I was
sorry to create annoyance and disappointment, but
that upon reflection it really seemed best that we put
our luggage ashore and stop over at Napoleon. Their
disapproval was prompt and loud ; their language
mutinous. Their main argument was one which has
always been the first to come to the surface, in such
cases, since the beginning of time: tc But you decided
and agreed to stick to this boat," etc.; as if, having
determined to do an unwise thing, one is thereby
bound to go ahead and make two unwise things of it,
by carrying out that determination.

(246)

Life on the Mississippi 247

I tried various mollifying tactics upon them, with
reasonably good success : under which encouragement
I increased my efforts; and, to show them that / had
not created this annoying errand, and was in no way
to blame for it, I presently drifted into its history —
substantially as follows :

Toward the end of last year I spent a few months in
Munich, Bavaria. In November I was living in Frau-
lein Dahlweiner's pension, la, Karlstrasse; but my
working quarters were a mile from there, in the house
of a widow who supported herself by taking lodgers.
She and her two young children used to drop in
every morning and talk German to me — by request.
One day, during a ramble about the city, I visited
one of the two establishments where the Government
keeps and watches corpses until the doctors decide
that they are permanently dead, and not in a trance
state. It was a grisly place, that spacious room.
There were thirty-six corpses of adults in sight,
stretched on their backs on slightly slanted boards, in
three long rows — all of them with wax-white, rigid
faces, and all of them wrapped in white shrouds.
Along the sides of the room were deep alcoves, like
bay windows ; and in each of these lay several marble-
visaged babes, utterly hidden and buried under banks
of fresh flowers, all but their faces and crossed hands.
Around a finger of each of these fifty still forms, both
great and small, was a ring; and from the ring a wire
led to the ceiling, and thence to a bell in a watch-room
yonder, where, day and night, a watchman sits always
alert and ready to spring to the aid of any of that
pallid company who, waking out of death, shall make
a movement — for any, even the slightest, movement
will twitch the wire and ring that fearful bell. I
imagined myself a death-sentinel drowsing there alone,
far in the dragging watches of some wailing, gusty

248 Life on the Mississippi

night, and having in a twinkling all my body stricken
to quivering jelly by the sudden clamor of that awful
summons! So I inquired about this thing; asked
what resulted usually? if the watchman died, and the
restored corpse came and did what it could to make
his last moments easy? But I was rebuked for trying
to feed an idle and frivolous curiosity in so solemn and
so mournful a place ; and went my way with a humbled
crest.

Next morning I was telling the widow my adventure
when she exclaimed :

* ' Come with me ! I have a lodger who shall tell
you all you want to know. He has been a night
watchman there."

He was a living man, but he did not look it. He
was abed and had his head propped high on
pillows; his face was wasted and colorless, his deep-
sunken eyes were shut; his hand, lying on his breast,
was talon-like, it was so bony and long-fingered. The
widow began her introduction of me. The man's eyes
opened slowly, and glittered wickedly out from the
twilight of their caverns ; he frowned a black frown ;
he lifted his lean hand and waved us peremptorily
away. But the widow kept straight on, till she had
got out the fact that I was a stranger and an American.
The man's face changed at once, brightened, became
even eager — and the next moment he and I were
alone together.

I opened up in cast-iron German ; he responded in
quite flexible English ; thereafter we gave the German
language a permanent rest.

This consumptive and I became good friends. I
visited him every day, and we talked about everything.
At least, about everything but wives and children. Let
anybody's wife or anybody's child be mentioned and
three things always followed : the most gracious and

Life on the Mississippi 249

loving and tender light glimmered in the man's eyes
for a moment ; faded out the next, and in its place
came that deadly look which had flamed there the first
time I ever saw his lids unclose; thirdly, he ceased
from speech there and then for that day, lay silent,
abstracted, and absorbed, apparently heard nothing
that I said, took no notice of my good-byes, and plainly
did not know by either sight or hearing when I left the
room.

When I had been this Karl Ritter's daily and sole
intimate during two months, he one day said abruptly:

' * I will tell you my story. ' '

A DYING MAN'S CONFESSION

Then he went on as follows :

' ' I have never given up until now. But now I have
given up. I am going to die. I made up my mind
last night that it must be, and very soon, too. You
say you are going to revisit your river by and by,
when you find opportunity. Very well ; that, together
with a certain strange experience which fell to my lot
last night, determines me to tell you my history — for
you will see Napoleon, Arkansas, and for my sake you
will stop there and do a certain thing for me — a thing
which you will willingly undertake after you shall have
heard my narrative.

" Let us shorten the story wherever we can, for it
will need it, being long. You already know how I
came to go to America, and how I came to settle in
that lonely region in the South. But you do not know
that I had a wife. My wife was young, beautiful,
loving, and oh, so divinely good and blameless and
gentle ! And our little girl was her mother in miniature.
It was the happiest of happy households.

4 ' One night — it was toward the close of the war —
I woke up out of a sodden lethargy, and found myself

250 Life on the Mississippi

bound and gagged, and the air tainted with chloroform !
I saw two men in the room, and one was saying to the
other in a hoarse whisper : ' I told her I would, if she
made a noise, and as for the child '

"The other man interrupted in a low, half-crying
voice :

" ' You said we'd only gag them and rob them, not
hurt them, or I wouldn't have come.'

' Shut up your whining ; had to change the plan
when they waked up. You done 2^ you could to pro
tect them, now let -that satisfy you. Come, help
rummage.'

"Both men were masked and wore coarse, ragged
'nigger* clothes; they had a bull's-eye lantern, and
by its light I noticed that the gentler robber had no
thumb on his right hand. They rummaged around
my poor cabin for a moment: the head bandit then
said in his stage whisper :

" ' It's a waste of time — he shall tell where it's hid.
Undo his gag and revive him up.'

"The other said:

" ' All right — provided no clubbing.'

" ' No clubbing it is, then — provided he keeps still.'

"They approached me. Just then there was a
sound outside, a sound of voices and trampling hoofs ;
the robbers held their breath and listened ; the sounds
came slowly nearer and nearer, then came a shout :

" * Hello , the house ! Show a light, we want water.'

" 'The captain's voice, by G !' said the stage-
whispering ruffian, and both robbers fled by the way
of the back-door, shutting off their bull's-eye as they
ran.

"The stranger shouted several times more, then
rode by — there seemed to be a dozen of the horses —
and I heard nothing more.

" I struggled, but could not free myself from my

Life on the Mississippi 251

bonds. I tried to speak, but the gag was effective, I
could not make a sound. I listened for my wife's
voice and my child's — listened long and intently, but
no sound came from the other end of the room where
their bed was. This silence became more and more
awful, more and more ominous, every moment. Could
you have endured an hour of it, do you think? Pity
me, then, who had to endure three. Three hours? it
was three ages ! Whenever the clock struck it seemed
as if years had gone by since I had heard it last. All
this time I was struggling in my bonds, and at last,
about dawn, I got myself free and rose up and stretched
my stiff limbs, I was able to distinguish details pretty
well. The floor was littered with things thrown there
by the robbers during their search for my savings.
The first object that caught my particular attention was
a document of mine which I had seen the rougher of
the two ruffians glance at and then cast away. It had
blood on it! I staggered to the other end of the
room. Oh, poor unoffending, helpless ones, there
they lay; their troubles ended, mine begun!

" Did I appeal to the law — I? Does it quench the
pauper's thirst if the king drink for him? Oh, no,
no, no ! I wanted no impertinent interference of the
law. Laws and the gallows could not pay the debt
that was owing to me ! Let the laws leave the matter
in my hands, and have no fears: I would find the
debtor and collect the debt. How accomplish this, do
you say? How accomplish it and feel so sure about
it, when I had neither seen the robbers' faces, nor
heard their natural voices, nor had any idea who they
might be? Nevertheless, I was sure — quite sure,
quite confident. I had a clew — a clew which you would
not have valued — a clew which would not have greatly
helped even a detective, since he would lack the secret
of how to apply it. I shall come to that presently —

252 Life on the Mississippi

you shall see. Let us go on now, taking things in
their due order. There was one circumstance which
gave me a slant in a definite direction to begin with :
Those two robbers were manifestly soldiers in tramp
disguise, and not new to military service, but old in
it — regulars, perhaps; they did not acquire their
soldierly attitude, gestures, carriage, in a day, nor a
month, nor yet in a year. So I thought, but said
nothing. And one of them had said, ' The captain's

voice, by G •!' — the one whose life I would have.

Two miles away several regiments were in camp, and
two companies of U. S. cavalry. When I learned that
Captain Blakely of Company C had passed our way
that night with an escort I said nothing, but in that
company I resolved to seek my man. In conversation
I studiously and persistently described the robbers as
tramps, camp followers; and among this class the
people made useless search, none suspecting the
soldiers but me.

" Working patiently by night in my desolated home,
I made a disguise for myself out of various odds and
ends of clothing ; in the nearest village I bought a pair
of blue goggles. By and by, when the military camp
broke up, and Company C was ordered a hundred
miles north, to Napoleon, I secreted my small hoard
of money in my belt and took my departure in the
night. When Company C arrived in Napoleon I was
already there. Yes, I was there, with a new trade —
fortune-teller. Not to seem partial, I made friends
and told fortunes among all the companies garrisoned
there, but I gave Company C the great bulk of my
attentions. I made myself limitlessly obliging to these
particular men ; they could ask me no favor, put on
me no risk which I would decline. I became the will
ing butt of their jokes; this perfected my popularity;
I became a favorite.

Life on the Mississippi 253

"I early found a private who lacked a thumb —
what joy it was to me ! And when I found that he
alone, of all the company, had lost a thumb, my last
misgiving vanished; I was sure I was on the right
track. This man's name was Kruger, a German.
There were nine Germans in the company. I watched
to see who might be his intimates, but he seemed to
have no especial intimates. But / was his intimate,
and I took care to make the intimacy grow. Some
times I so hungered for my revenge that I could hardly
restrain myself from going on my knees and begging
him to point out the man who had murdered my wife
and child, but I managed to bridle my tongue. I
bided my time and went on telling fortunes, as oppor
tunity offered.

" My apparatus was simple: a little red paint and a
bit of white paper. I painted the ball of the client's
thumb, took a print of it on the paper, studied it that
night, and revealed his fortune to him next day. What
was my idea in this nonsense? It was this: When I
was a youth, I knew an old Frenchman who had been
a prison-keeper for thirty years, and he told me thai
there was one thing about a person which nevei
changed, from the cradle to the grave — the lines in
the ball of the thumb; and he said that these lines
were never exactly alike in the thumbs of any two
human beings. In these days, we photograph the new
criminal, and hang his picture in the Rogues' Gallery
for future reference; but that Frenchman, in his day,
used to take a print of the ball of a new prisoner's
thumb and ' put that away for future reference. He
always said that pictures were no good — future dis
guises could make them useless. * The thumb's the
only sure thing,' said he; 'you can't disguise that.'
And he used to prove his theory, too, on my friends
and acquaintances ; it always succeeded.

254 Life on the Mississippi

" I went on telling fortunes. Every night I shut
myself in, all alone, and studied the day's thumb-
prints with a magnify ing- glass. Imagine the devouring
eagerness with which I poured over those mazy red
spirals, with that document by my side which bore the
right-hand thumb and finger-marks of that unknown
murderer, printed with the dearest blood — to me —
that was ever shed on this earth ! And many and
many a time I had to repeat the same old disappointed
remark, * Will they never correspond !'

" But my reward came at last. It was the print of
the thumb of the forty-third man of Company C whom
I had experimented on — Private Franz Adler. An
hour before I did not know the murderer's name, or
voice, or figure, or face, or nationality; but now I
knew all these things ! I believed I might feel sure ;
the Frenchman's repeated demonstrations being so
good a warranty. Still, there was a way to make sure.
I had an impression of Kruger's left thumb. In the
morning I took him aside when he was off duty ; and
when we were out of sight and hearing of witnesses, I
said impressively:

" ' A part of your fortune is so grave that I thought
it would be better for you if I did not tell it in public.
You and another man, whose fortune I was studying
last night — Private Adler — have been murdering a
woman and a child ! You are being dogged. Within
five days both of you will be assassinated.'

" He dropped on his knees, frightened out of his
wits; and for five minutes he kept pouring out the
same set of words, like a demented person, and in the
same half-crying way which was one of my membries
of that murderous night in my cabin :

" ' I didn't do it; upon my soul I didn't do it; and
I tried to keep him from doing it. I did, as God is
my witness. He did it alone .'

Life on the Mississippi 255

" This was all I wanted. And I tried to get rid of
the fool; but no, he clung to me, imploring me to
save him from the assassin. He said:

"'I have money — ten thousand dollars — hid
away, the fruit of loot and thievery; save me — tell
me what to do, and you shall have it, every penny.
Two-thirds of it is my cousin Adler's; but you can
take it all. We hid it when we first came here. But
I hid it in a new place yesterday, and have not told
him — shall not tell him. I was going to desert, and
get away with it all. It is gold, and too heavy to
carry when one is running and dodging; but a woman
who has been gone over the river two days to prepare
my way for me is going to follow me with it; and if I
got no chance to describe the hiding-place to her I was
going to slip my silver watch into her hand, or send it
to her, and she would understand. There's a piece of
paper in the back of the case which tells it all. Here,
take the watch — tell me what to do ! '

" He was trying to press his watch upon me, and
was exposing the paper and explaining it to me, when
Adler appeared on the scene, about a dozen yards
away. I said to poor Kruger :

" * Put up your watch, I don't want it. You sha'n't
come to any harm. Go, now. I must tell Adler his
fortune. Presently I will tell you how to escape the
assassin; meantime I shall have to examine your
thumb-mark again. Say nothing to Adler about this
thing — say nothing to anybody.'

" He went away filled with fright and gratitude,
poor devil ! I told Adler a long fortune — purposely
so long that I could not finish it ; promised to come to
him on guard, that night, and tell him the really im
portant part of it — the tragical part of it, I said — so
must be out of reach of eavesdroppers. They always
kept a picket- watch outside the town — mere dis-

256 Life on the Mississippi

cipline and ceremony — no occasion for it, no enemy
around.

"Toward midnight 1 set out, equipped with the
countersign, and picked my way toward the lonely
region where Adler was to keep his watch. It was so
dark that I stumbled right on a dim figure almost
jefore I could get out a protecting word. The sentinel
hailed and I answered, both at the same moment. I
added, * It's only me — the fortune-teller.' Then I
slipped to the poor devil's side, and without a word I
drove my dirk into his heart! ' Ja wokl,' laughed I,
1 it was the tragedy part of his fortune, indeed !' As
he fell from his horse he clutched at me, and my blue
goggles remained in his hand ; and away plunged the
beast, dragging him with his foot in the stirrup.

"I fled through the woods and made good my
escape, leaving the accusing goggles behind me in that
dead man's hand.

" This was fifteen or sixteen years ago. Since then
I have wandered aimlessly about the earth, sometimes
at work, sometimes idle ; sometimes with money, some
times with none; but always tired of life, and wishing
it was done, for my mission here was finished with the
act of that night; and the only pleasure, solace, satis
faction I had, in all those tedious years, was in the
daily reflection, ' I have killed him !'

"Four years ago my health began to fail. I had
wandered into Munich, in my purposeless way. Being
out of money I sought work, and got it ; did my duty
faithfully about a year, and was then given the berth
of night watchman yonder in that dead-house which
you visited lately. The place suited my mood. I
liked it. I liked being with the dead — liked being
alone with them. I used to wander among those rigid
corpses, and peer into their austere faces, by the hour.
The later the time, the more impressive it was ; I pre-

Life on the Mississippi 257

ferred the late time. Sometimes I turned the lights
low : this gave perspective, you see ; and the imagina
tion could play; always, the dim, receding ranks of
the dead inspired one with weird and fascinating
fancies. Two years ago — I had been there a year
then — I was sitting all alone in the watch-room, one
gusty winter's night, chilled, numb, comfortless;
drowsing gradually into unconsciousness ; the sobbing
of the wind and the slamming of distant shutters falling
fainter and fainter upon my dulling ear each moment,
when sharp and suddenly that dead-bell rang out a
blood-curdling alarum over my head ! The shock of
it nearly paralyzed me ; for it was the first time I had
ever heard it.

" I gathered myself together and flew to the corpse-
room. About midway down the outside rank, a
shrouded figure was sitting upright, wagging its head
slowly from one side to the other — a grisly spectacle !
Its side was toward me. I hurried to it and peered
into its face. Heavens, it was Adler !

41 Can you divine what my first thought was? Put
into words, it was this : * It seems, then, you escaped
me once : there will be a different result this time ! '

" Evidently this creature was suffering unimaginable
terrors. Think what it must have been to wake up in
the midst of that voiceless hush, and look out over that
grim congregation of the dead ! What gratitude shone
in his skinny white face when he saw a living form before
him ! And how the fervency of this mute gratitude was
augmented when his eyes fell upon the life-giving
cordials which I carried in my hands ! Then imagine
the horror which came into this pinched face when I
put the cordials behind me, and said mockingly:

" * Speak up, Franz Adler — call upon these dead!
Doubtless they will listen and have pity; but here
there is none else that will.'
17

258 Life on the Mississippi

" He tried to speak, but that part of the shroud
which bound his jaws held firm, and would not let
him. He tried to lift imploring hands, but they were
crossed upon his breast and tied. I said:

' ' * Shout, Franz Adler ; make the sleepers in the
distant streets hear you and bring help. Shout — and
lose no time, for there is little to lose. What, you
cannot? That is a pity; but it is no matter — it does
not always bring help. When you and your cousin
murdered a helpless woman and child in a cabin in
Arkansas — my wife, it was, and my child! — they
shrieked for help, you remember; but it did no good;
you remember that it did no good, is it not so? Your
teeth chatter — then why cannot you shout? Loosen
the bandages with your hands — then you can. Ah,
I see— -your hands are tied, they cannot aid you.
How strangely things repeat themselves, after long
years; for my hands were tied, that night, you remem
ber? Yes, tied much as yours are now — how odd
that is ! I could not pull free. It did not occur to
you to untie me; it does not occur to me to untie you.

Sh ! there's a late footstep. It is coming this

way. Hark, how near it is ! One can count the foot
falls — one — two — three. There — it is just outside.
Now is the time! Shout, man, shout! it is the one
sole chance between you and eternity ! Ah, you see
you have delayed too long — it is gone by. There —
it is dying out. It is gone! Think of it — reflect
upon it — you have heard a human footstep for the
last time. How curious it must be, to listen to so
common a sound as that and know that one will never
hear the fellow to it again.'

"Oh, my friend, the agony in that shrouded face
was ecstasy to see ! I thought of a new torture, and
applied it — assisting myself with a trifle of lying in
vention :

Life on the Mississippi 259

' That poor Kruger tried to save my wife and
child, and I did him a grateful good turn for it when
the time came. I persuaded him to rob you ; and I
and a woman helped him to desert, and got him away
in safety.'

"A look as of surprise and triumph shone out
dimly through the anguish in my victim's face. I was
disturbed, disquieted. I said:

" ' What, then — didn't he escape? ' "

" A negative shake of the head.
' No? What happened, then?'

The satisfaction in the shrouded face was still
plainer. The man tried to mumble out some words —
could not succeed ; tried to express something with his
obstructed hands — failed ; paused a moment, then
feebly tilted his head, in a meaning way, toward the
corpse that lay nearest him.

144 Dead?' I asked. * Failed to escape? caught in
the act and shot?'

44 Negative shake of the head.

"•How, then?'

* * Again the man tried to do something with his
hands. I watched closely, but could not guess the
intent. I bent over and watched still more intently.
He had twisted a thumb around and was weakly punch
ing at his breast with it.

44 ' Ah — stabbed, do you mean?'

44 Affirmative nod, accompanied by a spectral smile
of such devilishness that it struck an awakening light
through my dull brain, and I cried:

44 ' Did /stab him, mistaking him for you? for that
stroke was meant for none but you.'

4 ' The affirmative nod of the re-dying rascal was as
joyous as his failing strength was able to put into its
expression.

444 Oh, miserable, miserable me, to slaughter the

260 Life on the Mississippi

pitying soul that stood a friend to my darlings when
they were helpless, and would have saved them if he
could! miserable, oh, miserable, miserable me!'

44 I fancied I heard the muffled gurgle of a mocking
laugh. I took my face out of my hands, and saw my
enemy sinking back upon his inclined board.

44 He was a satisfactory long time dying. He had a
wonderful vitality, an astonishing constitution. Yes,
he was a pleasant long time at it. I got a chair and a
newspaper, and sat down by him and read. Occasion
ally I took a sip of brandy. This was necessary, on
account of the cold. But I did it partly because I saw
that, along at first, whenever I reached for the bottle,
he thought I was going to give him some. I read
aloud : mainly imaginary accounts of people snatched
from the grave's threshold and restored to life and
vigor by a few spoonsful of liquor and a warm bath.
Yes, he had a long, hard death of it — three hours and
six minutes, from the time he rang his bell.

1 ' It is believed that in all these eighteen years that
have elapsed since the institution of the corpse-watch,
no shrouded occupant of the Bavarian dead-houses has
ever rung its bell. Well, it is a harmless belief. Let
it stand at that.

4 ' The chill of that death-room had penetrated my
bones. It revived and fastened upon me the disease
which had been afflicting me, but which, up to that
night, had been steadily disappearing. That man
murdered my wife and my child; and in three days
hence he will have added me to his list. No matter —
God ! how delicious the memory of it ! I caught him
escaping from his grave, and thrust him back into it !

44 After that night I was confined to my bed for a
week ; but as soon as I could get about I went to the
dead-house books and got the number of the house
which Adler had died in. A wretched lodging-house

Life on the Mississippi 261

it was. It was my idea that he would naturally have
gotten hold of Kruger's effects, being his cousin; and
I wanted to get Kruger's watch, if I could. But while
I was sick, Adler's things had been sold and scattered,
all except a few old letters, and some odds and ends
of no value. However, through those letters I traced
out a son of Kruger's, the only relative he left. He is
a man of thirty, now, a shoemaker by trade, and living
at No. 14 Konigstrasse, Mannheim — widower, with
several small children. Without explaining to him
why, I have furnished two-thirds of his support ever
since.

* * Now, as to that watch — see how strangely things
happen ! I traced it around and about Germany for
more than a year, at considerable cost in money and
vexation ; and at last I got it. Got it, and was un
speakably glad ; opened it, and found nothing in it !
Why, I might have known that that bit of paper was
not going to stay there all this time. Of course I gave
up that ten thousand dollars then; gave it up, and
dropped it out of my mind ; and most sorrowfully, for
I had wanted it for Kruger's son.

'* Last night, when I consented at last that I must die,
I began to make ready. I proceeded to burn all useless
papers; and sure enough, from a batch of Adler's, not
previously examined with thoroughness, out dropped
that long-desired scrap ! I recognized it in a moment.
Here it is — I will translate it :

" Brick livery stable, stone foundation, middle of town, corner of
Orleans and Market. Corner toward Court-house. Third stone, fourth
row. Stick notice there, saying how many are to come."

"There— take it, and preserve it! Kruger ex
plained that that stone was removable ; and that it was
in the north wall of the foundation, fourth row from
the top, and third stone from the west. The money

262 Life on the Mississippi

is secreted behind it. He said the closing sentence
was a blind, to mislead in case the paper should fall
into wrong hands. It probably performed that office
for Adler.

' ' Now I want to beg that when you make your in
tended journey down the river, you will hunt out that
hidden money, and send it to Adam Kruger, care of
the Mannheim address which I have mentioned. It
will make a rich man of him, and I shall sleep the
sounder in my grave for knowing that I have done
what I could for the son of the man who tried to save
my wife and child — albeit my hand ignorantly struck
him down, whereas the impulse of my heart would
have been to shield and serve him."

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE DISPOSAL OF A BONANZA

was Ritter's narrative," said I to my two
friends. There was a profound and impressive
silence, which lasted a considerable time; then both
men broke into a fusillade of excited and admiring
ejaculations over the strange incidents of the tale:
and this, along with a rattling fire of questions, was
kept up until all hands were about out of breath.
Then my friends began to cool down, and draw off,
under shelter of occasional volleys, into silence and
abysmal revery. For ten minutes, now, there was
stillness. Then Rogers said dreamily:

4 ' Ten thousand dollars ! ' ' Adding, after a con
siderable pause:

" Ten thousand. It is a heap of money."

Presently the poet enquired :

"Are you going to send it to him right away? "

" Yes," I said. " It is a queer question."

No reply. After a little, Rogers asked hesitatingly:

1 'All of it ? That is — I mean ' '

" Certainly, all of it."

I was going to say more, but stopped — was stopped
by a train of thought which started up in me. Thomp
son spoke, but my mind was absent and I did not catch
what he said. But I heard Rogers answer:

"Yet, it seems so to me. It ought to be quite
sufficient; for I don't see that he has done anything."

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264 Life on the Mississippi

Presently the poet said :

* ' When you come to look at it , it is more than
sufficient. Just look at it — five thousand dollars!
Why, he couldn't spend it in a lifetime ! And it
would injure him, too; perhaps ruin him — you want
to look at that. In a little while he would throw his
last away, shut up his shop, maybe take to drinking,
maltreat his motherless children, drift into other evil

courses, go steadily from bad to worse "

* Yes, that's it," interrupted Rogers fervently, " I've
seen it a hundred times — yes, more than a hundred.
You put money into the hands of a man like that, if
you want to destroy him, that's all. Just put money
into his hands, it's all you've got to do ; and if it don't
pull him down, and take all the usefulness out of him,
and all the self-respect and everything, then I don't
know human nature — ain't that so, Thompson? And
even if we were to give him a third of it ; why, in less
than six months "

"Less than six weeks, you'd better say!" said I,
warming up and breaking in. " Unless he had that
three thousand dollars in safe hands where he couldn't
touch it, he would no more last you six weeks
than "

" Of course he wouldn't! " said Thompson. " I've
edited books for that kind of people : and the moment
they get their hands on the royalty- — maybe it's
three thousand, maybe it's two thousand "

" What business has that shoemaker with two thou
sand dollars, I should like to know? " broke in Rogers
earnestly. "A man perhaps perfectly contented now,
there in Mannheim, surrounded by his own class, eat
ing his bread with the appetite which laborious industry
alone can give, enjoying his humble life, honest, up
right, pure in heart, and blest! — yes, I say blest!
above all the myriads that go in silk attire and walk the

Life on the Mississippi 265

empty, artificial round of social folly — but just you
put that temptation before him once ! just you lay
fifteen hundred dollars before a man like that, and
say "

" Fifteen hundred devils ! " cried I. "Five hundred
would rot his principles, paralyze his industry, drag
him to the rumshop, thence to the gutter, thence to
the almshouse, thence to "

" Why put upon ourselves this crime, gentlemen?"
interrupted the poet earnestly and appealingly. " He
is happy where he is, and as he is. Every sentiment
of honor, every sentiment of charity, every sentiment
of high and sacred benevolence warns us, beseeches us,
commands us to leave him undisturbed. That is real
friendship, that is true friendship. We could follow
other courses that would be more showy; but none
that would be so truly kind and wise, depend upon it."

After some further talk, it became evident that each
of us, down in his heart, felt some misgivings over this
settlement of the matter. It was manifest that we all
felt that we ought to send the poor shoemaker some
thing. There was long and thoughtful discussion of
this point, and we finally decided to send him a chromo.

Well, now that everything seemed to be arranged
satisfactorily to everybody concerned, a new trouble
broke out : it transpired that these two men were ex
pecting to share equally in the money with me. That
was not my idea. I said that if they got half of it
between them they might consider themselves lucky.
Rogers said :

" Who would have had any if it hadn't been for me?
I flung out the first hint — but for that it would all
have gone to the shoemaker."

Thompson said that he was thinking of the thing
himself at the very moment that Rogers had originally
spoken.

266 Life on the Mississippi

I retorted that the idea would have occurred to me
plenty soon enough, and without anybody's help. I
was slow about thinking, maybe, but I was sure.

This matter warmed up into a quarrel ; then into a
fight; and each man got pretty badly battered. As
soon as I got myself mended up after a fashion, I as
cended to the hurricane-deck in a pretty sour humor.
I found Captain McCord there, and said, as pleasantly
as my humor would permit:

*' I have come to say good-by, captain. I wish to
go ashore at Napoleon."

"Go ashore where ? V.

''Napoleon."

The captain laughed ; but seeing that I was not in a
jovial mood, stopped that and said :

44 But are you serious? "

44 Serious? I certainly am."

The captain glanced up at the pilot-house and
said:

" He wants to get off at Napoleon ! "

"Napoleon?"

" That's what he says."

44 Great Caesar's ghost! "

Uncle Mumford approached along the deck. The
captain said :

" Uncle, here's a friend of yours wants to get off at
Napoleon! "

44 Well, by !"

I said :

44 Come, what is all this about? Can't a man go
ashore at Napoleon, if he wants to? "

14 Why, hang it, don't you know? There isn't any
Napoleon any more. Hasn't been for years and years.
The Arkansas River burst through it, tore it all to
rags, and emptied it into the Mississippi ! "

4 'Carried the whole town away? Banks, churches,

Life on the Mississippi 267

jails, newspaper offices, court-house, theater, fire de
partment, livery stable — everything?"

" Everything! Just a fifteen-minute job, or such a
matter. Didn't leave hide nor hair, shred nor shingle
of it, except the fag-end of* a shanty and one brick
chimney. This boat is paddling along right now where
the dead-center of that town used to be ; yonder is the
brick chimney — all that's left of Napoleon. These
dense woods on the right used to be a mile back of the
town. Take a look behind you — up stream — now
you begin to recognize this country, don't you? "

1 Yes, I do recognize it now. It is the most wonder
ful thing I ever heard of; by a long shot the most
wonderful — and unexpected. ' '

Mr. Thompson and Mr. Rogers had arrived, mean
time, with satchels and umbrellas, and had silently
listened to the captain's news. Thompson put a half-
dollar in my hand and said softly:

" For my share of the chromo."

Rogers followed suit.

Yes, it was an astonishing thing to see the Mississippi
rolling between unpeopled shores and straight over the
spot where I used to see a good big self-complacent
town twenty years ago. Town that was county-seat of
a great and important county ; town with a big United
States marine hospital ; town of innumerable fights — an
inquest every day ; town where I had used to know the
prettiest girl, and the most accomplished, in the whole
Mississippi Valley; town where we were handed the
first printed news of the Pennsylvania's mournful disaster
a quarter of a century ago ; a town no more — swal
lowed up, vanished, gone to feed the fishes; nothing
left but a fragment of a shanty and a crumbling brick
chimney !

CHAPTER XXXIII.

REFRESHMENTS AND ETHICS

IN regard to Island 74, which is situated not far from the
former Napoleon, a freak of the river here has sorely
perplexed the laws of men and made them a vanity and
a jest. When the State of Arkansas was chartered,
she controlled "to the center 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 within
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 ex
ceedingly 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 whisky-shop there, without a Mississippi license, and
enriched himself upon Mississippi custom under
Arkansas protection (where no license was in those
days required).

We glided steadily down the river in the usual privacy

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Life on the Mississippi 269

— steamboat or other moving thing seldom seen.
Scenery as always ; stretch upon stretch of almost un
broken forest on both sides of the river; soundless
solitude. Here and there a cabin or two, standing in
small openings on the gray and grassless banks — cabins
which had formerly stood a quarter or half mile farther
to the front, and gradually been pulled farther and
farther back as the shores caved in. As at Pilcher's
Point, for instance, where the cabins had been moved
back three hundred yards in three months, so we were
told ; but the caving banks had already caught up with
them, and they were being conveyed rearward once
more.

Napoleon had but small opinion of Greenville, Miss.,
in the old times; but behold, Napoleon is gone to the
catfishes, and here is Greenville full of life and
activity, and making a considerable flourish in the Val
ley; having three thousand inhabitants, it is said, and
doing a gross trade of two million five hundred thou
sand dollars annually. A growing town.

There was much talk on the boat about the Calhoun
Land Company, an enterprise which is expected to
work wholesome results. Colonel Calhoun, a grandson
of the statesman, went to Boston and formed a syndicate
which purchased a large tract of land on the river, in
Chicot County, Arkansas, — some ten thousand acres,

— for cotton growing. The purpose is to work on a
cash basis: buy at first hands, and handle their own
product; supply their negro laborers with provisions
and necessaries at a trifling profit, say eight or ten per
cent.; furnish them comfortable quarters, etc., and
encourage them to save money and remain on the
place. If this proves a financial success, as seems
quite certain, they propose to establish a banking-house
in Greenville, and lend money at an unburdensome rate
of interest — six per cent, is spoken of.

270 Life on the Mississippi

The trouble heretofore has been — I am quoting re
marks of planters and steamboatmen — that the plant
ers, although owning the land, were without cash
capital; had to hypothecate both land and crop to
carry on the business. Consequently, the commission
dealer who furnishes the money takes some risk and
demands big interest — usually ten per cent., and two
and one-half per cent, for negotiating the loan. The
planter has also to buy his supplies through the same
dealer, paying commissions and profits. Then when he
ships his crop, the dealer adds his commissions, insur
ance, etc. So, taking it by and large, and first and
last, the dealer's share of that crop is about twenty-
five per cent.*

A cotton-planter's estimate of the average margin of
profit on planting, in his section : One man and mule
will raise ten acres of cotton, giving ten bales cotton,
worth, say five hundred dollars; cost of producing,
say three hundred and fifty dollars; net profit, one
hundred and fifty dollars; or fifteen dollars per acre.
There is also a profit now from the cotton-seed, which
formerly had little value — none where much transpor
tation was necessary. In sixteen hundred pounds crude
cotton, four hundred are lint, worth, say, ten cents a
pound; and twelve hundred pounds of seed, worth
twelve dollars or thirteen dollars per ton. Maybe in
future even the stems will not be thrown away. Mr.
Edward Atkinson says that for each bale of cotton
there are fifteen hundred pounds of stems, and that
these are very rich in phosphate of lime and potash ;
that when ground and mixed with ensilage or cotton-

* " But what can the State do where the people are under subjection to
rates of interest ranging from eighteen to thirty per cent., and are also
under the necessity of purchasing their crops in advance even of planting,
at these rates, for the privilege of purchasing all their supplies at one
hundred per cent, profit ? " — Edward Atkinson.

Life on the Mississippi 271

seed meal (which is too rich for use as fodder in large
quantities), the stem mixture makes a superior food,
rich in all the elements needed for the production of
milk, meat, and bone. Heretofore the stems have been
considered a nuisance.

Complaint is made that the planter remains grouty
toward the former slave, since the war; will have noth
ing but a chill business relation with him, no sentiment
permitted to intrude; will not keep a " store " himself,
and supply the negro's wants and thus protect the
negro's pocket and make him able and willing to stay
on the place and an advantage to him to do it, but lets
that privilege to some thrifty Israelite, who encourages
the thoughtless negro and wife to buy all sorts of things
which they could do without — buy on credit, at big
prices, month after month, credit based on the negro's
share of the growing crop; and at the end of the
season, the negro's share belongs to the Israelite, the
negro is in debt besides, is discouraged, dissatisfied,
restless, and both he and the planter are injured ; for
he will take steamboat and migrate, and the planter
must get a stranger in his place who does not know
him, does not care for him, will fatten the Israelite a
season, and follow his predecessor per steamboat.

It is hoped that the Calhoun Company will show, by
its humane and protective treatment of its laborers,
that its method is the most profitable for both planter
and negro ; and it is believed that a general adoption
of that method will then follow.

And where so many are saying their say, shall not
the barkeeper testify? He is thoughtful, observant,
never drinks ; endeavors to earn his salary, and would
earn it if there were custom enough. He says the
people along here in Mississippi and Louisiana will
send up the river to buy vegetables rather than raise
them, and they will come aboard at the landings and

272 Life on the Mississippi

buy fruits of the barkeeper. Thinks they "don't
know anything but cotton " ; believes they don't know
how to raise vegetables and fruit — " at least the most
of them." Says " a nigger will go to H for a water
melon " (" H " is all I find in the stenographer's re
port — means Halifax probably, though that seems a
good way to go for a watermelon). Barkeeper buys
watermelons for five cents up the river, brings them
down and sells them for fifty. '* Why does he mix
such elaborate and picturesque drinks for the nigger
hands on the boat?" Because they won't have any
other. ''They want a big drink: don't make any
difference what you make it of, they want the worth of
their money. You give a nigger a plain gill of half-a-
dollar brandy for five cents — will he touch it? No.
Ain't size enough to it. But you put up a pint of all
kinds of worthless rubbish, and heave in some red stuff
to make it beautiful — red's the main thing — and he
wouldn't put down that glass to go to a circus." All
the bars on this Anchor Line are rented and owned by
one firm. They furnish the liquors from their own
establishment, and hire the barkeepers " on salary."
Good liquors? Yes, on some of the boats, where
there are the kind of passengers that want it and can
pay for it. On the other boats? No. Nobody but
the deck-hands and firemen to drink it. "Brandy?
Yes, I've got brandy, plenty of it; but you don't want
any of it unless you've made your will." It isn't as it
used to be in the old times. Then everybody traveled
by steamboat, everybody drank, and everybody treated
everybody else. " Now most everybody goes by rail
road, and the rest don't drink." In the old times, the
barkeeper owned the bar himsdf , ' ' and was gay and
smarty and talky and all jeweled up, and was the
toniest aristocrat on the boat ; used to make two thou
sand dollars on a trip. A father who left his son a

Life on the Mississippi 273

steamboat bar, left him a fortune. Now he leaves him
board and lodging; yes, and washing if a shirt a trip
will do. Yes, indeedy, times are changed. Why, do
you know, on the principal line of boats on the Upper
Mississippi they don't have any bar at all ! Sound?
like poetry, but it's the petrified truth."

CHAPTER XXXIV.

TOUGH YARNS

STACK ISLAND. I remembered Stack Island;
also Lake Providence, La. — which is the first
distinctly Southern-looking town you come to, down
ward bound ; lies level and low, shade-trees hung with
venerable gray-beards of Spanish moss; "restful,
pensive, Sunday aspect about the place," comments
Uncle Mumford, with feeling — also with truth.

A Mr. H. furnished some minor details of fact con
cerning this region which I would have hesitated to be
lieve, if I had not known him to be a steamboat mate.
He was a passenger of ours, a resident of Arkansas
City, and bound to Vicksburg to join his boat, a little
Sunflower packet. He was an austere man, and had
the reputation of being singularly unworldly, for a river
man. Among other things, he said that Arkansas had
been injured and kept back by generations of exaggera
tions concerning the mosquitoes there. One may
smile, said he, and turn the matter off as being a small
thing ; but when you come to look at the effects pro
duced, in the way of discouragement of immigration
and diminished values of property, it was quite the
opposite of a small thing, or thing in any wise to be
coughed down or sneered at. These mosquitoes had
been persistently represented as being formidable and
lawless; whereas "the truth is, they are feeble insig-

(274)

Life on the Mississippi 275

nificant in size, diffident to a fault, sensitive " — and so
on, and so on ; you would have supposed he was talk
ing about his family. But if he was soft on the
Arkansas mosquitoes, he was hard enough on the
mosquitoes of Lake Providence to make up for it —
"those Lake Providence colossi," as he finely called
them. He said that two of them could whip a dog,
and that four of them could hold a man down ; and
except help come, they would kill him — "butcher
him," as he expressed it. Referred in a sort of casual
way — and yet significant way, to ' ' the fact that the
life policy in its simplest form is unknown in Lake
Providence — they take out a mosquito policy be
sides." He told many remarkable things about those
lawless insects. Among others, said he had seen them
try to vote. Noticing that this statement seemed to be
a good deal of a strain on us, he modified it a little ; said
he might have been mistaken as to that particular, but
knew he had seen them around the polls ' * canvassing. ' '
There was another passenger — friend of H.'s —
who backed up the harsh evidence against those
mosquitoes, and detailed some stirring adventures
which he had had with them. The stories were pretty
sizable, merely pretty sizable; yet Mr. H. was con
tinually interrupting with a cold, inexorable "Wait —
knock off twenty-five per cent, of that; now go on;"
or, "Wait — you are getting that too strong; cut it
down, cut it down — you get a leetle too much cos-
tumery on to your statements : always dress a fact in
tights, never in an ulster;" or, " Pardon, once more;
if you are going to load anything more on to that state
ment, you want to get a couple of lighters and tow the
rest, because it's drawing all the water there is in the
river already; stick to facts — just stick to the cold
facts; what these gentlemen want for a book is the
frozen truth — ain't that so, gentlemen?" He ex-

276 Life on the Mississippi

plained privately that it was necessary to watch this
man all the time, and keep him within bounds; it
would not do to neglect this precaution, as he, Mr.
H., ** knew to his sorrow." Said he, " I will not de
ceive you ; he told me such a monstrous lie once that
it swelled my left ear up, and spread it .so that I was
actually not able to see out around it ; it remained so
for months, and people came miles to see me fan
myself with it."

CHAPTER XXXV.

VICKSBURG DURING THE TROUBLE

WE used to plow past the lofty hill-city, Vicksburg,
down-stream ; but we cannot do that now. A
cut-off has made a country town of it, like Osceola,
St. Genevieve, and several others. There is current-
less water — also a big island — in front of Vicksburg
now. You come down the river the other side of the
island, then turn and come up to the town, that is, in
high water: in low water you can't come up, but must
land some distance below it.

Signs and scars still remain, as reminders of Vicks-
burg's tremendous war-experiences; earthworks, trees
crippled by the cannon-balls, cave refuges in the clay
precipices, etc. The caves did good service during
the six weeks' bombardment of the city — May 18 to
July 4, 1863. They were used by the non-combatants
— mainly by the women and children ; not to live in
constantly, but to fly to for safety on occasion. They
were mere holes, tunnels driven into the perpendicular
clay-bank, then branched Y shape, within the hill.
Life in Vicksburg during the six weeks was perhaps —
but wait; here are some materials out of which to
reproduce it:

Population, twenty-seven thousand soldiers and three
thousand non-combatants ; the city utterly cut off from
the world — walled solidly in, the frontage by gun-

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278 Life on the Mississippi

boats, the rear by soldiers and batteries; hence, no
buying and selling with the outside ; no passing to and
fro ; no Godspeeding a parting guest, no welcoming a
coming one ; no printed acres of world-wide news to
be read at breakfast, mornings — a tedious dull absence
of such matter, instead; hence, also, no running to see
steamboats smoking into view in the distance up or
down, and plowing toward the town — for none came,
the river lay vacant and undisturbed; no rush and
turmoil around the railway station, no struggling over
bewildered swarms of passengers by noisy mobs of
hackmen — all quiet there ; flour two hundred dollars
a barrel, sugar thirty, corn ten dollars a bushel, bacon
five dollars a pound, rum a hundred dollars a gallon,
other things in proportion ; consequently, no roar and
racket of drays and carriages tearing along the streets ;
nothing for them to do, among that handful of non-
combatants of exhausted means; at three o'clock in
the morning, silence — silence so dead that the meas
ured tramp of a sentinel can be heard a seemingly im
possible distance; out of hearing of this lonely sound,
perhaps the stillness is absolute : all in a moment come
ground-shaking thunder-crashes of artillery, the sky is
cobwebbed with the criss-crossing red lines streaming
from soaring bomb-shells, and a rain of iron fragments
descends upon the city, descends upon the empty
streets — streets which are not empty a moment later,
but mottled with dim figures of frantic women and
children scurrying from home and bed toward the
cave dungeons — encouraged by the humorous grim
soldiery, who shout "Rats, to your holes!" and
laugh.

The cannon-thunder rages, shells scream and crash
overhead, the iron rain pours down, one hour, two
hours, three, possibly six, then stops; silence follows,
but the streets are still empty; the silence continues;

Life on the Mississippi 279

by and by a head projects from a cave here and there
and yonder, and reconnoitres cautiously; the silence
still continuing, bodies follow heads, and jaded, half-
smothered creatures group themselves about, stretch
their cramped limbs, draw in deep draughts of the
grateful fresh air, gossip with the neighbors from the
next cave ; maybe straggle off home presently, or take
a lounge through the town, if the stillness continues;
and will scurry to the holes again, by and by, when
the war-tempest breaks forth once more.

There being but three thousand of these cave-
dwellers — merely the population of a village — would
they not come to know each other, after a week or
two, and familiarly; insomuch that the fortunate or
unfortunate experiences of one would be of interest to
all?

Those are the materials furnished by history. From
them might not almost anybody reproduce for himself
the life of that time in Vicksburg? Could you, who
did not experience it, come nearer to reproducing it to
the imagination of another non-participant than could
a Vicksburger who did experience it? It seems im
possible ; and yet there are reasons why it might not
really be. When one makes his first voyage in a ship,
it is an experience which multitudinously bristles with
striking novelties ; novelties which are in such sharp
contrast with all this person's former experiences that
they take a seemingly deathless grip upon his imagina
tion and memory. By tongue or pen he can make a
landsman live that strange and stirring voyage over
with him; make him see it all and feel it all. But if
he wait? If he make ten voyages in succession — what
then? Why, the thing has lost color, snap, surprise;
and has become commonplace. The man would have
nothing to tell that would quicken a landsman's pulse.

Years ago I talked with a couple of the Vicksburg

280 Life on the Mississippi

non-combatants — a man and his wife. Left to tell
their story in their own way, those people told it with
out fire, almost without interest.

A week of their wonderful life there would have
made their tongues eloquent forever perhaps ; but they
had six weeks of it, and that wore the novelty all out;
they got used to being bomb-shelled out of home and
into the ground; the matter became commonplace.
After that, the possibility of their ever being startlingly
interesting in their talks about it was gone. What the
man said was to this effect:

It got to be Sunday all the time. Seven Sundays in the week — to us,
anyway. We hadn't anything to do, and time hung heavy. Seven Sundays,
and all of them broken up at one time or another, in the day or in the
night, by a few hours of the awful storm of fire and thunder and iron. At
first we used to shin for the holes a good deal faster than we did afterward.
The first time I forgot the children, and Maria fetched them both along.
When she was all safe in the cave she fainted. Two or three weeks after
ward, when she was running for the holes, one morning, through a shell-
shower, a big shell burst near her and covered her all over with dirt,
and a piece of iron carried away her game-bag of false hair from the back
of her head. Well, she stopped to get that game-bag before she shoved
along again ! Was getting used to things already, you see. We all got so
that we could tell a good deal about shells; and after that we didn't always
go under shelter if it was a light shower. Us men would loaf around and
talk; and a man would say, " There she goes ! :' and name the kind of shell
it was from the sound of it, and go on talking — if there wasn't any danger
from it. If a shell was bursting close over us, we stopped talking and stood
still; uncomfortable, yes, but it wasn't safe to move. When it let go, we
went on talking again, if nobody was hurt — maybe saying, "That was a
ripper! "or some such commonplace comment before we resumed; or,
maybe, we would see a shell poising itself away high in the air overhead.
In that case, every fellow just whipped out a sudden " See you again,
gents! " and shoved. Often and often I saw gangs of ladies promenad
ing the streets, looking as cheerful as you please, and keeping an eye
canted up watching the shells; and I've seen them stop still when they
were uncertain about what a shell was going to do, and wait and make

Life on the Mississippi 281

certain; and after that they sa'ntered along again, or lit out for shelter,
according to the verdict. Streets in some towns have a litter of pieces of
paper, and odds and ends of one sort or another lying around. Ours hadn't;
they had iron litter. Sometimes a man would gather up all the iron frag
ments and unbursted shells in his neighborhood, and pile them into a kind
of monument in his front yard — a ton of it, sometimes. No glass left;
glass couldn't stand such a bombardment; it was all shivered out. Windows
of the houses vacant — looked like eyeholes in a skull. Whole panes were
as scarce as news.

We had church Sundays. Not many there, along at first; but by and
by pretty good turnouts. I've seen service stop a minute, and everybody
sit quiet — no voice heard, pretty funeral-like then — and all the more so on
account of the awful boom and crash going on outside and overhead; and
pretty soon, when a body could be heard, service would go on again.
Organs and church music mixed up with a bombardment is a powerful
queer combination — along at first. Coming out of church, one morning,
we had an accident — the only one that happened around me on a Sunday.
I was just having a hearty hand-shake with a friend I hadn't seen for a
while, and saying, " Drop into our cave to-night, after bombardment;

we've got hold of a pint of prime wh " Whisky, I was going to say,

you know, but a shell interrupted. A chunk of it cut the man's arm off, and
left it dangling in my hand. And do you know the thing that is going to
stick the longest in my memory, and outlast everything else, little and big,
I reckon, is the mean thought I had then? It was, " the whisky is saved."
And yet, don't you know, it was kind of excusable; because it was as
scarce as diamonds, and we had only just that little; never had another
taste during the siege.

Sometimes the caves were desperately crowded, and always hot and
close. Sometimes a cave had twenty or twenty-five people packed into it;
no turning-room for anybody; air so foul, sometimes, you couldn't have
made a candle burn in it. A child was born in one of those caves one
night. Think (A that; why, it was like having it born in a trunk.

Twice we had sixteen people in our cave; and a number of times we
had a dozen. Pretty suffocating in there. We always had eight; eight
belonged there. Hunger and misery and sickness and fright and sorrow,
and I don't know what all, got so loaded into them that none of them were
ever rightly their old selves after the siege. They all died but three of us
within a couple of years. One night a shell burst in front of the hole and
caved it in and stopped it up. It was lively times, for a while, digging out.

282 Life on the Mississippi

Some of us came near smothering. After that we made two openings —
ought to have thought of it at first.

Mule meat ? No, we only got down to that the last day or two. Of
course it was good; anything is good when you are starving.

This man had kept a diary during — six weeks?
No, only the first six days. The first day, eight close
pages; the second, five; the third, one — loosely
written ; the fourth, three or four lines ; a line or two
the fifth and sixth days; seventh day, diary aban
doned ; life in terrific Vicksburg having now become
commonplace and matter of course.

The war history of Vicksburg has more about it to
interest the general reader than that of any other of the
river-towns. It is full of variety, full of incident, full
of the picturesque. Vicksburg held out longer than
any other important river- town, and saw warfare in all
its phases, both land and water — the siege, the mine,
the assault, the repulse, the bombardment, sickness,
captivity, famine.

The most beautiful of all the national cemeteries is
here. Over the great gateway is this inscription :

" HERE REST IN PEACE l6,6OQ WHO DIED FOR THEIR
COUNTRY IN THE YEARS l86l TO 1865 "

The grounds are nobly situated; being very high
and commanding a wide prospect of land and river.
They are tastefully laid out in broad terraces, with
winding roads and paths ; and there is profuse adorn
ment in the way of semi-tropical shrubs and flowers ;
and in one part is a piece of native wild-wood, left just
as it grew, and, therefore, perfect in its charm.
Everything about this cemetery suggests the hand of
the national Government. The Government's work is
always conspicuous for excellence, solidity, thorough-

Life on the Mississippi 283

ness, neatness. The Government does its work well in
the first place, and then takes care of it.

By winding roads — which were often cut to so great
a depth between perpendicular walls that they were
mere roofless tunnels — we drove out a mile or two and
visited the monument which stands upon the scene of
the surrender of Vicksburg to General Grant by Gen
eral Pemberton. Its metal will preserve it from the
hackings and chippings which so defaced its predeces
sor, which was of marble; but the brick foundations
are crumbling, and it will tumble down by and by. It
overlooks a picturesque region of wooded hills and
ravines; and is not unpicturesque itself, being well
smothered in flowering weeds. The battered remnant
of the marble monument has been removed to the
National Cemetery.

On the road, a quarter of a mile townward, an aged
colored man showed us, with pride, an unexploded
bombshell which had lain in his yard since the day it
fell there during the siege.

44 I was a-stannin' heah, an' de dog was a-stannin'
heah ; de dog he went for de shell, gwine to pick a fuss
wid it; but I didn't; I says, 'Jes' make youseff at
home heah ; lay still whah you is, or bust up de place,
jes' as you's a mind to, but /'s got business out in de
woods, /has!"'

Vicksburg is a town of substantial business streets
and pleasant residences ; it commands the commerce of
the Yazoo and Sunflower rivers ; is pushing railways in
several directions, through rich agricultural regions, and
has a promising future of prosperity and importance.

Apparently, nearly all the river towns, big and little,
have made up their minds that they must look mainly
to railroads for wealth and upbuilding, henceforth.
They are acting upon this idea. The signs are that
the next twenty years will bring about some noteworthy

284 Life on the Mississippi

changes in the Valley, in the direction of increased
population and wealth, and in the intellectual advance
ment and the liberalizing of opinion which go naturally
with these. And yet, if one may judge by the past,
the river towns will manage to find and use a chance,
here and there, to cripple and retard their progress.
They kept themselves back in the days of steamboating
supremacy, by a system of wharfage dues so stupidly
graded as to prohibit what may be called small retail
traffic in freights and passengers. Boats were charged
such heavy wharfage that they could not afford to land
for one or two passengers or a light lot of freight.
Instead of encouraging the bringing of trade to their
doors, the towns diligently and effectively discouraged
it. They could have had many boats and low rates ;
but their policy rendered few boats and high rates
compulsory. It was a policy which extended — and
extends — from New Orleans to St. Paul.

We had a strong desire to make a trip up the Yazoo
and the Sunflower — an interesting region at any time,
but additionally interesting at this time, because up
there the great inundation was still to be seen in force
— but we were nearly sure to have to wait a day or
more for a New Orleans boat on return ; so we were
obliged to give up the project.

Here is a story which I picked up on board the boat
that night. I insert it in this place merely because it
is a good story, not because it belongs here — for it
doesn't. It was told by a passenger, — a college pro
fessor, — and was called to the surface in the course of
a general conversation which began with talk about
horses, drifted into talk about astronomy, then into
talk about the lynching of the gamblers in Vicksburg
half a century ago, then into talk about dreams and
superstitions; and ended, after midnight, in a dispute
over free trade and protection.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

iS"

THE PROFESSOR'S YARN

IT was in the early days. I was not a college pro
fessor then. I was a humble-minded young land-
surveyor, with the world before me — to survey, in
case anybody wanted it done. I had a contract to
survey a route for a great mining ditch in California,
and I was on my way thither, by sea — a three or four
weeks' voyage. There were a good many passengers,
but I had very little to say to them ; reading and
dreaming were my passions, and I avoided conversa
tion in order to indulge these appetites. There were
three professional gamblers on board — rough, repul
sive fellows. I never had any talk with them, yet I
could not help seeing them with some frequency, fot
they gambled in an upper-deck state-room every day
and night, and in my promenades I often had glimpses
of them through their door, which stood a little ajar to
let out the surplus tobacco smoke and profanity. They
were an evil and hateful presence, but I had to put up
with it, of course.

There was one other passenger who fell under my
eye a good deal, for he seemed determined to be
friendly with me, and I could not have gotten rid of
him without running some chance of hurting his feel
ings, and I was far from wishing to do that. Besides,
there was something engaging in his countrified sim
plicity and his beaming good-nature. The first time I

10 (285)

286 Life on the Mississippi

saw this Mr. John Backus, I guessed, from his clothes
and his looks, that he was a grazier or farmer from the
backwoods of some Western State, — • doubtless Ohio, —
and afterward, when he dropped into his personal
history, and I discovered that he was a cattle-raiser
from interior Ohio, I was so pleased with my own
penetration that I warmed toward him for verifying my
instinct.

He got to dropping alongside me every day, after
breakfast, to help me make my promenade; and so, in
the course of time, his easy- working jaw had told me
everything about his business, his prospects, his family,
his relatives, his politics - — in fact, everything that con
cerned a Backus, living or dead. And meantime I
think he had managed to get out of me everything I
knew about my trade, my tribe, my purposes, my
prospects, and myself. He was a gentle and per
suasive genius, and this thing showed it; for I was not
given to talking about my matters. I said something
about triangulation, once; the stately word pleased his
ear; he inquired what it meant; I explained. After
that he quietly and inoffensively ignored my name, and
always called me Triangle.

What an enthusiast he was in cattle ! At the bare
name of a bull or a cow, his eye would light and his
eloquent tongue would turn itself loose. As long as I
would walk and listen, he would walk and talk; he
knew all breeds, he loved all breeds, he caressed them
all with his affectionate tongue. I tramped along in
voiceless misery while the cattle question was up.
When I could endure it no longer, I used to deftly
insert a scientific topic into the conversation ; then my
eye fired and his faded ; rny tongue fluttered, his
stopped ; life was a joy to me, and a sadness to him.

One day he said, a little hesitatingly, and with some
what of diffidence :

Life on the Mississippi 287

"Triangle, would you mind coming down to my
state-room a minute and have a little talk on a certain
matter?"

I went with him at once. Arrived there, he put his
head out, glanced up and down the saloon warily, then
closed the door and locked it. We sat down on the
sofa and he said :

"I'm a-going to make a little proposition to you,
and if it strikes you favorable, it'll be a middling good
thing for both of us. You ain't a-going out to Cali-
forny for fun, nuther am I — it's business, ain't that
so? Well, you can do me a good turn, and so can I
you, if we see fit. I've raked and scraped and saved a
considerable many years, and I've got it all here."
He unlocked an old hair trunk, tumbled a chaos of
shabby clothes aside, and drew a short, stout bag into
view for a moment, then buried it again and relocked
the trunk. Dropping his voice to a cautious, low tone,
he continued: "She's all there — a round ten thou
sand dollars in yellow-boys ; now, this is my little idea:
What I don't know about raising cattle ain't worth
knowing. There's mints of money in it in Californy.
Well, I know, and you know, that all along a line
that's being surveyed, there's little dabs of land that
they call * gores,' that fall to the surveyor free gratis
for nothing. All you've got to do on your side is to
survey in such a way that the ' gores ' will fall on good
fat land, then you turn 'em over to me, I stock 'em
with cattle, in rolls the cash, I plank out your share of
the dollars regular right along, and ' '

I was sorry to wither his blooming enthusiasm, but it
could not be helped. I interrupted and said severely:

" I am not that kind of a surveyor. Let us change
the subject, Mr. Backus."

It was pitiful to see his confusion and hear his awkward
and shamefaced apologies. I was as much distressed as

288 Life on the Mississippi

he was — especially as he seemed so far from having
suspected that there was anything improper in his
proposition. So I hastened to console him and lead
him on to forget his mishap in a conversational orgy
about cattle and butchery. We were lying at Aca-
pulco, and as we went on deck it happened luckily
that the crew were just beginning to hoist some
beeves aboard in slings. Backus' melancholy vanished
instantly, and with it the memory of his late mistake.

" Now, only look at that!" cried he. " My good
ness, Triangle, what would they say to it in Ohio ?
Wouldn't their eyes bug out to see 'em handled like
that? — wouldn't they, though?"

All the passengers were on deck to look,— even the
gamblers, — and Backus knew them all, and had
afflicted them all with his pet topic. As I moved
away I saw one of the gamblers approach and accost
him; then another of them ; then the third. I halted,
waited, watched; the conversation continued between
the four men ; it grew earnest ; Backus drew gradually
away ; the gamblers followed and kept at his elbow. I
was uncomfortable. However, as they passed me
presently, I heard Backus say with a tone of perse
cuted annoyance :

41 But it ain't any use, gentlemen; I tell you again,
as I've told you a half a dozen times before, I warn't
raised to it, and I ain't a-going to resk it."

I felt relieved. " His level head will be his sufficient
protection," I said to myself.

During the fortnight's run from Acapulco to San
Francisco I several times saw the gamblers talking
earnestly with Backus, and once I threw out a gentle
warning to him. He chuckled comfortably and said:

" Oh, yes ! they tag around after me considerable —
want me to play a little, just for amusement, they
say — but laws-a-me, if my folks have told me once to

Life on the Mississippi 289

look out for that sort of live-stock, they've told me a
thousand times, I reckon."

By and by, in due course, we were approaching San
Francisco. It was an ugly, black night, with a strong
wind blowing, but there was not much sea. I was on
deck alone. Toward ten I started below. A figure
issued from the gamblers' den and disappeared in the
darkness. I experienced a shock, for I was sure it was
Backus. I flew down the companion-way, looked
about for him, could not find him, then returned to
the deck just in time to catch a glimpse of him as he
re-entered that confounded nest of rascality. Had he
yielded at last? I feared it. What had he gone below
for? His bag of coin? Possibly. I drew near the
door, full of bodings. It was a-crack, and I glanced
in and saw a sight that made me bitterly wish I had
given my attention to saving my poor cattle-friend,
instead of reading and dreaming my foolish time away.
He was gambling. Worse still, he was being plied
with champagne, and was already showing some effect
from it. He praised the " cider," as he called it, and
said now that he had got a taste of it he almost believed
he would drink it if it was spirits, it was so good and so
ahead of anything he had ever run across before. Sur
reptitious smiles at this passed from one rascal to another,
and they filled all the glasses, and while Backus honestly
drained his to the bottom they pretended to do the
same, but threw the wine over their shoulders.

I could not bear the scene, so I wandered forward and
tried to interest myself in the sea and the voices of the*
wind. But no, my uneasy spirit kept dragging me back
at quarter-hour intervals, and always I saw Backus drink-
inghis wine — fairly and squarely, and the others throwing
theirs away. It was the painfulest night I ever spent.

The only hope I had was that we might reach our
anchorage with speed — that would break up the game.
19

290 x. Life on the Mississippi

I helped the ship along all I could with my prayers.
At last we went booming through the Golden Gate,
and my pulses leaped for joy. I hurried back to that
door and glanced in. Alas ! there was small room for
hope — Backus' eyes were heavy and bloodshot, his
sweaty face was crimson, his speech maudlin and thick,
his body sawed drunkenly about with the weaving
motion of the ship. He drained another glass to the
dregs, while the cards were being dealt.

He took his hand, glanced at it, and his dull eyes
lit up for a moment. The gamblers observed it, and
showed their gratification by hardly perceptible signs.

" How many cards?"

"None!" said Backus.

One villain — named Hank Wiley — discarded one
card, the others three each. The betting began.
Heretofore the bets had been trifling — a dollar or two ;
but Backus started off with an eagle now, Wiley hesi
tated a moment, then "saw it," and "went ten dol
lars better." The other two threw up their hands.

Backus went twenty better. Wiley said :

' * I see that, and go you a hundred better ! ' ' then
smiled and reached for the money.

" Let it alone," said Backus, with drunken gravity.

"What! you mean to say you're going to cover it?"

" Cover it? Well, I reckon I am — and lay another
hundred on top of it, too."

He reached down inside his overcoat and produced
the required sum.

"Oh, that's your little game, is it? I see your
raise, and raise it five hundred !" said Wiley.

" Five hundred better /" said the foolish bull-driver,
and pulled out the amount and showered it on the pile.
The three conspirators hardly tried to conceal their
exultation.

All diplomacy and pretense were dropped now, and

"I'VE BEEN LAYING FOR YOU!"

Life on the Mississippi 291

the sharp exclamations came thick and fast, and the
yellow pyramid grew higher and higher. At last ten
thousand dollars lay in view. Wiley cast a bag of
coin on the table, and said with mocking gentleness:

* ' Five thousand dollars better, my friend from the
rural districts — what do you say now ?"

"I call you!'7 said Backus, heaving his golden
shot-bag on the pile. "What have you got?"

' ' Four kings, you d d fool ! ' ' and Wiley threw down

his cards and surrounded the stakes with his arms.

" Four aces, you ass!" thundered Backus, covering
his man with a cocked revolver. " Pm a professional
gambler my self y and I've been laying for you duffers
all this voyage /"

Down went the anchor, rumbledy-dum-dum ! and
the trip was ended.

Well, well — it is a sad world. One of the three
gamblers was Backus' " pal." It was he that dealt the
fateful hands. According to an understanding with
the two victims, he was to have given Backus four
queens, but alas ! he didn't.

A week later I stumbled upon Backus — arrayed in
the height of fashion — in Montgomery street. He
said cheerily, as we were parting :

'* Ah, by the way, you needn't mind about those
gores. I don't really know anything about cattle, ex
cept what I was able to pick up in a week's apprentice
ship over in Jersey, just before we sailed. My cattle-
culture and cattle-enthusiasm have served their turn —
I sha'n't need them any more."

Next day we reluctantly parted from the Gold Dust
and her officers, hoping to see that boat and all those
officers again, some day. A thing which the fates
were to render tragically impossible !

CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE END OF THE "GOLD DUST"

rOR, three months later, August 8, while I was
writing one of these foregoing chapters, the New
York papers brought this telegram :

"A TERRIBLE DISASTER.

"SEVENTEEN PERSONS KILLED BY AN EXPLOSION ON THE STEAMER
'GOLD DUST.'

" NASHVILLE, August 7. — A dispatch from Hick-
man, Ky., says:

"The steamer Gold Dust exploded her boilers at three o'clock to-day,
just after leaving Hickman. Forty-seven persons were scalded and seven
teen are missing. The boat was landed in the eddy just above the town,
and through the exertions of the citizens the cabin passengers, officers, and
part of the crew and deck passengers were taken ashore and removed to the
hotels and residences. Twenty-four of the injured were lying in Holcomb's
dry-goods store atone time, where they received every attention before
being removed to more comfortable places."

A list of the names followed, whereby it appeared
that of the seventeen dead, one was the barkeeper;
and among the forty-seven wounded were the captain,
chief mate, second mate, and second and third clerks;
also Mr. Lem. S. Gray, pilot, and several members of
the crew.

In answer to a private telegram we learned that none
of these was severely hurt, except Mr. Gray. Letters

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Life on the Mississippi 293

received afterward confirmed this news, and said that
Mr. Gray was improving and would get well. Later
letters spoke less hopefully of his case; and finally
came one announcing his death. A good man, a most
companionable and manly man, and worthy of a kind
lier fate.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL

XY/E took passage in a Cincinnati boat for New
W Orleans; or on a Cincinnati boat — either is
correct ; the former is the Eastern form of putting it,
the latter the Western.

Mr. Dickens declined to agree that the Mississippi
steamboats were "magnificent," or that they were
"floating palaces," — terms which had always been
applied to them ; terms which did not over-express the
admiration with which the people viewed them.

Mr. Dickens' position was unassailable, possibly;
the people's position was certainly unassailable. If
Mr. Dickens was comparing these boats with the crown
jewels; or with the Taj, or with the Matterhorn; or
with some other priceless or wonderful thing which he
had seen, they were not magnificent — -he was right.
The people compared them with what they had seen ;
and, thus measured, thus judged, the boats were mag
nificent — the term was the correct one, it was not at
all too strong. The people were as right as was Mr.
Dickens. The steamboats were finer than anything on
shore. Compared with superior dwelling-houses and
first-class hotels in the Valley, they were indubitably
magnificent, they were "palaces." To a few people
living in New Orleans and St. Louis they were not
magnificent, perhaps; not palaces; but to the great

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Life on the Mississippi 295

majority of those populations, and to the entire popu
lations spread over both banks between Baton Rouge
and St. Louis, they were palaces; they tallied with
the citizen's dream of what magnificence was, and sat
isfied it.

Every town and village along that vast stretch of
double river-frontage had a best dwelling, finest dwell
ing, mansion — the home of its wealthiest and most
conspicuous citizen. It is easy to describe it: large
grassy yard, with paling fence painted white — in fair
repair; brick walk from gate to door; big, square,
two-story " frame " house, painted white and porticoed
like a Grecian temple — with this difference, that the
imposing fluted columns and Corinthian capitals were a
pathetic sham, being made of white pine, and painted;
iron knocker; brass door knob — discolored, for lack
of polishing. Within, an uncarpeted hall, of planed
boards; opening out of it, a parlor, fifteen feet by
fifteen — in some instances five or ten feet larger;
ingrain carpet; mahogany center-table; lamp on it,
with green-paper shade — standing on a gridiron, so to
speak, made of high-colored yarns, by the young ladies
of the house, and called a lamp-mat; several books,
piled and disposed, with cast-iron exactness, according
to an inherited and unchangeable plan ; among them,
Tupper, much penciled ; also, " Friendship's Offer
ing," and " Affection's Wreath," with their sappy
inanities illustrated in die-away mezzotints; also, Os-
sian ; * ' Alonzo and Melissa ' ' ; maybe ' ' Ivanhoe ' ' ;
also "Album," full of original "poetry" of the
Thou-hast-wounded - the - spirit-that-loved-thee breed ;
two or three goody-goody works — "Shepherd of
Salisbury Plain," etc.; current number of the chaste
and innocuous " Godey's Lady's Book," with painted
fashion-plate of wax-figure women with mouths all
alike — lips and eyelids the same size — each five-foot

296 Life on the Mississippi

woman with a two-inch wedge sticking from under her
dress and letting-on to be half of her foot. Polished
air-tight stove (new and deadly invention), with pipe
passing through a board which closes up the discarded
good old fireplace. On each end of the wooden
mantel, over the fireplace, a large basket of peaches
and other fruits, natural size, all done in plaster,
rudely, or in wax, and painted to resemble the origi
nals — which they don't. Over middle of mantel, en
graving — Washington Crossing the Delaware; on the
wall by the door, copy of it done in thunder-and-
lightning crewels by one of the young ladies — work of
art which would have made Washington hesitate about
crossing, if he could have foreseen what advantage was
going to be taken of it. Piano — kettle in disguise —
with music, bound and unbound, piled on it, and on a
stand near by : Battle of Prague ; Bird Waltz ; Arkan
sas Traveler ; Rosin the Bow ; Marseillaise Hymn ; On
a Lone Barren Isle (St. Helena) ; The Last Link Is
Broken ; She Wore a Wreath of Roses the Night When
Last We Met; Go, Forget Me, Why Should Sorrow
o'er That Brow a Shadow Fling; Hours There Were
to Memory Dearer ; Long, Long Ago ; Days of Ab
sence ; A Life on the Ocean Wave, a Home on the
Rolling Deep; Bird at Sea; and spread open on the
rack, where the plaintive singer has left it, Ro-\\o\\ on,
silver moo-hoon, guide the trav-e\-err on his way, etc.
Tilted pensively against the piano, a guitar — guitar
capable of playing the Spanish fandango by itself, if
you give it a start. Frantic work of art on the wall —
pious motto, done on the premises, sometimes in
colored yarns, sometimes in faded grasses : progenitor
of the " God Bless Our Home " of modern commerce.
Framed in black mouldings on the wall, other works of
art, conceived and committed on the premises, by the
young ladies; being grim black-and-white crayons;

Life on the Mississippi 297

landscapes, mostly: lake, solitary sailboat, petrified
clouds, pre-geological trees on shore, anthracite preci
pice; name of criminal conspicuous in the corner.
Lithograph, Napoleon Crossing the Alps. Lithograph,
The Grave at St. Helena. Steel-plates, Trumbull's
Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Sally from Gibraltar.
Copper-plates, Moses Smiting the Rock, and Return
of the Prodigal Son. In big gilt frame, slander of the
family in oil: papa holding a book (" Constitution of
the United States"); guitar leaning against mamma,
blue ribbons fluttering from its neck ; the young ladies,
as children, in slippers and scalloped pantalettes, one
embracing toy horse, the other beguiling kitten with
ball of yarn, and both simpering up at mamma, who
simpers back. These persons all fresh, raw, and
red — apparently skinned. Opposite, in gilt frame,
grandpa and grandma, at thirty and twenty-two, stiff,
old-fashioned, high-collared, puff-sleeved, glaring pal
lidly out from a background of solid Egyptian night.
Under a glass French clock dome, large bouquet of
stiff flowers done in corpsy white wax. Pyramidal
what-not in the corner, the shelves occupied chiefly
with bric-a-brac of the period, disposed with an eye to
best effect: shell, with the Lord's Prayer carved on it;
another shell — of the long-oval sort, narrow, straight
orifice, three inches long, running from end to end —
portrait of Washington carved on it; not well done;
the shell had Washington's mouth, originally — artist
should have built to that. These two are memorials of
the long-ago bridal trip to New Orleans and the
French Market. Other bric-a-brac : Calif ornian " speci
mens " — quartz, with gold wart adhering; old Guinea-
gold locket, with circlet of ancestral hair in it; Indian
arrow-heads, of flint; pair of bead moccasins, from
uncle who crossed the Plains; three* 'alum" baskets
of various colors — being skeleton-frame of wire,

298 Life on the Mississippi

clothed-on with cubes of crystallized alum in the rock-
candy style — works of art which were achieved by the
young ladies ; their doubles and duplicates to be found
upon all what-nots in the land ; convention of desic
cated bugs and butterflies pinned to a card; painted
toy-dog, seated upon bellows-attachment — drops its
under jaw and squeaks when pressed upon; sugar-
candy rabbit — limbs and features merged together,
not strongly defined ; pewter presidential-campaign
medal; miniature cardboard wood-sawyer, to be at
tached to the stovepipe and operated by the heat;
small Napoleon, done in wax; spread-open daguerreo
types of dim children, parents, cousins, aunts, and
friends, in all attitudes but customary ones ; no tem
pled portico at back, and manufactured landscape
stretching away in the distance — that came in later,
with the photograph ; all these vague figures lavishly
chained and ringed — metal indicated and secured from
doubt by stripes and splashes of vivid gold bronze ; all
of them too much combed, too much fixed up; and
all of them uncomfortable in inflexible Sunday clothes
of a pattern which the spectator cannot realize could
ever have been in fashion ; husband and wife generally
grouped together — husband sitting, wife standing, with
hand on his shoulder — and both preserving, all these
fading years, some traceable effect of the daguerreo-
typist's brisk " Now smile, if you please !" Bracketed
over what-not — place of special sacredness — an out
rage in water-color, done by the young niece that came
on a visit long ago, and died. Pity, too; for she
might have repented of this in time. Horsehair
chairs, horsehair sofa which keeps sliding from under
you. Window-shades, of oil stuff, with milkmaids and
ruined castles stenciled on them in fierce colors.
Lambrequins dependent from gaudy boxings of beaten
tin, gilded. Bedrooms with rag carpets; bedsteads of

Life on the Mississippi 299

the " corded " sort, with a sag in the middle, the cords
needing tightening; snuffy feather-bed — not aired
often enough ; cane-seat chairs, splint-bottomed rocker ;
looking-glass on wall, school-slate size, veneered frame;
inherited bureau; wash-bowl and pitcher, possibly —
but not certainly; brass candlestick, tallow candle,
snuffers. Nothing else in the room. Not a bathroom
in the house ; and no visitor likely to come along who
has ever seen one.

That was the residence of the principal citizen, all
the way from the suburbs of New Orleans to the edge
of St. Louis. When he stepped aboard a big fine
steamboat, he entered a new and marvelous world :
chimney-tops cut to counterfeit a spraying crown of
plumes — and maybe painted red; pilot-house, hurri
cane-deck, boiler-deck guards, all garnished with white
wooden filigree work of fanciful patterns ; gilt acorns
topping the derricks ; gilt deer-horns over the big bell ;
gaudy symbolical picture on the paddle-box, possibly;
big roomy boiler-deck, painted blue, and furnished
with Windsor arm-chairs ; inside, a far-receding snow-
white "cabin"; porcelain knob and oil-picture OB
every state-room door; curving patterns of filigree-
work touched up with gilding, stretching overhead all
down the converging vista ; big chandeliers every little
way, each an April shower of glittering glass-drops;
lovely rainbow-light falling everywhere from the colored
glazing of the skylights; the whole a long-drawn,
resplendent tunnel, a bewildering and soul-satisfying
spectacle ! in the ladies' cabin a pink and white Wilton
carpet, as soft as mush, and glorified with a ravishing
pattern of gigantic flowers. Then the Bridal Chamber
— the animal that invented that idea was still alive and
unhanged, at that day — Bridal Chamber whose pre
tentious flummery was necessarily overawing to the
now tottering intellect of that hosannahing citizen.

300 Life on the Mississippi

Every stateroom had its couple of cosey clean bunks,
and perhaps a looking-glass and a snug closet; and
sometimes there was even a washbowl and pitcher,
and part of a towel which could be told from mosquito
netting by an expert — though generally these things
were absent, and the shirt-sleeved passengers cleansed
themselves at a long row of stationary bowls in the
barber-shop, where were also public towels, public
combs, and public soap.

Take the steamboat which I have just described, and
you have her in her highest and finest, and most
pleasing, and comfortable, and satisfactory estate.
Now cake her over with a layer of ancient and ob
durate dirt, and you have the Cincinnati steamer awhile
ago referred to. Not all over — only inside; for she
was ably officered in all departments except the
steward's.

But wash that boat and repaint her, and she would
be about the counterpart of the most complimented
boat of the old flush times : for the steamboat architec
ture of the West has undergone no change ; neither
has steamboat furniture and ornamentation undergone
any.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

MANUFACTURES AND MISCREANTS

WHERE the river, in the Vicksburg region, used to
be corkscrewed, it is now comparatively straight
— made so by cut-off ; a former distance of seventy
miles is reduced to thirty-five. It is a change which
threw Vicksburg' s neighbor, Delta, La., out into the
country and ended its career as a river town. Its
whole river-frontage is now occupied by a vast sand
bar, thickly covered with young trees — a growth
which will magnify itself into a dense forest, by and
by, and completely hide the exiled town.

In due time we passed Grand Gulf and Rodney, of
war fame, and reached Natchez, the last of the beauti
ful hill-cities — for Baton Rouge, yet to come, is not
on a hill, but only on high ground. Famous Natchez-
under-the-hill has not changed notably in twenty
years ; in outward aspect — judging by the descriptions
of the ancient procession of foreign tourists — it has
not changed in sixty; for it is still small, straggling,
and shabby. It had a desperate reputation, morally,
in the old keel-boating and early steamboating times —
plenty of drinking, carousing, fisticuffing, and killing
there, among the riff-raff of the river, in those days.
But Natchez-on-top-of-the-hill is attractive ; has always
been attractive. Even Mrs. Trollope (1827) had to
confess its charms:

(301)

302 Life on the Mississippi

At one or two points the wearisome level line is relieved by bluffs, as
they call the short intervals of high ground. The town of Natchez is beau
tifully situated on one of those high spots. The contrast that its bright
green hill forms with the dismal line of black forest that stretches on every
side, the abundant growth of the paw-paw, palmetto, and orange, the copious
variety of sweet-scented flowers that flourish there, all make it appear like
an oasis in the desert. Natchez is the furthest point to the north at which
oranges ripen in the open air, or endure the winter without shelter. With
the exception of this sweet spot, I thought all the little towns and villages
we passed wretched-looking in the extreme.

Natchez, like her near and far river neighbors, has
railways now, and is adding to them — pushing them
hither and thither into all rich outlying regions that are
naturally tributary to her. And like Vicksburg and
New Orleans, she has her ice-factory; she makes thirty
tons of ice a day. In Vicksburg and Natchez, in my
time, ice was jewelry; none but the rich could wear it.
But anybody and everybody can have it now. I
visited one of the ice-factories in New Orleans, to see
what the polar regions might look like when lugged
into the edge of the tropics. But there was nothing
striking in the aspect of the place. It was merely a
spacious house, with some innocent steam machinery
in one end of it and some big porcelain pipes running
here and there. No, not porcelain — they merely
seemed to be; they were iron, but the ammonia which
was being breathed through them had coated them to
the thickness of your hand with solid milk-white ice.
It ought to have melted; for one did not require
winter clothing in that atmosphere: but it did not
melt; the inside of the pipe was too cold.

Sunk into the floor were numberless tin boxes, a
foot square and two feet long, and open at the top
end. These were full of clear water; and around each
box, salt and other proper stuff was packed; also, the
ammonia gases were applied to the water in some way

Life on the Mississippi 303

which will always remain a secret to me, because I was
not able to understand the process. While the water
in the boxes gradually froze, men gave it a stir or two
with a stick occasionally — to liberate the air-bubbles,
I think. Other men were continually lifting out boxes
whose contents had become hard frozen. They gave
the box a single dip into a vat of boiling water, to melt
the block of ice free from its tin coffin, then they shot
the block out upon a platform car, and it was ready
for market. These big blocks were hard, solid, and
crystal-clear. In certain of them, big bouquets of
fresh and brilliant tropical flowers had been frozen-in ;
in others, beautiful silken-clad French dolls, and other
pretty objects. These blocks were to be set on end in
a platter, in the center of dinner- tables, to cool the
tropical air; and also to be ornamental, for the flowers
and things imprisoned in them could be seen as
through plate glass. I was told that this factory could
retail its ice, by wagon, throughout New Orleans, in
the humblest dwelling-house quantities, at six or seven
dollars a ton, and make a sufficient profit. This being
the case, there is business for ice-factories in the
North ; for we get ice on no such terms there, if one
take less than three hundred and fifty pounds at a
delivery.

The Rosalie Yarn Mill, of Natchez, has a capacity
of 6,000 spindles and 160 looms, and employs 100
hands. The Natchez Cotton Mills Company began
operations four years ago in a two-story building of
50X190 feet, with 4,000 spindles and 128 looms;
capital $105,000, all subscribed in the town. Two
years later, the same stockholders increased their
capital to $225,000; added a third story to the mill,
increased its length to 317 feet ; added machinery to
increase the capacity to 10,300 spindles and 304 looms.
The company now employ 250 operatives, many of

304 Life on the Mississippi

whom are citizens of Natchez. "The mill works
5 ,000 bales of cotton annually and manufactures the
best standard quality of brown shirtings and sheetings
and drills, turning out 5,000,000 yards of these goods
per year."* A close corporation — stock held at
$5,000 per share, but none in the market.

The changes in the Mississippi River are great and
r strange, yet were to be expected ; but I was not ex
pecting to live to see Natchez and these other river
towns become manufacturing strongholds and railway
centers.

Speaking of manufactures reminds me of a talk upon
that topic which I heard — which I overheard — on
board the Cincinnati boat. I awoke out of a fretted
sleep, with a dull confusion of voices in my ears. I
listened — two men were talking; subject, apparently,
the great inundation. I looked out through the open
transom. The two men were eating a late breakfast;
sitting opposite each other ; nobody else around. They
closed up the inundation with a few words — having
used it, evidently, as a mere ice-breaker and acquaint
anceship-breeder — then they dropped into business.
It soon transpired that they were drummers — one
belonging in Cincinnati, the other in New Orleans.
Brisk men, energetic of movement and speech; the
dollar their god, how to get it their religion.

"Now as to this article," said Cincinnati, slashing
into the ostensible butter and holding forward a slab of
it on his knife-blade, " it's from our house; look at it
— smell of it- — taste it. Put any test on it you want
to. Take your own time — no hurry — make it
thorough. There now — what do you say? butter,
ain't it? Not by a thundering sight — it's oleomar
garine! Yes, sir, that's what it is — oleomargarine.
You can't tell it from butter; by George, an expert

*New Orleans Times- Democrat, August 26, 1882.

Life on the Mississippi 305

can't! It's from our house. We supply most of the
boats in the West; there's hardly a pound of butter
on one of them. We are crawling right along — jump
ing right along is the word. We are going to have
that entire trade. Yes, and the hotel trade, too. You
are going to see the day, pretty soon, when you can't
find an ounce of butter to bless yourself with, in any
hotel in the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys, outside of
the biggest cities. Why, we are turning out oleomar
garine now by the thousands of tons. And we can
sell it so dirt-cheap that the whole country has got to
take it — can't get around it, you see. Butter don't
stand any show — there ain't any chance for competi
tion. Butter's had its day — and from this out, butter
goes to the wall. There's more money in oleomar
garine than — why, you can't imagine the business we
do. I've stopped in every town, from Cincinnati to
Natchez; and I've sent home big orders from every
one of them."

And so forth and so on, for ten minutes longer, in
the same fervid strain. Then New Orleans piped up
and said :

"Yes, it's a first-rate imitation, that's a certainty;
but it ain't the only one around that's first-rate. For
instance, they make olive-oil out of cotton-seed oil,
nowadays, so that you can't tell them apart."

"Yes, that's so," responded Cincinnati, "and it
was a tip-top business for a while. They sent it over
and brought it back from France and Italy, with the
United States custom-house mark on it to indorse it
for genuine, and there was no end of cash in it; but
France and Italy broke up the game — of course they
naturally would. Cracked on such a rattling impost
that cotton-seed olive-oil couldn't stand the raise; had
to hang up and quit."

" Oh, it did, did it? You wait here a minute."
20

306 Life on the Mississippi

Goes to his state-room, brings back a couple of long
bottles, and takes out the corks — says :

" There now, smell them, taste them, examine the
bottles, inspect the labels. One of 'm's from Europe,
the other's never been out of this country. One's
European olive-oil, the other's American cottonseed
olive-oil. Tell 'm apart? 'Course you can't. No
body can. People that want to, can go to the expense
and trouble of shipping their oils to Europe and back
— it's their privilege; but our firm knows a trick
worth six of that. We turn out the whole thing —
clean from the word go — in our factory in New
Orleans: labels, bottles, oil, everything. Well, no,
not labels : been buying them abroad — get them dirt-
cheap there. You see there's just one little wee
speck, essence, or whatever it is, in a gallon of cotton
seed oil, that gives it a smell, or a flavor, or some
thing — get that out, and you're all right — perfectly
easy then to turn the oil into any kind of oil you want
to, and there ain't anybody that can detect the true
from the false. Well, we know how to get that one
little particle out — and we're the only firm that does.
And we turn out an olive-oil that is just simply per
fect — undetectable ! We are doing a ripping trade,
too — as I could easily show you by my order-book
for this trip. Maybe you'll butter everybody's bread
pretty soon, but we'll cotton-seed his salad for him
from the Gulf to Canada, that's a dead-certain thing."

Cincinnati glowed and flashed with admiration. The
two scoundrels exchanged business-cards, and arose.
As they left the table, Cincinnati said :

" But you have to have custom-house marks, don't
you? How do you manage that?"

I did not catch the answer.

We passed Port Hudson, scene of two of the most
terrific episodes of the war — the night-battle there

Life on the Mississippi 307

between Farragut's fleet and the Confederate land
batteries, April 14, 1863; and the memorable land
battle, two months later, which lasted eight hours, —
eight hours of exceptionally fierce and stubborn fight
ing, — and ended, finally, in the repulse of the Union
forces with great slaughter.

CHAPTER XL.

CASTLES AND CULTURE

BATON ROUGE was clothed in flowers, like *
bride — no, much more so; like a greenhouse.
For we were in the absolute South now — no modifica
tions, no compromises, no half-way measures. The
magnolia trees in the Capitol grounds were lovely and
fragrant, with their dense rich foliage and huge snow
ball blossoms. The scent of the flower is very sweet,
but you want distance on it, because it is so powerful.
They are not good bedroom blossoms — they might
suffocate one in his sleep. We were certainly in the
South at last; for here the sugar region begins, and
the plantations — vast green levels, with sugar-mill and
negro quarters clustered together in the middle dis
tance — were in view. And there was a tropical sun
overhead and a tropical swelter in the air.

And at this point, also, begins the pilot's paradise:
a wide river hence to New Orleans, abundance of water
from shore to shore, and no bars, snags, sawyers, or
wrecks in his road.

Sir Walter Scott is probably responsible for the
Capitol building; for it is not conceivable that this
little sham castle would ever have been built if he had
not run the people mad, a couple of generations ago,
with his mediaeval romances. The South has not yet
recovered from the debilitating influence of his Kooks.

(3ob)

Life on the Mississippi 309

Admiration of his fantastic heroes and their grotesque
"chivalry" doings and romantic juvenilities still sur
vives here, in an atmosphere in which is already per
ceptible the wholesome and practical nineteenth-
century smell of cotton factories and locomotives ; and
traces of its inflated language and other windy hum-
buggeries survive along with it. It is pathetic enough
that a whitewashed castle, with turrets and things, —
materials all ungenuine within and without, pretending
to be what they are not, — should ever have been built
in this otherwise honorable place ; but it is much more
pathetic to see this architectural falsehood undergoing
restoration and perpetuation in our day, when it would
have been so easy to let dynamite finish what a
charitable fire began, and then devote this restoration-
money to the building of something genuine.

Baton Rouge has no patent on imitation castles,
however, and no monopoly of them. The following
remark is from the advertisement of the "Female
Institute" of Columbia, Tenn. :

The Institute building has long been famed as a model of striking and
beautiful architecture. Visitors are charmed with its resemblance to the
old castles of song and story, with its towers, turreted walls, and ivy-
mantled porches.

Keeping school in a castle is a romantic thing; as
romantic as keeping hotel in a castle.

By itself the imitation castle is doubtless harmless,
and well enough; but as a symbol and breeder and
sustainer of maudlin Middle-Age romanticism here in
the midst of the plainest and sturdiest and infinitely
greatest and worthiest of all the centuries the world has
seen, it is necessarily a hurtful thing and a mistake.

Here is an extract from the prospectus of a Ken
tucky " Female College." Female college sounds well
enough; but since the phrasing it in that unjustifiable

310 Life on the Mississippi

way was done purely in the interest of brevity, it
seems to me that she-college would have been still
better — because shorter, and means the same thing:
that is, if either phrase means anything at all :

The president is Southern by birth, by rearing, by education, and by
sentiment; the teachers are all Southern in sentiment, and with the excep
tion of those born in Europe were born and raised in the South. Believing
the Southern to be the highest type of civilization this continent has seen,*
the young ladies are trained according to the Southern ideas of delicacy,
refinement, womanhood, religion, and propriety; hence we offer a first-class
female college for the South and solicit Southern patronage.

What, warder, ho ! the man that can blow so com
placent a blast as that, probably blows it from a castle.

From Baton Rouge to New Orleans, the great sugar
plantations border both sides of the river all the way,

* Illustrations of it thoughtlessly omitted by the advertiser :
"KNOXVILLE, TENN., October 19. — This morning, a few minutes after
ten o'clock, General Joseph A. Mabry, Thomas O'Connor, and Joseph A.
Mabry, Jr., were killed in a shooting affray. The difficulty began yesterday
afternoon by General Mabry attacking Major O'Connor and threatening to
kill him. This was at the fair grounds, and O'Connor told Mabry that it
was not the place to settle their difficulties. Mabry then told O'Connor he
should not live. It seems that Mabry was armed and O'Connor was not.
The cause of the difficulty was an old feud about the transfer of some prop
erty from Mabry to O'Connor. Later in the afternoon Mabry sent word to
O'Connor that he would kill him on sight. This morning Major O'Connor
was standing in the door of the Mechanics' National Bank, of which he was
president. General Mabry and another gentleman walked down Gay Street
on the opposite side from the bank. O'Connor stepped into the bank, got
a shotgun, took deliberate aim at General Mabry and fired. Mabry fell
dead, being shot in the left side. As he fell O'Connor fired again, the shot
taking effect in Mabry 's thigh. O'Connor then reached into the bank and
got another shotgun. About this time, Joseph A. Mabry, Jr., son of Gen
eral Mabry, came rushing down the street, unseen by O'Connor until within
forty feet, when the young man fired a pistol, the shot taking effect in
O'Connor's right breast, passing through the body near the heart. The

Life on the Mississippi 311

and stretch their league-wide levels back to the dim
forest-walls of bearded cypress in the rear. Shores
lonely no longer. Plenty of dwellings all the way, on
both banks — standing so close together, for long dis
tances, that the broad river lying between the two rows
becomes a sort of spacious street. A most homelike
and happy-looking region. And now and then you
see a pillared and porticoed great manor-house, em
bowered in trees. Here is testimony of one or two of
the procession of foreign tourists that filed along here
half a century ago. Mrs. Trollope says:

The unbroken flatness of the banks of the Mississippi continued unvaried
for many miles above New Orleans; but the graceful and luxuriant pal
metto, the dark and noble ilex, and the bright orange were everywhere

instant Mabry shot, O'Connor turned and fired, the load taking effect in
young Mabry's right breast and side. Mabry fell, pierced with twenty
buckshot, and almost instantly O'Connor fell dead without a struggle.
Mabry tried to rise, but fell back dead. The whole tragedy occurred within
two minutes, and neither of the three spoke after he was shot. General
Mabry had about thirty buckshot in his body. A bystander was painfully
wounded in the thigh with a buckshot, and another was wounded in the
arm. Four other men had their clothing pierced by buckshot. The affair
caused great excitement, and Gay Street was thronged with thousands of
people. General Mabry and his son Joe were acquitted only a few days ago
of the murder of Moses Lusby and Don Lusby, father and son, whom they
killed a few weeks ago. Will Mabry was killed by Don Lusby last Christ
mas. Major Thomas O'Connor was President of the Mechanics' National
Bank here, and the wealthiest man in the State."— Associated Press
Telegram.

One day last month Professor Sharpe of the Somerville, Tenn., Female
College, " a quiet and gentlemanly man," was told that his brother-in-law,
a Captain Burton, had threatened to kill him. Burton, it seems, had
already killed one man and driven his knife into another. The professor
armed himself with a double-barrelled shotgun, started out in search of his
brother-in-law, found him playing billiards in a saloon, and blew his brains
out. The Memphis Avalanche reports that the professor's course met with

312 Life on the Mississippi

to be seen, and it was many days before we were weary cf looking at
them.

Captain Basil Hall:

The district of country which lies adjacent to the Mississippi, in the
lower parts of Louisiana, is everywhere thickly peopled by sugar-planters,
whose showy houses, gay piazzas, trig gardens, and numerous slave villages,
all clean and neat, gave an exceedingly thriving air to the river scenery.

All the procession paint the attractive picture in the
same way. The descriptions of fifty years ago do not
need to have a word changed in order to exactly
describe the same region as it appears to-day — except
as to the " trigness " of the houses. The whitewash is
gone from the negro cabins now; and many, possibly
most, of the big mansions, once so shining white, have

pretty general approval in the community; knowing that the law was pow
erless, in the actual condition of public sentiment, to protect him, he pro
tected himself.

About the same time, two young men in North Carolina quarreled about
a girl, and " hostile messages " were exchanged. Friends tried to reconcile
them, but had their labor for their pains. On the 24th the young men met
in the public highway. One of them had a heavy club in his hand, the
other an axe. The man with the club fought desperately for his life, but it
was a hopeless fight from the first. A well-directed blow sent his club
whirling out of his grasp, and the next moment he was a dead man.

About the same time, two "highly connected " young Virginians, clerks
in a hardware store at Charlottesville, while " skylarking," came to blows.
Peter Dick threw pepper in Charles Roads' eyes; Roads demanded an
apology; Dick refused to give it, and it was agreed that a duel was inevi
table, but a difficulty arose; the parties had no pistols, and it was too late at
night to procure them. One of them suggested that butcher-knives would
answer the purpose, and the other accepted the suggestion; the result was
that Roads fell to the floor with a gash in his abdomen that may or may not
prove fatal. If Dick has been arrested, the news has not reached us. He
" expressed deep regret," and we are told by a Staunton correspondent of
the Philadelphia Press that " every effort has been made to hush the matte*
up." — Extracts from the Public Journals.

Life on the Mississippi 313

worn out their paint and have a decayed, neglected
look. It is the blight of the war. Twenty-one years
ago everything was trim and trig and bright along the
" coast," just as it had been in 1827, as described by
those tourists.

Unfortunate tourists ! People humbugged them with
stupid and silly lies, and then laughed at them for
believing and printing the same. They told Mrs.
Trollope that the alligators — or crocodiles, as she calls
them — were terrible creatures; and backed up the
statement with a blood-curdling account of how one of
these slandered reptiles crept into a squatter cabin one
night, and ate up a woman and five children. The
woman, by herself, would have satisfied any ordinarily
impossible alligator; but no, these liars must make him
gorge the five children besides. One would not
imagine that jokers of this robust breed would be
sensitive — but they were. It is difficult, at this day,
to understand, and impossible to justify, the reception
which the book of the grave, honest, intelligent,
gentle, manly, charitable, well-meaning Captain Basil
Hall got. Mrs. Trollope's account of it may perhaps
entertain the reader : therefore, I have put it in the
Appendix.*

* See Appendix C.

CHAPTER XLI.

THE METROPOLIS OF THE SOUTH

HPHE approaches to New Orleans were familiar;
I general aspects were unchanged. When one
goes flying through London along a railway propped
in the air on tall arches, he may inspect miles of upper
bedrooms through the open windows, but the lower
half of the houses is under his level and out of sight.
Similarly, in high-river stage, in the New Orleans
region, the water is up to the top of the enclosing
levee-rim, the flat country behind it lies low, — repre
senting the bottom of a dish, — and as the boat swims
along, high on the flood, one looks down upon the
houses and into the upper windows. There is nothing
but that frail breastwork of earth between the people
and destruction.

The old brick salt-warehouses clustered at the upper
end of the city looked as they had always looked :
warehouses which had had a kind of Aladdin's lamp
experience, however, since I had seen them ; for when
the war broke out the proprietor went to bed one
night leaving them packed with thousands of sacks of
vulgar salt, worth a couple of dollars a sack, and got
up in the morning and found his mountain of salt
turned into a mountain of gold, so to speak, so sud
denly and to so dizzy a height had the war news sent
up the price of the article.

Life on the Mississippi 315

The vast reach of plank wharves remained un
changed, and there were as many ships as ever: but
the long array of steamboats had vanished; not al
together, of course, but not much of it was left.

The city itself had not changed — to the eye. It
had greatly increased in spread and population, but the
look of the town was not altered. The dust, waste-
paper-littered, was still deep in the streets; the deep
trough-like gutters along the curbstones were still half
full of reposeful water with a dusty surface ; the side
walks were still — in the sugar and bacon region —
encumbered by casks and barrels and hogsheads ; the
great blocks of austerely plain commercial houses were
as dusty-looking as ever.

Canal Street was finer and more attractive and stir
ring than formerly, with its drifting crowds of people,
its several processions of hurrying street-cars, and —
toward evening — its broad second-story verandas
crowded with gentleman and ladies clothed according
to the latest mode.

Not that there is any "architecture" in Canal
Street: to speak in broad, general terms, there is no
architecture in New Orleans, except in the cemeteries.
It seems a strange thing to say of a wealthy, far-seeing,
and energetic city of a quarter of a million inhabitants,
but it is true. There is a huge granite United States
custom-house — costly enough, genuine enough, but
as to decoration it is inferior to a gasometer. It looks
like a state prison. But it was built before the war.
Architecture in America may be said to have been
born since the war. New Orleans, I believe, has had
the good luck — and in a sense the bad luck — to have
had no great fire in late years. It must be so. If the
opposite had been the case, I think one would be able
to tell the * ' burnt district ' ' by the radical improve
ment in its architecture over the old forms. One can

J16 Life on the Mississippi

do this in Boston and Chicago. The " burnt district "
of Boston was commonplace before the fire ; but now
there is no commercial district in any city in the world
that can surpass it — or perhaps even rival it — in
beauty, elegance, and tastefulness.

However, New Orleans has begun — just this mo
ment, as one may say. When completed, the new
Cotton Exchange will be a stately and beautiful build
ing: massive, substantial, full of architectural graces;
no shams or false pretenses or uglinesses about it any
where. To the city it will be worth many times its
cost, for it will breed its species. What has been
lacking hitherto was a model to build toward, some
thing to educate eye and taste : a suggester, so to
speak.

The city is well outfitted with progressive men —
thinking, sagacious, long-headed men. The contrast
between the spirit of the city and the city's architec
ture is like the contrast between waking and sleep.
Apparently there is a * ' boom ' ' in everything but that
one dead feature. The water in the gutters used to be
stagnant and slimy, and a potent disease-breeder ; but
the gutters are flushed now two or three times a day
by powerful machinery; in many of the gutters the
water never stands still, but has a steady current.
Other sanitary improvements have been made; and
with such effect that New Orleans claims to be (during
the long intervals between the occasional yellow-fever
assaults) one of the healthiest cities in the Union.
There's plenty of ice now for everybody, manufac
tured in the town. It is a driving place commercially,
and has a great river, ocean, and railway business.
At the date of our visit it was the best-lighted city in
the Union, electrically speaking. The New Orleans
electric lights were more numerous than those of New
York, and very much better. One had this modified

Life on the Mississippi

noonday not only in Canal and some neighboring chief
streets, but all along a stretch of five miles of river
frontage. There are good clubs in the city now —
several of them but recently organized — and inviting
modern-style pleasure resorts at West End and Spanish
Fort. The telephone is everywhere. One of the
most notable advances is in journalism. The news
papers, as I remember them, were not a striking
feature. Now they are. Money is spent upon them
with a free hand. They get the news, let it cost what
it may. The editorial work is not hack-grinding, but
literature. As an example of New Orleans journalistic
achievement, it may be mentioned that the Times-
Democrat ®i August 26, 1882, contained a report of the
year's business of the towns of the Mississippi Valley,
from New Orleans all the way to St. Paul — two thou
sand miles. That issue of the paper consisted of forty
pages ; seven columns to the page ; two hundred and
eighty columns in all ; fifteen hundred words to the
column ; an aggregate of four hundred and twenty
thousand words. That is to say, not much short of
three times as many words as are in this book. One
may with sorrow contrast this with the architecture of
New Orleans.

I have been speaking of public architecture only.
The domestic article in New Orleans is reproachless,
notwithstanding it remains as it always was. All the
dwellings are of wood, — in the American part of the
town, I mean, — and all have a comfortable look.
Those in the wealthy quarter are spacious; painted
snow-white usually, and generally have wide verandas,
or double verandas, supported by ornamental columns.
These mansions stand in the center of large grounds,
and rise, garlanded with roses, out of the midst of
swelling masses of shining green foliage and many-
colored blossoms. No houses could well be in better

318 Life on the Mississippi

harmony with their surroundings, or more pleasing to
the eye, or more homelike and comfortable-looking.
One even becomes reconciled to the cistern pres
ently; this is a mighty cask, painted green, and some
times a couple of stories high, which is propped against
the house-corner on stilts. There is a mansion-and-
brewery suggestion about the combination which seems
very incongruous at first. But the people cannot have
wells, and so they take rain-water. Neither can they
conveniently have cellars or graves,* the town being
built upon " made " ground ; so they do without both,
and few of the living complain, and none of the others.

*The Israelites are buried in graves — by permission, I take it, not
requirement; but none else, except the destitute, who are buried at public
expense. The graves are but three or four feet deep.

CHAPTER XLII.

HYGIENE AND SENTIMENT

"""THEY bury their dead in vaults, above the ground.
I These vaults have a resemblance to houses —
sometimes to temples; are built of marble, generally;
are architecturally graceful and shapely; they face the
walks and driveways of the cemetery; and when one
moves through the midst of a thousand or so of them,
and sees their white roofs and gables stretching into
the distance on every hand, the phrase " city of the
dead" has all at once a meaning to him. Many of
the cemeteries are beautiful and are kept in perfect
order. When one goes from the levee or the business
streets near it, to a cemetery, he observes to himself
that if those people down there would live as neatly
while they are alive as they do after they are dead,
they would find many advantages in it; and besides,
their quarter would be the wonder and admiration of
the business world. Fresh flowers, in vases of water,
are to be seen at the portals of many of the vaults :
placed there by the pious hands of bereaved parents
and children, husbands and wives, and renewed daily.
A milder form of sorrow finds its inexpensive and last
ing remembrancer in the coarse and ugly but inde
structible "immortelle" — which is a wreath or cross
or some such emblem, made of rosettes of black linen,
with sometimes a yellow rosette at the junction of the

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320 Life on the Mississippi

cross' bars — kind of sorrowful breastpin, so to say.
The immortelle requires no attention : you just hang it
up, and there you are; just leave it alone, it will take
care of your grief for you, and keep it in mind better
than you can; stands weather first-rate, and lasts like
boikr-iron.

On sunny days, pretty little chameleons — grace-
fullest of legged reptiles — creep along the marble
fronts of the vaults, and catch flies. Their changes of
color — as to variety — are not up to the creature's
reputation. They change color when a person comes
along and hangs up an immortelle ; but that is noth
ing : any right-feeling reptile would do that.

I will gradually drop this subject of graveyards. I
have been trying all I could to get down to the senti
mental part of it, but I cannot accomplish it. I think
there is no genuinely sentimental part to it. It is all
grotesque, ghastly, horrible. Graveyards may have
been justifiable in the bygone ages, when nobody knew
that for every dead body put into the ground, to glut
the earth and the plant-roots and the air with disease-
germs, five or fifty, or maybe a hundred, persons
must die before their proper time ; but they are hardly
justifiable now, when even the children know that a
dead saint enters upon a century-long career of assas
sination the moment the earth closes over his corpse.
It is a grim sort of a thought. The relics of St. Anne,
up in Canada, have now, after nineteen hundred years,
gone to curing the sick by the dozen. But it is merest
matter-of-course that these same relics, within a
generation after St. Anne's death and burial, made
several thousand people sick. Therefore these miracle-
performances are simply compensation, nothing more.
St. Anne is somewhat slow pay, for a Saint, it is true ;
but better a debt paid after nineteen hundred years,
and outlawed by the statute of limitations, than not

Life on the Mississippi 321

paid at all ; and most of the knights of the halo do not
pay at all. Where you find one that pays — like St.
Anne — you find a hundred and fifty that take the
benefit of the statute. And none of them pay any
more than the principal of what they owe — they pay
none of the interest either simple or compound. A
Saint can never quite return the principal, however, for
his dead body kills people, whereas his relics heal
only — they never restore the dead to life. That part
of the account is always left unsettled.

Dr. F. Julius Le Moyne, after fifty years of medical practice, wrote:
"The inhumation of human bodies, dead from infectious diseases, results in
constantly loading the atmosphere, and polluting the waters, with not only
the germs that rise from simply putrefaction, but also with the specific
germs of the diseases from which death resulted."

The gases (from buried corpses) will rise to the surface through eight or
ten feet of gravel, just as coal gas will do, and there is practically no limit
to their power of escape.

During the epidemic in New Orleans in 1853, Dr. E. H. Barton
reported that in the Fourth District the mortality was four hundred and
fifty-two per thousand — more than double that of any other. In this dis
trict were three large cemeteries, in which during the previous year more
than three thousand bodies had been buried. In other districts the prox
imity of cemeteries seemed to aggravate the disease.

In 1828 Professor Bianchi demonstrated how the fearful re-appearance
of the plague at Modena was caused by excavations in ground where, three
hundred years previously ', the victims of the pestilence had been buried.
Mr. Cooper, in explaining the causes of some epidemics, remarks that the
opening of the plague burial-grounds at Eyam resulted in an immediate out'
break of disease. — North American Review, No. 3, Vol. 135.

In an address before the Chicago Medical Society,
in advocacy of cremation, Dr. Charles W. Purdy made
some striking comparisons to show what a burden is
laid upon society by the burial of the dead :

One and one- fourth times more money is expended annually in funerals
in the United States than the Government expends for public school pur
poses. Funerals cost this country in 1880 enough money to pay the liabil-
21

322 Life on the Mississippi

ities of all the commercial failures in the United States during the same
year, and give each bankrupt a capital of eight thousand six hundred and
thirty dollars with which to resume business. Funerals cost annually more
money than the value of the combined gold and silver yield of the United
States in the year 1880. These figures do not include the sums invested in
burial-grounds and expended in tombs and monuments, nor the loss from
depreciation of property in the vicinity of cemeteries.

For the rich, cremation would answer as well as
burial ; for the ceremonies connected with it could be
made as costly and ostentatious as a Hindoo suttee ;
while for the poor, cremation would be better than
burial, because so cheap* — so cheap until the poor
got to imitating the rich, which they would do by and
by. The adoption of cremation would relieve us of a
muck of threadbare burial-witticisms ; but, on the other
hand, it would resurrect a lot of mildewed old
cremation-jokes that have had a rest for two thousand
years.

I have a colored acquaintance who earns his living
by odd jobs and heavy manual labor. He never earns
above four hundred dollars in a year, and as he has a
wife and several young children, the closest scrimping
is necessary to get him through to the end of the
twelve months debtless. To such a man a funeral is a
colossal financial disaster. While I was writing one of
the preceding chapters, this man lost a little child. He
walked the town over with a friend, trying to find a
coffin that was within his means. He bought the very
cheapest one he could find, plain wood, stained. It
cost him twenty-six dollars. It would have cost less
than four, probably, if it had been built to put some
thing useful into. He and his family will feel that
outlay a good many months.

* Four or five dollars is the minimum cost.

CHAPTER XLIII.

THE ART OF INHUMATION

ABOUT the same time I encountered a man in the
street whom I had not seen for six or seven
years ; and something like this talk followed. I said :

" But you used to look sad and oldish; you don't
now. Where did you get all this youth and bubbling
cheerfulness? Give me the address."

He chuckled blithely, took off his shining tile,
pointed to a notched pink circlet of paper pasted into
its crown, with something lettered on it, and went on
chuckling while I read, " J. B., UNDERTAKER." Then
he clapped his hat on, gave it an irreverent tilt to
leeward, and cried out:

' That's what's the matter! It used to be rough
times with me when you knew me — insurance-agency
business, you know; mighty irregular. Big fire, all
right — brisk trade for ten days while people scared;
after that, dull policy-business till next fire. Town
like this don't have fires often enough — a fellow
strikes so many dull weeks in a row that he gets dis
couraged. But you bet you, this is the business!
People don't wait for examples to die. No, sir, they
drop off right along — there ain't any dull spots in the
undertaker line. I just started in with two or three
little old coffins and a hired hearse, and now look at
the thing! I've worked up a business here that would
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324 Life on the Mississippi

satisfy any man, don't care who he is. Five years
ago, lodged in an attic; live in a swell house now, with
a mansard roof, and all the modern inconveniences."

" Does a coffin pay so well? Is there much profit
on a coffin?"

. " Go-way I How you talk!" Then, with a confi
dential wink, a dropping of the voice, and an impress
ive laying of his hand on my arm: "Look here;
there's one thing in this world which isn't ever cheap.
That's a coffin. There's one thing in this world which
a person don't ever try to jew you down on. That's
a coffin. There's one thing in this world which a
person don't say — * I'll look around a little, and if I
find I can't do better I'll come back and take it.'
That's a coffin. There's one thing in this world which
a person won't take in pine if he can go walnut; and
won't take in walnut if he can go mahogany; and
won't take in mahogany if he can go an iron casket
with silver door-plate and bronze handles. That's a
coffin. And there's one thing in this world which you
don't have to worry around after a person to get him
to pay for. And that's a coffin. Undertaking? —
why it's the dead-surest business in Christendom, and
the nobbiest.

11 Why, just look at it. A rich man won't have any
thing but your very best; and you can just pile it on,
too — pile it on and sock it to him — he won't ever
holler. And you take in a poor man, and if you work
him right he'll bust himself on a single lay-out. Or
especially a woman. F'r instance: Mrs. O'Flaherty
comes in, — widow, — wiping her eyes and kind of
moaning. Unhandkerchiefs one eye, bats it around
tearfully over the stock ; says :

' And fhat might ye ask for that wan?'
'Thirty-nine dollars, madam/ says I.

"'It's a foine big price, sure, but Pat shall be

Life on the Mississippi 325

buried like a gintleman, as he was, if I have to work
me fingers off for it. Ill have that wan, sor.'

* Yes, madam,' says I, ' and it is a very good one,
too ; not costly, to be sure, but in this life we must
cut our garment to our clothes, as the saying is.'
And as she starts out, I heave in, kind of casually,
1 This one with the white satin lining is a beauty, but I
am afraid — well, sixty-five dollars is a rather — rather
— but no matter, I felt obliged to say to Mrs.
O ' Shaughnessy '

" ' D'ye mane to soy that Bridget O' Shaughnessy
bought the mate to that joo-ul box to ship that
dhrunken divil to Purgatory in?'

'"Yes, madam.'

1 ' ' Then Pat shall go to heaven in the twin to it, if
it takes the last rap the O'Flahertys can raise; and
moind you, stick on some extras, too, and I'll give ye
another dollar.'

" And as I lay in with the livery stables, of course I
don't forget to mention that Mrs. O'Shaughnessy hired
fifty-four dollars' worth of hacks and flung as much
style into Dennis' funeral as if he had been a duke or
an assassin. And of course she sails in and goes the
O'Shaughnessy about four hacks and an omnibus
better. That used to be, but that's all played now;
that is, in this particular town. The Irish got to piling
up hacks so, on their funerals, that a funeral left them
ragged and hungry for two years afterward; so the
priest pitched in and broke it all up. He don't allow
them to have but two hacks now, and sometimes only
one."

44 Well," said I, " If you are so light-hearted and
jolly in ordinary times, what must you be in an
epidemic?"

He shook his head.

"No, you're off, there. We don't like to see an

326 Life on the Mississippi

epidemic. An epidemic don't pay. Well, of course
I don't mean that, exactly; but it don't pay in pro
portion to the regular thing. Don't it occur to you
why?"

41 No."

" Think."

" I can't imagine. What is it?"

"It's just two things."

"Well, what are they?"

" One's Embamming."

" And what's the other?"

"Ice."

"How is that?"

" Well, in ordinary times, a person dies, and we lay
him up in ice; one day, two days, maybe three, to
wait for friends to come. Takes a lot of it — melts
fast. We charge jewelry rates for that ice, and war
prices for attendance. Well, don't you know, when
there's an epidemic, they rush 'em to the cemetery the
minute the breath's out. No market for ice in an
epidemic. Same with Embamming. You take a family
that's able to embam, and you've got a soft thing.
You can mention sixteen different ways to do it, —
though there ain't only one or two ways, when you
come down to the bottom facts of it, — and they'll take
the highest-priced way, every time. It's human
nature — human nature in grief. It don't reason, you

see. Time being, it don't care a d n. All it

wants is physical immortality for deceased, and they're
willing to pay for it. All you've got to do is to just
be ca'm and stack it up — they'll stand the racket,
Why, man, you can take a defunct that you couldn't
give away ; and get your embamming traps around you
and go to work ; and in a couple of hours he is worth
a cool six hundred — that's what he's worth. There
ain't anything equal to it but trading rats for di'monds

Life on the Mississippi J27

in time of famine. Well, don't you see, when there's
an epidemic, people don't wait to embam. No, in
deed they don't; and it hurts the business like hellth,
as we say — hurts it like hell-th, health, see? — our
little joke in the trade. Well, I must be going. Give
me a call whenever you need any — I mean, when
you're going by, some time."

In his joyful high spirits, he did the exaggerating
himself, if any had been done. I have not enlarged
on him.

With the above brief references to inhumation, let
us leave the subject. As for me, I hope to be cre
mated. I made that remark to my pastor once, who
said, with what he seemed to think was an impressive
manner:

" I wouldn't worry about that, if I had your
chances."

Much he knew about it — the family all so opposed
to it.

CHAPTER XLIV.

CITY SIGHTS

THE old French part of New Orleans — anciently
the Spanish part — bears no resemblance to the
American end of the city : the American end which
lies beyond the intervening brick business center. The
houses are massed in blocks ; are austerely plain and
dignified; uniform of pattern, with here and there a
departure from it with pleasant effect ; all are plastered
on the outside, and nearly all have long, iron-railed
verandas running along the several stories. Their
chief beauty is the deep, warm, varicolored stain with
which time and the weather have enriched the plaster.
It harmonizes with all the surroundings, and has as
natural a look of belonging there as has the flush upon
sunset clouds. This charming decoration cannot be
successfully imitated ; neither is it to be found else
where in America.

The iron railings are a specialty, also. The pattern
is often exceedingly light and dainty, and airy and
graceful — with a large cipher or monogram in the
center, a delicate cobweb of baffling, intricate forms,
wrought in steel. The ancient railings are hand-made,
and are now comparatively rare and proportionately
valuable. They are become bric-a-brac.

The party had the privilege of idling through this
ancient quarter of New Orleans with the South 's finest

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Life on the Mississippi 329

literary genius, the author of "The Grandissimes."
In him the South has found a masterly delineator of
its interior life and its history. In truth, I find by
experience, that the untrained eye and vacant mind
can inspect it and learn of it and judge of it more
clearly and profitably in his books than by personal
contact with it.

With Mr. Cable along to see for you, and describe
and explain and illuminate, a jog through that old
quarter is a vivid pleasure. And you have a vivid
sense as of unseen or dimly seen things — vivid, and
yet fitful and darkling; you glimpse salient features,
but lose the fine shades or catch them imperfectly
through the vision of the imagination: a case, as it
were, of an ignorant, near-sighted stranger traversing
the rim of wide, vague horizons of Alps with an in
spired and enlightened long-sighted native.

We visited the old St. Louis Hotel, now occupied
by municipal offices. There is nothing strikingly re
markable about it; but one can say of it as of the
Academy of Music in New York, that if a broom or a
shovel has ever been used in it there is no circumstan
tial evidence to back up the fact. It is curious that •
cabbages and hay and things do not grow in the
Academy of Music ; but no doubt it is on account of
the interruption of the light by the benches, and the
impossibility of hoeing the crop except in the aisles.
The fact that the ushers grow their buttonhole-bouquets
on the premises shows what might be done if they had
the right kind of an agricultural head to the establish
ment.

We visited also the venerable Cathedral, and the
pretty square in front of it; the one dim with religious
light, the other brilliant with the worldly sort, and
lovely with orange-trees and blossomy shrubs; then
we drove in the hot sun through the wilderness of

330 Life on the Mississippi

houses and out on to the wide, dead level beyond,
where the villas are, and the water-wheels to drain the
town, and the commons populous with cows and chil
dren ; passing by an old cemetery where we were told
lie the ashes of an early pirate ; but we took him on
trust, and did not visit him. He was a pirate with a
tremendous and sanguinary history ; and as long as he
preserved unspotted, in retirement, the dignity of his
name and the grandeur of his ancient calling, homage
and reverence were his from high and low ; but when
at last he descended into politics and became a paltry
alderman, the public "shook" him, and turned aside
and wept. When he died, they set up a monument
over him ; and little by little he has come into respect
again; but it is respect for the pirate, not the alder
man. To-day the loyal and generous remember only
what he was, and charitably forget what he became.

Thence, we drove a few miles across a swamp, along
a raised shell road, with a canal on one hand and a
dense wood on the other; and here and there, in the
distance, a ragged and angular-limbed and moss-
bearded cypress-top standing out, clear cut against the
sky, and as quaint of form as the apple-trees in
Japanese pictures — such was our course and the sur
roundings, of it. There was an occasional alligator
swimming comfortably along in the canal, and an occa
sional picturesque colored person on the bank, flinging
his statue-rigid reflection upon the still water and
watching for a bite.

And by and by we reached the West End, a collec
tion of hotels of the usual light summer-resort pattern,
with broad verandas all around, and the waves of the
wide and blue Lake Pontchartrain lapping the
thresholds. We had dinner on a ground veranda over
the water — the chief dish the renowned fish called
pompano, delicious as the less criminal forms of sin.

Life on the Mississippi 331

Thousands of people come by rail and carriage to
West End and to Spanish Fort every evening, and
dine, listen to the bands, take strolls in the open air
under the electric lights, go sailing on the lake, and
entertain themselves in various and sundry other ways.

We had opportunities on other days and in other
places to test the pompano. Notably, at an editorial
dinner at one of the clubs in the city. He was in his
last possible perfection there, and justified his fame.
In his suite was a tall pyramid of scarlet cray-fish —
large ones; as large as one's thumb; delicate, pala
table, appetizing. Also deviled whitebait; also shrimps
of choice quality; and a platter of small soft-shell
crabs of a most superior breed. The other dishes were
what one might get at Delmonico's or Buckingham
Palace ; those I have spoken of can be had in similar
perfection in New Orleans only, I suppose.

In the West and South they have a new institution —
the Broom Brigade. It is composed of young ladies
who dress in a uniform costume, and go through the
infantry drill, with broom in place of musket. It is a
very pretty sight, on private view. When they per
form on the stage of a theater, in the blaze of colored
fires, it must be a fine and fascinating spectacle. I
saw them go through their complex manual with grace,
spirit, and admirable precision. I saw them do every
thing which a human being can possibly do with a
broom, except sweep. I did not see them sweep.
But I know they could learn. What they have already
learned proves that. And if they ever should learn,
and should go on the war-path down Tchoupitoulas or
some of those other streets around there, those
thoroughfares would bear a greatly improved aspect
in a very few minutes. But the girls themselves
wouldn't; so nothing would be really gained, after all.

The drill was in the Washington Artillery building.

332 Life on the Mississippi

In this building we saw many interesting relics of the
war. Also a fine oil-painting representing Stonewall
Jackson's last interview with General Lee. Both men
are on horseback. Jackson has just ridden up, and is
accosting Lee. The picture is very valuable, on ac
count of the portraits, which are authentic. But like
many another historical picture, it means nothing with
out its label. And one label will fit it as well as
another :

First Interview between Lee and Jackson.

Last Interview between Lee and Jackson.

Jackson Introducing himself to Lee.

Jackson Accepting Lee's Invitation to Dinner.

Jackson Declining Lee's Invitation to Dinner — with
Thanks.

Jackson Apologizing for a Heavy Defeat.

Jackson Reporting a Great Victory.

Jackson Asking Lee for a Match.

It tells one story, and a sufficient one ; for it says
quite plainly and satisfactorily, " Here are Lee and
Jackson together." The artist would have made it tell
that this is Lee and Jackson's last interview if he could
have done it. But he couldn't, for there wasn't any
way to do it. A good legible label is usually worth,
for information, a ton of significant attitude and ex
pression in a historical picture. In Rome, people with
fine sympathetic natures stand up and weep in front of
the celebrated ' * Beatrice Cenci the Day before her
Execution.'1 It shows what a label can do. If they
did not know the picture, they would inspect it un
moved, and say, " Young girl with hay fever; young
girl with her head in a bag. ' '

I found the half-forgotten Southern intonations and
elisions as pleasing to my ear as they had formerly
been. A Southerner talks music. At least it is music
to me, but then I was born in the South. The edu-

Life on the Mississippi 333

cated Southerner has no use for an r> except at the
beginning of a word. He says " honah," and " din-
nah," and " Gove'nuh," and " befo' the waw," and
so on. The words may lack charm to the eye, in
print, but they have it to the ear. When did the r
disappear from Southern speech, and how did it come
to disappear? The custom of dropping it was not
borrowed from the North, nor inherited from England.
Many Southerners — most Southerners — put a y into
occasional words that begin with the k sound. For
instance, they say Mr. K'yahtah (Carter) and speak
of playing k'yahds or of riding in the k'yahs. And
they have the pleasant custom — long ago fallen into
decay in the North — of frequently employing the
respectful "Sir." Instead of the curt Yes, and the
abrupt No, they say " Yes, suh " ; " No, suh."

But there are some infelicities, such as *'like" for
"as," and the addition of an "at" where it isn't
needed. I heard an educated gentleman say, "Like
the flag-officer did." His cook or his butler would
have said, "Like the flag-officer done." You hear
gentlemen say, "Where have you been at?" And
here is the aggravated form — heard a ragged street
Arab say it to a comrade: " I was a-ask'n' Tom whah
you was a-sett'n' at." The very elect carelessly say
' ' will ' ' when they mean ' ' shall ' ' ; and many of them
say " I didn't go to do it," meaning " I didn't mean
to do it." The Northern word "guess" — imported
from England, where it used to be common, and now
regarded by satirical Englishman as a Yankee original
— is but little used among Southerners. They say
"reckon." They haven't any "doesn't" in their
language ; they say " don't " instead. The unpolished
often use "went" for " gone." It is nearly as bad
as the Northern "hadn't ought." This reminds me
that a remark of a very peculiar nature was made here

334 Life on the Mississippi

in my neighborhood (in the North) a few days ago:
"He hadn't ought to have went." How is that?
Isn't that a good deal of a triumph? One knows the
orders combined in this half-breed's architecture with
out inquiring: one parent Northern, the other South
ern. To-day I heard a schoolmistress ask, " Where is
John gone?" This form is so common — so nearly
universal, in fact — that if she had used "whither"
instead of "where," I think it would have sounded
like an affectation.

We picked up one excellent word — a word worth
traveling to New Orleans to get; a nice limber, ex
pressive, handy word — "Lagniappe." They pro
nounce it lanny-j/tf/. It is Spanish — so they said.
We discovered it at the head of a column of odds and
ends in the Picayune the first day ; heard twenty peo
ple use it the second ; inquired what it meant the
third ; adopted it and got facility in swinging it the
fourth. It has a restricted meaning, but I think the
people spread it out a little when they choose. It is
the equivalent of the thirteenth roll in a "baker's
dozen." It is something thrown in, gratis, for good
measure. The custom originated in the Spanish quar
ter of the city. When a child or a servant buys some
thing in a shop — -or even the mayor or the governor,
for aught I know — he finishes the operation by saying :

" Give me something for lagniappe."

The shopman always responds ; gives the child a bit
of liquorice-root, gives the servant a cheap cigar or a
spool of thread, gives the governor — I don't know
what he gives the governor ; support, likely.

When you are invited to drink, — and this does
occur now and then in New Orleans, — and you say,
14 What, again? — no, I've had enough," the other
party says, " But just this one time more — this is for
lagniappe." When the beau perceives that he is

Life on the Mississippi 335

stacking his compliments a trifle too high, and sees by
the young lady's countenance that the edifice would
have been better with the top compliment left off, he
puts his "I beg pardon, no harm intended," into the
briefer form of "Oh, that's for lagniappe." If the
waiter in the restaurant stumbles and spills a gill of
coffee down the back of your neck, he says, " F'r
lagniappe, sah," and gets you another cup without
extra charge.

CHAPTER XLV.

SOUTHERN SPORTS

IN the North one hears the war mentioned, in social
conversation, once a month; sometimes as often as
once a week ; but as a distinct subject for talk, it has
long ago been relieved of duty. There are sufficient
reasons for this. Given a dinner company of six
gentlemen to-day, it can easily happen that four of
them — and possibly five — were not in the field at all.
So the chances are four to two, or five to one, that the
war will at no time during the evening become the
topic of conversation ; and the chances are still greater
that if it become the topic it will remain so but a little
while. If you add six ladies to the company, you
have added six people who saw so little of the dread
realities of the war that they ran out of talk concerning
them years ago, and now would soon weary of the
war topic if you brought it up.

The case is very different in the South. There,
every man you meet was in the war ; and every lady
you meet saw the war. The war is the great chief
topic of conversation. The interest in it is vivid and
constant; the interest in other topics is fleeting.
Mention of the war will wake up a dull company and
set their tongues going when nearly any other topic
would fail, ln the South, the war is what A. D. is
date from it. All day long you hear

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Life on the Mississippi 337

things ' ' placed ' ' as having happened since the waw ;
or du'in' the waw; or befo' the waw; or right aftah
the waw; or 'bout two yeahs or five yeahs or ten
yeahs befo' the waw or aftah the waw. It shows how
intimately every individual was visited, in his own per
son, by that tremendous episode. It gives the inex
perienced stranger a better idea of what a vast and
comprehensive calamity invasion is than he can ever
l^et by reading books at the fireside.

At a club one evening, a gentleman turned to me
and said, in an aside:

"You notice, of course, that we are nearly always
talking about the war. It isn't because we haven't
anything else to talk about, but because nothing else
has so strong an interest for us. And there is another
reason: In the war, each of us, in his own person,
seems to have sampled all the different varieties of
human experience; as a consequence, you can't men
tion an outside matter of any sort but it will certainly
remind some listener of something that happened
during the war — and out he comes with it. Of course
that brings the talk back to the war. You may try all
you want to, to keep other subjects before the house,
and we may all join in and help, but there can be but
one result: the most random topic would load every
man up with war reminiscences, and shut him up, too;
and talk would be likely to stop presently, because
you can't talk pale inconsequentialities when you've
got a crimson fact or fancy in your head that you are
burning to fetch out."

The poet was sitting some little distance away ; and
presently he began to speak — about the moon.

The gentleman who had been talking to me re
marked in an aside: "There, the moon is far enough
from the seat of war, but you will see that it will sug
gest something to somebody about the war; in ten

338 Life on the Mississippi

minutes from now the moon, as a topic, will be
shelved."

The poet was saying he had noticed something which
was a surprise to him; had had the impression that
down here, toward the equator, the moonlight was
much stronger and brighter than up North; had had
the impression that when he visited New Orleans,
many years ago, the moon

Interruption from the other end of the room :

"Let me explain that. Reminds me of an anec
dote. Everything is changed since the war, for better
or for worse; but you'll find people down here born
grumblers, who see no change except the change for
the worse. There was an old negro woman of this
sort. A young New Yorker said in her presence,
* What a wonderful moon you have down here !' She
sighed and said, ' Ah, bless yo' heart, honey, you
ought to seen dat moon befo' de waw!' '

The new topic was dead already. But the poet
resurrected it, and gave it a new start.

A brief dispute followed, as to whether the difference
between Northern and Southern moonlight really ex
isted or was only imagined. Moonlight talk drifted
easily into talk about artificial methods of dispelling
darkness. Then somebody remembered that when
Farragut advanced upon Port Hudson on a dark night
— and did not wish to assist the aim of the Confederate
gunners — he carried no battle-lanterns, but painted
the decks of his ships white, and thus created a dim
but valuable light, which enabled his own men to grope
their way around with considerable facility. At this
point the war got the floor again — the ten minutes not
quite up yet.

I was not sorry, for war talk by men who have been
in a war is always interesting ; whereas moon talk by a
poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull.

Life on the Mississippi 339

We went to a cockpit in New Orleans on a Saturday
afternoon. I had never seen a cock-fight before.
There were men and boys there of all ages and all
colors, and of many languages and nationalities. But
I noticed one quite conspicuous and surprising ab
sence: the traditional brutal faces. There were no
brutal faces. With no cock-fighting going on, you
could have played the gathering on a stranger for a
prayer-meeting; and after it began, for a revival, —
provided you blindfolded your stranger, — for the
shouting was something prodigious.

A negro and a white man were in the ring; every
body else outside. The cocks were brought in in
sacks; and when time was called, they were taken out
by the two bottle-holders, stroked, caressed, poked
toward each other, and finally liberated. The big
black cock plunged instantly at the little gray one and
struck him on the head with his spur. The gray re
sponded with spirit. Then the Babel of many-tongued
shoutings broke out, and ceased not thenceforth.
When the cocks had been fighting some little time, I
was expecting them momently to drop dead, for both
were blind, red with blood, and so exhausted that they
frequently fell down. Yet they would not give up,
neither would they die. The negro and the white man
would pick them up every few seconds, wipe them off,
blow cold water on them in a fine spray, and take
their heads in their mouths and hold them there a mo
ment — to warm back the perishing life perhaps ; I do
not know. Then, bei:ig set down again, the dying
creatures would totter gropingly about, with dragging
wings, find each other, strike a guess-work blow or
two, and fall exhausted once more.

I did not see the end of the battle. I forced myself
to endure it as long as I could, but it was too pitiful a
sight; so I made frank confession to that effect, and

340 Life on the Mississippi

we retired. We heard afterward that the black cock
died in the ring, and fighting to the last.

Evidently there is abundant fascination about this
' * sport ' ' for such as have had a degree of familiarity
with it. I never saw people enjoy anything more than
this gathering enjoyed this fight. The case was the
same with old gray-heads and with boys of ten. They
lost themselves in frenzies of delight. The ' ' cocking-
main " is an inhuman sort of entertainment, there is
no question about that; still, it seems a much more
respectable and far less cruel sport than fox-hunting —
for the cocks like it; they experience, as well as confer
enjoyment; which is not the fox's case.

We assisted — in the French sense — at a mule-
race, one day. I believe I enjoyed this contest more
than any other mule there. I enjoyed it more than I
remember having enjoyed any other animal race I ever
saw. The grand stand was well filled with the beauty
and the chivalry of New Orleans. That phrase is not
original with me. It is the Southern reporter's. He
has used it for two generations. He uses it twenty times
a day, or twenty thousand times a day, or a million times
a day — according to the exigencies. He is obliged to
use it a million times a day, if he have occasion to
speak of respectable men and women that often ; for
he has no other phrase for such service except that
single one. He never tires of it; it always has a fine
sound to him. There is a kind of swell, mediaeval
bulliness and tinsel about it that pleases his gaudy,
barbaric soul. If he had been in Palestine in the
early times, we should have had no references to
" much people" out of him. No, he would have
said * ' the beauty and the chivalry of Galilee ' ' assem
bled to hear the Sermon on the Mount. It is likely
that the men and women of the South are sick
enough of that phrase by this time, and would like a

Life on the Mississippi 341

change, but there is no immediate prospect of their
getting it.

The New Orleans editor has a strong, compact,
direct, unflowery style ; wastes no words, and does not
gush. Not so with his average correspondent. In the
Appendix I have quoted a good letter, penned by a
trained hand ; but the average correspondent hurls a
style which differs from that. For instance :

The Times-Democrat sent a relief-steamer up one of
the bayous, last April. This steamer landed at a
village, up there somewhere, and the captain invited
some of the ladies of the village to make a short trip
with him. They accepted and came aboard, and the
steamboat shoved out up the creek. That was all
there was " to it." And that is all that the editor of
the Times-Democrat would have got out of it. There
was nothing in the thing but statistics, and he would
have got nothing else out of it. He would probably
have even tabulated them; partly to secure perfect
clearness of statement, and partly to save space. But
his special correspondent knows other methods of
handling statistics. He just throws off all restraint and
wallows in them:

On Saturday, early in the morning, the beauty of the place graced our
cabin, and proud of her fair freight the gallant little boat glided up the

bayou.

Twenty-two words to say the ladies came aboard and
the boat shoved out up the creek, is a clean waste of
ten good words, and is also destructive of compactness
of statement.

The trouble with the Southern reporter is — Women.
They unsettle him; they throw him off his balance.
He is plain, and sensible, and satisfactory, until woman
heaves in sight. Then he goes all to pieces ; his mind
totters, becomes flowery and idiotic. From reading

342 Life on the Mississippi

the above extract, you would imagine that this student
of Sir Walter Scott is an apprentice, and knows next
to nothing about handling a pen. On the contrary, he
furnishes plenty of proofs, in his long letter, that he
knows well enough how to handle it when the women
are not around to give him the artificial flower com
plaint. For instance :

At four o'clock ominous clouds began to gather in the southeast, and
presently from the Gulf there came a blow which increased in severity every
moment. It was not safe to leave the landing then, and there was a delay.
The oaks shook off long tresses of their mossy beards to the tugging of the
wind, and the bayou in its ambition put on miniature waves in mocking of
much larger bodies of water. A lull permitted a start, and homeward we
steamed, an inky sky overhead and a heavy wind blowing. As darkness
crept on, there were few on board who did not wish themselves nearer
home.

There is nothing the matter with that. It is good
description, compactly put. Yet there was great
temptation, there, to drop into lurid writing.

But let us return to the mule. Since I left him, I
have rummaged around and found a full report of the
race. In it I find confirmation of the theory which I
broached just now — namely, that the trouble with the
Southern reporter is Women: Women, supplemented
by Walter Scott and his knights and beauty and
chivalry, and so on. This is an excellent report, as
long as the women stay out of it. But when they
intrude, we have this frantic result:

It will be probably a long time before the ladies' stand presents such a
sea of foam-like loveliness as it did yesterday. The New Orleans women
are always charming, but never so much so as at this time of the year, when in
their dainty spring costumes they bring with them a breath of balmy fresh
ness and an odor of sanctity unspeakable. The stand was so crowded with
them that, walking at their feet and seeing no possibility of approach, many
a man appreciated as he never did before the Peri's feeling at the Gates of
Paradise, and wondered what was the priceless boon that would admit him

Life on the Mississippi 343

to their sacred presence. Sparkling on their white-robed breasts or
shoulders were the colors of their favorite knights, and were it not for the
fact that the doughty heroes appeared on unromantic mules, it would have
been easy to imagine one of King Arthur's gala-days.

There were thirteen mules in the first heat ; all sorts
of mules, they were; all sorts of complexions, gaits,
dispositions, aspects. Some were handsome creatures,
some were not; some were sleek, some hadn't had
their fur brushed lately; some were innocently gay
and frisky; some were full of malice and all un
righteousness; guessing from looks, some of them
thought the matter on hand was war, some thought
it was a lark, the rest took it for a religious occa
sion. And each mule acted according to his con
victions. The result was an absence of harmony well
compensated by a conspicuous presence of variety —
variety of a picturesque and entertaining sort.

All the riders were young gentlemen in fashionable
society. If the reader has been wondering why it is
that the ladies of New Orleans attend so humble an
orgy as a mule-race, the thing is explained now. It is
a fashion-freak; all connected with it are people of
fashion.

It is great fun, and cordially liked. The mule-race
is one of the marked occasions of the year. It has
brought some pretty fast mules to the front. One of
these had to be ruled out, because he was so fast that
he turned the thing into a one-mule contest, and
robbed it of one of its best features — variety. But
every now and then somebody disguises him with a new
name and a new complexion, and rings him in again.

The riders dress in full jockey costumes of bright-
colored silks, satins, and velvets.

The thirteen mules got away in a body, after a
couple of false starts, and scampered off with pro
digious spirit. As each mule and each rider had a

344 Life on the Mississippi

distinct opinion of his own as to how the race ought to
be run, and which side of the track was best in certain
circumstances, and how often the track ought to be
crossed, and when a collision ought to be accom
plished, and when it ought to be avoided, these
twenty-six conflicting opinions created a most fantastic
and picturesque confusion, and the resulting spectacle
was killingly comical.

Mile heat; time, 2 :22. Eight of the thirteen mules
distanced. I had a bet on a mule which would have
won if the procession had been reversed. The second
heat was good fun; and so was the " consolation race
for beaten mules," which followed later; but the first
heat was the best in that respect.

I think that much the most enjoyable of all races is
a steamboat race ; but, next to that, I prefer the gay
and joyous mule-rush. Two red-hot steamboats raging
along, neck-and-neck, straining every nerve, — that is
to say, every rivet in the boilers, — quaking and shaking
and groaning from stem to stern, spouting white steam
from the pipes, pouring black smoke from the chim
neys, raining down sparks, parting the river into long
breaks of hissing foam — this is sport that makes a
body's very liver curl with enjoyment. A horse-race
is pretty tame and colorless in comparison. Still, a
horse-race might be well enough, in its way, perhaps,
if it were not for the tiresome false starts. But then,
nobody is ever killed. At least, nobody was ever
killed when I was at a horse-race. They have been
crippled, it is true; but this is little to the purpose.

CHAPTER XLVI.

ENCHANTMENTS AND ENCHANTERS

THE largest annual event in New Orleans is a some
thing which we arrived too late to sample — the
Mardi-Gras festivities. I saw the procession of the
Mystic Crew of Comus there, twenty-four years ago —
with knights and nobles and so on, clothed in silken
and golden Paris-made gorgeousnesses, planned and
bought for that single night's use; and in their train
all manner of giants, drawfs, monstrosities, and other
diverting grotesquerie — a startling and wonderful sort
of show, as it filed solemnly and silently down the
street in the light of its smoking and flickering torches ;
but it is said that in these latter days the spectacle is
mightily augmented, as to cost, splendor, and variety.
There is a chief personage — " Rex " ; and if I remem
ber rightly, neither this king nor any of his great
following of subordinates is known to any outsider.
All these people are gentlemen of position and conse
quence; and it is a proud thing to belong to the
organization ; so the mystery in which they hide their
personality is merely for romance's sake, and not on
account of the police.

Mardi-Gras is of course a relic of the French and
Spanish occupation; but I judge that the religious
feature has been pretty well knocked out of it now.
Sir Walter has got the advantage of the gentlemen of

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346 Life on the Mississippi

the cowl and rosary, and he will stay. His mediaeval
business, supplemented by the monsters and the oddi
ties, and the pleasant creatures from fairy-land, is finer
to look at than the poor fantastic inventions and per
formances of the reveling rabble of the priest's day,
and serves quite as well, perhaps, to emphasize the
day and admonish men that the grace-line between the
worldly season and the holy one is reached.

This Mardi-Gras pageant was the exclusive posses
sion of New Orleans until recently. But now it has
spread to Memphis and St. Louis and Baltimore. It
has probably reached its limit. It is a thing which
could hardly exist in the practical North ; would cer
tainly last but a very brief time ; as brief a time as it
would last in London. For the soul of it is the
romantic, not the funny and the grotesque. Take
away the romantic mysteries, the kings and knights
and big-sounding titles, and Mardi-Gras would die,
down there in the South. The very feature that keeps
it alive in the South — girly-girly romance — would
kill it in the North or in London. Puck and Punchy
and the press universal, would fall upon it and make
merciless fun of it, and its first exhibition would be
also its last.

Against the crimes of the French Revolution and of
Bonaparte may be set two compensating benefactions :
the Revolution broke the chains of the ancien regime
and of the Church, and made a nation of abject slaves
a nation of freemen; and Bonaparte instituted the
setting of merit above birth, and also so completely
stripped the divinity from royalty that, whereas
crowned heads in Europe were gods before, they are
only men since, and can never be gods again, but only
figure-heads, and answerable for their acts like com
mon clay. Such benefactions as these compensate the
temporary harm which Bonaparte and the Revolution

Life on the Mississippi 347

did, and leave the world in debt to them for these great
and permanent services to liberty, humanity, and
progress.

Then comes Sir Walter Scott with his enchantments,
and 'by his single might checks this wave of progress,
and even turns it back; sets the world in love with
dreams and phantoms : with decayed and swinish
forms of religion : with decayed and degraded systems
of government; with the sillinesses and emptinesses,
sham grandeurs, sham gauds, and sham chivalries of a
brainless and worthless long-vanished society. He did
measureless harm; more real and lasting harm, per
haps, than any other individual that ever wrote. Most
of the world has now outlived good part of these
harms, though by no means all of them ; but in our
South they flourish pretty forcefully still. Not so
forcefully as half a generation ago, perhaps, but still
forcefully. There, the genuine and wholesome civiliza
tion of the nineteenth century is curiously confused
and commingled with the Walter Scott Middle-Age
sham civilization, and so you have practical common-
sense, progressive ideas, and progressive works, mixed
up with the duel, the inflated speech, and the jejune
romanticism of an absurd past that is dead, and out of
charity ought to be buried. But for the Sir Walter
disease, the character of the Southerner — or Southron,
according to Sir Walter's starchier way of phrasing it —
would be wholly modern, in place of modern and
mediaeval mixed, and the South would be fully a
generation further advanced than it is. It was Sir
Walter that made every gentleman in the South a
major or a colonel, or a general or a judge, before the
war; and it was he, also, that made these gentlemen
value these bogus decorations. For it was he that
created rank and caste down there, and also reverence
for rank and caste, and pride and pleasure in them.

348 Life on the Mississippi

Enough is laid on slavery, without fathering upon it
these creations and contributions of Sir Walter.

Sir Walter had so large a hand in making Southern
character, as it existed before the war, that he is in
great measure responsible for the war. It seems a
little harsh toward a dead man to say that we never
should have had any war but for Sir WTalter ; and yet
something of a plausible argument might, perhaps, be
made in support of that wild proposition. The
Southerner of the American Revolution owned slaves ;
so did the Southerner of the Civil War; but the
former resembles the latter as an Englishman resem
bles a Frenchman. The change of character can be
traced rather more easily to Sir Walter's influence than
to that of any other thing or person.

One may observe, by one or two signs, how deeply
that influence penetrated, and how strongly it holds.
If one take up a Northern or Southern literary periodi
cal of forty or fifty years ago, he will find it filled with
wordy, windy, flowery "eloquence," romanticism,
sentimentality — all imitated from Sir Walter, and
sufficiently badly done, too — innocent travesties of his
style and methods, in fact. This sort of literature
being the fashion in both sections of the country,
there was opportunity for the fairest competition ; and
as a consequence, the South was able to show as many
well-known literary names, proportioned to population,
as the North could.

But a change has come, and there is no opportunity
now for a fair competition between North and South.
For the North has thrown out that old inflated style,
whereas the Southern writer still clings to it — clings to
it and has a restricted market for his wares, as a conse
quence. There is as much literary talent in the South,
now, as ever there was, of course; but its work can
gain but slight currency under present conditions ; the

Life on the Mississippi 349

authors write for the past, not the present ; they use
obsolete forms and a dead language. But when a
Southerner of genius writes modern English, his book
goes upon crutches no longer, but upon wings; and
they carry it swiftly all about America and England,
and through the great English reprint publishing
houses of Germany — as witness the experience of Mr.
Cable and "Uncle Remus," two of the very few
Southern authors who do not write in the Southern
style. Instead of three or four widely-known literary
names, the South ought to have a dozen or two — and
will have them when Sir Walter's time is out.

A curious exemplification of the power of a single
book for good or harm is shown in the effects wrought
by "Don Quixote" and those wrought by "Ivan-
hoe." The first swept the world's admiration for the
mediaeval chivalry-silliness out of existence; and the
other restored it. As far as our South is concerned,
the good work done by Cervantes is pretty nearly a
dead letter, so effectually has Scott's pernicious work
undermined it.

CHAPTER XLVII.

"UNCLE REMUS" AND MR. CABLE

MR. JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS (" Uncle Re
mus") was to arrive from Atlanta at seven
o'clock Sunday morning; so we got up and received
him. We were able to detect him among the crowd of
arrivals at the hotel-counter by his correspondence
with a description of him which had been furnished us
from a trustworthy source. He was said to be under
sized, red-haired, and somewhat freckled. He was the
only man in the party whose outside tallied with this
bill of particulars. He was said to be very shy. He
is a shy man. Of this there is no doubt. It may not
show on the surface, but the shyness is there. After
days of intimacy one wonders to see that it is still in
about as strong force as ever. There is a fine and
beautiful nature hidden behind it, as all know who have
read the " Uncle Remus" book; and a fine genius,
too, as all know by the same sign. I seem to be talk
ing quite freely about this neighbor ; but in talking to
the public I am but talking to his personal friends, and
these things are permissible among friends.

He deeply disappointed a number of children who
had flocked eagerly to Mr. Cable's house to get a
glimpse of the illustrious sage and oracle of the nation's
nurseries. They said :

"Why, he's white!"

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Life on the Mississippi 351

They were grieved about it. So, to console them,
the book was brought, that they might hear Uncle
Remus' Tar-Baby story from the lips of Uncle Remus
himself — or what, in their outraged eyes, was left of
him. But it turned out that he had never read aloud
to people, and was too shy to venture the attempt
now. Mr. Cable and I read from books of ours, to
show him what an easy trick it was ; but his immortal
shyness was proof against even this sagacious strategy ;
so we had to read about Brer Rabbit ourselves.

Mr. Harris ought to be able to read the negro dialect
better than anybody else, for in the matter of writing
it he is the only master the country has produced.
Mr. Cable is the only master in the writing of French
dialects that the country has produced ; and he reads
them in perfection. It was a great treat to hear him
read about Jean-ah Poquelin, and about Innerarity and
his famous " pigshoo " representing ' ' Louisihanna
^/-fusing to Hanter the Union," along with passages
of nicely-shaded German dialect from a novel which
was still in manuscript.

It came out in conversation that in two different in
stances Mr. Cable got into grotesque trouble by using,
in his books, next- to-impossible French names which
nevertheless happened to be borne by living and sensi
tive citizens of New Orleans. His names were either
inventions or were borrowed from the ancient and
obsolete past, I do not now remember which ; but at
any rate living bearers of them turned up, and were a
good deal hurt at having attention directed to them
selves and their affairs in so excessively public a
manner.

Mr. Warner and I had an experience of the same
sort when we wrote the book called "The Gilded
Age." There is a character in it called " Sellers." I
do not remember what his first name was, in the begin-

352 Life on the Mississippi

ning; but anyway, Mr. Warner did not like it, and
wanted it improved. He asked me if I was able to
imagine a person named " Eschol Sellers." Of course
I said I could not, without stimulants. He said that
away out West, once, he had met, and contemplated,
and actually shaken hands with a man bearing that
impossible name — " Eschol Sellers." He added:

"It was twenty years ago ; his name has probably
carried him off before this; and if it hasn't, he will
never see the book anyhow. We will confiscate his
name. The name you are using is common, and
therefore dangerous; there are probably a thousand
Sellerses bearing it, and the whole horde will come
after us ; but Eschol Sellers is a safe name — it is a
rock."

So we borrowed that name ; and when the book had
been out about a week, one of the stateliest and hand
somest and most aristocratic looking white men that
ever lived, called around, with the most formidable
libel suit in his pocket that ever — well, in brief, we
got his permission to suppress an edition of ten million*
copies of the book and change that name to " Beriah
Sellers " in future editions.

* Figures taken from memory, and probably incorrect. Think it was

CHAPTER XLVII1.

SUGAR AND POSTAGE

ONE day, on the street, I encountered the man
whom, of all men, I most wished to see —
Horace Bixby ; formerly pilot under me, — or rather,
over me, — now captain of the great steamer City of
Baton Rouge, the latest and swiftest addition to the
Anchor Line. The same slender figure, the same tight
curls, the same springy step, the same alertness, the
same decision of eye and answering decision of hand,
the same erect military bearing; not an inch gained or
lost in girth, not an ounce gained or lost in weight,
not a hair turned. It is a curious thing, to leave a
man thirty-five years old, and come back at the end of
twenty-one years and find him still only thirty-five. I
have not had an experience of this kind before, I be
lieve. There were some crow's-feet, but they counted
for next to nothing, since they were inconspicuous.

His boat was just in. I had been waiting several
days for her, purposing to return to St. Louis in her.
The captain and I joined a party of ladies and gentle
men, guests of Major Wood, and went down the river
fifty-four miles, in a swift tug, to ex-Governor War-
moth's sugar plantation. Strung along below the city
was a number of decayed, ramshackly, superannuated
old steamboats, not one of which had I ever seen
before. They had all been built, and worn out, and
23 (353)

3 §4 Life on the Mississippi

thrown aside, since I was here last. This gives one a
realizing sense of the frailness of a Mississippi boat and
the briefness of its life.

Six miles below town a fat and battered brick chim
ney, sticking above the magnolias and live-oaks, was
pointed out as the monument erected by an apprecia
tive nation to celebrate the battle of New Orleans —
Jackson's victory over the British, January 8, 1815.
The war had ended, the two nations were at peace, but
the news had not yet reached New Orleans. If we had
had the cable telegraph in those days, this blood would
not have been spilt, those lives would not have been
wasted; and better still, Jackson would probably never
have been President. We have gotten over the harms
done us by the war of 1812, but not over some of
those done us by Jackson's presidency.

The Warmoth plantation covers a vast deal of
ground, and the hospitality of the Warmoth mansion
is graduated to the same large scale. We saw steam-
plows at work, here, for the first time. The traction
engine travels about on its own wheels, till it reaches
the required spot ; then it stands still and by means of
a wire rope pulls the huge plow toward itself two or
three hundred yards across the field, between the rows
of cane. The thing cuts down into the black mold a
foot and a half deep. The plow looks like a fore-and-
aft brace of a Hudson River steamer, inverted. When
the negro steersman sits on one end of it, that end
tilts down near the ground, while the other sticks up
high in air. This great seesaw goes rolling and pitch
ing like a ship at sea, and it is not every circus-rider
that could stay on it.

The plantation contains two thousand six hundred
acres ; six hundred and fifty are in cane ; and there is
a fruitful orange grove of five thousand trees. The
cane is cultivated after a modern and intricate scientific

Life on the Mississippi 355

fashion, too elaborate and complex for me to attempt
to describe ; but it lost forty thousand dollars last year.
I forget the other details. However, this year's crop
will reach ten or twelve hundred tons of sugar, conse
quently last year's loss will not matter. These trouble
some and expensive scientific methods achieve a yield
of a ton and a half, and from that to two tons, to the
acre ; which is three or four times what the yield of an
acre was in my time.

The drainage-ditches were everywhere alive with
little crabs — "fiddlers." One saw them scampering
sidewise in every direction whenever they heard a dis
turbing noise. Expensive pests, these crabs; for they
bore into the levees, and ruin them.

The great sugar-house was a wilderness of tubs and
tanks and vats and filters, pumps, pipes, and machinery.
The process of making sugar is exceedingly interesting.
First, you heave your cane into the centrifugals and
grind out the juice ; then run it through the evaporating
pan to extract the fibre; then through the bone-filter
to remove the alcohol; then through the clarifying
tanks to discharge the molasses; then through the
granulating pipe to condense it; then through the
vacuum pan to extract the vacuum. It is now ready
for market. I have jotted these particulars down from
memory. The thing looks simple and easy. Do not
deceive yourself. To make sugar is really one of the
most difficult things in the world. And to make it
right is next to impossible. If you will examine your
own supply every now and then for a term of years,
and tabulate the result, you will find that not two men
in twenty can make sugar without getting sand into it.

We could have gone down to the mouth of the river
and visited Captain Eads' great work, the "jetties,"
where the river has been compressed between walls,
and thus deepened to twenty-six feet; but it was voted

356 Life on the Mississippi

useless to go, since at this stage of the water every
thing would be covered up and invisible.

We could have visited that ancient and singular
burg, " Pilot-town/' which stands on stilts in the water
— so they say ; where nearly all communication is by
skiff and canoe, even to the attending of weddings and
funerals ; and where the littlest boys and girls are as
handy with the oar as unamphibious children are with
the velocipede.

We could have done a number of other things ; but
on account of limited time, we went back home. The
sail up the breezy and sparkling river was a charming
experience, and would have been satisfyingly senti
mental and romantic but for the interruptions of the
tug's pet parrot, whose tireless comments upon the
scenery and the guests were always this-worldly, and
often profane. He had also a superabundance of the
discordant, ear-splitting, metallic laugh common to his
breed — a machine-made laugh, a Frankenstein laugh,
with the soul left out of it. He applied it to every
sentimental remark, and to every pathetic song. He
cackled it out with hideous energy after " Home again,
home again, from a foreign shore," and said he

" wouldn't give a d for a tug-load of such rot."

Romance and sentiment cannot long survive this sort
of discouragement; so the singing and talking pres
ently ceased ; which so delighted the parrot that he
cursed himself hoarse for joy.

Then the male members of the party moved to the
forecastle, to smoke and gossip. There were several
old steamboatmen along, and I learned from them a
great deal of what had been happening to my former
river friends during my long absence. I learned that
a pilot whom I used to steer for is become a spiritual
ist, and for more than fifteen years has been receiving
a letter every week from a deceased relative, through a

Life on the Mississippi 357

New York spiritualistic medium named Manchester —
postage graduated by distance ; from the local post-
office in Paradise to New York, five dollars ; from New
York to St. Louis, three cents. I remember Mr. Man
chester very well. I called on him once, ten years
ago, with a couple of friends, one of whom wished to
inquire after a deceased uncle. This uncle had lost his
life in a peculiarly violent and unusual way, half a
dozen years before: a cyclone blew him some three
miles and knocked a tree down with him which was
four feet through at the outt and sixty-five feet high.
He did not survive this triumph. At the stance just
referred to, my friend questioned his late uncle,
through Mr. Manchester, and the late uncle wrote
down his replies, using Mr. Manchester's hand and
pencil for that purpose. The following is a fair ex
ample of the questions asked, and also of the sloppy
twaddle in the way of answers furnished by Manchester
under the pretense that it came from the specter. If
this man is not the paltriest fraud that lives, I owe him
an apology:

Question. Where are you?

Answer. In the spirit world.

Q. Are you happy?

A. Very happy. Perfectly happy.

Q. How do you amuse yourself?

A. Conversation with friends, and other spirits.

Q. What else?

A. Nothing else. Nothing else is necessary.

Q. What do you talk about?

A. About how happy we are; and about friends
left behind in the earth, and how to influence them for
their good.

Q. When your friends in the earth all get to the
spirit land, what shall you have to talk about then? —
nothing but about how happy you all are?

}58 Life on the Mississippi

No reply. It is explained that spirits will not answer
frivolous questions.

Q. How is it that spirits that are content to spend
an eternity in frivolous employments, and accept it as
happiness, are so fastidious about frivolous questions
upon the subject?

No reply.

Q. Would you like to come back?

A. No.

Q. Would you say that under oath?

A. Yes.

<2. What do you eat there?

A. We do not eat.

Q. What do you drink?

A. We do not drink.

Q. What do you smoke?

A. We do not smoke.

Q. What do you read?

A. We do not read.

Q. Do all the good people go to your place?

A. Yes.

Q. You know my present way of life. Can you
suggest any additions to it, in the way of crime, that
will reasonably insure my going to some other place?

No reply.

Q. When did you die?

A. I did not die; I passed away.

Q. Very well, then; when did you pass away?
How long have you been in the spirit land?

A. We have no measurements of time here.

Q, Though you may be indifferent and uncertain
as to dates and times in your present condition and
environment, this has nothing to do with your former
condition. You had dates then. One of these is
what I ask for. You departed on a certain day in a
certain year. Is not this true ?

Life on the Mississippi 359

A. Yes.

Q. Then name the day of the month.

(Mvich fumbling with pencil, on the part of the
medium, accompanied by violent spasmodic jerkings
of his head and body, for some little time. Finally,
explanation to the effect that spirits often forget dates,
such things being without importance to them.)

Q. Then this one has actually forgotten the date of
its translation to the spirit land ?

This was granted to be the case.

Q. This is very curious. Well, then, what year
was it?

(More fumbling, jerking, idiotic spasms, on the part
of the medium. Finally, explanation to the effect that
the spirit has forgotten the year.)

Q. This is indeed stupendous. Let me put one
more question, one last question, to you, before we
part to meet no more ; for even if I failed to avoid
your asylum, a meeting there will go for nothing as a
meeting, since by that time you will easily have for
gotten me and my name. Did you die a natural
death, or were you cut off by a catastrophe?

A. (After a long hesitation and many throes and
spasms.) Natural death.

This ended the interview. My friend told the medium
that when his relative was in this poor world, he was
endowed with an extraordinary intellect and an abso
lutely defectless memory, and it seemed a great pity
that he had not been allowed to keep some shred of
these for his amusement in the realms of everlasting
contentment, and for the amazement and admiration of
the rest of the population there.

This man had plenty of clients — has plenty yet.
He receives letters from spirits located in every part of
the spirit world, and delivers them all over this country
through the United States mail. These letters are

360 Life on the Mississippi

filled with advice, — advice from "spirits" who don't
know as much as a tadpole, — and this advice is reli
giously followed by the receivers. One of these clients
was a man whom the spirits (if one may thus plurally
describe the ingenious Manchester) were teaching how
to contrive an improved railway car- wheel. It is
coarse employment for a spirit, but it is higher and
wholesomer activity than talking forever about "how
happy we are."

CHAPTER XLIX.

EPISODES IN PILOT LIFE

IN the course of the tug-boat gossip, it came out that
out of every five of my former friends who had
quitted the river, four had chosen farming as an occu
pation. Of course this was not because they were
peculiarly gifted agriculturally, 'and thus more likely
to succeed as farmers than in other industries: the
reason for their choice must be traced to some other
source. Doubtless they chose farming because that
life is private and secluded from irruptions of undesir
able strangers — like the pilot-house hermitage. And
doubtless they also chose it because on a thousand
nights of black storm and danger they had noted the
twinkling lights of solitary farm-houses, as the boat
swung by, and pictured to themselves the serenity and
security and coseyness of such refuges at such times,
and so had by and by come to dream of that retired
and peaceful life as the one desirable thing to long
for, anticipate, earn, and at last enjoy.

But I did not learn that any of these pilot-farmers
had astonished anybody with their successes. Their
farms do not support them : they support their farms.
The pilot-farmer disappears from the river annually,
about the breaking of spring, and is seen no more till
next frost. Then he appears again, in damaged home
spun, combs the hayseed out of his hair, and takes a
pilot-house berth for the winter. In this way he pays

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362 Life on the Mississippi

the debts which his farming has achieved during the
agricultural season. So his river bondage is but half
broken; he is still the river's slave the hardest half of
the year.

One of these men bought a farm, but did not retire
to it. He knew a trick worth two of that. He did not
propose to pauperize his farm by applying his personal
ignorance to working it. No, he put the farm into the
hands of an agricultural expert to be worked on
shares — out of every three loads of corn the expert
to have two and the pilot the third. But at the end of
the season the pilot received no corn. The expert
explained that his share was not reached. The farm
produced only two loads.

Some of the pilots whom I had known had had ad
ventures — the outcome fortunate, sometimes, but not
in all cases. Captain Montgomery, whom I had
steered for when he was a pilot, commanded the Con
federate fleet in the great battle before Memphis;
when his vessel went down, he swam ashore, fought
his way through a squad of soldiers, and made a gallant
and narrow escape. He was always a cool man;
nothing could disturb his serenity. Once when he was
captain of the Crescent City, I was bringing the boat
into port at New Orleans, and momently expecting
orders from the hurricane-deck, but received none. I
had stopped the wheels, and there my authority and
responsibility ceased. It was evening — dim twilight;
the captain's hat was perched upon the big bell, and I
supposed the intellectual end of the captain was in it,
but such was not the case. The captain was very
strict; therefore I knew better than to touch a bell
without orders. My duty was to hold the boat steadily
on her calamitous course, and leave the consequences
to take care of themselves — which I did. So we went
plowing past the sterns of steamboats and getting

Life on the Mississippi 363

closer and closer — the crash was bound to come very
soon — and still that hat never budged ; for alas ! the
captain was napping in the texas. . . . Things
were becoming exceedingly nervous and uncomfort
able. It seemed to me that the captain was not going
to appear in time to see the entertainment. But he
did. Just as we were walking into the stern of a
steamboat, he stepped out on deck, and said, with
heavenly serenity, " Set her back on both" — which I
did ; but a trifle late, however, for the next moment
we went smashing through that other boat's flimsy
outer works with a most prodigious racket. The cap
tain never said a word to me about the matter after
ward, except to remark that I had done right, and that
he hoped I would not hesitate to act in the same way
again in like circumstances.

One of the pilots whom I had known when I was on
the river had died a very honorable death. His boat
caught fire, and he remained at the wheel until he got
her safe to land. Then he went out over the breast-
board with his clothing in flames, and was the last person
to get ashore. He died from his injuries in the course
of two or three hours, and his was the only life lost.

The history of Mississippi piloting affords six or
seven instances of this sort of martyrdom, and half a
hundred instances of escape from a like fate which
came within a second or two of being fatally too late ;
but there is no instance of a pilot deserting his post to
save his life while, by remaining and sacrificing it, he
might secure other lives from destruction. It is well
worth while to set down this noble fact, and well worth
while to put it in italics, too.

The " cub " pilot is early admonished to despise all
perils connected with a pilot's calling, and to prefer
any sort of death to the deep dishonor of deserting his
post while there is any possibility of his being useful in

364 Life on the Mississippi

it. And so effectively are these admonitions incul
cated that even young and but half-tried pilots can be
depended upon to stick to the wheel, and die there
when occasion requires. In a Memphis graveyard is
buried a young fellow who perished at the wheel a
great many years ago, in. White River, to save the
lives of other men. He said to the captain that if the
fire would give him time to reach a sandbar, some
distance away, all could be saved, but that to land
against the bluff bank of the river would be to insure
the loss of many lives. He reached the bar and
grounded the boat in shallow water ; but by that time the
flames had closed around him, and in escaping through
them he was fatally burned. He had been urged to fly
sooner, but had replied as became a pilot to reply:

" I will not go. If I go, nobody will be saved. If
I stay, no one will be lost but me. I will stay."

There were two hundred persons on board, and no
life was lost but the pilot's. There used to be a
monument to this young fellow in that Memphis grave
yard. While we tarried in Memphis on our down
trip, I started out to look for it, but our time was so
brief that I was obliged to turn back before my object
was accomplished.

The tugboat gossip informed me that Dick Kennet
was dead — blown up, near Memphis, and killed; that
several others whom I had known had fallen in the war
— one or two of them shot down at the wheel ; that
another and very particular friend, whom I had steered
many trips for, had stepped out of his house in New
Orleans, one night years ago, to collect some money
in a remote part of the city, and had never been seen
again — was murdered and thrown into the river, it was
thought ; that Ben Thornburg was dead long ago ;
also his wild " cub," whom I used to quarrel with all
through every daylight watch. A heedless, reckless

Life on the Mississippi 365

creature he was, and always in hot water, always in
mischief. An Arkansas passenger brought an enor
mous bear aboard one day, and chained him to a lifeboat
on the hurricane-deck. Thornburg's " cub " could not
rest till he had gone there and unchained the bear, to
" see what he would do." He was promptly gratified.
The bear chased him around and around the deck, for
miles and miles, with two hundred eager faces grinning
through the railings for audience, and finally snatched
off the lad's coat-tail and went into the texas to chew
it. The off-watch turned out with alacrity, and left
the bear in sole possession. He presently grew lone
some, and started out for recreation. He ranged the
whole boat — visited every part of it, with an advance
guard of fleeing people in front of him and a voiceless
vacancy behind him; and when his owner captured
him at last, those two were the only visible beings
anywhere ; everybody else was in hiding, and the boat
was a solitude.

I was told that one of my pilot friends fell dead at
the wheel, from heart disease, in 1869. The captain
was on the roof at the time. He saw the boat break
ing for the shore; shouted, and got no answer; ran
up, and found the pilot lying dead on the floor.

Mr. Bixby had been blown up in Madrid bend ; was
not injured, but the other pilot was lost.

George Ritchie had been blown up near Memphis —
blown into the river from the wheel, and disabled.
The water was very cold ; he clung to a cotton-bale —
mainly with his teeth — and floated until nearly ex
hausted, when he was rescued by some deck-hands
who were on a piece of the wreck. They tore open
the bale and packed him in the cotton, and warmed
the life back into him, and got him safe to Memphis.
He is one of Bixby 's pilots on the Baton Rouge now.

Into the life of a steamboat clerk, now dead, had

366 Life on the Mississippi

dropped a bit of romance — somewhat grotesque ro
mance, but romance nevertheless. When I knew him
he was a shiftless young spendthrift, boisterous, good-
hearted, full of careless generosities, and pretty con
spicuously promising to fool his possibilities away
early, and come to nothing. In a Western city lived
a rich and childless old foreigner and his wife ; and in
their family was a comely young girl — sort of friend,
sort of servant. The young clerk of whom I have been
speaking, — whose name was not George Johnson, but
who shall be called George Johnson for the purposes of
this narrative, — got acquainted with this young girl,
and they sinned ; and the old foreigner found them out
and rebuked them. Being ashamed, they lied, and
said they were married ; that they had been privately
married. Then the old foreigner's hurt was healed,
and he forgave and blessed them. After that, they
were able to continue their sin without concealment.
By and by the foreigner's wife died; and presently he
followed after her. Friends of the family assembled to
mourn ; and among the mourners sat the two young
sinners. The will was opened and solemnly read. It
bequeathed every penny of that old man's great wealth
to Mrs. George Johnson !

And there was no such person. The young sinners
fled forth then and did a very foolish thing : married
themselves before an obscure justice of the peace, and
got him to antedate the thing. That did no sort of
good. The distant relatives flocked in and exposed
the fraudful date with extreme suddenness and sur
prising ease, and carried off the fortune, leaving the
Johnsons very legitimately, and legally, and irrevocably
chained together in honorable marriage, but with not
so much as a penny to bless themselves withal. Such
are the actual facts ; and not all novels have for a base
so telling a situation.

CHAPTER L.

THE "ORIGINAL JACOBS"

WE had some talk about Captain Isaiah 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 hand
some ; and in his old age — as I remember him — his
hair was as 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 survi
vors of a bygone age are always held by their asso
ciates. 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 1 8 1 1 , the year the first steamboat disturbed
the waters of the Mississippi. At the time of his death
a correspondent of the St. Louis Reptiblican culled the
following items from the diary ;

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368 Life on the Mississippi

In February, 1825, he shipped on board the steamer Rambler, at
Florence, Ala., and made during that year three trips to New Orleans and
back — this on the General Carrol, between Nashville and New Orleans.
It was during his stay on this boat that Captain Sellers introduced the tap
of the bell as a 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. The proximity of the forecastle to the pilot-hou«' , no doubt, ren
dered this an easy matter; but how different on one of our palaces of the
present day !

In 1827 we find him on board the President, a boat of two hundred and
eighty-five tons burden, and plying between Smithland and New Orleans.
Thence he joined the Jubilee in 1828, and on this boat he did his first
piloting in the St. Louis trade; his first watch extending from Herculaneum
to St. Genevieve. On May 26, 1836, he completed and left Pittsburg in
charge of the steamer Prairie, a boat of four hundred tons, and the first
steamer with a state-room cabin ever seen at St. Louis. In 1857 he intro
duced the signal for meeting boats, and which has, with some slight change,
been the universal custom of this day; in fact, is rendered obligatory by
act of Congress.

As general items of river history, we quote the following marginal notes
from his general log :

In March, 1825, General Lafayette left New Orleans for St. Louis on
the low-pressure steamer Natchez.

In January, 1828, twenty-one steamers left the New Orleans wharf to
celebrate the occasion of General Jackson's visit to that city.

In 1830 the North American made the run from New Orleans to
Memphis in six days — best time on record to that date. It has since been
made in two days and ten hours.

In 1831 the Red River cut-off formed.

In 1832 steamer Hudson made the run from White River to Helena, a
distance of seventy-five miles, in twelve hours. This was the source of
much talk and speculation among parties directly interested.

In 1839 Great Horseshoe cut-off formed.

Up to the present time, a term of thirty-five years, we ascertain, by ref
erence to the diary, he has made four hundred and sixty round trips to New
Orleans, which gives a distance of one million one hundred and four thou
sand miles, or an average of eighty-six miles a day-

Whenever Captain Sellers approached a body of
gossiping pilots, a chill fell there, and talking ceased.

Life on the Mississippi 369

For this reason : whenever six pilots were gathered to
gether, there would always be one or two newly-fledged
ones in the lot, and the elder ones would be always
" showing off" before these poor fellows; making
them sorrowfully feel how callow they were, how recent
their nobility, and how humble their degree, by talking
largely and vaporously of old-time experiences on the
river ; always making it a point to date everything back
as far as they could, so as to make the new men feel
their newness to the sharpest degree possible, and
envy the old stagers in the like degree. And how
these complacent baldheads would swell, and brag,
and lie, and date back — ten, fifteen, twenty years, and
how they did enjoy the effect produced upon the
marveling and envying youngsters !

And perhaps just at this happy stage of the proceed
ings, the stately figure of Captain Isaiah Sellers, that
real and only genuine Son of Antiquity, would drift
solemnly into the midst. Imagine the size of the
silence that would result on the instant ! And imagine
the feelings of those baldheads, and the exultation of
their recent audience, when the ancient captain would
begin to drop casual and indifferent remarks of a
reminiscent nature — about islands that had disap
peared, and cut-offs that had been made, a generation
before the oldest baldhead in the company had ever
set his foot in a pilot-house !

Many and many a time did this ancient mariner
appear on the scene in the above fashion, and spread
disaster and humiliation around him. If one might
believe the pilots, he always dated his islands back to
the misty dawn of river history ; and he never used
the same island twice ; and never did he employ an
island that still existed, or give one a name which
anybody present was old enough to have heard of be
fore. If you might believe the pilots, he was always
24

370 Life on the Mississippi

conscientiously particular about little details; never
spoke of "the State of Mississippi," for instance —
no, he would say, " When the State of Mississippi was
where Arkansas now is " ; and would never speak of
Louisiana or Missouri in a general way, and leave an
incorrect impression on your mind — no, he would
say, "When Louisiana was up the river farther," or
" When Missouri was on the Illinois side."

The old gentleman was not of literary turn or
capacity, but he used to jot down brief paragraphs of
plain, practical information about the river, and sign
them "MARK TWAIN," and give them to the New
Orleans Picayune. They related to the stage and con
dition of the river, and were accurate and valuable;
and thus far they contained no poison. But in speak
ing of the stage of the river to-day at a given point,
the captain was pretty apt to drop in a little remark
about this being the first time he had seen the water
so high or so low at that particular point in forty-nine
years ; and now and then he would mention Island so
and so, and follow it, in parentheses, with some such
observation as "disappeared in 1807, if I remember
rightly." In these antique interjections lay poison
and bitterness for the other old pilots, and they used
to chaff the * ' Mark Twain ' ' paragraphs with unsparing
mockery.

It so chanced that one of these paragraphs* became

* The original MS. of it, in the captain's own hand, has been sent to me
from New Orleans. It reads as follows :

VICKSBURG, May 4, 1859.

"My opinion for the benefit of the citizens of New Orleans: The
water is higher this far up than it has been since 1815. My opinion is that
the water will be 4 feet deep in Canal Street before the first of next June.
Mrs. Turner's plantation at the head of Big Black Island is all under water,

and it has not been since 1815.

"I. SELLERS."

Life on the Mississippi 371

the text for my first newspaper article. I burlesqued
it broadly, very broadly, stringing my fantastics out to
the extent of eight hundred or a thousand words. I
was a " cub " at the time. I showed my performance
to some pilots, and they eagerly rushed it into print in
the New Orleans True Delta. It was a great pity; for
it did nobody any worthy service, and it sent a pang
deep into a good man's heart. There was no malice
in my rubbish; but it laughed at the captain. It
laughed at a man to whom such a thing was new and
strange and dreadful. I did not know then, though I
do now, that there is no suffering comparable with that
which a private person feels when he is for the first
time pilloried in print.

Captain Sellers did me the honor to profoundly
detest me from that day forth. When I say he did
»ne the honor, I am not using empty words. It was a
very real honor to be in the thoughts of so great a man
as Captain Sellers, and I had wit enough to appreciate
it and be proud of it. It was distinction to be loved ;
by such a man ; but it was a much greater distinction ,
to be hated by him, because he loved scores of people;
but he didn't sit up nights to hate anybody but me.

He never printed another paragraph while he lived,
and he never again signed " Mark Twain" to any
thing. At the time that the telegraph brought the
news of his death, I was on the Pacific coast. I was a
fresh, new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre ; so
I confiscated the ancient mariner's discarded one, and
have done my best to make it remain what it was in his
hands — a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever
is found in its company may be gambled on as being
the petrified truth. How I've succeeded, it would not
be modest in me to say.

The captain had an honorable pride in his profession
and an abiding love for it. He ordered his monument

372 Life on the Mississippi

before he died, and kept it near him until he did die.
It stands over his grave now, in Bellefontaine Ceme
tery, St. Louis. It is his image, in marble, standing
on duty at the pilot-wheel ; and worthy to stand and
confront criticism, for it represents a man who in life
would have stayed there till he burned to a cinder, if
duty required it.

The finest thing we saw on our whole Mississippi
trip, we saw as we approached New Orleans in the
steam-tug. This was the curving frontage of the
Crescent City lit up with the white glare of five miles
of electric lights. It was a wonderful sight, and very
beautiful.

CHAPTER LI.

REMINISCENCES

WE left for St. Louis in the City of Baton Rouge,
on a delightfully hot day, but with the main
purpose of my visit but lamely accomplished. I had
hoped to hunt up and talk with a hundred steamboat-
men, but got so pleasantly involved in the social life of
the town that I got nothing more than mere five-minute
talks with a couple of dozen of the craft.

I was on the bench of the pilot-house when we
backed out and ' * straightened up ' ' for the start — the
boat pausing for a " good ready," in the old-fashioned
way, and the black smoke piling out of the chimneys
equally in the old-fashioned way. Then we began to
gather momentum, and presently were fairly under way
and booming along. It was all as natural and familiar
— and so were the shoreward sights — as if there had
been no break in my river life. There was a " cub,"
and I judged that he would take the wheel now; and
he did. Captain Bixby stepped into the pilot-house.
Presently the cub closed up on the rank of steamships.
He made me nervous, for he allowed too much water
to show between our boat and the ships. I knew
quite well what was going to happen, because I could
date back in my own life and inspect the record. The
captain looked on, during a silent half-minute, then
took the wheel himself, and crowded the boat in, till

(373)

374 Life on the Mississippi

she went scraping along within a hand-breadth of the
ships. It was exactly the favor which he had done
me, about a quarter of a century before, in that same
spot, the first time I ever steamed out of the port of
New Orleans. It was a very great and sincere pleasure
to me to see the thing repeated — with somebody else
as victim.

We made Natchez (three hundred miles) in twenty-
two hours and a half — much the swiftest passage I
have ever made over that piece of water.

The next morning I came on with the four o'clock
watch, and saw Ritchie successfully run half a dozen
crossings in a fog, using for his guidance the marked
chart devised and patented by Bixby himself. This
sufficiently evidenced the great value of the chart.

By and by, when the fog began to clear off, I
noticed that the reflection of a tree in the smooth water
of an overflowed bank, six hundred yards away, was
stronger and blacker than the ghostly tree itself. The
faint, spectral trees, dimly glimpsed through the shred
ding fog, were very pretty things to see.

We had a heavy thunder-storm at Natchez, another
at Vicksburg, and still another about fifty miles below
Memphis. They had an old-fashioned energy which
had long been unfamiliar to me. This third storm was
accompanied by a raging wind. We tied up to the
bank when we saw the tempest coming, and everybody
left the pilot-house but me. The wind bent the young
trees down, exposing the pale underside of the leaves;
and gust after gust followed, in quick succession,
thrashing the branches violently up and down, and to
this side and that, and creating swift waves of alter
nating green and white, according to the side of the
leaf that was exposed, and these waves raced after each
other as do their kind over a wind-tossed field of oats.
No color that was visible anywhere was quite natural

Life on the Mississippi 375

— all tints were charged with a leaden tinge from the
solid cloud-bank overhead. The river was leaden, all
distances the same ; and even the far-reaching ranks of
combing white-caps were dully shaded by the dark,
rich atmosphere through which their swarming legions
marched. The thunder-peals were constant and deaf
ening; explosion followed explosion with but incon
sequential intervals between, and the reports grew
steadily sharper and higher- keyed, and more trying to
the ear ; the lightning was as diligent as the thunder,
and produced effects which enchanted the eye and set
electric ecstasies of mixed delight and apprehension
shivering along eveiy nerve in the body in unintermit-
tent procession. The rain poured down in amazing
volume; the ear-splitting thunder-peals broke nearer
and nearer ; the wind increased in fury and began to
wrench off boughs and tree-tops and send them sailing
away through space; the pilot-house fell to rocking
and straining and cracking and surging, and I went
down in the hold to see what time it was.

People boast a good deal about Alpine thunder
storms ; but the storms which I have had the luck to
see in the Alps were not the equals of some which I
have seen in the Mississippi Valley. I may not have
seen the Alps do their best, of course, and if they can
beat the Mississippi, I don't wish to.

On this up trip I saw a little towhead (infant
island) half a mile long, which had been formed during
the past nineteen years. Since there was so much
time to spare that nineteen years of it could be devoted
to the construction of a mere towhead, where was the
use, originally, in rushing this whole globe through in
six days? It is likely that if more time had been
taken, in the first place, the world would have been
made right, and this ceaseless improving and repairing
would not be necessary now. But if you hurry a

j 76 Life on the Mississippi

world or a house, you are nearly sure to find out by
and by that you have left out a towhead, or a broom-
closet, or some other little convenience, here and there,
which has got to be supplied, no matter how much
expense or vexation it may cost.

We had a succession of black nights, going up the
river, and it was observable that whenever we landed,
and suddenly inundated the trees with the intense
sunburst of the electric light, a certain curious effect
was always produced ; hundreds of birds flocked in
stantly out from the masses of shining green foliage,
and went careering hither and thither through the
white rays, and often a song-bird tuned up and fell to
singing. We judged that they mistook this superb
artificial day for the genuine article.

We had a delightful trip in that thoroughly well-
ordered .steamer, and regretted that it was accomplished
so speedily. By means of diligence and activity, we
managed to hunt out nearly all the old friends. One
was missing, however ; he went to his reward , whatever
it was, two years ago. But I found out all about him.
His case helped me to realize how lasting can be the
effect of a very trifling occurrence. When he was an
apprentice-blacksmith in our village, and I a school
boy, a couple of young Englishmen came to the town
and sojourned a while ; and one day they got them
selves up in cheap royal finery and did the Richard
III. sword-fight with maniac energy and prodigious
powwow, in the presence of the village boys. This
blacksmith cub was there, and the histrionic poison
entered his bones. This vast, lumbering, ignorant,
dull-witted lout was stage-struck, and irrecoverably.
He disappeared, and presently turned up in St. Louis.
I ran across him there, by and by. He was standing
musing on a street corner, with his right hand on his
hip, the thumb of his left supporting his chin, face

Life on the Mississippi 377

bowed and frowning, slouch hat pulled down over his
forehead — imagining himself to be Othello or some
such character, and imagining that the passing crowd
marked his tragic bearing and were awe-struck.

I joined him, and tried to get him down out of the
clouds, but did not succeed. However, he casually
informed me, presently, that he was a member of the
Walnut Street Theater company — and he tried to say
it with indifference, but the indifference was thin, and
a mighty exultation showed through it. He said he
was cast for a part in " Julius Caesar," for that night,
and if I should come I would see him. If I should
come ! I said I wouldn't miss it if I were dead.

I went away stupefied with astonishment, and saying
to myself, " How strange it is ! we always thought this
fellow a fool ; yet the moment he comes to a great
city, where intelligence and appreciation abound, the
talent concealed in this shabby napkin is at once dis
covered, and promptly welcomed and honored."

But I came away from the theater that night disap
pointed and offended ; for I had had no glimpse of my
hero, and his name was not in the bills. I met him
on the street the next morning, and before I could
speak, he asked :

"Did you see me?"

" No, you weren't there."

He looked surprised and disappointed. He said :

"Yes, I was. Indeed, I was. I was a Roman
soldier."

"Which one?"

" Why, didn't you see them Roman soldiers that
stood back there in a rank, and sometimes marched in
procession around the stage?"

1 * Do you mean the Roman army ? — those six san
daled roustabouts in nightshirts, with tin shields and
helmets, that marched around treading on each other's

378 Life on the Mississippi

heels, in charge of a spider-legged consumptive dressed
like themselves?"

44 That's it! that's it! I was one of them Roman
soldiers. I was the next to the last one. A half a
year ago I used to always be the last one; but I've
been promoted."

Well, they told me that that poor fellow remained a
Roman soldier to the last — a matter of thirty-four
years. Sometimes they cast him for a "speaking
part," but not an elaborate one. He could be trusted
to go and say, " My lord, the carriage waits," but if
they ventured to add a sentence or two to this, his
memory felt the strain and he was likely to miss fire.
Yet, poor devil, he had been patiently studying the
part of Hamlet for more than thirty years, and he
lived and died in the belief that some day he would be
invited to play it !

And this is what came of that fleeting visit of those
young Englishmen to our village such ages and ages
ago ! What noble horseshoes this man might have
made, but for those Englishmen ; and what an inade
quate Roman soldier he did make !

A day or two after we reached St. Louis, I was
walking along Fourth Street when a grizzly-headed
man gave a sort of start as he passed me, then stopped,
came back, inspected me narrowly, with a clouding
brow, and finally said with deep asperity :

*4 Look here, have you got that drink yet ?"

A maniac, I judged, at first. But all in a flash I
recognized him. I made an effort to blush that
strained every muscle in me, and answered as sweetly
and winningly as ever I knew how :

" Been a little slow, but am just this minute closing
in on the place where they keep it. Come in and
help!"

He softened, and said make it a bottle of champagne

Life on the Mississippi 379

and he was agreeable. He said he had seen my name
in the papers, and had put all his affairs aside and
turned out, resolved to find me or die ; and make me
answer that question satisfactorily, or kill me ; though
the most of his late asperity had been rather counter
feit than otherwise.

This meeting brought back to me the St. Louis riots
of about thirty years ago. I spent a week there, at
that time, in a boarding-house, and had this young
fellow for a neighbor across the hall. We saw some
of the fightings and killings ; and by and by we went
one night to an armory where two hundred young men
had met, upon call, to be armed and go forth against
the rioters, under command of a military man. We
drilled till about ten o'clock at night; then news came
that the mob were in great force in the lower end of
the town, and were sweeping everything before them.
Our column moved at once. It was a very hot night,
and my musket was very heavy. We marched and
marched ; and the nearer we approached the seat of
war, the hotter I grew and the thirstier I got. I was
behind my friend ; so finally, I asked him to hold my
musket while I dropped out and got a drink. Then I
branched off and went home. I was not feeling any
solicitude about him of course, because I knew he was
so well armed now that he could take care of himself
without any trouble. If I had had any doubts about
that, I would have borrowed another musket for him.
I left the city pretty early the next morning, and if
this grizzled man had not happened to encounter my
name in the papers the other day in St. Louis, and felt
moved to seek me out, I should have carried to my
grave a heart-torturing uncertainty as to whether he
ever got out of the riots all right or not. I ought to
have inquired, thirty years ago; I know that. And I
would have inquired, if I had had the muskets; but,

380 Life on the Mississippi

in the circumstances, he seemed better fixed to conduct
the investigations than I was.

One Monday, near the time of our visit to St. Louis,
the Globe-Democrat came out with a couple of pages of
Sunday statistics, whereby it appeared that 119,448
St. Louis people attended the morning and evening
church services the day before, and 23,102 children
attended Sunday-school. Thus 142,550 persons, out
of the city's total of 400,000 population, respected the
day religiouswise. I found these statistics, in a con
densed form, in a telegram of the Associated Press,
and preserved them. They made it apparent that St.
Louis was in a higher state of grace than she could
have claimed to be in my time. But now that I canvass
the figures narrowly, I suspect that the telegraph
mutilated them. It cannot be that there are more than
150,000 Catholics in the town; the other 250,000
must be classified as Protestants. Out of these
250,000, according to this questionable telegram, only
26,362 attended church and Sunday-school, while out
of the 150,000 Catholics, 116,188 went to church and
Sunday-school.

CHAPTER LII.

A BURNING BRAND

ALL at once the thought came into my mind, "I
have not sought out Mr. Brown."

Upon that text I desire to depart from the direct
line of my subject and make a little excursion. I
wish to reveal a secret which I have carried with me
nine years and which has become burdensome.

Upon a certain occasion, nine years ago, I had said,
with strong feeling, " If ever I see St. Louis again, I
will seek out Mr. Brown, the great grain merchant,
and ask of him the privilege of shaking him by the
hand."

The occasion and the circumstances were as follows.
A friend of mine, a clergyman, came one evening and
said:

" I have a most remarkable letter here, which I want
to read to you, if I can do it without breaking down.
I must preface it with some explanations, however.
The letter is written by an ex-thief and ex-vagabond of
the lowest origin and basest rearing, a man all stained
with crime and steeped in ignorance ; but, thank God !
with a mine of pure gold hidden away in him, as you
shall see. His letter is written to a burglar named
Williams, who is serving a nine-year term in a certain
State prison, for burglary. Williams was a particularly
daring burglar and plied that trade during a number of

*s (381)

382 Life on the Mississippi

years; but he was caught at last and jailed, to await
trial in a town where he had broken into a house at
night, pistol in hand, and forced the owner to hand
over to him eight thousand dollars in government
bonds. Williams was not a common sort of person,
by any means ; he was a graduate of Harvard College
and came of good New England stock. His father
was a clergyman. While lying in jail, his health began
to fail, and he was threatened with consumption. This
fact, together with the opportunity for reflection
afforded by solitary confinement, had its effect — its
natural effect. He fell into serious thought; his early
training asserted itself with power, and wrought with
strong influence upon his mind and heart. He put his
old life behind him and became an earnest Christian.
Some ladies in the town heard of this, visited him, and
by their encouraging words supported him in his good
resolutions and strengthened him to continue in his
new life. The trial ended in his conviction and sen
tence to the State prison for the term of nine years, as
I have before said. In the prison he became acquainted
with the poor wretch referred to in the beginning of
my talk, Jack Hunt, the writer of the letter which I
am going to read. You will see that the acquaintance
ship bore fruit for Hunt. When Hunt's time was out,
he wandered to St. Louis ; and from that place he
wrote his letter to Williams. The letter got no
further than the office of the prison warden, of caurse;
prisoners are not often allowed to receive letters from
outside. The prison authorities read this letter, but
did not destroy it. They had not the heart to do it.
They read it to several persons, and eventually it fell
into the hands of those ladies of whom I spoke a while
ago. The other day I came across an old friend of
mine — a clergyman — who had seen this letter, and
was full of it. The mere remembrance of it so moved

Life on the Mississippi 383

him that he could not talk of it without his voice
breaking. He promised to get a copy of it for me ;
and here it is — an exact copy, with all the imperfec
tions of the original preserved. It has many slang ex
pressions in it — thieves' argot — but their meaning
has been interlined, in parentheses, by the prison
authorities :

ST. Louis, June 9th, 1872.

MR. W friend Charlie if i may call you so : i no you are surprised

to get a letter from me, but i hope you won't be mad at my writing to you.
i want to tell you my thanks for the way you talked to me when i was in
prison — it has led me to try and be a better man; i guess you thought i did
not cair for what you said, & at the first go off i did n't, but i noed you was
a man who had don big work with good men & want no sucker, nor want
gasing & all the boys knod it.

I used to think at nite what you said, & for it i nocked off swearing 5
months before my time was up, for i saw it want no good, nohow — the
day my time was up you told me if i would shake the cross (quit stealing),
& live on the square for 3 months, it would be the best job i ever done in my
life. The state agent give me a ticket to here, & on the car i thought more of
what you said to me, but didn't make up my mind. When we got to Chicago
on the cars from there to here, I pulled off an old woman's leather (robbed her
of her pocket-book} ; i had n't no more than got it off when i wished i had n't
done it, for awhile before that i made up my mind to be a square bloke, for
3 months on your word, but i forgot it when i saw the leather was a grip
(easy to get} — but i kept clos to her & when she got out of thi cars at a
way place i said, marm have you lost anything? & she tumbled (dis
covered} her leather was of (gone} — is this it says i, giving it to her —
well if you aint honest, says she, but i had n't got cheak enough to stand
that sort of talk, so i left her in a hurry. When i got here i had $i and 25
cents left & i didn't get no work for 3 days as i aint strong enough for roust
about on a steam bote (for a deck band)— The afternoon of the 3d day I
spent my last 10 cents for 2 moons (large, round sea biscuit} & cheese & i
felt pretty rough & was thinking i would have to go on the dipe (picking
pockets} again, when i thought of what you once said about a fellows calling
on the Lord when he was in hard luck, & i thought i would try it once
anyhow, but when i tryed it i got stuck on the start, & all i could get off
wos, Lord give a poor fellow a chance to square it for 3 months for Christ's

384 Life on the Mississippi

sake, amen; & i kept a thinking of it over and over as i went along — about
«i hour after that i was in 4th St. & this is what happened & is the cause of
my being where i am now & about which i will tell you before i get done
writing. As i was walking along i herd a big noise & saw a horse running
away with a carriage with 2 children in it, and i grabed up a peace of box
cover from the sidewalk & run in the middle of the street, & when the horse
came up i smashed him over the head as hard as i could drive — the bord
split to peces & the horse checked up a little & i grabbed the reigns & pulled
his head down until he stopped — the gentleman what owned him came
running up & soon as he saw the children were all rite, he shook hands
with me & gave me a $50 green back, & my asking the Lord to help me
come into my head, & i was so thunderstruck i could n't drop the reigns nor
say nothing — he saw something was up, & coming back to me said, my
boy are you hurt? & the thought come into my head just then to ask him
for work; & i asked him to take back the bill and give me a job — says he,
jump in here & lets talk about it, but keep the money — he asked me if i
could take care of horses & i said yes, for i used to hang round livery
stables & often would help clean & drive horses, he told me he wanted a
man for that work, & would give me $16. a month & bord me. You bet
i took that chance at once, that nite in my little room over the stable i sat
a long time thinking over my past life & of what had just happened & i just
got down on my nees & thanked the Lord for the job & to help me to square
it, & to bless you for putting me up to it, & the next morning i done it
again & got me some new togs {clothes} & a bible for i made up my mind
after what the Lord had done for me i would read the bible every nite and
morning, & ask him to keep an eye on me. When I had been there about
a week Mr Brown (that's his name) came in my room one nite & saw me
reading the bible — he asked me if i was a Christian & i told him no — he
asked me how it was i read the bible instead of papers & books — Well
Charlie i thought i had better give him a square deal in the start, so i told
him all about my being in prison & about you, & how i had almost done
give up looking for work & how the Lord got me the job when i asked him;
& the only way i had to pay him back was to read the bible & square it, &
i asked him to give me a chance for 3 months — he talked to me like a
father for a long time, & told me i could stay & then i felt better than ever
i had done in my life, for i had given Mr. Brown a fair start with me & now
i did n't fear no one giving me a back cap {exposing his past life) & running
me off the job — the next morning he called me into the library & gave me
another square talk, & advised me to study some every day, & he would

Life on the Mississippi 385

help me one or 2 hours every nite, & he gave me a Arithmetic, a spelling
book, a Geography & and a writing book, & he hers me every nite — he
lets me come into the house to prayers every morning, & got me put in a
bible class in the Sunday School which i likes very much for it helps me to
understand my bible better.

Now, Charlie the 3 months on the square are up 2 months ago, & as
you said, it is the best job i ever did in my life, & i commenced another of
the same sort right away, only it is to God helping me to last a lifetime
Charlie — i wrote this letter to tell you i do think God has forgiven my sins
& herd your prayers, for you told me you should pray for me — i no i love
to read his word & tell him all my troubles & he helps me i know for i have
plenty of chances to steal but i don't feel to as i once did & now i take more
pleasure in going to church than to the theatre & that wasn't so once
— our minister and others often talk with me & a month ago they wanted
me to join the church, but i said no, not now, i may be mistaken in my
feelings, i will wait awhile, but now i feel that God has called me & on the
first Sunday in July i will join the church — dear friend i wish i could write
to you as i feel, but i cant do it yet — you no i learned to read and write
while in prisons & i aint got well enough along to write as i would talk; i
no i aint spelled all the words rite in this & lots of other mistakes but you
will excuse it i no, for you no i was brought up in a poor house until i run
away, & that i never new who my father and mother was & i don't no my
rite name, & i hope you wont be mad at me, but i have as much rite to one
name as another & i have taken your name, for you wont use it when you
get out i no, & you are the man i think most of in the world; so i hope you
wont be mad — I am doing well, i put $10 a month in bank with $25 of
the $50 — if you ever want any or all of it let me know, & it is yours, i
wish you would let me send you some now. I send you with this a receipt for
a year of Littles Living Age, i did n't know what you would like & i told
Mr Brown & he said he thought you would like it — i wish i was nere you
so i could send you chuck (refreshments} on holidays; it would spoil this
weather from here, but i will send you a box next thanksgiving any way —
next week Mr. Brown takes me into his store as lite porter & will advance
me as soon as i know a little more — he keeps a big granary store, whole
sale — i forgot to tell you of my mission school, Sunday school class — the
school is in the Sunday afternoon, i went out two Sunday afternoons, and
picked up seven kids (Jiitle boys} & got them to come in. Two of them
new as much as i did & i had them put in a class where they could learn
something, i don't no much myself, but as these kids cant read i get on

386 Life on the Mississippi

nicely with them, i make sure of them by going after them every Sunday
yz hour before school time, i also got 4 girls to come, tell Mack and
Harry about me, if they will come out here when their time is up i will get
them jobs at once, i hope you will excuse this long letter & all mistakes, i
wish i could see you for i cant write as i would talk — i hope the warm
weather is doing your lungs good — i was afraid when you was bleeding you
would die — give my respects to all the boys and tell them how i am doing
— i am doing well and every one here treats me as kind as they can — Mr
Brown is going to write to you sometime — i hope some day you will write
to me, this letter is from your very true friend

who you know as Jack Hunt.
I send you Mr Brown's card. Send my letter to him.

Here was true eloquence; irresistible eloquence;
and without a single grace or ornament to help it out.
I have seldom been so deeply stirred by £.ny piece of
writing. The reader of it halted, all the way through,
on a lame and broken voice ; yet he had tried to fortify
his feelings by several private readings of the letter
before venturing into company with it. He was prac
ticing upon me to see if there was any hope of his
being able to read the document to his prayer-meeting
with anything like a decent command over his feelings.
The result was not promising. However, he deter
mined to risk it; and did. He got through tolerably
well; but his audience broke down early, and stayed
in that condition to the end.

The fame of the letter spread through the town. A
brother minister came and borrowed the manuscript,
put it bodily into a sermon, preached the sermon to
twelve hundred people on a Sunday morning, and the
letter drowned them in their own tears. Then my
friend put it into a sermon and went before his Sunday
morning congregation with it. It scored another
triumph. The house wept as one individual.

My friend went on summer vacation up into the

Life on the Mississippi 387

fishing regions of our northern British neighbors, and
carried this sermon with him, since he might possibly
chance to need a sermon. He was asked to preach
one day. The little church was full. Among the
people present were the late Dr. J. G. Holland, the
late Mr. Seymour of the New York Times, Mr. Page,
the philanthropist and temperance advocate, and, I
think, Senator Frye of Maine. The marvelous letter
did its wonted work; all the people were moved, all
the people wept; the tears flowed in a steady stream
down Dr. Holland's cheeks, and nearly the same can
be said with regard to all who were there. Mr. Page
was so full of enthusiasm over the letter that he said he
would not rest until he made pilgrimage to that prison,
and had speech with the man who had been able to
inspire a fellow-unfortunate to write so priceless a
tract.

Ah, that unlucky Page! — and another man. If
they had only been in Jericho, that letter would have
rung through the world and stirred all the hearts of all
the nations for a thousand years to come, and nobody
might ever have found out that it was the confounded-
est, brazenest, ingeniousest piece of fraud and hum-
buggery that was ever concocted to fool poor confiding
mortals with !

The letter was a pure swindle, and that is the truth.
And take it by and large, it was without a compeer
among swindles. It was perfect, it was rounded,
symmetrical, complete, colossal!

The reader learns it at this point; but we didn't
learn it till some miles and weeks beyond this stage of
the affair. My friend came back from the woods, and
he and other clergymen and lay missionaries began
once more to inundate audiences with their tears and
the tears of said audiences ; I begged hard for per
mission to print the letter in a magazine and tell the

388 Life on the Mississippi

watery story of its triumphs ; numbers of people got
copies of the letter, with permission to circulate them
in writing, but not in print; copies were sent to the
Sandwich Islands and other far regions.

Charles Dudley Warner was at church, one day,
when the worn letter was read and wept over. At the
church door, afterward, he dropped a peculiarly cold
iceberg down the clergyman's back with the question:

" Do you know that letter to be genuine?"

It was the first suspicion that had ever been voiced ;
but it had that sickening effect which first-uttered sus
picions against one's idol always have. Some talk
followed :

" Why — what should make you suspect that it isn't
genuine?"

" Nothing that I know of, except that it is too neat,
and compact, and fluent, and nicely put together for
an ignorant person, an unpracticed hand. I think it
was done by an educated man."

The literary artist had detected the literary machin
ery. If you will look at the letter now, you will de
tect it yourself — it is observable in every line.

Straightway the clergyman went off, with this seed
of suspcion sprouting in him, and wrote to a minister
residing in that town where Williams had been jailed
and converted; asked for light; and also asked if a
person in the literary line (meaning me) might be
allowed to print the letter and tell its history. He
presently received this answer:

REV. .

MY DEAR FRIEND: In regard to that "convict's letter" there can be
no doubt as to its genuineness. "Williams," to whom it was written, lay

in our jail and professed to have been converted, and Rev. Mr. ,

the chaplain, had great faith in the genuineness of the change — as much
as one can have in any such case.

The letter was sent to one of our ladies, who is a Sunday-school teacher

Life on the Mississippi 389

— sent either by Williams himself, or the chaplain of the State's prison,
probably. She has been greatly annoyed in having so much publicity, lest
it might seem a breach of confidence, or be an injury to Williams. In
regard to its publication, I can give no permission; though, if the names
and places were omitted, and especially if sent out of the country, I think
you might take the responsibility and do it.

It is a wonderful letter, which no Christian genius, much less one un-
sanctified, could ever have written. As showing the work of giace in a
human heart, and in a very degraded and wicked one, it proves its own
origin and reproves our weak faith in its power to cope with any form of
wickedness.

" Mr. Brown " of St. Louis, someone said, was a Hartford man. Do
all whom you send from Hartford serve their Master as well?

P. S. — Williams is still in the State's prison, serving out a long sen
tence — of nine years, I think. He has been sick and threatened with
consumption, but I have not enquired after him lately. This lady that I
speak of corresponds with him, I presume, and will be quite sure to look
after him.

This letter arrived a few days after it was written —
and up went Mr. Williams' stock again. Mr. Warner's
low-down suspicion was laid in the cold, cold grave,
where it apparently belonged. It was a suspicion based
upon mere internal evidence, anyway; and when you
come to internal evidence, it's a big field and a game
that two can play at : as witness this other internal
evidence, discovered by the writer of the note above
quoted, that " it is a wonderful letter — which no
Christian genius, much less one unsanctified, could
ever have written."

I had permission now to print — provided I sup
pressed names and places and sent my narrative out of
the country. So I chose an Australian magazine for
vehicle, as being far enough out of the country, and set
myself to work on my article. And the ministers set the
pumps going again, with the letter to work the handles.

But meantime Brother Page had been agitating. He
had not visited the penitentiary, but he had sent a copy

390 Life on the Mississippi

of the illustrious letter to the chaplain of that mstitu
tion, and accompanied it with — apparently — in
quiries. He got an answer, dated four days later
than that other brother's reassuring epistle; and be
fore my article was complete, it wandered into my
hands. The original is before me now, and I here
append it. It is pretty well loaded with internal evi
dence of the most solid description :

STATE'S PRISON, CHAPLAIN'S OFFICE, July n, 1873.
DEAR BRO. PAGE:

Herewith please find the letter kindly loaned me. I am afraid it
genuineness cannot be established. It purports to be addressed to some
prisoner here. No such letter ever came to a prisoner here. All letters
received are carefully read by officers of the prison before they go into the
hands of the convicts, and any such letter could not be forgotten. Again,
Charles Williams is not a Christian man, but a dissolute, cunning prodigal,
whose father is a minister of the gospel. His name is an assumed one. I
am glad to have made your acquaintance. I am preparing a lecture upon
life seen through prison bars, and should like to deliver the same in your
vicinity.

And so ended that little drama. My poor article
went into the fire; for whereas the materials for it
were now more abundant and infinitely richer than they
had previously been, there were patties all around me
who, although longing for the publication before, were
a unit for suppression at this stage and complexion of
the game. They said, "Wait — the wound is too
fresh, yet." All the copies of the famous letter, ex
cept mine, disappeared suddenly; and from that time
onward, the aforetime same old drought set in, in the
churches. As a rule, the town was on a spacious grin
for a while, but there were places in it where the grin
did not appear, and where it was dangerous to refer to
the ex-convict's letter.

A word of explanation: "Jack Hunt," the pro
fessed writer of the letter, was an imaginary person.

Life on the Mississippi 391

The burglar Williams — Harvard graduate, son of a
minister — wrote the letter himself, to himself: got it
smuggled out of the prison ; got it conveyed to persons
who had supported and encouraged him in his conver
sion — where he knew two things would happen : the
genuineness of the letter would not be doubted or in
quired Into ; and the nub of it would be noticed, and
would have valuable effect — the effect, indeed, of
starting a movement to get Mr. Williams pardoned out
of prison.

That " nub " is so ingeniously, so casually, flung in,
and immediately left there in the tail of the letter, un-
dwelt upon, that an indifferent reader would never sus
pect that it was the heart and core of the epistle, if he
even took note of it at all. This is the " nub " :

i hope the warm weather is doing your lungs good — i was afraid when
you was bleeding you would die — give my respects, etc.

That is all there is of it — simply touch and go — no
dwelling upon it. Nevertheless it was intended for an
eye that would be swift to see it ; and it was meant to
move a kind heart to try to effect the liberation of a
poor reformed and purified fellow lying in the fell grip
of consumption.

When I for the first time heard that letter read, nine
years ago, I felt that it was the most remarkable one I
had ever encountered. And it so warmed me toward
Mr. Brown of St. Louis that I said that if ever I visited
that city again, I would seek out that excellent man
and kiss the hem of his garment, if it was a new one.
Well, I visited St. Louis, but I did not hunt for Mr.
Brown ; for alas ! the investigations of long ago had
proved that the benevolent Brown, like "Jack Hunt,"
was not a real person, but a sheer invention of that
gifted rascal, Williams — burglar, Harvard graduate,
son of a clergyman.

CHAPTER LIII.

MY BOYHOOD HOME

WE took passage in one of the fast boats of the St.
Louis and St. Paul Packet Company, and started
up the river.

When I, as a boy, first saw the mouth of the Mis
souri River, it was twenty-two or twenty-three miles
above St. Louis, according to the estimate of pilots;
the wear and tear of the banks has. moved it down
eight miles since then ; and the pilots say that within
five years the river will cut through and move the
mouth down five miles more, which will bring it within
ten miles of St. Louis.

About nightfall we passed the large and flourishing
town of Alton, 111., and before daylight next morning
the town of Louisiana, Mo., a sleepy village in my
day, but a brisk railway center now; however, all the
towns out there are railway centers now. I could not
clearly recognize the place. This seemed odd to me,
for when I retired from the rebel army in '61 I retired
upon Louisiana in good order; at least in good enough
order for a person who had not yet learned how to
retreat according to the rules of war, and had to trust
to native genius. It seemed to me that for a first
attempt at a retreat it was not badly done. I had
done no advancing in all that campaign that was at all
equal to it.

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Life on the Mississippi 393

There was a railway bridge across the river here well
sprinkled with glowing lights, and a very beautiful
sight it was.

At seven in the morning we reached Hannibal, Mo.,
where my boyhood was spent. I had had a glimpse of
it fifteen years ago, and another glimpse six years
earlier, but both were so brief that they hardly counted.
The only notion of the town that remained in my mind
was the memory of it as I had known it when I first
quitted it twenty-nine years ago. That picture of it
was still as clear and vivid to me as a photograph. I
stepped ashore with the feeling of one who returns out
of a dead-and-gone generation. I had a sort of real
izing sense of what the Bastille prisoners must have
felt when they used to come out and look upon Paris
after years of captivity, and note how curiously the
familiar and the strange were mixed together before
them. I saw the new houses — saw them plainly
enough — but they did not affect the older picture in
my mind, for through their solid bricks and mortar I
saw the vanished houses, which had formerly stood
there, with perfect distinctness.

It was Sunday morning, and everybody was abed
yet. So I passed through the vacant streets, still see
ing the town as it was, and not as it is, and recognizing
and metaphorically shaking hands with a hundred
familiar objects which no longer exist; and finally
climbed Holiday's Hill to get a comprehensive view.
The whole town lay spread out below me then, and
I could mark and fix every locality, every detail.
Naturally, I was a good deal moved. I said, " Many
of the people I once knew in this tranquil refuge of my
childhood are now in heaven ; some, I trust, are in the
other place."

The things about me and before me made me feel
like a boy again — convinced me that I was a boy

394 Life on the Mississippi

again, and that I had simply been dreaming an un
usually long dream; but my reflections spoiled all
that; for they forced me to say, "I see fifty old
houses down yonder, into each of which I could enter
and find either a man or a woman who was a baby or
unborn when I noticed those houses last, or a grand
mother who was a plump young bride at that time."

From this vantage ground the extensive view up and
down the river, and wide over the wooded expanses of
Illinois, is very beautiful — one of the most beautiful
on the Mississippi, I think; which is a hazardous re
mark to make, for the eight hundred miles of river
between St. Louis and St. Paul afford an unbroken
succession of lovely pictures. It may be that my
affection for the one in question biases my judgment
in its favor; I cannot say as to that. No matter, it
was satisfyingly beautiful to me, and it had this ad
vantage over all the other friends whom I was about to
greet again: it had suffered no change; it was as
young and fresh and comely and gracious as ever it
had been; whereas, the faces of the others would be
old, and scarred with the campaigns of life, and marked
with their griefs and defeats, and would give me no up-
liftings of spirit.

An old gentleman, out on an early morning walk,
came along, and we discussed the weather, and then
drifted into other matters. I could not remember his
face. He said he had been living here twenty-eight
years. So he had come after my time, and I had
never seen him before. I asked him various questions ;
first about a mate of mine in Sunday-school — what
became of him?

" He graduated with honor in an Eastern college,
wandered off into the world somewhere, succeeded at
nothing, passed out of knowledge and memory years
ago, and is supposed to have gone to the dogs."

Life on the Mississippi 395

" He was bright, and promised well when he was a
boy."

44 Yes, but the thing that happened is what became
of it all."

I asked after another lad, altogether the brightest in
our village school when I was a boy.

"He, too, was graduated with honors, from an
Eastern college ; but life whipped him in every battle,
straight along, and he died in one of the Territories,
years ago, a defeated man."

I asked after another of the bright boys.

" He is a success, always has been, always will be, I
think."

I inquired after a young fellow who came to the
town to study for one of the professions when I was a
boy.

He went at something else before he got through
— went from medicine to law, or from law to medi
cine — then to some other new thing; went away for a
year, came back with a young wife ; fell to drinking,
then to gambling behind the door; finally took his
wife and two children to her father's, and went off to
Mexico; went from bad to worse, and finally died
there, without a cent to buy a shroud, and without a
friend to attend the funeral."

" Pity, for he was the best-natured and most cheery
and hopeful young fellow that ever was."

I named another boy.

"Oh, he is all right. Lives here yet; has a wife
and children, and is prospering."

Same verdict concerning other boys.

I named three school-girls.

" The first two live here, are married and have chil
dren ; the other is long ago dead — never married."

I named, with emotion, one of my early sweethearts.

1 ' She is all right. Been married three times ; buried

396 Life on the Mississippi

two husbands, divorced from the third, and I hear she
is getting ready to marry an old fellow out in Colorado
somewhere. She's got children scattered around here
and there, most everywheres."

The answer to several other inquiries was brief and
simple :

" Killed in the war."

I named another boy.

"Well, now, his case is curious! There wasn't a
human being in this town but knew that that boy was a
perfect chucklehead; perfect dummy; just a stupid
ass, as you may say. Everybody knew it, and every
body said it. Well, if that very boy isn't the first
lawyer in the State of Missouri to-day, I'm a Demo
crat!"

"Is that so?"

" It's actually so. I'm telling you the truth."

" How do you account for it?"

"Account for it? There ain't any accounting for

it, except that if you send a d d fool to St. Louis,

and you don't tell them he's a d d fool, they'll

never find it out. There's one thing sure — if I had a

d d fool I should know what to do with him : ship

him to St. Louis — it's the noblest market in the world
for that kind of property. Well, when you come to
look at it all around, and chew at it and think it over,
don't it just bang anything you ever heard of?"

II Well, yes; it does seem to. But don't you think
maybe it was the Hannibal people who were mistaken
about the boy, and not the St. Louis people?"

" Oh, nonsense! The people here have known him
from the very cradle — they knew him a hundred times
better than the St. Louis idiots could have known him.

No ; if you have got any d d fools that you want

to realize on, take my advice — send them to St.
Louis."

Life on the Mississippi 397

I mentioned a great number of people whom 1 had
formerly known. Some were dead, some were gone
away, some had prospered, some had come to naught;
but as regarded a dozen or so of the lot, the answer
was comforting:

"Prosperous — live here yet — town littered with
their children."

I asked about Miss .

" Died in the insane asylum three or four years ago
— never was out of it from the time she went in ; and
was always suffering too; never got a shred of her
mind back."

If he spoke the truth, here was a heavy tragedy,
indeed. Thirty-six years in a mad-house, that some
young fools might have some fun ! I was a small boy
at the time ; and I saw those giddy young ladies come

tiptoeing into the room where Miss sat reading

at midnight by a lamp. The girl at the head of the
file wore a shroud and a doughface ; she crept behind
the victim, touched her on the shoulder, and she looked
up and screamed, and then fell into convulsions. She
did not recover from the fright, but went mad. In
these days it seems incredible that people believed in
ghosts so short a time ago. But they did.

After asking after such other folk as I could call to
mind, I finally inquired about myself :

" Oh, he succeeded well enough — another case of

d d fool. If they'd sent him to St. Louis, he'd

have succeeded sooner."

It was with much satisfaction that I recognized the
wisdom of having told this candid gentleman, in the
beginning, that my name was Smith.

CHAPTER LIV.

PAST AND PRESENT

BEING left to myself, up there, I went on picking
out old houses in the distant town, and calling
back their former inmates out of the moldy past.
Among them I presently recognized the house of the
father of Lem Hackett (fictitious name). It carried
me back more than a generation in a moment, and
landed me in the midst of a time when the happenings
of life were not the natural and logical results of great
general laws, but of special orders, and were freighted
with very precise and distinct purposes — partly puni
tive in intent, partly admonitory ; and usually local in
application.

When I was a small boy, Lem Hackett was drowned
— on a Sunday. He fell out of an empty flatboat,
where he was playing. Being loaded with sin, he went
to the bottom like an anvil. He was the only boy in
the village who slept that night. We others all lay
awake, repenting. We had not needed the informa
tion, delivered from the pulpit that evening, that
Lem's was a case of special judgment — we knew that,
already. There was a ferocious thunder-storm that
night, and it raged continuously until near dawn. The
wind blew, the windows rattled, the rain swept along
the roof in pelting sheets, and at the briefest of inter
vals the inky blackness of the night vanished, the

(398)

Life on the Mississippi 399

houses over the way glared out white and blinding for
a quivering instant, then the solid darkness shut down
again and a splitting peal of thunder followed which
seemed to rend everything in the neighborhood to
shreds and splinters. I sat up in bed quaking and
shuddering, waiting for the destruction of the world,
and expecting it. To me there was nothing strange or
incongruous in Heaven's making such an uproar about
Lem Hackett. Apparently it was the right and proper
thing to do. Not a doubt entered my mind that all
the angels were grouped together, discussing this boy's
case and observing the awful bombardment of our
beggarly little village with satisfaction and approval.
There was one thing which disturbed me in the most
serious way : that was the thought that this centering of
the celestial interest on our village could not fail to
attract the attention of the observers to people among
us who might otherwise have escaped notice for years.
I felt that I was not only one of those people, but the
very one most likely to be discovered. That discovery
could have but one result : I should be in the fire with
Lem before the chill of the river had been fairly
warmed out of him. I knew that this would be only
just and fair. I was increasing the chances against
myself all the time, by feeling a secret bitterness
against Lem for having attracted this fatal attention
to me, but I could not help it — this sinful thought
persisted in infesting my breast in spite of me.
Every time the lightning glared I caught my breath,
and judged I was gone. In my terror and misery I
meanly began to suggest other boys, and mention acts
of theirs which were wickeder than mine, and peculiarly
needed punishment — and I tried to pretend to myself
that I was simply doing this in a casual way, and with
out intent to divert the heavenly attention to them for
the purpose of getting rid of it myself. With deep

400 Life on the Mississippi

sagacity I put these mentions into the form of sorrow
ing recollections and left-handed snam-supplications
that the sins of those boys might be allowed to pass
unnoticed — " Possibly they may repent." ' It is true
that Jim Smith broke a window and lied about it — but
maybe he did not mean any harm. And although
Tom Holmes says more bad words than any other boy
in the village, he probably intends to repent — though
he has never said he would. And while it is a fact
that John Jones did fish a little on Sunday, once, he
didn't really catch anything but only just one small
useless mudcat; and maybe that wouldn't have been
so awful if he had thrown it back — as he says he did,
but he didn't. Pity but they would repent of these
dreadful things — and maybe they will yet."

But while I was shamefully trying to draw attention
to these poor chaps — who were doubtless directing
the celestial attention to me at the same moment,
though I never once suspected that — I had heedlessly
left my candle burning. It was not a time to neglect
even trifling precautions. There was no occasion to
add anything to the facilities for attracting notice to
me — so I put the light out.

It was a long night to me, and perhaps the most dis
tressful one I ever spent. I endured agonies of remorse
for sins which I knew I had committed, and for others
which I was not certain about, yet was sure that they
had been set down against me in a book by an angel
who was wiser than I and did not trust such important
matters to memory. It struck me, by and by, that I
had been making a most foolish and calamitous mis
take, in one respect; doubtless I had not only made
my own destruction sure by directing attention to
those other boys, but had already accomplished theirs !
Doubtless the lightning had stretched them all dead in
their beds by this time ! The anguish and the fright

Life on the Mississippi 401

which this thought gave me made my previous suffer
ings seem trifling by comparison.

Things had become truly serious. I resolved to turn
over a new leaf instantly; I also resolved to connect
myself with the church the next day, if 1 survived to
see its sun appear. I resolved to cease from sin in all
its forms, and to lead a high and blameless life forever
after. I would be punctual at church and Sunday-
school ; visit the sick ; carry baskets of victuals to the
poor (simply to fulfill the regulation conditions, al
though I knew we had none among us so poor but
they would smash the basket over my head for my
pains) ; I would instruct other boys in right ways, and
take the resulting trouncings meekly; I would subsist
entirely on tracts; I would invade the rum shop and
warn the drunkard — and finally, if I escaped the fate
of those who early become too good to live, I would
go for a missionary.

The storm subsided toward daybreak, and I dozed
gradually to sleep with a sense of obligation to Lem
Hackett for going to eternal suffering in that abrupt
way, and thus preventing a far more dreadful disaster
— my own loss.

But when I rose refreshed, by and by, and found
that those other boys were still alive, I had a dim sense
that perhaps the whole thing was a false alarm ; that
the entire turmoil had been on Lem's account and no
body's else. The world looked so bright and safe that
there did not seem to be any real occasion to turn over
a new leaf. I was a little subdued during that day,
and perhaps the next; after that, my purpose of
reforming slowly dropped out of my mind, and I had
a peaceful, comfortable time again, until the next
storm.

That storm came about three weeks later; and it
was the most unaccountable one, to me, that I had
26

402 Life on the Mississippi

ever experienced; for on the afternoon of that day,
"Dutchy" was drowned. Dutchy belonged to our
Sunday-school. He was a German lad who did not
know enough to come in out of the rain ; but he was
exasperatingly good, and had a prodigious memory.
One Sunday he made himself the envy of all the youth
and the talk of all the admiring village, by reciting
three thousand verses of Scripture without missing a
word : then he went off the very next day and got
drowned.

Circumstances gave to his death a peculiar impres-
siveness. We were all bathing in a muddy creek which
had a deep hole in it, and in this hole the coopers had
sunk a pile of green hickory hoop-poles to soak, some
twelve feet under water. We were diving and * ' seeing
who could stay under longest." We managed to re
main down by holding on to the hoop-poles. Dutchy
made such a poor success of it that he was hailed with
laughter and derision every time his head appeared
above water. At last he seemed hurt with the taunts,
and begged us to stand still on the bank and be fair
with him and give him an honest count — " be friendly
and kind just this once, and not miscount for the sake
of having the fun of laughing at him." Treacherous
winks were exchanged, and all said, "All right,
Dutchy — go ahead, we'll play fair."

Dutchy plunged in, but the boys, instead of begin
ning to count, followed the lead of one of their number
and scampered to a range of blackberry bushes close
by and hid behind it. They imagined Dutchy 's
humiliation, when he should rise after a superhuman
effort and find the place silent and vacant, nobody
there to applaud. They were " so full of laugh " with
the idea that they were continually exploding into
muffled cackles. Time swept on, and presently one
who was peeping through the briers said, with surprise :

Life on the Mississippi 403

" Why, he hasn't come up yet!"

The laughing stopped.

11 Boys, it's a splendid dive," said one.

" Never mind that," said another, " the joke on him
is all the better for it."

There was a remark or two more, and then a pause.
Talking ceased, and all began to peer through the
vines. Before long, the boys' faces began to look
uneasy, then anxious, then terrified. Still there was
no movement of the placid water. Hearts began to
beat fast, and faces to turn pale. We all glided out
silently, and stood on the bank, our horrified eyes
wandering back and forth from each other's counte
nances to the water.

" Somebody must go down and see !"

Yes, that was plain ; but nobody wanted that grisly
task.

"Draw straws!"

So we did — with hands which shook so that we
hardly knew what we were about. The lot fell to me,
and I went down. The water was so muddy I could
not see anything, but I felt around among the hoop-
poles, and presently grasped a limp wrist which gave
me no response — and if it had I should not have
known it, I let it go with such a frightened suddenness.

The boy had been caught among the hoop-poles and
entangled there, helplessly. I fled to the surface and
told the awful news. Some of us knew that if the boy
were dragged out at once he might possibly be resusci
tated, but we never thought of that. We did not
think of anything; we did not know what to do, so we
did nothing — except that the smaller lads cried
piteously, and we all struggled frantically into our
clothes, putting on anybody's that came handy, and
getting them wrong-side-out and upside-down, as a
rule. Then we scurried away and gave the alarm, but

404 Life on the Mississippi

none of us went back to see the end of the tragedy.
We had a more important thing to attend to : we all
flew home, and lost not a moment in getting ready to
lead a better life.

The night presently closed down. Then came on
that tremendous and utterly unaccountable storm. I
was perfectly dazed; I could not understand it. It
seemed to me that there must be some mistake. The
elements were turned loose, and they rattled and
banged and blazed away in the most blind and frantic
manner. All heart and hope went out of me, and the
dismal thought kept floating through my brain, " If a
boy who knows three thousand verses by heart is not
satisfactory, what chance is there for anybody else?"

Of course I never questioned for a moment that the
storm was on Dutchy's account, or that he or any
other inconsequential animal was worthy of such a
majestic demonstration from on high ; the lesson of it
was the only thing that troubled me ; for it convinced
me that if Dutchy, with all his perfections, was not a
delight, it would be vain for me to turn over a new
leaf, for I must infallibly fall hopelessly short of that
boy, no matter how hard I might try. Nevertheless I
did turn it over — a highly educated fear compelled me
to do that — but succeeding days of cheerfulness and
sunshine came bothering around, and within a month I
had so drifted backward that again I was as lost and
comfortable as ever.

Breakfast time approached while I mused these
musings and called these ancient happenings back to
mind ; so I got me back into the present and went
down the hill.

On my way through town to the hotel, I saw the
house which was my home when I was a boy. At
present rates, the people who now occupy it are of no
more value than I am ; but in my time they would

Life on the Mississippi 40$

have been worth not less than five hundred dollars
apiece. They are colored folk.

After breakfast I went out alone again, intending to
hunt up some of the Sunday-schools and see how this
generation of pupils might compare with their pro
genitors who had sat with me in those places and had
probably taken me as a model — though I do not re
member as to that now. By the public square there
had been in my day a shabby little brick church called
the " Old Ship of Zion," which I had attended as a
Sunday-school scholar; and I found the locality easily
enough, but not the old church; it was gone, and a
trig and rather hilarious new edifice was in its place.
The pupils were better dressed and better looking than
were those of my time; consequently they did not
resemble their ancestors ; and consequently there was
nothing familiar to me in their faces. Still, I contem
plated them with a deep interest and a yearning wist-
fulness, and if I had been a girl I would have cried;
for they were the offspring, and represented, and oc
cupied the places, of boys and girls some of whom I
had loved to love, and some of whom I had loved to
hate, but all of whom were dear to me for the one
reason or the other, so many years gone by — and,
Lord, where be they now!

I was mightily stirred, and would have been grateful
to be allowed to remain unmolested and look my fill ;
but a bald-summited superintendent who had been a
towheaded Sunday-school mate of mine of that spot in
the early ages, recognized me, and I talked a flutter of
wild nonsense to those children to hide the thoughts
which were in me, and which could not have been
spoken without a betrayal of feeling that would have
been recognized as out of character with me.

Making speeches without preparation is no gift of
mine; and I was resolved to shirk any new oppor-

406 Life on the Mississippi

tunity, but in the next and larger Sunday-school I
found myself in the rear of the assemblage ; so I was
very willing to go on the platform a moment for the
sake of getting a good look at the scholars. On the
spur of the moment I could not recall any of the old
idiotic talks which visitors used to insult me with when
I was a pupil there; and I was sorry for this, since it
would have given me time and excuse to dawdle there
and take a long and satisfying look at what I feel at
liberty to say was an array of fresh young comeliness
not matchable in another Sunday-school of the same
size. As I talked merely to get a chance to inspect,
and as I strung out the random rubbish solely to pro
long the inspection, I judged it but decent to confess
these low motives, and I did so.

If the Model Boy was in either of these Sunday-
schools, I did not see him. The Model Boy of my
time — we never had but the one — was perfect : per
fect in manners, perfect in dress, perfect in conduct,
perfect in filial piety, perfect in exterior godliness ; but
at bottom he was a prig ; and as for the contents of
his skull, they could have changed place with the con
tents of a pie, and nobody would have been the worse
off for it but the pie. This fellow's reproachlessness
was a standing reproach to every lad in the village.
He was the admiration of all the mothers, and the
detestation of all their sons. I was told what became
of him, but as it was a disappointment to me, I will
not enter into details. He succeeded in life.

CHAPTER LV.

A VENDETTA AND OTHER THINGS

DURING my three days' stay in the town, I woke
up every morning with the impression that I was
a boy — for in my dreams the faces were all young
again, and looked as they had looked in the old times;
but I went to bed a hundred years old, every night —
for meantime I had been seeing those faces as they are
now.

Of course I suffered some surprises, along at first,
before I had become adjusted to the changed state of
things. I met young ladies who did not seem to have
changed at all ; but they turned out to be the daughters
of the young ladies I had in mind — sometimes their
granddaughters. When you are told that a stranger
of fifty is a grandmother, there is nothing surprising
about it ; but if, on the contrary, she is a person whom
you knew as a little girl, it seems impossible. You
say to yourself, " How can a little girl be a grand
mother?" It takes some little time to accept and
realize the fact that while you have been growing old,
your friends have not been standing still, in that matter.

I noticed that the greatest changes observable were
with the women, not the men. I saw men whom thirty
years had changed but slightly; but their wives had
grown old. These were good women; it is very
wearing to be good.

(W)

408 Life on the Mississippi

There was a saddler whom I wished to see ; but he
was gone. Dead, these many years, they said. Once
or twice a day, the saddler used to go tearing down the
street, putting on his coat as he went ; and then every
body knew, a steamboat was coming. Everybody
knew, also, that John Stavely was not ^expecting
anybody by the boat — or any freight, either; and
Stavely must have known that everybody knew this, still
it made no difference to him ; he liked to seem to him
self to be expecting a hundred thousand tons of saddles
by this boat, and so he went on all his life, enjoying
being faithfully on hand to receive and receipt for
those saddles, in case by any miracle they should
come. A malicious Quincy paper used always to
refer to this town, in derision, as " Stavely 's Land
ing." Stavely was one of my earliest admirations ; I
envied him his rush of imaginary business, and the
display he was able to make of it before strangers, as
he went flying down the street, struggling with his
fluttering coat.

But there was a carpenter who was my chief est hero.
He was a mighty liar, but I did not know that ; I be
lieved everything he said. He was a romantic, senti
mental, melodramatic fraud, and his bearing impressed
me with awe. I vividly remember the first time he
took me into his confidence. He was planing a board,
and every now and then he would pause and heave a
deep sigh and occasionally mutter broken sentences, —
confused and not intelligible, — but out of their midst
an ejaculation sometimes escaped which made me
shiver and did me good: one was, " O God, it is his
blood ! " I sat on the tool-chest and humbly and
shudderingly admired him ; for I judged he was full of
crime. At last he said in a low voice :

" My little friend, can you keep a secret?"

I eagerly said I could.

Life on the Mississippi 409

14 A dark and dreadful one?"

I satisfied him on that point.

' Then I will tell you some passages in my history;
for oh, I must relieve my burdened soul, or I shall
die!"

He cautioned me once more to be " as silent as the
grave ' ' ; then he told me he was a * ' red-handed mur
derer." He put down his plane, held his hands out
before him, contemplated them sadly, and said :

" Look — with these hands I have taken the lives of
thirty human beings!"

The effect which this had upon me was an inspira
tion to him, and he turned himself loose upon his sub
ject with interest and energy. He left generalizing,
and went into details — began with his first murder ;
described it, told what measures he had taken to avert
suspicion; then passed to his second homicide, his
third, his fourth, and so on. He had always done his
murders with a bowie-knife, and he made all my hairs
rise by suddenly snatching it out and showing it
to me.

At the end of this first stance I went home with six
of his fearful secrets among my freightage, and found
them a great help to my dreams, which had been slug
gish for a while back. I sought him again and again,
on my Saturday holidays ; in fact, I spent the summer
with him — all of it which was valuable to me. His
fascinations never diminished, for he threw something
fresh and stirring, in the way of horror, into each suc
cessive murder. He always gave names, dates, places
— everything. This by and by enabled me to note
two things: that he had killed his victims in every
quarter of the globe, and that these victims were
always named Lynch. The destruction of the Lynches
went serenely on, Saturday after Saturday, until the
original thirty had multiplied to sixty, — and more to

410 Life on the Mississippi

be heard from yet; then my curiosity got the better of
my timidity, and I asked how it happened that these
justly punished persons all bore the same name.

My hero said he had never divulged that dark secret
to any living being; but felt that he could trust me,
and therefore he would lay bare before me the story of
his sad and blighted life. He had loved one " too fair
for earth," and she had reciprocated "with all the
sweet affection of her pure and noble nature." But
he had a rival, a " base hireling" named Archibald
Lynch, who said the girl should be his, or he would
"dye his hands in her heart's best blood." The
carpenter, "innocent and happy in love's young
dream," gave no weight to the threat, but led his
"golden-haired darling to the altar," and there the
two were made one; there, also, just as the minister's
hands were stretched in blessing over their heads, the
fell deed was done — with a knife — and the bride fell
a corpse at her husband's feet. And what did the
husband do? He plucked forth that knife, and, kneel
ing by the body of his lost one, swore to " consecrate
his life to the extermination of all the human scum that
bear the hated name of Lynch."

That was it. He had been hunting down the
Lynches and slaughtering them, from that day to this
— twenty years. He had always used that same con
secrated knife; with it he had murdered his long
array of Lynches, and with it he had left upon the
forehead of each victim a peculiar mark — a cross,
deeply incised. Said he:

* The cross of the Mysterious Avenger is known in
Europe, in America, in China, in Siam, in the Tropics,
in the Polar Seas, in the deserts of Asia, in all the
earth. Wherever in the uttermost parts of the globe
a Lynch has penetrated, there has the Mysterious Cross
been seen, and those who have seen it have shuddered

Life on the Mississippi 411

and said, 'It is his mark; he has been here!' You
have heard of the Mysterious Avenger — look upon
him, for before you stands no less a person ! But
beware — breathe not a word to any soul. Be silent,
and wait. Some morning this town will flock aghast
to view a gory corpse ; on its brow will be seen the
awful sign, and men will tremble and whisper, * He
has been here — it is the Mysterious Avenger's mark!'
You will come here, but I shall have vanished ; you
will see me no more."

This ass had been reading the " Jibbenainosay," no
doubt, and had had his poor romantic head turned by
it; but as I had not yet seen the book then, I took his
inventions for truth, and did not suspect that he was a
plagiarist.

However, we had a Lynch living in the town ; and
the more I reflected upon his impending doom, the
more I could not sleep. It seemed my plain duty to
save him, and a still plainer and more important duty
to get some sleep for myself, so at last I ventured to
go to Mr. Lynch and tell him what was about to hap
pen to him — under strict secrecy. I advised him to
" fly," and certainly expected him to do it. But he
laughed at me ; and he did not stop there ; he led me
down to the carpenter's shop, gave the carpenter a
jeering and scornful lecture upon his silly pretensions,
slapped his face, made him get down on his knees and
beg — then went off and left me to contemplate the
cheap and pitiful ruin of what, in my eyes, had so
lately been a majestic and incomparable hero. The
carpenter blustered, flourished his knife, and doomed
this Lynch in his usual volcanic style, the size of his
fateful words undiminished ; but it was all wasted upon
me ; he was a hero to me no longer, but only a poor,
foolish, exposed humbug. I was ashamed of him, and
ashamed of myself; I took no further interest in him,

412 Life on the Mississippi

and never went to his shop any more. He was a
heavy loss to me, for he was the greatest hero I had
ever known. The fellow must have had some talent;
for some of his imaginary murders were so vividly
and dramatically described that I remember all their
details yet.

The people of Hannibal are not more changed than
is the town. It is no longer a village ; it is a city, with
a Mayor, and a council, and water-works, and probably
a debt. It has fifteen thousand people, is a thriving
and energetic place, and is paved like the rest of the
West and South — where a well-paved street and a
good sidewalk are things so seldom seen that one
doubts them when he does see them. The customary
half-dozen railways center in Hannibal now, and there
is a new depot, which cost a hundred thousand dollars.
In my time the town had no specialty, and no com
mercial grandeur; the daily packet usually landed a
passenger and bought a catfish, and took away another
passenger and a hatful of freight; but now a huge
commerce in lumber has grown up, and a large mis
cellaneous commerce is one of the results. A deal of
money changes hands there now.

Bear Creek — so called, perhaps, because it was
always so particularly bare of bears — is hidden out of
sight now, under islands and continents of piled lum
ber, and nobody but an expert can find it. I used to
get drowned in it every summer regularly, and be
drained out, and inflated and set going again by some
chance enemy; but not enough of it is unoccupied
now to drown a person in. It was a famous breeder
of chills and fever in its day. I remember one summer
when everybody in town had this disease at once.
Many chimneys were shaken down, and all the houses
were so racked that the town had to be rebuilt. The
chasm or gorge between Lover's Leap and the hill west

Life on the Mississippi 413

of it is supposed by scientists to have been caused by
glacial action. This is a mistake.

There is an interesting cave a mile or two below
Hannibal, among the bluffs. I would have liked to
revisit it, but had not time. In my time the person
who then owned it turned it into a mausoleum for his
daughter^ aged fourteen. The body of this poor child
was put into a copper cylinder filled with alcohol, and
this was suspended in one of the dismal avenues of the
cave. The top of the cylinder was removable ; and it
was said to be a common thing for the baser order of
tourists to drag the dead face into view and examine it
and comment upon it.

CHAPTER LVI.

A QUESTION OF LAW

"T""HE slaughter-house is gone from the mouth of
I Bear Creek and so is the small jail (or " cala
boose") which once stood in its neighborhood. A
citizen asked, " Do you remember when Jimmy Finn,
the town drunkard, was burned to death in the cala
boose?"

Observe, now, how history becomes defiled, through
lapse of time and the help of the bad memories of
men. Jimmy Finn was not burned in the calaboose,
but died a natural death in a tan vat, of a combination
of delirium tremens and spontaneous combustion.
When I say natural death, I mean it was a natural death
for Jimmy Finn to die. The calaboose victim was not
a citizen; he was a poor stranger, a harmless, whisky-
sodden tramp. I know more about his case than any
body else; I knew too much of it, in that bygone
day, to relish speaking of it. That tramp was wander
ing about the streets one chilly evening, with a pipe in
his mouth, and begging for a match ; he got neither
matches nor courtesy; on the contrary, a troop of
bad little boys followed him around and amused them
selves with nagging and annoying him. I assisted; but
at last, some appeal which the wayfarer made for for
bearance, accompanying it with a pathetic reference to
his forlorn and friendless condition, touched such sense

(414)

Life on the Mississippi 415

of shame and remnant of right feeling as were left in
me, and I went away and got him some matches, and
then hied me home and to bed, heavily weighted as to
conscience, and unbuoyant in spirit. An hour or two
afterward the man was arrested and locked up in the
calaboose by the marshal — large name for a constable,
but that was his title. At two in the morning, the
church-bells rang for fire, and everybody turned out,
of course — I with the rest. The tramp had used his
matches disastrously ; he had set his straw bed on fire,
and the oaken sheathing of the room had caught.
When I reached the ground, two hundred men,
women, and children stood massed together, transfixed
with horror, and staring at the grated windows of the
jail. Behind the iron bars, and tugging frantically at
them, and screaming for help, stood the tramp; he
seemed like a black object set against a sun, so white
and intense was the light at his back. That marshal
could not be found, and he had the only key. A
battering-ram was quickly improvised, and the thunder
of its blows upon the door had so encouraging a sound
that the spectators broke into wild cheering, and be
lieved the merciful battle won. But it was not so.
The timbers were too strong; they did not yield. It
was said that the man's death-grip still held fast to the
bars after he was dead ; and that in this position the
fires wrapped him about and consumed him. As to
this, I do not know. What was seen, after I recog
nized the face that was pleading through »the bars, was
seen by others, not by me.

I saw that face, so situated, every night for a long
time afterward ; and I believed myself as guilty of the
man's death as if I had given him the matches pur
posely that he might burn himself up with them. I
had not a doubt that I should be hanged if my connec
tion with this tragedy were found out. The happen-

416 Life on the Mississippi

ings and the impressions of that time are burned into
my memory, and the study of them entertains me as
much now as they themselves distressed me then. If
anybody spoke of that grisly matter, I was all ears in a
moment, and alert to hear what might be said, for I
was always dreading and expecting to find out that I
was suspected; and so fine and so delicate was the
perception of my guilty conscience that it often de
tected suspicion in the most purposeless remarks, and
in looks, gestures, glances of the eye, which had no
significance, but which sent me shivering away in a
panic of fright, just the same. And how sick it made
me when somebody dropped, howsoever carelessly and
barren of intent, the remark that ' ' murder will out ! ' '
For a boy of ten years, I was carrying a pretty weighty
cargo.

All this time 1 was blessedly forgetting one thing — .
the fact that I was an inveterate talker in my sleep,
But one night I awoke and found my bed-mate — my
younger brother — sitting up in bed and contemplating
me by the light of the moon. I said :

"What is the matter?"

" You talk so much I can't sleep."

I came to a sitting posture in an instant, with my
kidneys in my throat and my hair on end.

" What did I say? Quick — out with it — what did
I say?"

"Nothing much."
1 It's a lie — you know everything!"
" Everything about what?"
' You know well enough. About that."

II About what? I don't know what you are talking
about. I think you are sick or crazy or something.
But anyway, you're awake, and I'll get to sleep while
I've got a chance."

He fell asleep and I lay there in a cold sweat, turn-

Life on the Mississippi 417

ing this new terror over in the whirling chaos which
did duty as my mind. The burden of my thought
was, How much did I divulge? How much does he
know? What a distress is this uncertainty! But by
and by I evolved an idea — I would wake my brother
and probe him with a supposititious case. I shook
him up, and said:

" Suppose a man should come to you drunk "

1 This is foolish — I never get drunk."

4t I don't mean you, idiot — • I mean the man. Sup
pose a man should come to you drunk, and borrow a
knife, or a tomahawk, or a pistol, and you forgot to
tell him it was loaded, and "

" How could you load a tomahawk?"

" I don't mean the tomahawk, and I didn't say the
tomahawk; I said the pistol. Now, don't you keep
breaking in that way, because this is serious. There's
been a man killed."

"What! In this town?"

" Yes, in this town."

" Well, go on — I won't say a single word."

"Well, then, suppose you forgot to tell him to be
careful with it, because it was loaded, and he went off
and shot himself with that pistol — fooling with it, you
know, and probably doing it by accident, being drunk.
Well, would it be murder?"

•• No — suicide."

"No, no! I don't mean his act, I mean yours.
Would you be a murderer for letting him have that
pistol?"

After deep thought came this answer:

"Well, I should think I was guilty of something —
maybe murder — yes, probably murder, but I don't
quite know."

This made me very uncomfortable. However, it
was not a decisive verdict. I should have to set out
27

Life on the Mississippi

the real case — there seemed to be no other way. But
I would do it cautiously, and keep a watch out for
suspicious effects. I said :

" I was supposing a case, but I am coming to the
real one now. Do you know how the man came to be
burned up in the calaboose?"

<4No."

" Haven't you the least idea?"

"Not the least."

" Wish you may die in your tracks if you have?"

" Yes, wish I may die in my tracks."

"Well, the way of it was this. The man wanted
some matches to light his pipe. A boy got him some.
The man set fire to the calaboose with those very
matches, and burnt himself up."

"Is that so?"

" Yes, it is. Now, is that boy a murderer, do you
think?"

** Let me see. The man was drunk?"

"Yes, he was drunk."

"Very drunk?"

"Yes."

" And the boy knew it?"

14 Yes, he knew it."

There was a long pause. Then came this heavy verdict :

" If the man was drunk, and the boy knew it, the
boy murdered that man. This is certain."

Faint, sickening sensations crept along all the fibers
of my body, and I seemed to know how a person feels
who hears his death sentence pronounced from the
bench. I waited to hear what my brother would say
next. I believed I knew what it would be, and I was
right. He said :

" I know the boy."

I had nothing to say ; so I said nothing. I simply
shuddered. Then he added:

Life on the Mississippi 419

" Yes, before you got half through telling about the
thing, I knew perfectly well who the boy was ; it was
Ben Coontz!"

I came out of my collapse as one who rises from the
dead. I said, with admiration:

' Why, how in the world did you ever guess it?"

41 You told me in your sleep."

I said to myself, ' * How splendid that is ! This is a
habit which must be cultivated."

My brother rattled innocently on :
'When you were talking in your sleep, you kept
mumbling something about ' matches,' which I couldn't
make anything out of ; but just now, when you began
to tell me about the man and the calaboose and the
matches, I remembered that in your sleep you men
tioned Ben Coontz two or three times ; so I put this
and that together, you see, and right away I knew it
was Ben that burnt that man up."

I praised his sagacity effusively. Presently he asked :
" Are you going to give him up to the law?"

II No," I said, " I believe that this will be a lesson
to him. I shall keep an eye on him, of course, for
that is but right ; but if he stops where he is and re
forms, it shall never be said that I betrayed him."

" How good you are!"

11 Well, I try to be. It is all a person can do in a
world like this."

And now, my burden being shifted to other shoul
ders, my terrors soon faded away.

The day before we left Hannibal, a curious thing
fell under my notice — the surprising spread which
longitudinal time undergoes there. I learned it from
one of the most unostentatious of men — the colored
coachman of a friend of mine, who lives three miles
from town. He was to call for me at the Park Hotel
at 7.30 P. M., and drive me out. But he missed it

420 Life on the Mississippi

considerably — did not arrive till ten. He excused
himself by saying:

" De time is mos' an hour en a half slower in de
country en what it is in de town; you'll be in plenty
time, boss. Sometimes we shoves out early for
church, Sunday, en fetches up dah right plum in de
middle er de sermon. Diffunce in de time. A body
can't make no calculations 'bout it."

I had lost two hours and a half; but I had learned a
fact worth four.

CHAPTER LVII.

AN ARCHANGEL

FROM St. Louis northward there are all the enliven
ing signs of the presence of active, energetic, intel
ligent, prosperous, practical nineteenth-century popu
lations. The people don't dream; they work. The
happy result is manifest all around in the substantial
outside aspect of things, and the suggestions of whole
some life and comfort that everywhere appear.

Quincy is a notable example — a brisk, handsome,
well-ordered city; and now, as formerly, interested in
art, letters, and other high things.

But Marion City is an exception. Marion City has
gone backward in a most unaccountable way. This
metropolis promised so well that the projectors tacked
44 city" to its name in the very beginning, with full
confidence; but it was bad prophecy. When I first
saw Marion City, thirty-five years ago, it contained one
street, and nearly or quite six houses. It contains but
one house now, and this one, in a state of ruin, is
getting ready to follow the former five into the river.

Doubtless Marion City was too near to Quincy. It
had another disadvantage : it was situated in a flat mud
bottom, below high-water mark, whereas Quincy stands
high up on the slope of a hill.

In the beginning Quincy had the aspect and ways of
a model New England town : and these she has yet ;

(421)

422 i-ife on the Mississippi

broad, clean streets, trim, neat dwellings and lawns,
fine mansions, stately blocks of commercial buildings.
And there are ample fair-grounds, a well-kept park,
and many attractive drives; library, reading-rooms, a
couple of colleges, some handsome and costly churches,
and a grand courthouse, with grounds which occupy a
square. The population of the city is thirty thousand.
There are some large factories here, and manufactur
ing, of many sorts, is done on a great scale.

La Grange and Canton are growing towns, but I
missed Alexandria ; was told it was under water, but
would come up to blow in the summer.

Keokuk was easily recognizable. I lived there in
1857, — an extraordinary year there in real-estate mat
ters. The '* boom " was something wonderful. Every
body bought, everybody sold — except widows and
preachers; they always hold on; and when the tide
ebbs, they get left. Anything in the semblance of a
town lot, no matter how situated, was salable, and at a
figure which would still have been high if the ground
had been sodded with greenbacks.

The town has a population of fifteen thousand now,
and is progressing with a healthy growth. It was
night, and we could not see details, for which we were
sorry, for Keokuk has the reputation of being a beau
tiful city. It was a pleasant one to live in long ago,
and doubtless has advanced, not retrograded, in that
respect.

A mighty work, which was in progress there in my
day, is finished now. This is the canal over the
Rapids. It is eight miles long, three hundred feet
wide, and is in no place less than six feet deep. Its
masonry is of the majestic kind which the War Depart
ment usually deals in, and will endure like a Roman
aqueduct. The work cost four or five millions.

After an hour or two spent with former friends, we

Life on the Mississippi 423

started up the river again. Keokuk, a long time ago,
was an occasional loafing-place of that erratic genius,
Henry Clay Dean. I believe I never saw him but
once ; but he was much talked of when I lived there.
This is what was said of him :

He began life poor and without education. But he
educated himself — on the curbstones of Keokuk. He
would sit down on a curbstone with his book, care
less or unconscious of the clatter of commerce and
the tramp of the passing crowds, and bury himself in
his studies by the hour, never changing his position
except to draw in his knees now and then to let a dray
pass unobstructed; and when his book was finished,
its contents, however abstruse, had been burned into
his memory, and were his permanent possession. In
this way he acquired a vast hoard of all sorts of learn
ing, and had it pigeon-holed in his head where he
could put his intellectual hand on it whenever it was
wanted .

His clothes differed in no respect from a " wharf-
rat's," except that they were raggeder, more ill-
assorted and inharmonious (and therefore more ex
travagantly picturesque), and several layers dirtier.
Nobody could infer the master-mind in the top of
that edifice from the edifice itself.

He was an orator — by nature in the first place, and
later by the training of experience and practice.
When he was out on a canvass, his name was a load
stone which drew the farmers to his stump from fifty
miles around. His theme was always politics. He
used no notes, for a volcano does not need notes. In
1862 a son of Keokuk's late distinguished citizen, Mr.
Claggett, gave me this incident concerning Dean :

The war feeling was running high in Keokuk (in
'61), and a great mass meeting was to be held on a
certain day in the new Athenaeum. A distinguished

424 Life on the Mississippi

stranger was to address the house. After the building
had been packed to its utmost capacity with sweltering
folk of both sexes, the stage still remained vacant —
the distinguished stranger had failed to connect. The
crowd grew impatient, and by and by indignant and
rebellious. About this time a distressed manager dis
covered Dean on a curbstone, explained the dilemma
to him, took his book away from him, rushed him into
the building the back way, and told him to make for
the stage and save his country.

Presently a sudden silence fell upon the grumbling
audience, and everybody's eyes sought a single point —
the wide, empty, carpetless stage. A figure appeared
there whose aspect was familiar to hardly a dozen per
sons present. It was the scarecrow Dean — in foxy
shoes, down at the heels; socks of odd colors, also
11 down " ; damaged trousers, relics of antiquity and a
world too short, exposing some inches of naked ankle ;
an unbuttoned vest, also too short, and exposing a
zone of soiled and wrinkled linen between it and the
waistband ; shirt bosom open ; long black handker
chief, wound round and round the neck like a bandage ;
bobtailed blue coat, reaching down to the small of the
back, with sleeves which left four inches of forearm
unprotected; small, stiff-brimmed soldier-cap hung on
a corner of the bump of — whichever bump it was.
This figure moved gravely out upon the stage and, with
sedate and measured step, down to the front, where it
paused, and dreamily inspected the house, saying no
word. The silence of surprise held its own for a
moment, then was broken by a just audible ripple of
merriment which swept the sea of faces like the wash
of a wave. The figure remained as before, thought
fully inspecting. Another wave started — laughter,
this time. It was followed by another, then a third —
this last one boisterous.

Life on the Mississippi 425

And now the stranger stepped back one pace, took
off his soldier-cap, tossed it into the wing, and began
to speak with deliberation, nobody listening, everybody
laughing and whispering. The speaker talked on un
embarrassed, and presently delivered a shot which went
home, and silence and attention resulted. He followed
it quick and fast with other telling things ; warmed to
his work and began to pour his words out, instead of
dripping them; grew hotter and hotter, and fell to
discharging lightnings and thunder — and now the
house began to break into applause, to which the
speaker gave no heed, but went hammering straight
on ; unwound his black bandage and cast it away, still
thundering ; presently discarded the bobtailed coat and
flung it aside, firing up higher and higher all the time ;
finally flung the vest after the coat ; and then for an
untimed period stood there, like another Vesuvius,
spouting smoke and flame, lava and ashes, raining
pumice-stone and cinders, shaking the moral earth
with intellectual crash upon crash, explosion upon ex
plosion, while the mad multitude stood upon their feet
in a solid body, answering back with a ceaseless hurri
cane of cheers, through a thrashing snow-storm of
waving handkerchiefs.

"When Dean came," said Claggett, "the people
thought he was an escaped lunatic ; but when he went,
they thought he was an escaped archangel."

Burlington, home of the sparkling Burdette, is
another hill city; and also a beautiful one — unques
tionably so ; a fine and flourishing city, with a popula
tion of twenty-five thousand, and belted with busy
factories of nearly every imaginable description. It
was a very sober city, too — for the moment — fora
most sobering bill was pending; a bill to forbid the
manufacture, exportation, importation, purchase, sale,
borrowing, lending, stealing, drinking, smelling, or

426 Life on the Mississippi

possession, by conquest, inheritance, intent, accident,
or otherwise, in the State of Iowa, of each and every
deleterious beverage known to the human race, except
water. This measure was approved by all the rational
people in the State; but not by the bench of judges.

Burlington has the progressive modern city's full
equipment of devices for right and intelligent govern
ment, including a paid fire department; a thing
which the great city of New Orleans is without, but
still employs that relic of antiquity, the independent
system.

In Burlington, as in all these Upper-River towns,
one breathes a go-ahead atmosphere which tastes good
in the nostrils. An opera-house has lately been built
there which is in strong contrast with the shabby dens
which usually do duty as theaters in cities of Burling
ton's size.

We had not time to go ashore in Muscatine, but had
a daylight view of it from the boat. I lived there a
while, many years ago, but the place, now, had a
rather unfamiliar look; so I suppose it has clear out
grown the town which I used to know. In fact, I
know it has; for I remember it as a small place —
which it isn't now. But I remember it best for a
lunatic who caught me out in the fields, one Sunday,
and extracted a butcher-knife from his boot and pro
posed to carve me up with it, unless I acknowledged
him to be the only son of the Devil. I tried to com
promise on an acknowledgment that he was the only
member of the family I had met ; but that did not
satisfy him; he wouldn't have any half-measures; I
must say he was the sole and only son of the Devil —
and he whetted his knife on his boot. It did not seem
worth while to make trouble about a little thing like
that; so I swung round to his view of the matter and
saved my skin whole. Shortly afterward, he went to

Life on the Mississippi 427

v'sit his father; and as he has not turned up since, I
trust he is there yet.

And I remember Muscatine — still more pleasantly
• — for its summer sunsets. I have never seen any, on
either side of the ocean, that equaled them. They
used the broad, smooth river as a canvas, and painted
on it every imaginable dream of color, from the mot
tled daintinesses and delicacies of the opal, all the way
up, through cumulative intensities, to blinding purple
and crimson conflagrations, which were enchanting to
the eye, but sharply tried it at the same time. All the
Upper Mississippi region has these extraordinary sun
sets as a familiar spectacle. It is the true Sunset Land :
I am sure no other country can show so good a right to
the name. The sunrises are also said to be exceed
ingly fine. I do not know.

CHAPTER LVIII.

ON THE UPPER RIVER

THE big towns drop in, thick and fast, now: and
between stretch processions of thrifty farms, not
desolate solitude. Hour by hour, the boat plows
deeper and deeper into the great and populous North
west ; and with each successive section of it which is
revealed, one's surprise and respect gather emphasis
and increase. Such a people, and such achievements
as theirs, compel homage. This is an independent
race who think for themselves, and who are competent
to do it, because they are educated and enlightened ;
they read, they keep abreast of the best and newest
thought; they fortify every weak place in their land
with a school, a college, a library, and a newspaper;
and they live under law. Solicitude for the future of
a race like this is not in order.

This region is new ; so new that it may be said to be
still in its babyhood. By what it has accomplished
while still teething, one may forecast what marvels it
will do in the strength of its maturity. It is so new
that the foreign tourist has not heard of it yet ; and
has not visited it. For sixty years the foreign tourist
has steamed up and down the river between St. Louis
and New Orleans, and then gone home and written his
book ; believing he had seen all of the river that was
worth seeing or that had anything to see. In not six

(428)

Life on the Mississippi 429

of all these books is there mention of these Upper-
River towns — for the reason that the five or six tour
ists who penetrated this region did it before these
towns were projected. The latest tourist of them all
(1878) made the same old regulation trip — he had not
heard that there was anything north of St. Louis.

Yet there was. There was this amazing region,
bristling with great towns, projected day before yester
day, so to speak, and built next morning. A score of
them number from 1,500 to 5,000 people. Then we
have Muscatine, 10,000; Winona, 10,000; Moline,
10,000; Rock Island, 12,000; La Crosse, 12,000;
Burlington, 25,000, Dubuque, 25,000; Davenport,
30,000; St. Paul, 58,000; Minneapolis, 60,000 and
upward.

The foreign tourist has never heard of these ; there
is no note of them in his books. They have sprung
up in the night, while he slept. So new is this region
that I, who am comparatively young, am yet older
than it is. When I was born St. Paul had a population
of three persons; Minneapolis had just a third as
many. The then population of Minneapolis died two
years ago; and when he died he had seen himself
undergo an increase, in forty years, of fifty-nine thou
sand nine hundred and ninety-nine persons. He had
a frog's fertility.

I must explain that the figures set down above, as
the population of St. Paul and Minneapolis, are several
months old. These towns are far larger now. In
fact, I have just seen a newspaper estimate, which
gives the former seventy-one thousand and the latter
seventy-eight thousand. This book will not reach the
public for six or seven months yet; none of the figures
will be worth much then.

We had a glimpse at Davenport, which is another
beautiful city, crowning a hill — a phrase which applies

430 Life on the Mississippi

to all these towns; for they are all comely, all well
built, clean, orderly, pleasant to the eye, and cheering
to the spirit; and they are all situated upon hills.
Therefore we will give that phrase a rest. The Indians
have a tradition that Marquette and Joliet camped
where Davenport now stands, in 1673. The next
white man who camped there, did it about a hundred
and seventy years later — in 1834. Davenport has
gathered its thirty thousand people within the past
thirty years. She sends more children to her schools
now than her whole population numbered twenty-three
years ago. She has the usual Upper-River quota of
factories, newspapers, and institutions of learning; she
has telephones, local telegraphs, an electric alarm, and
an admirable paid fire department, consisting of six
hook and ladder companies, four steam fire-engines,
and thirty churches. Davenport is the official resi
dence of two bishops — Episcopal and Catholic.

Opposite Davenport is the flourishing town of Rock
Island, which lies at the foot of the Upper Rapids. A
great railroad bridge connects the two towns — one of
the thirteen which fret the Mississippi and the pilots
between St. Louis and St. Paul.

The charming island of Rock Island, three miles
long and half a mile wide, belongs to the United
States, and the Government has turned it into a
wonderful park, enhancing its natural attractions by
art, and threading its fine forests with many miles of
drives. Near the center of the island one catches
glimpses, through the trees, of ten vast stone four-story
buildings, each of which covers an acre of ground.
These are the Government workshops ; for the Rock
Island establishment is a national armory and arsenal.

We move up the river — always through enchanting
scenery, there being no other kind on the Upper Mis
sissippi — and pass Moline, a center of vast manu-

Life on the Mississippi 431

facturing industries; and Clinton and Lyons, great
lumber centers ; and presently reach Dubuque, which
is situated in a rich mineral region. The lead mines
are very productive, and of wide extent. Dubuque
has a great number of manufacturing establishments;
among them a plow factory, which has for customers
all Christendom in general. At least so I was told by
an agent of the concern who was on the boat. He
said :

' You show me any country under the sun where
they really know how to plow, and if I don't show you
our mark on the plow they use, I'll eat that plow;
and I won't ask for any Woostershyre sauce to flavor
it up with, either."

All this part of the river is rich in Indian history and
traditions. Black Hawk's was once a puissant name
hereabouts; as was Keokuk's, further down. A few
miles below Dubuque is the Tete de Mort, — Death's-
head rock, or bluff, — to the top of which the French
drove a band of Indians, in early times, and cooped
them up there, with death for a certainty, and only the
manner of it matter of choice — to starve, or jump off
and kill themselves. Black Hawk adopted the ways of
the white people toward the end of his life ; and when
he died he was buried, near Des Moines, in Christian
fashion, modified by Indian custom; that is to say,
clothed in a Christian military uniform, and with a Chris
tian cane in his hand, but deposited in the grave in a
sitting posture. Formerly, a horse had always been
buried with a chief. The substitution of the cane
shows that Black Hawk's haughty nature was really
humbled, and he expected to walk when he got over.

We noticed that above Dubuque the water of the
Mississippi was olive-green — rich and beautiful and
semi-transparent, with the sun on it. Of course the
water was nowhere as clear or of as fine a complexion

432 Life on the Mississippi

as it is in some other seasons of the year ; for now it
was at flood stage, and therefore dimmed and blurred
by the mud manufactured from caving banks.

The majestic bluffs that overlook the river, along
through this region, charm one with the grace and
variety of their forms, and the soft beauty of their
adornment. The steep, verdant slope, whose base is
at the water's edge, is topped by a lofty rampart of
broken, turreted rocks, which are exquisitely rich and
mellow in color — mainly dark browns and dull greens,
but splashed with other tints. And then you have the
shining river, winding here and there and yonder, its
sweep interrupted at intervals by clusters of wooded
islands threaded by silver channels ; and you have
glimpses of distant villages, asleep upon capes; and of
stealthy rafts slipping along in the shade of the forest
walls ; and of white steamers vanishing around remote
points. And it is all as tranquil and reposeful as
dreamland, and has nothing this-worldly about it —
nothing to hang a fret or a worry upon.

Until the unholy train comes tearing along — which
it presently does, ripping the sacred solitude to rags
arid tatters with its devil's war-whoop and the roar and
thunder of its rushing wheels — and straightway you
are back in this world, and with one of its frets ready
to hand for your entertainment: for you remember
that this is the very road whose stock always goes
down after you buy it, and always goes up again as
soon as you sell it. It makes me shudder to this day,
to remember that I once came near not getting rid of
my stock at all. It must be an awful thing to have a
railroad left on your hands.

The locomotive is in sight from the deck of the
steamboat almost the whole way from St. Louis to St.
Paul — eight hundred miles. These railroads have
made havoc with the steamboat commerce. The clerk

Life on the Mississippi 433

of our boat was a steamboat clerk before these roads
were built. In that day the influx of population was
so great, and the freight business so heavy, that the
boats were not able to keep up with the demands made
upon their carrying capacity; consequently the cap
tains were very independent and airy — pretty "big-
gity," as Uncle Remus would say. The clerk nut-
shelled the contrast between the former time and the
present, thus :

" Boat used to land — captain on hurricane roof —
mighty stiff and straight — iron ramrod for a spine —
kid gloves, plug tile, hair parted behind — man on
shore takes off hat and says :

" * Got twenty-eight tons of wheat, cap'n — be great
favor if you can take them/

" Captain says:

" ' '11 take two of them' — and don't even conde
scend to look at him.

" But nowadays the captain takes off his old slouch,
and smiles all the way around to the back of his ears,
and gets off a bow which he hasn't got any ramrod to
interfere with, and says:

" * Glad to see you, Smith, glad to see you — you're
looking well — haven't seen you looking so well for
years — what you got for us?'

" ' Nuth'n',' says Smith; and keeps his hat on, and
just turns his back and goes to talking with somebody
else.

" Oh, yes ! eight years ago the captain was on top ;
but it's Smith's turn now. Eight years ago a boat
used to go up the river with every stateroom full, and
people piled five and six deep on the cabin floor ; and
a solid deckload of immigrants and harvesters down
below, into the bargain. To get a first-class stateroom,
you'd got to prove sixteen quarterings of nobility and
four hundred years of descent, or be personally ac-

434 Life on the Mississippi

quainted with the nigger that blacked the captain's
boots. But it's all changed now; plenty staterooms
above, no harvesters below — there's a patent self-
binder now, and they don't have harvesters any more ;
they've gone where the woodbine twineth — and they
didn't go by steamboat, either; went by the train.''

Up in this region we met massed ^acres of lumber
rafts coming down — but not floating leisurely along,
in the old-fashioned way, manned with joyous and
reckless crews of fiddling, song-singing, whisky-drink^
ing, breakdown-dancing rapscallions; no, the whole
thing was shoved swiftly along by a powerful stern-
wheeler, modern fashion; and the small crews were
quiet, orderly men, of a sedate business aspect, with not
a suggestion of romance about them anywhere.

Along here, somewhere, on a black night, we ran
some exceedingly narrow and intricate island-chutes by
aid of the electric light. Behind was solid blackness —
a crackless bank of it; ahead, a narrow elbow of water,
curving between dense walls of foliage that almost
touched our bows on both sides ; and here every indi
vidual leaf, and every individual ripple stood out in its
natural color, and flooded with a glare as of noonday
intensified. The effect was strange and fine, and very
striking.

We passed Prairie du Chien, another of Father
Marquette's camping-places; and after some hours of
progress through varied and beautiful scenery, reached
La Crosse. Here is a town of twelve or thirteen thou
sand population, with electric-lighted streets, and
blocks of buildings which are stately enough, and also
architecturally fine enough to command respect in any
city. It is a choice town, and we made satisfactory
use of the hour allowed us, in roaming it over, though
the weather was rainier than necessary.

CHAPTER LIX.

•

LEGENDS AND SCENERY

WE added several passengers to our list at La
Crosse; among others an old gentleman who
had come to this Northwestern region with the early
settlers, and was familiar with every part of it. Par
donably proud of it, too. He said :

' You'll find scenery between here and St. Paul that
can give the Hudson points. You'll have the Queen's
Bluff — seven hundred feet high, and just as imposing
a spectacle as you can find anywheres ; and Trempe-
leau Island, which isn't like any other island in
America, I believe, for it is a gigantic mountain, with
precipitous sides, and is full of Indian traditions, and
used to be full of rattlesnakes ; if you catch the sun
just right there, you will have a picture that will stay
with you. And above Winona you'll have lovely
prairies; and then come the Thousand Islands, too
beautiful for anything. Green? Why, you never saw
foliage so green, nor packed so thick; it's like a
thousand plush cushions afloat on a looking-glass —
when the water's still; and then the monstrous bluffs
on both sides of the river — ragged, rugged, dark-
complected — just the frame that's wanted ; you always
want a strong frame, you know, to throw up the nice
points of a delicate picture and make them stand out."
The old gentleman also told us a touching Indian
legend or two — but not very powerful ones.

BB (435)

436 Life on the Mississippi

After this excursion into history, he came back to
the scenery, and described it, detail by detail, from
the Thousand Islands to St. Paul; naming its names
with such facility, tripping along his theme with such
nimble and confident ease, slamming in a three-ton
word, here and there, with such a complacent air
of 'tisn't-anything,-I-can-do-it-any-time-I-want-to, and
letting off fine surprises of lurid eloquence at such
judicious intervals, that I presently began to sus
pect

But no matter what I began to suspect. Hear him :

4 'Ten miles above Winona we come to Fountain
City, nestling sweetly at the feet of cliffs that lift their
awful fronts, Jove-like, toward the blue depths of
heaven, bathing them in virgin atmospheres that have
known no other contact save that of angels' wings.

"And next we glide through silver waters, amid
lovely and stupendous aspects of nature that attune
our hearts to adoring admiration, about twelve miles,
and strike Mount Vernon, six hundred feet high, with
romantic ruins of a once first-class hotel perched far
among the cloud shadows that mottle its dizzy heights
— sole remnant of once-flourishing Mount Vernon,
town of early days, now desolate and utterly deserted.

"And so we move on. Past Chimney Rock we
fly — noble shaft of six hundred feet; then just before
landing at Minnieska our attention is attracted by a
most striking promontory rising over five hundred
feet — the ideal mountain pyramid. Its conic shape,
thickly-wooded surface girding its sides, and its apex
like that of a cone, cause the spectator to wonder at
nature's workings. From its dizzy heights superb
views of the forests, streams, bluffs, hills, and dales,
below and beyond for miles, are brought within its
focus. What grander river scenery can be conceived,
as we gaze upon this enchanting landscape, from the

Life on the Mississippi 437

uppermost point of these bluffs upon the valleys
below? The primeval wildness and awful loneliness
of these sublime creations of nature and nature's God,
excite feelings of unbounded admiration, and the recol
lection of which can never be effaced from the mem
ory, as we view them in any direction.

" Next we have the Lion's Head and the Lioness's
Head, carved by nature's hand, to adorn and dominate
the beauteous stream : and then anon the river widens,
and a most charming and magnificent view of the valley
before us suddenly bursts upon our vision; rugged
hills, clad with verdant forests from summit to base,
level prairie lands, holding in their lap the beautiful
Wabasha, City of the Healing Waters, puissant foe of
Bright' s disease, and that grandest conception of
nature's works, incomparable Lake Pepin — these con
stitute a picture whereon the tourist's eye may gaze
uncounted hours, with rapture unappeased and unap
peasable.

" And so we glide along: in due time encountering
those majestic domes, the mighty Sugar Loaf, and the
sublime Maiden's Rock — which latter, romantic super
stition has invested with a voice ; and ofttimes as the
birch canoe glides near, at twilight, the dusky paddler
fancies he hears the soft sweet music of the long-
departed Winona, darling of Indian song and story.

" Then Frontenac looms upon our vision, delightful
resort of jaded summer tourists ; then progressive Red
Wing; and Diamond Bluff, impressive and preponder-
ous in its lone sublimity; then Prescott and the St.
Croix ; and anon we see bursting upon us the domes
and steeples of St. Paul, giant young chief of the
North, marching with seven-league stride in the van of
progress, banner-bearer of the highest and newest
civilization, carving his beneficent way with the toma
hawk of commercial enterprise, sounding the war-

438 Life on the Mississippi

whoop of Christian culture, tearing off the reeking
scalp of sloth and superstition to plant there the
steam-plow and the school-house — ever in his front
stretch arid lawlessness, ignorance, crime, despair;
ever in his wake bloom the jail, the gallows, and the
pulpit; and ever "

" Have you ever traveled with a panorama?*'

" I have formerly served in that capacity."

My suspicion was confirmed.

" Do you still travel with it?"

" No, she is laid up till the fall season opens. I am
helping now to work up the materials for a Tourists
Guide which the St. Louis and St. Paul Packet Com
pany are going to issue this summer for the benefit of
travelers who go by that line."

"When you were talking of Maiden's Rock, you
spoke of the long-departed Winona, darling of Indian
song and story. Is she the maiden of the rock? —
and are the two connected by legend?"

"Yes, and a very tragic and painful one. Perhaps
the most celebrated, as well as the most pathetic, of
all the legends of the Mississippi."

We asked him to tell it. He dropped out of his
conversational vein and back into his lecture gait with
out an effort, and rolled on as follows :

" A little distance above Lake City is a famous point
known as Maiden's Rock, which is not only a pic
turesque spot, but is full of romantic interest from the
event which gave it its name. Not many years ago
this locality was a favorite resort for the Sioux Indians
on account of the fine fishing and hunting to be had
there, and large numbers of them were always to be
found in this locality. Among the families which used
to resort here was one belonging to the tribe of
Wabasha. We-no-na (first-born) was the name of a
maiden who had plighted her troth to a lover belonging

Life on the Mississippi 439

to the same band. But her stern parents had promised
her hand to another, a famous warrior, and insisted on
her wedding him. The day was fixed by her parents,
to her great grief. She appeared to accede to the
proposal and accompanied them to the rock, for the
purpose of gathering flowers for the feast. On reach
ing the rock, We-no-na ran to its summit, and, stand
ing on its edge, upbraided her parents who were
below, for their cruelty, and then, singing a death-
dirge, threw herself from the precipice and dashed
them in pieces on the rock below."

" Dashed who in pieces — her parents?"

" Yes."

"Well, it certainly was a tragic business, as you
say. And moreover, there is a startling kind of
dramatic surprise about it which I was not looking
for. It is a distinct improvement upon the threadbare
form of Indian legend. There are fifty Lover's Leaps
along the Mississippi from whose summit disappointed
Indian girls have jumped, but this is the only jump in
the lot that turned out in the right and satisfactory
way. What became of Winona?"

" She was a good deal jarred up and jolted: but she
got herself together and disappeared before the coroner
reached the fatal spot; and 'tis said she sought and
married her true love, and wandered with him to some
distant clime, where she lived happy ever after, her
gentle spirit mellowed and chastened by the romantic
incident which had so early deprived her of the sweet
guidance of a mother's love and a father's protecting
arm, and thrown her, all unfriended, upon the cold
charity of a censorious world."

I was glad to hear the lecturer's description of the
scenery, for it assisted my appreciation of what I saw
of it, and enabled me to imagine such of it as we lost
by the intrusion of night.

440 Life on the Mississippi

As the lecturer remarked, this whole region is
blanketed with Indian tales and traditions. But I re
minded him that people usually merely mentioned this
fact — doing it in a way to make a body's mouth water
— and judiciously stopped there. Why? Because the
impression left was that these tales were full of incident
and imagination — a pleasant impression which would
be promptly dissipated if the tales were told. I showed
him a lot of this sort of literature which I had been
collecting, and he confessed that it was poor stuff,
exceedingly sorry rubbish ; and I ventured to add that
the legends which he had himself told us were of this
character, with the single exception of the admirable
story of Winona. He granted these facts, but said
that if I would hunt up Mr. Schoolcraft's book, pub
lished near fifty years ago, and now doubtless out of
print, I would find some Indian inventions in it that
were very far from being barren of incident and imagi
nation; that the tales in "Hiawatha" were of this
sort, and they came from Schoolcraft's book; and that
there were others in the same book which Mr. Long
fellow could have turned into verse with good effect.
For instance, there was the legend of "The Undying
Head." He could not tell it, for many of the details
had grown dim in his memory ; but he would recom
mend me to find it and enlarge my respect for the
Indian imagination. He said that this tale, and most
of the others in the book, were current among the
Indians along this part of the Mississippi when he first
came here; and that the contributors to Schoolcraft's
book had got them directly from Indian lips, and had
written them down with strict exactness, and without
embellishments of their own.

I have found the book. The lecturer was right.
There are several legends in it which confirm what he
said. I will offer two of them — "The Undying

Life on the Mississippi 441

Head," and " Peboan and Seegwun, an Allegory of
the Seasons." The latter is used in "Hiawatha";
but it is worth reading in the original form, if only
that one may see how effective a genuine poem can be
without the helps and graces of poetic measure and
rhythm :

PEBOAN AND SEEGWUN.

An old man was sitting alone in his lodge, by the side of a frozen
stream. It was the close of winter, and his fire was almost out. He
appeared very old and very desolate. His locks were white with age, and
he trembled in every joint. Day after day passed in solitude, and he heard
nothing but the sound of the tempest, sweeping before it the new-fallen
snow.

\ One day, as his fire was just dying, a handsome young man approached
and entered his dwelling. His cheeks were red with the blood of youth,
his eyes sparkled with animation, and a smile played upon his lips. He
walked with a light and quick step. His forehead was bound with a
wreath of sweet grass, in place of a warrior's frontlet, and he carried a
bunch of flowers in his hand.

" Ah, my son ! " said the old man, " I am happy to see you. Come
in ! Come and tell me of your adventures, and what strange lands you have
been to see. Let us pass the night together. I will tell you of my prowess
and exploits, and what I can perform. You shall do the same, and we will
amuse ourselves."

He then drew from his sack a curiously-wrought antique pipe, and hav
ing filled it with tobacco, rendered mild by a mixture of certain leaves,
handed it to his guest. When this ceremony was concluded they began to
speak.

" I blow my breath," said the old man, " and the stream stands still.
The water becomes stiff and hard as clear stone."

" I breathe," said the young man, "and flowers spring up over the
plain."

" I shake my locks," retorted the old man, " and snow covers the land.
The leaves fall from the trees at my command, and my breath blows them
away. The birds get up from the water, and fly to a distant land. The
animals hide themselves from my breath, and the very ground becomes as
hard as flint."

" I shake my ringlets," rejoined the young man, " and warm showers

442 Life on the Mississippi

of soft rain fall upon the earth. The plants lift up their heads out of the
earth, like the eyes of children glistening with delight. My voice recalls
the birds. The warmth of my breath unlocks the streams. Music fills the
groves wherever I walk, and all nature rejoices."

At length the sun began to rise. A gentle warmth came over the place. \
The tongue of the old man became silent. The robin and bluebird began
to sing on the top of the lodge. The stream began to murmur by the door,
and the fragrance of growing herbs and flowers came softly on the vernal
breeze.

Daylight fully revealed to the young man the character of his entertainer.
When he looked upon him, he had the icy visage of Peboan.* Streams
began to flow from his eyes. As the sun increased, he grew less and less
in stature, and anon had melted completely away. Nothing remained on
the place of his lodge fire but the miskodeedjt a small white flower, with a
pink border, which is one of the earliest species of northern plants.

"The Undying Head " is a rather long tale, but it
makes up in weird conceits, fairy-tale prodigies, variety
of incident, and energy of movement, for what it lacks
in brevity. \

* Vinter. tThe trailing arbutus. % See Appendix D.

CHAPTER LX.

SPECULATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

WE reached St. Paul, at the head of navigation of
the Mississippi, and there our voyage of two
thousand miles from New Orleans ended. It is about
a ten-day trip by steamer. It can probably be done
quicker by rail. I judge so because I know that one
may go by rail from St. Louis to Hannibal — a dis
tance of at least a hundred and twenty miles — in
seven hours. This is better than walking; unless one
is in a hurry.

The season being far advanced when we were in New
Orleans, the roses and magnolia blossoms were falling;
but here in St. Paul it was the snow. In New Orleans
we had caught an occasional withering breath from
over a crater, apparently ; here in St. Paul we caught
a frequent benumbing one from over a glacier, ap
parently.

I am not trying to astonish by these statistics. No,
it is only natural that there should be a sharp difference
between climates which lie upon parallels of latitude
which are one or two thousand miles apart. I take
this position, and I will hold it and maintain it in spite
of the newspapers. The newspaper thinks it isn't a
natural thing; and once a year, in February, it re
marks, with ill-concealed exclamation points, that
while we, away up here, are fighting snow and ice,

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444

Life on the Mississippi

folks are having new strawberries and peas down
South; callas are blooming out of doors, and the peo
ple are complaining of the warm weather. The news
paper never gets done being surprised about it. It is
caught regularly every February. There must be a
reason for this; and this reason must be change of
hands at the editorial desk. You cannot surprise an
individual more than twice with the same marvel — not
even with the February miracles of the Southern
climate; but if you keep putting new hands at the
editorial desk every year or two, and forget to vacci
nate them against the annual climatic surprise, that
same old thing is going to occur right along. Each
year one new hand will have the disease, and be safe
from its recurrence ; but this does not save the news
paper. No, the newspaper is in as bad case as ever;
it will forever have its new hand; and so, it will break
out with the strawberry surprise every February as
long as it lives. The new hand is curable ; the news
paper itself is incurable. An act of Congress — no,
Congress could not prohibit the strawberry surprise
without questionably stretching its powers. An amend
ment to the Constitution might fix the thing, and that
is probably the best and quickest way to get at it.
Under authority of such an amendment, Congress
could then pass an act inflicting imprisonment for life
for the first offence, and some sort of lingering death
for subsequent ones; and this, no doubt, would pres
ently give us a rest. At the same time, the amend
ment and the resulting act and penalties might easily
be made to cover various cognate abuses, such as the
Annual-Veteran - who - has-Voted-for-Every- President-
from -Washington - down, - and - Walked - to-the-Polls-
Yesterday - with - as-Bright-an-Eye-and-as-Firm-a-Step-
as-Ever, and ten or eleven other weary yearly marvels
of that sort, and of the Oldest-Freemason, and Oldest-

Life on the Mississippi 445

Printer, and Oldest-Baptist-Preacher, and Oldest-Alum
nus sort, and Three-Children-Born-at-a-Birth sort, and
so on, and so on. And then England would take it
up and pass a lav/ prohibiting the further use of Sidney
Smith's jokes, and appointing a commissioner to con
struct some new ones. Then life would be a sweet
dream of rest and peace, and the nations would cease
to long for heaven.

But I wander from my theme. St. Paul is a won
derful town. It is put together in solid blocks of
honest brick and stone, and has the air of intending to
stay. Its post-office was established thirty-six years
ago ; and by and by, when the postmaster received a
letter, he carried it to Washington, horseback, to in
quire what was to be done with it. Such is the
legend. Two frame houses were built that year, and
several persons were added to the population. A
recent number of the leading St. Paul paper, the
Pioneer Press, gives some statistics which furnish a
vivid contrast to that old state of things, to wit: Popu
lation, autumn of the present year (1882), 71,000;
number of letters handled, first half of the year,
1,209,387; number of houses built during three-
quarters of the year, 989; their cost, $3,186,000.
The increase of letters over the corresponding six
months of last year was fifty per cent. Last year the
new buildings added to the city cost above $4,500.000.
St. Paul's strength lies in her commerce — I mean his
commerce. He is a manufacturing city, of course, —
all the cities of that region are, — but he is peculiarly
strong in the matter of commerce. Last year his job
bing trade amounted to upward of $52,000,000.

He has a custom-house, and is building a costly
capitol to replace the one recently burned — for he is
the capital of the State. He has churches without
end ; and not the cheap poor kind, but the kind that

446 Life on the Mississippi

the rich Protestant puts up, the kind that the poor
Irish " hired-girl" delights to erect. What a passion
for building majestic churches the Irish hired-girl has.
It is a fine thing for our architecture ; but too often we
enjoy her stately fanes without giving her a grateful
thought. In fact, instead of reflecting that "every
brick and every stone in this beautiful edifice repre
sents an ache or a pain, and a handful of sweat, and
hours of heavy fatigue, contributed by the back and
forehead and bones of poverty," it is our habit to for
get these things entirely, and merely glorify the mighty
temple itself, without vouchsafing one praiseful thought
to its humble builder, whose rich heart and withered
purse it symbolizes.

This is a land of libraries and schools. St. Paul has
three public libraries, and they contain, in the aggre
gate, some forty thousand books. He has one hundred
and sixteen school-houses, and pays out more than
seventy thousand dollars a year in teachers' salaries.

There is an unusually fine railway station ; so large
is it, in fact, that it seemed somewhat overdone, in the
matter of size, at first; but at the end of a few months
it was perceived that the mistake was distinctly the
other way. The error is to be corrected.

The town stands on high ground ; it is about seven
hundred feet above the sea-level. It is so high that a
wide view of river and lowland is offered from its
streets.

It is a very wonderful town, indeed, and is not
finished yet. All the streets are obstructed with build
ing material, and this is being compacted into houses
as fast as possible, to make room for more — for other
people are anxious to build, as soon as they can get
the use of the streets to pile up their bricks and stuff in.

How solemn and beautiful is the thought that the
earliest pioneer of civilization, the van-leader of civil-

Life on the Mississippi 447

ization, is never the steamboat, never the railroad,
never the newspaper, never the Sabbath-school, never
the missionary — but always whisky! Such is the
case. Look history over ; you will see. The mission
ary comes after the whisky — I mean he arrives after
the whisky has arrived ; next comes the poor immi
grant, with axe and hoe and rifle; next, the trader;
next, the miscellaneous rush; next, the gambler, the
desperado, the highwayman, and all their kindred in
sin of both sexes ; and next, the smart chap who has
bought up an old grant that covers all the land ; this
brings the lawyer tribe; the vigilance committee brings
the undertaker. All these interests bring the news
paper; the newspaper starts up politics and a railroad;
all hands turn to and build a church and a jail — and
behold ! civilization is established forever in the land.
But whisky, you see, was the van-leader in this bene
ficent work. It always is. It was like a foreigner —
and excusable in a foreigner — to be ignorant of this
great truth, and wander off into astronomy to borrow
a symbol. But if he had been conversant with the
facts, he would have said :

Westward the Jug of Empire takes its way.

This great van-leader arrived upon the ground which
St. Paul now occupies, in June, 1837. Yes» at tnat
date, Pierre Parrant, a Canadian, built the first cabin,
uncorked his jug, and began to sell whisky to the
Indians. The result is before us.

All that I have said of the newness, briskness, swift
progress, wealth, intelligence, fine and substantial
architecture, and general slash and go and energy of
St. Paul, will apply to his near neighbor, Minneapolis —
with the addition that the latter is the bigger of the
two cities.

These extraordinary towns were ten miles apart a

448 Life on the Mississippi

few months ago, but were growing so fast that they
may possibly be joined now and getting along under a
single mayor. At any rate, within five years from now
there will be at least such a substantial ligament of
buildings stretching between them and uniting them
that a stranger will not be able to tell where the one
Siamese twin leaves off and the other begins. Com
bined, they will then number a population of two
hundred and fifty thousand, if they continue to grow
as they are now growing. Thus, this center of popu-
lation, at the head of Mississippi navigation, will then
begin a rivalry as to numbers with that center of
population at the foot of it — New Orleans.

Minneapolis is situated at the falls of St. Anthony,
which stretch across the river fifteen hundred feet, and
have a fall of eighty-two feet — a water-power which,
by art, has been made of inestimable value, business-
wise, though somewhat to the damage of the Falls as a
spectacle, or as a background against which to get
your photograph taken.

Thirty flouring mills turn out two million barrels of
the very choicest of flour every year; twenty sawmills
produce two hundred million feet of lumber annually ;
then there are woolen mills, cotton mills, paper and
oil mills; and sash, nail, furniture, barrel, and other
factories, without number, so to speak. The great
flouring-mills here and at St. Paul use the " new pro
cess ' ' and mash the wheat by rolling, instead of
grinding it.

Sixteen railroads meet in Minneapolis, and sixty-five
passenger trains arrive and depart daily.

In this place, as in St. Paul, journalism thrives.
Here there are three great dailies, ten weeklies, and
three monthlies.

There is a university, with four hundred students — •
and, better still, its good efforts are not confined to

Life on the Mississippi 449

enlightening the one sex. There are sixteen public
schools, with buildings which cost five hundred thou
sand dollars; there are six thousand pupils and one
hundred and twenty-eight teachers. There are also
seventy churches existing, and a lot more projected.
The banks aggregate a capital of three million dollars,
and the wholesale jobbing trade of the town amounts
to fifty million dollars a year.

Near St. Paul and Minneapolis are several points of
interest — Fort Snelling, a fortress occupying a river
bluff a hundred feet high; the falls of Minnehaha;
White-bear Lake, and so forth. The beautiful falls of
Minnehaha are sufficiently celebrated — they do not
need a lift from me, in that direction. The White-
bear Lake is less known. It is a lovely sheet of water,
and is being utilized as a summer-resort by the wealth
and fashion of the State. It has its club-house, and
its hotel, with the modern improvements and conven
iences ; its fine summer residences ; and plenty of fish
ing, hunting, and pleasant drives. There are a dozen
minor summer resorts around about St. Paul and
Minneapolis, but the White-bear Lake is the resort.
Connected with White-bear Lake is a most idiotic
Indian legend. I would resist the temptation to print
it here, if I could, but the task is beyond my strength.
The guide-book names the preserver of the legend,
and compliments his "facile pen." Without further
comment or delay then, let us turn the said facile pen
loose upon the reader:

A LEGEND OF WHITE-BEAR LAKE.

Every spring, for perhaps a century, or as long as there has been a
nation of red men, an island in the middle of White-bear Lake has been
visited by a band of Indians for the purpose of making maple sugar.

Tradition says that many springs ago, while upon this island, a young
warrior loved and wooed the daughter of his chief, and it is said, also, the
99

450 Life on the Mississippi

maiden loved the warrior. He had again and again been refused her hand
by her parents, the old chief alleging that he was no brave, and his old con-
sort called him a woman 1

The sun had again set upon the " sugar-bush," and the bright moon
rose high in the bright blue heavens, when the young warrior took down his
flute and went out alone, once more to sing the story of his love; the mild
breeze gently moved the two gay feathers in his head-dress, and as he
mounted on the trunk of a leaning tree, the damp snow fell from his feet
heavily. As he raised his flute to his lips, his blanket slipped from his well-
formed shoulders, and lay partly on the snow beneath. He began his
weird, wild love song, but soon felt that he was cold, and as he reached
back for his blanket, some unseen hand laid it gently on his shoulders; it
was the hand of his love, his guardian angel. She took her place beside
him, and for the present they were happy; for the Indian has a heart to
love, and in this pride he is as noble as in his own freedom, which makes
him the child of the forest. As the legend runs, a large white bear, think
ing, perhaps, that polar snows and dismal winter weather extended every
where, took up his journey southward. He at length approached the
northern shore of the lake which now bears his name, walked down the
bank, and made his way noiselessly through the deep heavy snow toward
the island. It was the same spring ensuing that the lovers met. They had
left their first retreat, and were now seated among the branches of a large
elm which hung far over the lake. (The same tree is still standing, and
excites universal curiosity and interest.) For fear of being detected they
talked almost in a whisper, and now, that they might get back to camp in
good time and thereby avoid suspicion, they were just rising to return, when
the maiden uttered a shriek which was heard at the camp, and bounding
toward the young brave, she caught his blanket, but missed the direction of
her foot and fell, bearing the blanket with her into the great arms of the
ferocious monster. Instantly every man, woman, and child of the band
were upon the bank, but all unarmed. Cries and wailings went up from
every mouth. What was to be done? In the meantime this white and
savage beast held the breathless maiden in his huge grasp, and fondled with
his precious prey as if he were used to scenes like this. One deafening yell
from the lover warrior is heard above the cries of hundreds of his tribe, and
dashing away to his wigwam he grasps his faithful knife, returns almost at a
single bound to the scene of fear and fright, rushes out along the leaning
tree to the spot where his treasure fell, and springing with the fury of a mad
panther, pounced upon his prey. The animal turned, and with one stroke

Life on the Mississippi 451

of his huge paw brought the lovers heart to heart, but the next moment the
warrior, with one plunge of the blade of his knife, opened the crimson
sluices of death, and the dying bear relaxed his hold.

That night there was no more sleep for the band or the lovers, and as
the young and the old danced about the carcass of the dead monster, the
gallant warrior was presented with another plume, and ere another moon
had set he had a living treasure added to his heart. Their children for
many years played upon the skin of the white bear,— from which the lake
derives its name, — and the maiden and the brave remembered long the
fearful scene and rescue that made them one, for Kis-se-me-pa and Ka-go-ka
could never forget their fearful encounter with the huge monster that came
so near sending them to the happy hunting-ground.

It is a perplexing business. First, she fell down out
of the tree — she and the blanket ; and the bear caught
her and fondled her — her and the blanket ; then she
fell up into the tree again — leaving the blanket;
meantime the lover goes war-whooping home and
comes back "heeled," climbs the tree, jumps down
on the bear, the girl jumps down after him, — appa
rently, for she was up the tree, — resumes her place in
the bear's arms along with the blanket, the lover rams
his knife into the bear, and saves — whom? The
blanket? No — nothing of the sort. You get your
self all worked up and excited about that blanket, and
then all of a sudden, just when a happy climax seems
imminent, you are let down flat — nothing saved but
the girl! Whereas, one is not interested in the girl;
she is not the prominent feature of the legend. Never
theless, there you are left, and there you must remain ;
for if you live a thousand years you will never know
who got the blanket. A dead man could get up a
better legend than this one. I don't mean a fresh
dead man either; I mean a man that's been dead
weeks and weeks.

We struck the home-trail now, and in a few hours
were in that astonishing Chicago — a city where they
cc

452 Life on the Mississippi

are always rubbing the lamp, and fetching up the
genii, and contriving and achieving new impossibilities.
It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try to keep
up with Chicago — she outgrows his prophecies faster
than he can make them. She is always a novelty, for
she is never the Chicago you saw when you passed
through the last time. The Pennsylvania road rushed
us to New York without missing schedule time ten
minutes anywhere on the route ; and there ended one
of the most enjoyable five-thousand mile journeys I
have ever had the good fortune to make.

APPENDIX

[ From the New Orleans Times- Democrat of March 29, rSSg]

VOYAGE OF THE TIMES-DEMOCRAT'S RELIEF BOAT
THROUGH THE INUNDATED REGIONS

IT was nine o'clock Thursday morning when the Susie left the Missis
sippi and entered Old River, or what is now called the mouth of the Red.
Ascending on the left, a flood was pouring in through and over the levees
on the Chandler plantation, the most northern point in Point Coupee
parish. The water completely covered the place, although the levees had
given way but a short time before. The stock had been gathered in a large
flatboat, where, without food, as we passed, the animals were huddled
together, waiting for a boat to tow them off. On the right-hand side of the
river is TurnbulTs Island, and on it is a large plantation which formerly was
pronounced one of the most fertile in the State. The water has hitherto
allowed it to go scot-free in usual floods, but now broad sheets of water told
only where fields were. The top of the protective levee could be seen here
and there, but nearly all of it was submerged.

The trees have put on a greener foliage since the water has poured hi,
and the woods look bright and fresh, but this pleasant aspect to the eye is
neutralized by the interminable waste of water. We pass mile after mile,
and it is nothing but trees standing up to their branches in water. A water-
turkey now and again rises and flies ahead into the long avenue of silence.
A pirogue sometimes flits from the bushes and crosses the Red River on its
way out to the Mississippi, but the sad-faced paddlers never turn their heads
to look at our boat. The puffing of the boat is music in this gloom, which
affects one most curiously. It is not the gloom of deep forests or dark
u (453)

454 Life on the Mississippi

caverns, but a peculiar kind of solemn silence and impressive awe that holds
one perforce to its recognition. We passed two negro families on a raft
tied up in the willows this morning. They were evidently of the well-to-do
class, as they had a supply of meal and three or four hogs with them.
Their rafts were about twenty feet square, and in front of an improvised
shelter earth had been placed, on which they built their fire.

The current running down the Atchafalaya was very swift, the Mississippi
showing a predilection in that direction, which needs only to be seen to
enforce the opinion of that river's desperate endeavors to find a short way
to the Gulf. Small boats, skiffs, pirogues, etc., are in great demand, and
many have been stolen by piratical negroes, who take them where they will
bring the greatest price. From what was told me by Mr. C. P. Ferguson,
a planter near Red River Landing, whose place had just gene under, there
is much suffering in the rear of that place. The negroes had given up all
thoughts of a crevasse there, as the upper levee had stood so long, and
when it did come they were at its mercy. On Thursday a number were
taken out of trees and off cabin roofs and brought in, many yet remaining.

One does not appreciate the sight of earth until he has traveled through
a flood. At sea one does not expect or look for it, but here with fluttering
leaves, shadowy forest aisles, house-tops barely visible, it is expected. In
fact, a graveyard, if the mounds were above water, would be appreciated.
The river here is known only because there is an opening in the trees, and
that is all. It is in width, from Fort Adams on the left bank of the Missis
sippi to the bank of Rapides Parish, a distance of about sixty miles. A
large portion of this was under cultivation, particularly along the Mississippi
and back of the Red. When Red River proper was entered, a strong cur
rent was running directly 'across it, pursuing the same direction as that of
the Mississippi.

After a run of some hours, Black River was reached. Hardly was it
entered before signs of suffering became visible. All the willows along the
banks were stripped of their leaves. One man, whom your correspondent
spoke to, said that he had had one hundred and fifty head of cattle and one
hundred head of hogs. At the first appearance of water1 he had started to
drive them to the highlands of Avoyelles, thirty-five miles off, but he lost
fifty head of the beef cattle and sixty hogs. Black River is quite pictur
esque, even if its shores are under water. A dense growth of ash, oak,
gum, and hickory makes the shores almost impenetrable, and where one
can get a view down some avenue in the trees, only the dim outlines of dis
tant trunks can be barely distinguished in the gloom.

Life on the Mississippi 455

A few miles up this river, the depth of water on the banks was fully
eight feet, and on all sides could be seen, still holding against the strong
current, the tops of cabins. Here and there one overturned was surrounded
by driftwood, forming the nucleus of possibly some future island.

In order to save coal, as it was impossible to get that fuel at any point
to be touched during the expedition, a lookout was kept for a woodpile.
On rounding a point a pirogue, skillfully paddled by a youth, shot out, and
in its bow was a girl of fifteen, of fair face, beautiful black eyes, and demure
manners. The boy asked for a paper, which was thrown to him, and the
couple pushed their tiny craft out into the swell of the boat.

Presently a little girl, not certainly over twelve years, paddled out hi the
smallest little canoe and handled it with all the deftness of an old voyageur.
The little one looked more like an Indian than a white child, and laughed
when asked if she were afraid. She had been raised in a pirogue and could
go anywhere. She was bound out to pick willow leaves for the stock, and
she pointed to a house near by with water three inches deep on the floors.
At its back door was moored a raft about thirty feet square, with a sort of
fence built upon it, and inside of this some sixteen cows and twenty hogs
were standing. The family did not complain, except on account of losing
their stock, and promptly brought a supply of wood in a flat.

From this point to the Mississippi River, fifteen miles, there is not a
spot of earth above water, and to the westward for thirty-five miles there is
nothing but the river's flood. Black River had risen during Thursday, the
23d, I ^ inch, and was going up at night still. As we progress up the
river habitations become more frequent, but are yet still miles apart.
Nearly all of them are deserted, and the outhouses floated off. To add to
the gloom, almost every living thing seems to have departed, and not a
whistle of a bird nor the bark of a squirrel can be heard in the solitude.
Sometimes a morose gar will throw his tail aloft and disappear in the river,
but beyond this everything is quiet — the quiet of dissolution. Down the
river floats now a neatly whitewashed hen-house, then a cluster of neatly
split fence rails, or a door and a bloated carcass, solemnly guarded by a pair
of buzzards — the jnly bird to be seen— which feast on the carcass as it
bears them along. A picture-frame, in which there was a cheap lithograph
of a soldier on horseback, as it floated on told of some hearth invaded by
the water and despoiled of this ornament.

At dark, as it was not prudent to run, a place alongside the woods was
hunted, and to a tall gum tree the boat was made fast for the night.

A pretty quarter of the moon threw a pleasant light over forest and

456 Life on the Mississippi

river, making a picture that would be a delightful piece of landscape study,
could an artist only hold it down to his canvas. The motion of the engines
had ceased, the puffing of the escaping steam was stilled, and the envelop
ing silence closed upon us, and such silence it was ! Usually in a forest at
night one can hear the piping of frogs, the hum of insects, or the dropping
of limbs; but here Nature was dumb. The dark recesses, those aisles into
this cathedral, gave forth no sound, and even the ripplings of the current
die away.

At daylight, Friday morning, all hands were up, and up the Black we
started. The morning was a beautiful one, and the river, which is remark
ably straight, put on its loveliest garb. The blossoms of the haw perfumed
the air deliciously, and a few birds whistled blithely along the banks. The
trees were larger, and the forest seemed of older growth than below. More
fields were passed than nearer the mouth, but the same scene presented
itself — smokehouses drifting out in the pastures, negro quarters anchored
in confusion against some oak and the modest residence just showing its
eaves above water. The sun came up in a glory of carmine, and the trees
were brilliant in their varied shades of green. Not a foot of soil is to be
seen anywhere, and the water is apparently growing deeper and deeper, for
it reaches up to the branches of the largest trees. All along, the bordering
willows have been denuded of leaves, showing how long the people have
been at work gathering this fodder for their animals. An old man in a
pirogue was asked how the willow leaves agreed with his cattle. He stopped
in his work, and with an ominous shake of his head replied : " Well, sir, it's
enough to keep warmth in their bodies, and that's all we expect, but it's
hard on the hogs, particularly the small ones. They is dropping off power
ful fast, but what can you do? It's all we've got."

At thirty miles above the mouth of Black River the water extends from
Natchez on the Mississippi across to the pine hills of Louisiana, a distance of
seventy-three miles, and there is hardly a spot that is not ten feet under it.
The tendency of the current up the Black is toward the west. In fact, so
much is this the case, the waters of Red River have been driven down from
toward the Calcasieu country, and the waters of the Black enter the Red
some fifteen miles above the mouth of the former, a thing never before seen
by even the oldest steamboatmen. The water now in sight of us is entirely
from the Mississippi.

Up to Trinity, or rather Troy, which is but a short distance below, the
people have nearly all moved out, those remaining having enough for their
present personal needs. Their cattle, though, are suffering and dying off

Life on the Mississippi 457

quite fast, as the confinement on rafts and the food they get breed dis
ease.

After a short stop we started, and soon came to a section where there
were many open fields and cabins thickly scattered about. Here were seen
more pictures of distress. On the inside of the houses the inmates had
built on boxes a scaffold on which they placed the furniture. The bedposts
were sawed off on top, as the ceiling was not more than four feet from the
improvised floor. The buildings looked very insecure, and threaten every
moment to float off. Near the houses were cattle standing breast-high in
the water, perfectly impassive. They did not move in their places, but
stood patiently waiting for help to come. The sight was a distressing one,
and the poor creatures will be sure to die unless speedily rescued. Cattle
differ from horses in this peculiar quality. A horse, after finding no relief
comes, will swim off in search of food, whereas a beef will stand hi its
tracks until with exhaustion it drops in the water and drowns.

At half-past twelve o'clock a hail was given from a flatboat inside the
line of the bank. Rounding to we ran alongside, and General York
stepped aboard. He was just then engaged in getting off stock, and wel
comed the Times- Democrat boat heartily, as he said there was much need
for her. He said that the distress was not exaggerated in the least. People
were in a condition it was difficult even for one to imagine. The water
was so high there was great danger of their houses being swept away. It
had already risen so high that it was approaching the eaves, and when it
reaches this point there is always imminent risk of their being swept away.
If this occurs, there will be great loss of life. The general spoke of the
gallant work of many of the people in their attempts to save their stock,
but thought that fully twenty-five per cent, had perished. Already
twenty-five hundred people had received rations from Troy, on Black
River, and he had towed out a great many cattle, but a very great quantity
remained and were in dire need. The water was now eighteen inches
higher than in 1874, and there was no land between Vidalia and the hills
of Catahoula.

At two o'clock the Susie reached Troy, sixty-five miles above the mouth
of Black River. Here on the left comes in Little River; just beyond that
the Ouachita, and on the right the Tensas. These three rivers form the
Black River. Troy, or a portion of it, is situated on and around three
large Indian mounds, circular in shape, which rise above the present water
about twelve feet. They are about one hundred and fifty feet in diameter,
and are about two hundred yards apart. The houses are all built between

458 Life on the Mississippi

these mounds, and hence are all flooded to a depth of eighteen inches on
their floors.

These elevations, built by the aborigines hundreds of years ago, are the
only points of refuge for miles. When we arrived we found them crowded
with stock, all of which was thin and hardly able to stand up. They were
mixed together, sheep, hogs, horses, mules, and cattle. One of these
mounds has been used for many years as the graveyard, and to-day we saw
attenuated cows lying against the marble tombstones, chewing their cud in
contentment, after a meal of corn furnished by General York. Here, as
below, the remarkable skill of the women and girls in the management of
the smaller pirogues was noticed. Children were paddling about in these
most ticklish crafts with all the nonchalance of adepts.

General York has put into operation a perfect system in regard to fur
nishing relief. He makes a personal inspection of the place where it is
asked, sees what is necessary to be done, and then, having two boats
chartered, with flats, sends them promptly to the place, when the cattle are
loaded and towed to the pine hills and uplands of Catahoula. He has
made Troy his headquarters, and to this point boats come for their supply
of feed for cattle. On the opposite side of Little River, which branches to
the left out of Black, and between it and the Ouachita, is situated the town
of Trinity, which is hourly threatened with destruction. It is much lower
than Troy, and the water is eight and nine feet deep in the houses. A
strong current sweeps through it, and it is remarkable that all of its houses
have not gone before. The residents of both Troy and Trinity have been
cared for, yet some of their stock have to be furnished with food.

As soon as the Susie reached Troy she was turned over to General York,
and placed at his disposition to carry out the work of relief more rapidly.
Nearly all her supplies were landed on one of the mounds to lighten her,
and she was headed down stream to relieve those below. At Tom Hooper's
place, a few miles from Troy, a large flat, with about fifty head of stock on
board, was taken in tow. The animals were fed, and soon regained some
strength. To-day we go on Little River, where the suffering is greatest.

DOWN BLACK RIVER

SATURDAY EVENING, March 25.

We started down Black River quite early, under the direction of General
York, to bring out what stock could be reached. Going down river a flat in
tow was left in a central locality, and from there men poled her back in the

Life on the Mississippi 459

rear of plantations, picking up the animals wherever found. In the loft of
a gin-house there were seventeen head found, and, after a gangway was
built, they were led down into the flat without difficulty. Taking a skiff
with the General, your reporter was pulled up to a little house of two rooms,
in which the water was standing two feet on the floors. In one of the large
rooms were huddled the horses and cows of the place, while in the other
the Widow Taylor and her son were seated on a scaffold raised on the floor.
One or two dugouts were drifting about in the room, ready to be put in
service at any time. When the flat was brought up, the side of the house
was cut away as the only means of getting the animals out, and the cattle
were driven on board the boat. General York, in this as in every case,
inquired if the family desired to leave, informing them that Major Burke of
the Times-Democrat has sent the Susie up for that purpose. Mrs. Taylor
said she thanked Major Burke, but she would try and hold out. The re
markable tenacity of the people here to their homes is beyond all compre
hension. Just below, at a point sixteen miles from Troy, information was
received that the house of Mr. Tom Ellis was in danger, and his family
were all in it. We steamed there immediately, and a sad picture was pre
sented. Looking out of the half of the window left above water was Mrs.
Ellis, who is in feeble health, while at the door were her seven children,
the oldest not fourteen years. One side of the house was given up to the
work animals, some twelve head, besides hogs. In the next room the family
lived, the water coming within two inches of the bedrail. The stove
was below water, and the cooking was done on a fire on top of it. The
house threatened to give way at any moment; one end of it was sinking,
and, in fact, the building looked like a mere shell. As the boat rounded
to, Mr. Ellis came out in a dugout, and General York told him that he had
come to his relief; that the Times-Democrat boat was at his service and
would remove his family at once to the hills, and on Monday a flat would
take out his stock, as, until that time, they would be busy. Notwithstand
ing the deplorable situation himself and family were in, Mr. Ellis did not
want to leave. He said he thought he would wait until Monday, and take
the risk of his house falling. The children around the door looked per
fectly contented, seeming to care little for the danger they were in. These
are but two instances of the many. After weeks of privation and suffering
people still cling to their houses, and leave only when there is not room be
tween the water and the ceiling to build a scaffold on which to stand. It
seemed to be incomprehensible, yet the love for the old place was strongei
than that for safety.

460 Life on the Mississippi

After leaving the Ellis place, the next spot touched at was the Oswald
place. Here the flat was towed alongside the gin-house, where there were
fifteen head standing in water; and yet, as they stood on scaffolds, their
heads were above the top of the entrance. It was found impossible to get
them out without cutting away a portion of the front; and so axes were
brought into requisition and a gap made. After much labor the horses and
mules were securely placed on the flat.

At each place we stop there are always three, four, or more dugouts
arriving, bringing information of stock in other places in need. Notwith
standing the fact that a great many had driven a part of their stock to the
hills some time ago, there yet remains a large quantity, which General York,
who is working with indomitable energy, will get landed in the pine hills
by Tuesday.

All along Black River the Susie has been visited by scores of planters,
whose tales are the repetition of those already heard of suffering and loss.
An old planter, who has lived on the river since 1844, said there never was
such a rise, and he was satisfied more than one-quarter of the stock has
been lost. Luckily the people cared first for their work stock, and, when
they could find it horses and mules were housed in a place of safety. The
rise, which still continues and was two inches last night, compels them to
get them out to the hills; hence it is that the work of General York is of
such a great value. From daylight to late at night he is going this way and
that, cheering by his kindly words and directing with calm judgment what
is to be done. One unpleasant story,of a certain merchant in New Orleans,
is told all along the river. It appears for some years past the planters have
been dealing with this individual, and many of them had balances in his
hands. When the overflow came they wrote for coffee, for meal, and, in
fact, for such little necessities as were required. No response to these let
ters came, and others were written, and yet these old customers, with
plantations under water, were refused even what was necessary to sustain
life. It is needless to say he is not popular now on Black River.

The hills spoken of as the place of refuge for the people and stock on
Black River are in Catahoula parish, twenty- four miles from Black River.

After filling the flat with cattle we took on board the family of T. S.
Hooper, seven in number, who could not longer remain hi their dwelling,
and we are now taking them up Little River to the hills.

Life on the Mississippi 461

THE FLOOD STILL RISING

TROY, March 27, 1882, noon.

The flood here is rising about three and a half inches eveiy twenty-four
hours, and rains have set in which will increase this. General York feels
now that our efforts ought to be directed toward saving life, as the increase
of the water has jeopardized many houses. We intend to go up the Tensas
in a few minutes, and then we will return and go down Black River to take
off families. There is a lack of steam transportation here to meet the
emergency. The General has three boats chartered with flats in tow. but
the demand for these to tow out stock is greater than they can meet with
promptness. All are working night and day, and the Susie hardly stops for
more than an hour anywhere. The rise has placed Trinity in a dangerous
plight, and momentarily it is expected that some of the houses will float off.
Troy is a little higher, yet all are in the water. Reports have come hi that
a woman and child have been washed away below here, and two cabins
floated off. Their occupants are the same who refused to come off day
before yesterday. One would not believe the utter passiveness of the
people.

As yet no news has been received of the steamer Delia, which is sup
posed to be the one sunk in yesterday's storm on Lake Catahoula. She is
due here now, but has not arrived. Even the mail here is most uncertain,
and this I send by skiff to Natchez to get it to you. It is impossible to get
accurate data as to past crops, etc., as those who know much about the
matter have gone, and those who remain are not well versed in the produc
tion of this section.

General York desires me to say that the amount of rations formerly sent
should be duplicated and sent at once. It is impossible to make any esti
mate, for the people are fleeing to the hills, so rapid is the rise. The resi
dents here are in a state of commotion that can only be appreciated when
seen, and complete demoralization has set in.

If rations are drawn for any particular section hereabouts they would not
be certain to be distributed, so everything should be sent to Troy as a center,
and the General will have it properly disposed of. He has sent for one
hundred tents, and, if all go to the hills who are in motion now, two hun
dred will be required.

THE condition of this rich valley of the Lower Mississippi, immediately
after and since the war, constituted one of the disastrous effects of war most
to be deplored. Fictitious property in slaves was not only righteously
destroyed, but very much of the work which had depended upon the slave
labor was also destroyed or greatly impaired, especially the levee system.

It might have been expected, by those who have not investigated the
subject, that such important improvements as the construction and mainte
nance of the levees would have been assumed at once by the several States.
But what can the State do where the people are under subjection to rates of
interest ranging from eighteen to thirty per cent., and are also under the
necessity of pledging their crops in advance even of planting, at these
rates, for the privilege of purchasing all of their supplies at one hundred per
cent, profit?

It has needed but little attention to make it perfectly obvious that the
control of the Mississippi River, if undertaken at all, must be undertaken
by the national Government, and cannot be compassed by States. The
river must be treated as a unit ; its control cannot be compassed under a
divided or separate system of administration.

Neither are the States especially interested competent to combine among
themselves for the necessary operations. The work must begin far up the
river; at least as far as Cairo, if not beyond, and must be conducted upon a
onsistent general plan throughout the course of the river.

tt does not need technical or scientific knowledge to comprehend the
elements of the case, if one will give a little time and attention to the sub
ject: and when a Mississippi River commission has been constituted, as the
existing commission is, of thoroughly able men of different walks in life,
may it not be suggested that their verdict in the case should be accepted as
conclusive, so far as any a priori theory of construction or control can be
considered conclusive?

It should be remembered that upon this board are General Gilrnore,

(462)

Life on the Mississippi 463

General Comstock, and General Suter of the United States Engineers;
Professor Henry Mitchell (the most competent authority on the question of
hydrography) of the United States Coast Survey; B. B. Harrod, the State
Engineer of Louisiana; Jas. B. Eads, whose success with the jetties at New
Orleans is a warrant of his competency, and Judge Taylor of Indiana.

It would be presumption on the part of any single man, however skilled,
to contest the judgment of such a board as this.

The method of improvement proposed by the commission is at once in
accord with the results of engineering experience and with observations of
nature where meeting our wants. As in nature the growth of trees and
their proneness, where undermined, to fall across the slope and support the
bank secure at some points a fair depth of channel and some degree of per
manence; so, in the project of the engineer, the use of timber and brush
and the encouragement of forest growth are the main features. It is pro
posed to reduce the width, where excessive, by brushwood dykes, at first
low, but raised higher and higher as the mud of the river settles under their
shelter, and finally slope them back at the angle upon which willows will
grow freely. In this work there are many details connected with the forms
of these shelter dykes, their arrangements so as to present a series of settling
basins, etc., a description of which would only complicate the conception.
Through the larger part of the river works of contraction will not be
required, but nearly all the banks on the concave side of the bends must be
held against the wear of the stream, and much of the opposite banks de
fended at critical points. The works having in view this conservative
object may be generally designated works of revetment; and these also will
be largely of brushwood, woven in continuous carpets, or twined into wire
netting. This veneering process has been successfully employed on the
Missouri River; and in some cases they have so covered themselves with
sediments, and have become so overgrown with willows, that they may be
regarded as permanent. In securing these mats rubblestone is to be used
in small quantities, and in some instances the dressed slope between high
and. low river will have to be more or less paved with stone.

Anyone who has been on the Rhine will have observed operations not
unlike those to which we have just referred; and, indeed, most of the rivers
of Europe flowing among their own alluvia have required similar treatment
in the interest of navigation and agriculture.

The levee is the crowning work of bank revetment, although not neces
sarily in immediate connection. It may be set back a short distance from
the revetted bank; but it is, in effect, the requisite parapet. The flood

464 Life on the Mississippi

river and the low river cannot be brought into register, and compelled to
tmite in the excavation of a single permanent channel, without a complete
control of afl the stages; and even the abnormal rise must be provided
against, because this would endanger the levee, and once in force behind
the works of revetment, would tear them also away.

Under the general principle that the local slope of a river is the result
and measure of the resistance of its bed, it is evident that a narrow and
deep stream should have less slope, because it has less factional surface in
proportion to capacity; i. e.t less perimeter in proportion to area of cross
section. The ultimate effect of levees and revetments, confining the fioods
and bringing all the stages of the river into registry, is to deepen the chan
nel and let down the slope. The first effect of the levees is to raise the
surface; but this, by inducing greater velocity of flow, inevitably causes an
enlargement of section, and if this enlargement is prevented from being
made at the expense of the banks, the bottom must give way and the form
of the waterway be so improved as to admit this flow with less rise. The
actual experience with levees upon the Mississippi River, with no attempt to
hold the banks, has been favorable, and no one can doubt, upon the evi
dence furnished in the reports of the commission, that if the earliest levees
had been accompanied by revetment of banks, and made complete, we
should have to-day a river navigable at low water and an adjacent country
safe from inundation.

Of course it would be illogical to conclude that the constrained river can
ever lower its flood slope so as to make levees unnecessary, but it is believed
that, by this lateral constraint, the river as a conduit may be so improved in
form that even those rare floods which result from the coincident rising of
many tributaries will find vent without destroying levees of ordinary height.
That the actual capacity of a channel through alluvium depends upon its
service during floods has been often shown, but this capacity does not
include anomalous, but recurrent, fioods.

It is hardly worth while to consider the projects for relieving the Missis
sippi River floods by creating new outlets, since these sensational propo
sitions have commended themselves only to unthinking minds, and have no
support among engineers. Were the river-bed cast-iron, a resort to open
ings for surplus waters might be a necessity; but as the bottom is yielding,
and the best forro of outlet is a single deep channel, as realizing the least
ratio of perimeter to area of cross section, there could not well be a more
unphilosophical method of treatment than the multiplication of avenues of
escape.

Life on the Mississippi 465

the subiect would permit, the general
; of the problem, and the general features of the proposed method

_ j ^_ _a » At.—. •%f?J.JTJ.Jr * T*-

•ooptcu of CDC M •**>•**>* j^* juw

The voter cannot help feefing that it h vuuMLmbM. prrmmiliii MS on his

to present the fads relating to an fulfiptisfc which cafls tor

tdic United Slates, and is one of the methods of mi MB! racUu^ which ought

It is a war *'!••••» wlk«Jk nnpfies no private gain, and no
eitcpt for one of the cases of dcbiiULl»jfl im'idrnt to war
wdl he repaired by the people of the

i, Aprfl 14, ittz.

RECEPTION OF CAPTAIN BASIL HALL'S BOOK IN THE
UNITED STATES

HAVING now arrived nearly at the end of our travels, I am induced, ere
I conclude, again to mention what I consider as one of the most remarkable
traits in the national character of the Americans : namely, their exquisite
sensitiveness and soreness respecting everything said or written concerning
them. Of this, perhaps, the most remarkable example I can give is the
effect produced on nearly every class of readers by the appearance of Cap
tain Basil Hall's "Travels in North America." In fact, it was a sort of
moral earthquake, and the vibration it occasioned through the nerves of the
republic, from one corner of the Union to the other, was by no means over
when I left the country in July, 1831, a couple of years after the shock.

I was in Cincinnati when these volumes came out, but it was not till
July, 1830, that I procured a copy of them. One bookseller to whom I
applied told me that he had had a few copies before he understood the
nature of the work, but that, after becoming acquainted with it, nothing
should induce him to sell another. Other persons of his profession must,
however, have been less scrupulous; for the book was read in city, town,
village, and hamlet, steamboat and stage-coach, and a sort of war-whoop
was sent forth perfectly unprecedented in my recollection upon any occa
sion whatever.

An ardent desire for approbation, and a delicate sensitiveness under
censure, have always, I believe, been considered as amiable traits of char
acter, but the condition into which the appearance of Captain Hall's work
threw the republic shows plainly that these feelings, if carried to excess,
produce a weakness which amounts to imbecility.

It was perfectly astonishing to hear men, who, on other subjects, were
of some judgment, utter their opinions upon this. I never heard of any
instance in which the common sense generally found in national criticism

(466)

Life on the Mississippi 467

was so overthrown by passion. I do not speak of the want of justice, and
of fair and liberal interpretation: these, perhaps, were hardly to be ex-
pected. Other nations have been called thin-skinned, but the citizens of
the Union have, apparently, no skins at all; they wince if a breeze blows
over them, unless it be tempered with adulation. It was not, therefore,
very surprising that the acute and forcible observations of a traveler they
knew would be listened to should be received testily. The extraordinary
features of the business were, first, the excess of the rage into which they
lashed themselves; 'and, secondly, the puerility of the inventions by which
they attempted to account for the severity with which they fancied they had
been treated.

Not content with declaring that the volumes contained no word of truth
from beginning to end (which is an assertion I heard made very nearly as
often as they were mentioned), the whole country set to work to discover
the causes why Captain Hall had visited the United States, and why he had
published his book.

I have heard it said with as much precision and gravity as if the state
ment had been conveyed by an official report, that Captain Hall had been
sent out by the British Government expressly for the purpose of checking
the growing admiration of England for the government of the United States
— that it was by a commission from the Treasury he had come, and that it
was only in obedience to orders that he had found anything to object to.

I do not give this as the gossip of a coterie; I am persuaded that it is
the belief of a very considerable portion of the country. So deep is the con
viction of this singular people that they cannot be seen without being
admired, that they will not admit the possibility that any one should honestly
and sincerely find aught to disprove in them or their country.

The American Reviews are, many of them, I believe, well known in
England; I need not, therefore, quote them here, but I sometimes won
dered that they, none of them, ever thought of translating Obadiah's curse
into classic American; if they had done so, on placing [he, Basil Hall]
between brackets, instead of [he, Obadiah] it would have saved them a
world of trouble.

I can hardly describe the curiosity with which I sat down at length to
peruse these tremendous volumes; still less can I do justice to my surprise
at their contents. To say that I have found not one exaggerated statement
throughout the work is by no means saying enough. It is impossible for
any one who knows the country not to see that Captain Hall earnestly
sought out things to admire and commend. When he praises, it is with
DD

468 Life on the Mississippi

evident pleasure; and when he finds fault, it is with evident reluctance and
restraint, excepting where motives purely patriotic urge him to state roundly
what it is for the benefit of his country should be known.

In fact, Captain Hall saw the country to the greatest possible advantage.
Furnished, of course, with letters of introduction to the most distinguished
individuals, and with the still more influential recommendation of his own
reputation, he was received in full drawing-room style and state from one
end of the Union to the other. He saw the country in full dress, and had
little or no opportunity of judging of it unhouselled, unanointed, unan-
nealed, with all its imperfections on its head, as I and my family too often
had.

Captain Hall had certainly excellent opportunities of making himself
acquainted with the form of the government and the laws; and of receiving,
moreover, the best oral commentary upon them, in conversation with the
most distinguished citizens. Of these opportunities he made excellent use;
nothing important met his eye which did not receive that sort of analytical
attention which an experienced and philosophical traveler alone can give.
This has made his volumes highly interesting and valuable; but I am deeply
persuaded that, were a man of equal penetration to visit the United States
with no other means of becoming acquainted with the national character
than the ordinary working-day intercourse of life, he would conceive an
infinitely lower idea of the moral atmosphere of the country than Captain
Hall appears to have done; and the internal conviction on my mind is strong
that, if Captain Hall had not placed a firm restraint on himself, he must
have given expression to far deeper indignation than any he has uttered
against many points in the American character, with which he shows from
other circumstances that he was well acquainted. His rule appears to have
been to state just so much of the truth as would leave on the mind of his
readers a correct impression, at the least cost of pain to the sensitive folks
he was writing about. He states his own opinions and feelings, and leaves
it to be inferred that he has good grounds for adopting them; but he spares
the Americans the bitterness which a detail of the circumstances would have
produced.

If any one chooses to say that some wicked antipathy to twelve millions
of strangers is the origin of my opinion, I must bear it; and were the ques
tion one of mere idle speculation, I certainly would not court the abuse I
must meet for stating it. But it is not so.

The candor which he expresses, and evidently feels, they mistake fot

Life on the Mississippi 469

irony, or totally distrust; his unwillingness to give pain to persons from
whom he has received kindness, they scornfully reject as affectation; and
although they must know right well, in their own secret hearts, how in
finitely more they lay at his mercy than he has chosen to betray, they pre
tend, even to themselves, that he has exaggerated the bad points of their
character and institutions; whereas, the truth is that he has let them off
with a degree of tenderness which may be quite suitable for him to exercise,
however little merited; while, at the same time, he has most industriously
magnified their merits, whenever he era Id possibly find anything favorable.

THE UNDYING HEAD

IN a remote part of the North lived a man and his sister, who had never
seen a human being. Seldom, if ever, had the man any cause to go from
home; for, as his wants demanded food, he had only to go a little distance
from the lodge, and there, in some particular spot, place his arrows, with
their barbs in the ground. Telling his sister where they had been placed,
every morning she would go in search, and never fail of finding each stuck
through the heart of a deer. She had then only to drag them into the lodge
and prepare their food. Thus she lived till she attained womanhood, when
one day her brother, whose name was lamo, said to her: " Sister, the time
is at hand when you will be ill. Listen to my advice. If you do not, it
will probably be the cause of my death. Take the implements with which
we kindle our fires. Go some distance from our lodge and build a separate
fire. When you are in want of food, I will tell you where to find it. You
must cook for yourself, and I will for myself. When you are ill, do not
attempt to come near the lodge, or bring any of the utensils you use. Be
sure always to fasten to your belt the implements you need, for you do not
know when the time will come. As for myself, I must do the best I can."
His sister promised to obey him in all he had said.

Shortly after, her brother had cause to go from home. She was alone
in her lodge combing her hair. She had just untied the belt to which the
implements were fastened, when suddenly the event to which her brother
had alluded occurred. She ran out of the lodge, but in her haste forgot the
belt. Afraid to return, she stood for some time thinking. Finally, she
decided to enter the lodge and get it. For, thought she, my brother is not
at home, and I will stay but a moment to catch hold of it. She went back.
Running in suddenly, she caught hold of it, and was coming out when her
brother came in sight. He knew what was the matter. "Oh," he said,
"did I not tell you to take care? But now you have killed me." She

(470)

Life on the Mississippi 471

was going on her way, but her brother said to her, " What can you do there
now? The accident has happened. Go in, and stay where you have
always stayed. And what will become of you? You have killed me."

He then laid aside his hunting-dress and accoutrements, and soon after
both his feet began to turn black, so that he could not move. Still he
directed his sister where to place the arrows, that she might always have
food. The inflammation continued to increase, and had now reached his first
rib; and he said, " Sister, my end is near. You must do as I tell you. You
see my medicine-sack, and my war-club tied to it. It contains all my medi
cines, and my war-plumes, and my paints of all colors. A soon as the
inflammation reaches my breast, you will take my war-club. It has a sharp
point, and you will cut off my head. When it is free from my body, take
it, place its neck in the sack, which you must open at one end. Then hang
it up in its former place. Do not forget my bow and arrows. One of the
last you will take to procure food. The remainder tie in my sack, and then
hang it up, so that I can look toward the door. Now and then I will speak
to you, but not often." His sister again promised to obey.

In a little time his breast was affected. " Now," said he, " take the
club and strike off my head." She was afraid, but he told her to muster
courage. *' Strike ! " said he, and a smile was on his face. Mustering all
her courage, she gave the blow and cut off the head. "Now," said the
head, " place me where I told you." And fearfully she obeyed it in all its
commands. Retaining its animation, it looked around the lodge as usual,
and it would command its sister to go in such places as it thought would
procure for her the flesh of different animals she needed. One day the head
said: "The time is not distant when I shall be freed from this situation,
and I shall have to undergo many sore evils. So the superior manito
decrees, and I must bear all patiently." In this situation we must leave the
head.

In a certain part of the country was a village inhabited by a numerous
and warlike band of Indians. In this village was a family of ten young
men — brothers. It was in the spring of the year that the youngest of these
blackened his face and fasted. His dreams were propitious. Having
ended his fast, he went secretly for his brothers at night, so that none in
the village could overhear or find out the direction they intended to go.
Though their drum was heard, yet that was a common occurrence. Having
ended the usual formalities, he told how favorable his dreams were, and
that he had called them together to know if they would accompany him in
a war excursion. They all answered they would. The third brother from

472 Life on the Mississippi

the eldest, noted for his oddities, coming up with his war-club when his
brother had ceased speaking, jumped up. "Yes," said he, " I will go,
and this will be the way I will treat those I am going to fight;" and he
struck the post in the center of the lodge, and gave a yell. The others
spoke to him saying: "Slow, slow, Mudjikewis! when you are in other
people's lodges." So he sat down. Then, in turn, they took the drum,
and sang their songs, and closed with a feast. The youngest told them not
to whisper their intention to their wives, but secretly to prepare for their
journey. They all promised obedience, and Mudjikewis was the first to
say so.

The time for their departure drew near. Word was given to assemble
on a certain night, when they would depart immediately. Mudjikewis was
loud in his demands for his moccasins. Several times his wife asked him
the reason. " Besides," said she, " you have a good pair on." " Quick,
quick!" said he, " since you must know, we are going on a war ex
cursion; so be quick." He thus revealed the secret. That night they met
and started. The snow was on the ground, and they traveled all night, lest
others should follow them. When it was daylight, the leader took snow
and made a ball of it, then tossing it into the air, he said: " It was in this
way I saw snow fall in a dream, so that I could not be tracked." And he
told them to keep close to each other for fear of losing themselves, as the
snow began to fall in very large flakes. Near as they walked, it was with
difficulty they could see each other. The snow continued falling all that
day and the following night, so it was impossible to track them.

They had now walked for several days, and Mudjikewis was always in
the rear. One day, running suddenly forward, he gave the saw-saw-yuan,*
and struck a tree with his war-club, and it broke into pieces as if struck with
lightning. " Brothers," said he, " this will be the way I will serve those
we are going to fight." The leader answered, " Slow, slow, Mudjikewis !
The one I lead you to is not to be thought of so lightly." Again he fell
back and thought to himself: " What ! what ! Who can this be he is lead
ing us to?" He felt fearful, and was silent. Day after day they traveled
on, till they came to an extensive plain, on the borders of which human
bones were bleaching in the sun. The leader spoke : " They are the bones
of those who have gone before us. None has ever yet returned to tell the sad
tale of their fate." Again Mudjikewis became restless, and, running for
ward, gave the accustomed yell. Advancing to a large rock which stood
above the ground, he struck it, and it fell to pieces. "See, brothers,"

* War-whoop.

Life on the Mississippi 473

said ae, " thus will I treat those whom we are going to fight." " Still,
still ! " once more said the leader. " He to whom I am leading you is not
to be compared to the rock."

Mudjikewis fell back thoughtful, saying to himself: "I wonder who
this can be that he is going to attack; " and he was afraid. Still they con-
tinued to see the remains of former warriors, who had been to the place
where they were now going, some of whom had retreated as far back as the
place where they first saw the bones, beyond which no one had ever
escaped. At last they came to a piece of rising ground, from which they
plainly distinguished, sleeping on a distant mountain, a mammoth bear.

The distance between them was very great, but the size of the animal
caused him to be plainly seen. "There!" said the leader, "it is he to
whom I am leading you; here our troubles will commence, for he is a
mishemokwa and a manito. It is he who has that we prize so dearly (i. e.t
wampum), to obtain which the warriors whose bones we saw sacrificed theii
lives. You must not be fearful; be manly. We shall find him asleep."
Then the leader went forward and touched the belt around the animal's
neck. "This," said he, "is what we must get. It contains the wam
pum." Then they requested the eldest to try and slip the belt over the
bear's head, who appeared to be fast asleep, as he was not in the least dis
turbed by the attempt to obtain the belt. All their efforts were in vain, till
it came to the one next the youngest. He tried, and the belt moved nearly
over the monster's head, but he could get it no farther. Then the youngest
one, and the leader, made his attempt, and succeeded. Placing it on the
back of the oldest, he said, "Now we must run," and off they started.
When one became fatigued with its weight, another would relieve him.
Thus they ran till they had passed the bones of all former warriors, and
were some distance beyond, when, looking back, they saw the monster
slowly rising. He stood some time before he missed his wampum. Soon
they heard his tremendous howl, like distant thunder; slowly filling all the
sky; and then they heard him speak and say, " Who can it be that has
dared to steal my wampum? Earth is not so large but that I can find
them;" and he descended from the hill in pursuit. As if convulsed, the
earth shook, with every jump he made. Very soon he approached the
party. They, however, kept the belt, exchanging it from one to another,
and encouraging each other; but he gained on them fast. " Brothers,"
said the leader, " has never any one of you, when fasting, dreamed of some
friendly spirit who would aid you as a guardian?" A dead silence fol
lowed. ' « Well, ' ' said he, ' « fasting, I dreamed of being in danger of instant

474 Life on the Mississippi

death, when I saw a small lodge, with smoke curling from its top, An old
man lived in it, and I dreamed he helped me; and may it be verified soon,"
he said, running forward and giving the peculiar yell, and a howl as if the
sounds came from the depth of his stomach, and what is called checaudum.
Getting upon a piece of rising ground, behold ! a lodge, with smoke curling
from its top, appeared. This gave them all new strength, and they ran for
ward and entered it. The leader spoke to the old man who sat in the lodge,
saying, "Nemesho, help us; we claim your protection, for the great bear
will kill us." "Sit down and eat, my grandchildren," said the old man.
" Who is a great manito? " said he. " There is none but me; but let me
look," and he opened the door of the lodge, when lo ! at a little distance he
saw the enraged animal coming on, with slow but powerful leaps. He
closed the door. " Yes," said he, "he is indeed a great manito. My
grandchildren, you will be the cause of my losing my life; you asked my
protection, and I granted it; so now, come what may, I will protect you.
When the bear arrives at the door, you must run out of the other door of
the lodge." Then putting his hand to the side of the lodge where he sat,
he brought out a bag which he opened. Taking out two small black dogs,
he placed them before him. "These are the ones I use when I fight,"
said he; and he commenced patting with both hands the sides of one of
them, and he began to swell out, so that he soon filled the lodge by his
bulk; and he had great strong teeth. When he attained his full size he
growled, and from that moment, as from instinct, he jumped out at the
door and met the bear, who in another leap would have reached the lodge.
A terrible combat ensued. The skies rang with the howls of the fierce
monsters. The remaining dog soon took the field. The brothers, at the
onset, took the advice of the old man, and escaped through the opposite
side of the lodge. They had not proceeded far before they heard the dying
cry of one of the dogs, and, soon after, of the other. " Well," said the
leader, "the old man will share their fate; so run; he will soon be after
us." They started with fresh vigor, for they had received food from the
old man; but very soon the bear came hi sight, and again was fast gaining
upon them. Again the leader asked the brothers if they could do nothing
for their safety. All were silent. The leader, running forward, did as
before. " I dreamed," he cried, " that, being in great trouble, an old man
helped me who was a manito; we shall soon see his lodge." Taking
courage, they still went on. After going a short distance they saw the
lodge of the old manito. They entered immediately and claimed his pro
tection, telling him a manito was after them. The old man, setting meat

Life on the Mississippi 475

before them, said: "Eat! Who is a manito? There is no manito but
me; there is none whom I fear;" and the earth trembled as the monster
advanced. The old man opened the door and saw him coming. He shut
it slowly, and said: "Yes, my grandchildren, you have brought trouble
upon me." Procuring his medicine-sack, he took out his small war-clubs
of black stone, and told the young men to run through the other side of the
lodge. As he handled the clubs, they became very large, and the old man
stepped out just as the bear reached the door. Then striking him with one
of the clubs, it broke in pieces; the bear stumbled. Renewing the attempt
with the other war-club, that also was broken, but the bear fell senseless.
Each blow the old man gave him sounded like a clap of thunder, and the
howls of the bear ran along till they filled the heavens.

The young men had now run some distance, when they looked back.
They could see that the bear was recovering from the blows. First he
moved his paws, and soon they saw him rise on his feet. The old man
shared the fate of the first, for they now heard his cries as he was torn in
pieces. Again the monster was in pursuit, and fast overtaking them. Not
yet discouraged, the young men kept on their way; but the bear was now
so close that the leader once more applied to his brothers, but they could do
nothing. "Well," said he, "my dreams will soon be exhausted; after
this I have but one more." He advanced, invoking his guardian spirit to
aid him. "Once," said he, " I dreamed that, being sorely pressed, I came
to a large lake, on the shore of which was a canoe, partly out of water,
having ten paddles all in readiness. Do not fear," he cried, "we shall
soon get it." And so it was, even as he had said. Coming to the lake, they
saw the canoe with ten paddles, and immediately they embarked. Scarcely
had they reached the center of the lake, when they saw the bear arrive at
its borders. Lifting himself on his hind legs, he looked all around. Then
he waded into the water; then, losing his footing, he turned back, and
commenced making the circuit of the lake. Meantime the party remained
stationary in the center to watch his movements. He traveled all around,
till at last he came to the place from whence he started. Then he com
menced drinking up the water, and they saw the current fast setting in
toward his open mouth. The leader encouraged them to paddle hard for
the opposite shore. When only a short distance from the land, the current
had increased so much that they were drawn back by it, and all their efforts
to reach it were in vain.

Then the leader again spoke, telling them to meet their fates manfully.
" Now is the tune, Mudjikewis," said he, " to show your prowess. Take

476 Life on the Mississippi

courage and sit at the bow of the canoe; and when it approaches his mouth,
try what effect your club will have on his head." He obeyed, and stood
ready fo give the blow; while the leader, who steered, directed the canoe
for the open mouth of the monster.

Rapidly advancing, they were just about to enter his mouth, when
Mudjikewis struck him a tremendous blow on the head, and gave the saw-
saw-quan. The bear's limbs doubled under him, and he fell, stunned by
the blow. But before Mudjikewis could renew it, the monster disgorged all
the water he had drank, with a force which sent the canoe with great
velocity to the opposite shore. Instantly leaving the canoe, again they fled,
and on they went till they were completely exhausted. The earth again
shook, and soon they saw the monster hard after them. Their spirits
drooped, and they felt discouraged. The leader exerted himself, by actions
and words, to cheer them up; and once more he asked them if they
thought of nothing, or could do nothing for their rescue; and, as before,
all were silent. " Then," he said, " this is the last time I can apply to my
guardian spirit. Now, if we do not succeed, our fates are decided." Re
ran forward, invoking his spirit with great earnestness, and gave the yell.
"We shall soon arrive,'5 said he to his brothers, " at the place where my
last guardian spirit dwells. In him I place great confidence. Do not, do
not be afraid, or your limbs will be fear -bound. We shall soon reach his
lodge. Run, run! "he cried.

Returning now to lamo, he had passed all the time in the same con
dition we had left him, the head directing his sister, in order to procure
food, where to place the magic arrows, and speaking at long intervals.
One day the sister saw the eyes of the head brighten, as if with pleasure.
At last it spoke: " Oh, sister," it said, " in what a pitiful situation you have
been the cause of placing me ! Soon, very soon, a party of young men
will arrive and apply to me for aid; but alas ! How can I give what I
would have done with so much pleasure? Nevertheless, take two arrows,
and place them where you have been in the habit of placing the others, and
have meat prepared and cooked before they arrive. When you hear them
coming and calling on my name, go out and say, ' Alas ! it is long ago that
an accident befell him. I was the cause of it.' If they still come near, ask
them in, and set meat before them. And now you must follow my direc
tions strictly. When the bear is near, go out and meet him. You will
take my medicine-sack, bow and arrows, and my head. You must then
untie the sack, and spread out before you my paints of all colors, my war-
eagle feathers, my tufts of dried hair, and whatever else it contains. As

Life on the Mississippi 477

the bear approaches, you will take all these articles, one by one, and say to
him, 'This is my deceased brother's paint,' and so on with all the other
articles, throwing each of them as far as you can. The virtues contained in
them will cause him to totter; and, to complete his destruction, you will
take my head, and that too you will cast as far off as you can, crying
aloud, c See, this is my deceased brother's head ! ' He will then fall sense
less. By this time the young men will have eaten, and you will call them
to your assistance. You must then cut the carcass into pieces — yes, into
small pieces — and scatter them to the four winds; for, unless you do this,
he will again revive." She promised that all should be done as he said.
She had only time to prepare the meat, when the voice of the leader was
heard calling upon lamo for aid. The woman went out, and said as her
brother had directed. But the war party, being closely pursued, came up
to the lodge. She invited them in, and placed the meat before them.
While they were eating, they heard the bear approaching. Untying the
medicine-sack and taking the head, she had all in readiness for his approach.
When he came up she did as she had been told; and before she had ex
pended the paints and feathers, the bear began to totter, but, still advanc
ing, came close to the woman. Saying as she was commanded, she then
took the head, and cast it as far from her as she could. As it rolled along
the ground, the blood, excited by the feelings of the head in this terrible
scene, gushed from the nose and mouth. The bear, tottering, soon fell
with a tremendous noise. Then she cried for help, and the young men
came rushing out, having partially regained their strength and spirits.

Mudjikewis, stepping up, gave a yell and struck him a blow upon the
head. This he repeated, till it seemed like a mass of brains, while the
others, as quick as possible, cut him into very small pieces, which they then
scattered in every direction. While thus employed, happening to look
around where they had thrown the meat, wonderful to behold, they saw
starting up and running off in every direction small black bears, such as are
seen at the present day. The country was soon overspread with these black
animals. And it was from this monster that the present race of bears
derived their origin.

Having thus overcome their pursuer, they returned to the lodge. In
the meantime, the woman, gathering the implements she had used, and
the head, placed them again in the sack. But the head did not speak
again, probably from its great exertion to overcome the monster.

Having spent so much time and traversed so vast a country in their
flight, the young men gave up the idea of ever returning to their own coun-
31

478 Life on the Mississippi

try, and game being plenty, they determined to remain where they now
were. One day they moved off some distance from the lodge for the pur
pose of hunting, having left the wampum with the woman. They were very
successful, and amused themselves, as all young men do when alone, by
talking and jesting with each other. One of them spoke and said, " We
have all this sport to ourselves; let us go and ask our sister if she will not
let us bring the head to this place, as it is still alive. It may be pleased to
hear us talk, and be in our company. In the meantime take food to our
sister." They went and requested the head. She told them to take it,
and they took it to their hunting-grounds, and tried to amuse it, but only
at times did they see its eyes beam with pleasure. One day, while busy in
their encampment, they were unexpectedly attacked by unknown Indians.
The skirmish was long-contested and bloody; many of their foes were slain,
but still they were thirty to one. The young men fought desperately till
they were all killed. The attacking party then retreated to a height of
ground, to muster their men, and to count the number of missing and slain.
One of their young men had stayed away, and, in endeavoring to overtake
them, came to the place where the head was hung up. Seeing that alone
retain animation, he eyed it for some time with fear and surprise. How
ever, he took it down and opened the sack, and was much pleased to see
the beautiful feathers, one of which he placed on his head.

Starting off, it waved gracefully over him till he reached his party, when
he threw down the head and sack, and told them how he had found it,
and that the sack was full of paints and feathers. They all looked at the
head and made sport of it. Numbers of the young men took the paint and
painted themselves, and one of the party took the head by the hair and
said:

" Look, you ugly thing, and see your paints on the faces of warriors."

But the feathers were so beautiful that numbers of them also placed
them on their heads. Then again they used all kinds of indignity to the
head, for which they were in turn repaid by the death of those who had
used the feathers. Then the chief commanded them to throw away all
except the head. " We will see," said he, " when we get home what we
can do with it. We will try to make it shut its eyes."

When they reached their homes they took it to the council lodge and
hung it up before the fire, fastening it with rawhide soaked, which would
shrink and become tightened by the action of the fire. " We will then
see," they said, " if we cannot make it shut its eyes."

Meantime, for several days, the sister had been waiting for the young

Life on the Mississippi 479

men to bring back the head; till at last, getting impatient, she went in
search of it. The young men she found lying within short distances of each
other, dead, and covered with wounds. Various other bodies lay scattered
in different directions around them. She searched for the head and sack,
but they were nowhere to be found. She raised her voice and wept, and
blackened her face. Then she walked in different directions, till she came
to the place from whence the head had been taken. Then she found the
magic bow and arrows, where the young men, ignorant of their qualities,
had left them. She thought to herself that she would find her brother's
head, and came to a piece of rising ground, and there saw some of his
paints and feathers. These she carefully put up, and hung upon the branch
of a tree till her return.

At dusk she arrived at the first lodge of a very extensive village. Here
she used a charm, common among Indians when they wish to meet with a
kind reception. On applying to the old man and woman of the lodge, she
was kindly received. She made known her errand. The old man prom*
ised to aid her, and told her the head was hung up before the council fire,
and that the chiefs of the village, with their young men, kept watch over it
continually. The former are considered as manitoes. She said she only
wished to see it, and would be satisfied if she could only get to the door ol
the lodge. She knew she had not sufficient power to take it by force.
"Come with me," said the Indian, " I will take you there." They went,
and they took their seats near the door. The council lodge was filled with war
riors, amusing themselves with games, and constantly keeping up a fire to
smoke the head, as they said, to make dry meat. They saw the head move,
and not knowing what to make of it, one spoke and said: " Ha ! ha! It
is beginning to feel the effects of the smoke." The sister looked up from
the door, and her eyes met those of her brother, and tears rolled down the
cheeks of the head. "Well," said the chief, " I thought we would make
you do something at last. Look ! look at it — shedding tears ! " said he to
those around him; and they all laughed and passed their jokes upon it.
The chief, looking around and observing the woman, after some time said
to the man who came with her : ' ' Who have you got there ? I have never seen
that woman before in our village." " Yes," replied the man, "you have
seen her; she is a relation of mine, and seldom goes out. She stays at my
lodge, and asked me to allow her to come with me to this place." In the
center of the lodge sat one of those young men who are always forward and
fond of boasting and displaying themselves before others. " Why," said
he, " I've seen her often, and it is to this lodge I go, almost every night, to

480 Life on the Mississippi

court her." All the others laughed, and continued their games. The
young man did not know he was telling a lie to the woman's advantage,
who by that means escaped.

She returned to the man's lodge, and immediately set out for her own
country. Coming to the spot where the bodies of her adopted brothers lay,
she placed them together, their feet toward the east. Then, taking an axe
which she had, she cast it up into the air, crying out, " Brothers, get up
from under it, or it will fall on you ! " This she repeated three times, and
the third time the brothers all arose and stood on their feet.

Mudjikewis commenced rubbing his eyes and stretching himself.
"Why," said he, " I have overslept myself." " No, indeed," said one of
the others; "do you not know we were all killed, and that it is our sister
who has brought us to life?" The young men took the bodies of their
enemies and burned them. Soon after, the woman went to procure wives
for them in a distant country, they knew not where; but she returned with
ten young women, whom she gave to the ten young men, beginning with
the eldest. Mudjikewis stepped to and fro, uneasy lest he should not get
the one he liked. But he was not disappointed, for she fell to his lot.
And they were well matched, for she was a female magician. They then
all moved into a very large lodge, and their sister told them that the women
must now take turns in going to her brother's head every night, trying to
untie it. They all said they would do so with pleasure. The eldest made
the first attempt,' and with a rushing noise she fled through the air.

Toward daylight she returned. She had been unsuccessful, as she suc
ceeded in untying only one of the knots. All took their turns regularly, and
each one succeeded in untying only one knot each time. But when the
youngest went, she commenced the work as soon as she reached the lodge;
although it had always been occupied, still the Indians never could see any
one. For ten nights now the smoke had not ascended, but rilled the lodge
and drove them out. This last night they were all driven out, and the
young woman carried off the head.

The young people and the sister heard the young woman coming high
through the air, and they heard her saying: "Prepare the body of our
brother." And as soon as they heard it, they wenu to a small lodge where
the black body of lamo lay. His sister commenced cutting the neck part,
from which the neck had been severed. She cut so deep as to cause it to
bleed; and the others who were present, by rubbing the body and applying
medicines, expelled the blackness. In the meantime, the one who brought
it, by cutting the neck of the head, caused that also to bleed.

Life on the Mississippi 481

As soon as she arrived, they placed that close to the body, and, by aid
of medicines and various other means, succeeded in restoring lamo to all
his former beauty and manliness. All rejoiced in the happy termination of
their troubles, and they had spent some time joyfully together, when lamo
said: " Now I will divide the wampum;" and getting the belt which con
tained it, he commenced with the eldest, giving it in equal portions. But
the youngest got the most splendid and beautiful, as the bottom of the belt
held the richest and rarest.

They were told that, since they had all once died, and were restored to
life, they were no longer mortal, but spirits, and they were assigned differ
ent stations in the invisible world. Only Mudjikewis's place was, however,
named. He was to direct the west wind, hence generally called Kebeyun,
there to remain forever. They were commanded, as they had it in their
power, to do good to the inhabitants of the earth, and, forgetting their suf
ferings in procuring the wampum, to give all things with a liberal hand.
And they were also commanded that it should also be held by them sacred;
those grains or shells of the pale hue to be emblematic of peace, while
those of the darker hue would lead to evil and war.

The spirits then, amid songs and shouts, took their flight to their re
spective abodes on high; while lamo with his sister lamoqua, descended
into the depths below.

THE END

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