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MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
SPEAKMAN
MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
HERE'S IRELAND
BEYOND SHANGHAI
HILLTOPS IN GALILEE
FROM A SOLDIER'S HEART
THIS ABOVE ALL (A NOVEL)
MOSTLY Miss*ssa?m:
by
HAROLD SPEAKMAN
VVith a number of DRAWINGS by
RUSSELL LINDSAY SPEAKMAN
and the AUTHOR
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
New York : : : 1927
COPYRIGHT, 1937
BY DOI>i>, MKAl) AND COMPANY, INC.
I'KINTl'iD IN U. 8. A.
TO MY WIFE
AND FRIEND
RUSSELL LINDSAY SPEARMAN
FOREWORD
Three characters persist throughout the following
pages a man, a woman, and the Mississippi River.
Of these three, only one is solid, consecutive, endur
ing. That one is the river. As long as the clouds are,
and the forests are, its tawny-maned flood will go
foaming down to the dark bowl of the sea. The story
of its strength will be told again and again in books,
and records, and charts, and relentless dates.
The man and woman are impermanent, perishable.
Their journeys will be short and few. They will be
seen only for a moment on the face of the river. In
that fact alone there may be a certain value provided
we look at them squarely, not as at a pair of wooden
mannikins on which to hang a few gay ribbons of
scenery.
So, throwing off any embarrassment I may feel,
as something quite aside and stupid, I shall look into
the man's mind and to the other's responsive presence
for the volatile essence of this adventure, always shield
ing my somewhat delicately exposed position behind
the consoling thought that the river, by its sheer mag
nificent strength, is both the villain and the hero of
this book.
CONTENTS
I DUCKS & PERSONAE ...... i
II THE YOUNG RIVER ....... 14
III THE THICKET ........ 29
IV LADY INTO CATFISH ....... 41
V SSS-BANG! .......... 5 1
VI SOME WHO STRAY ....... 6-
VII GOOD-BY CANOE ........ 82
VIII SlIANTYBOAT ......... 97
IX OFF ........... 106
X A WRECK OR Two
XI "YOU'LL TIE UP"
XII SLOUGH, BIRD, MODEL
XIII CITIES
XIV MORMONS
XV BECKY AND IGNITION
XVI THE SMOKY SAINT
XVII LAND OF EGYPT
XVIII HERE'S DIXIE
XIX ALONG THE LEVEES
XX COLOR OF THE SOUTH ...... 255
XXI BUGLE ECHO ........ 273
XXII MEMORY LANE . ....... 283
XXIII HOBO JUNGLE ........ 297
XXIV DRIFT ........... 3 8
XXV THE TIDE . . . . ...... 323
XXVI THE BAYOUS ......... 33 2
XXVir THE JOYOUS CITY ....... 345
128
138
149
162
173
191
208
222
241
ILLUSTRATIONS
Girl, house-boat, river Frontispiece
FACING
Cohasset 32
Girl of the West Country 58
The Cathedral, St. Paul 98
Pete of the Mississippi no
Old lady of Dubuque 146
An. old knight of the river 160
"Becky Thatcher" 178
The Court House, St. Louis, where slaves were sold . 200
The "Patonia," Memphis 234
Poet of the delta 258
One of the last of the river showmen 284
Old Tom from Baton Rouge and Bayou Sara . . 310
Tombs in an ancient New Orleans cemetery . . - 334
The ''Quarter" of New Orleans abounds in mellow
court yards 348
MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
DUCKS & PERSONAE
CI-IAPTER I
WE drove the canoe forward.
With a noise like the hiss of a breaking- comber, the
dark line on the water before us tore raggedly upward
into flight. A hundred yards ahead, its component
parts settled down again mallard, teal, pintail
thousand after thousand in another broad, sinuous
line, as speckled and dusky as though some one had
scattered gunpowder far out on the glittering blue sur
face of the lake. Again and again, with that strange
hiss of wings, it broke into flight, cutting the August
sunlight into a weird geometry of patterns and shrill
cries.
The wilderness was about us. The forest was dark
and unspoiled: 1 It had no fear of the girl at the front
paddle, nor of the man at the back. A clamorous host
of waterfowl came wheeling and pirouetting about the
canoe. Clouds of gulls sailed by, their white groups out
lined against the dark of spruce and pine. A pair of
blue cranes flapped lazily through the sunlight, while
2 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
whole families of snipe stalked in solemn conclave
along the low shore beyond.
There was a fresh, unfinished look to the scene, like
Paradise, perhaps, on the evening of the fifth day.
What was the reason for that mile- wide strip of bare,
flat sand at the lake's edge before the forest began?
Perhaps God had not put enough water into the
lake.
We waded ashore over the shallows and came to the
village of Bena lying dry and disconsolate a mile to
the south. God, they told us there, had put plenty of
water in the lake, but the river commission had taken
it out. To-mor ow we would find a large dam at the
place where the young river left the lake, whose name
was Winnibigoshish.* A few years earlier, nine feet
of water had been drawn off through the clam, they
said, giving the lake a considerable space to rise in if
the rains were heavy. Thus the flow of water into the
river below could be controlled.
But it was bad for them at Bena. That evil-looking
line of the whitened ribs and antlers of dead trees
along the forest's edge marked the height of the old
water level.
Returning to the canoe with a few purchases we had
made some vegetables, a collapsible air mattress,
honey in a mason jar, and particularly an additional
* Locally pronounced, Winnibigosh'.
DUCKS & PE-RSONAE 3
blanket, for the nights were cold we set off for a
promontory to the west.
I watched the paddle blade in front of me sink noise
lessly into the water, run along the side with a swift,
even sweep, and, rising from its aqueous fold, send a
silvery, funnelled eddy racing by. A good canoeist
ahead! As for me, I knew nothing about canoes. I
was at the back pacldle, the important paddle, only by
courtesy. Well, perhaps Fd learn.
The vermilion canoe we rode in was of painted
canvas with a double border of staring black-and-
white checks along the gunwales. Its hilarious gayety
had embarrassed us a little, when, thi^e days before,
we had left the town of Bemidji under considerable
observation. Here on Winnibigoshish its color shrieked
and giggled louder than ever under the solemnity of
the wilderness. We would repaint it ourselves a little
later on, when once the river had emerged from this
adolescent tangle of lakes and connecting streamlets
that marks its early course.
Bemiclji, on Lake Bemidji, where we had begun our
journey, is at the most northerly point on this lake-
and-streamlet combination. To travel from Bemidji up
stream to the river's source, one does not go decently
north as one might expect. Elk Lake, twenty-three
miles as the crow flies, southwest of Bemidji, is fre
quently called the source. In a very dry season, there
4 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
are stretches of the dot-and-dash rivulet between Elk
Lake and Bemidji that are not navigable for a canoe.
Even down stream from Bemidji, we were forced to
run for several rather breathless miles through a
series of rushing, boulder-strewn rapids on an extra
foot of water generously furnished by a power clam,
located where the river leaves the lake!
There have been many ponderous and rather futile
arguments as to the true head of the Mississippi. For
many years, Lake Itasca was called the source. 'Then
Elk Lake was discovered up stream from Itasca. Rut
the water from Elk Lake must come from somcwlTere
too. In a wet season, there may even be a puddle that
drains into the puddle that drains into Elk Lake. The
whole subject is made a little less plethoric by a per
fectly glorious old faker named Glazier who came that
way in 1881, and "gathering his little band about
him," rechristened Elk Lake after himself and took
possession of it in the name of the United States
just six years after it had been surveyed, named and
recorded at Washington by members of the United
States Land Survey!
We paddled on. White clouds were marching in
broken ranks up the afternoon sky, their farthest
DUCKS & PERSONAE 5
stragglers lost beneath the tops of the forest. There
had been a storm to the south and these were the victo
rious legions swinging northward toward the Cana
dian border.
Then from the front of the canoe :
"How far did that man at Bena tell you it was to
New Orleans?"
"Nearly two thousand five hundred miles/ 7
She laughed with a little thrill of anticipation in
which I could detect the presence of bears on a dark
stair behind.
Sunset was approaching, and here was the promon
tory ahead. We went ashore on the wide, sandy flat.
Then, gathering my little band about me, I too said a
few simple words about the other great explorers
whose names were linked inseparably with the Missis
sippi La Salle, Marquette, Joliet and, looking
boldly around, I took possession of the spot in the name
of the United States. But my little band only said, "I
think you had better pitch the tent."
The tent was a "miner's tent. 77 It was pyramidal in
shape and nine feet square at the base. It was sup
ported by a nine-foot iron pipe that stood upright in the
center. When not in use, the pipe unscrewed into two
parts which fitted nicely under the thwarts of the
canoe. The prize feature of the tent was a canvas floor.
This was sewn solidly to the sides, and lay flat under-
6 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
foot when the tent was pitched. It not only kept con
siderable moisture out, but innumerable articles in.
After three nights of tent-pitching, the thing was
easy. But at first, in my zeal, I had tried to. put up the
tent pole before driving in the pegs, and so had been
forced into a ten-minute wrestling match with what
seemed to be a large, soiled canvas angel who finally
seized his iron backbone and cracked me over the head.
Then I tried driving in the pegs first, and from that
time on, the gaunt wrestler became our good genie,
guarding us to the best of his somewhat limited ability
against wind and rain.
The tent being up, my companion, who had busied
herself where the wood fire was blazing, 'now removed
certain savory pans and kettles from the folding grill
and called me to her and gave me bacon and eggs and
carrots and young corn all smoking on a plate. And for
those who don't like carrots, let it be noted that there
was plenty of bread and butter, and coffee, and also
some strawberry jam, to which the manufacturer, with
great solicitude, had added a small portion of bcuzoatc
of soda.
We ate. But when we had finished and sat there, very
content and comfortable, the mosquitoes came raging
against us. And when we stood on a root a few minutes
later washing the dishes, one of them bit my sweet
friend and she sprang off the root into the lake which
DUCKS &PERSONAE 7
fortunately was only two inches deep. Then we smote
them hip and thigh, and dragged our bags of dunnage
into the tent, and let down the net before the door, with
the nasty creatures roaring and yapping at our heels.
She inquired a little breathlessly as to what mosquitoes
ate in a place like that when they could not find any
people. T>ut I was busy blowing up the air mattress and
did not answer which was just as well since I did not
know.
The air mattress, what shall I say of it? When we
bought it at Bena, it had seemed to be large enough for
two. It was nearly as wide as the space between the
wall and the tent pole, and correspondingly long. But
as soon as I began to blow it up, it began to shrink.
And the more I blew, the narrower and shorter it grew
until at last it looked like a row of eight little olive-
drab sausages lying coyly side by side.
"Heavens ! Did you ever see anything so tiny I"
"Well ... it is a little small."
"What shall we do? 77
"Why, you take it. I'll sleep over there."
"No; we haven't enough blankets/'
"Oh I don't need many blankets.' '
"Yes you do. We'll try it. We'll put those bags be
side us and the raincoats along the other edge."
So we went to bed on the sausages, spending the
night like two courteous g-entlemen shipwrecked at
8 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
sea on a raft too small for both, each offering the other
his share, or at most suggesting with a thump some
slight change for mutual comfort.
"Good kind friend if you don't mind you have
me squeezed between the tent pole/'
"That's ungrammatical. How could you be squeezed
between the tent pole?"
"Well, the result remains the same."
"You see, you're heavier than I. You press the air
out of that side, and raise it up on this side, and then
I roll down hill"
So now I lift myself off the sausages, and the air
comes hissing into them again through their hidden
ways.
"Now you had better double up your knees . . .
because . . . because . . ." ( One of us is very sleepy.)
"Because why, sweet friend?"
"Because if you don't, I'll gradually settle on you."
I move a little and catch a glimpse through the
mosquito netting of the white sand and the hillside be
yond, all garrisoned by the silent forest.
"It is a beautiful night. See, the stars are shining.
I am very content ; je suis trcs content"
"Sh! Don't talk your French."
I am intrigued by that. "Why not?" I inquire.
"Because . . . the mosquitoes might hear you. . . ,"
I lie still, considering. Does she mean that the
DUCKS & PERSONAE 9
mosquitoes on hearing a human voice will plan a night
attack? Or does she mean that they are French Cana
dian mosquitoes and may become enraged at my ac
cent? Or does she mean that at the present moment,
all languages, domestic and foreign, are superfluous?
All of these, perhaps. It doesn't make any difference.
I note that one particular bright star is glowing above
the pine trees. A novel idea comes to me : that is prob
ably the evening star. . . .
So into the sunrise of another day.
The day began its new world symphony in a cool
minor key blue water reaching to the far horizon,
wind in the pine trees, bird cries from the thickets, the
recurring lap of small waves against the prow of the
canoe. We paddled through a lake of flashing light,
coming at last to a sandy, sedge-covered point which
cut us off from the direction we must follow. By stand
ing up, I could see a narrow channel in the rushes, with
open water beyond. We pushed our way in.
Thick, aquatic moss lay just beneath the surface on
the shallow bottom. Wading and paddling, we worked
through it until the canoe floated free of the matted
stems. The sedge about us resounded with the clatter
of terrific duck activities. Ducks were everywhere.
io MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
They rose on all sides, craning their necks, splashing,
calling; dragging up small sharp peaks of water with
the tips of their wings. The morass was a cluck natato-
rium and family hotel, with ducks at breakfast, clucks
singing in their bath, ducks scolding their young,
ducks practicing their flight song and at the same time
doing an aquatic "breakdown" with their webbed feet ;
ducks so close that we might almost have hit them with
a paddle.
Beyond these ornithological apartments of sedge and
wild rice stretched a wide, indeterminate bay. The
water was clear and shallow, the lake bottom so vividly
defined that we seemed to be passing through an ele
ment no more substantial than air, now over tree-like
clumps of weeds where fish of all sizes darted in and
out among the fronds, now over glittering spots of
white sand, and occasionally over dim caverns which
dropped away to unexpected depths.
After three or four miles, the lake drew to an apex
across which reared the buttress of a broad darn, with
buildings to the left, and the U. S. flag flying. We ap
proached with some care and tied to a boom beside one
of the runways.
The dam was a complicated structure of concrete,
with several waterways, a logway, a channel through
which fish might travel from the river below up into
the lake, and a chute for the passage of small boats.
DUCKS & PERSONAE n
But there were protruding boltheads in the chute's bot
tom which made it impracticable for a boat covered
with painted canvas. A formidable gray-haired Scotch
man in charge of the dam helped me carry our blushing
kayak up over the high concrete steps, he chewing non
chalantly on a straw all the while to show how fit he
was.
"There s nothing the matter with your wind/ 7 I
managed.
"Well perhaps not bad for an old man."
"Old man!"
"Yes. I was seventy years last month." And he
walked away chewing victoriously on his straw. Under
the circumstances it would hardly do to say, "Here,
come back and help us with these bags"; so my voy-
ageusc and I, each according to his strength, wrestled
our dunnage over the dam and packed it into the canoe
again, first laying the three large, cylindrical water
proof bags of blankets and clothing crosswise in the
center of the canoe between the thwarts with the folded
tent above them, then putting the bread box, with its
load of bread and jam and condiments under the back
seat, then fitting other bags of vegetables and bacon
and tableware and pots and pans into the ends of the
canoe, and distributing the camera, rain coats, fish pole,
grill, hand ax, and a small leather Boston bag (al
ready known as "General Ketchall") where they would
12 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
be least in the way. The final ceremony consisted in
covering the flat-lying tent and bags between the
thwarts with a waterproof poncho, and battening it
down along the sides with the two sections of tent
pole which fitted under the
thwarts, thus keeping the
poncho from blowing away,
and making the canoe very
shipshape.
I took the water pail up
General Kctchaii to the house and asked the
keeper's wife for the courtesy of using their
pump. The man himself came out, and I spoke of the
myriad ducks on the lake. But he made an abrupt ges
ture of the hand, such as woodsmen and sailors make,
and assured me that the ducks I had seen were noth
ing at all, and that I ought to be there when the north
ducks came down. The whole lake was black with
them, he said, and it was a big lake too, nearly one
hundred and forty square miles.
"Winnibigoshish is an Indian name, isn't it?"
"It is. Most of the lakes and streams up this way
have Indian names. You'd think Itasca was an Indian
name too, but it isn't. General Schoolcraft, who dis
covered it in 1832 had a friend of his with him, a
scholar. And the scholar picked out two Latin words,
vcritas, meaning truth, and caput, meaning head. And
;u-4hi DUCKS & PERSONAE 13
put the last two syllables of veritas together with
first syllable of caput, and made Itasca, the true
^ head."
-0 Talking, we returned to the dam together ; and there
^was my friend deeply absorbed in dangling a hook on
La little piece of line over the edge, while directly above
her was a sign which read, "No fishing within fifty
of this fish run."
As we approached, she lookecl up excitedly. "Here
are lots of fish/' she said. But the old man kindly looked
away, and I got her aboard before the catchpolls of the
set upon her. Then we paddled clown a small canal
^nto a good-sized poncl that goes by the name of Little
Winnibigoshish, and thence into the young and
now on, uninterrupted Mississippi River.
THE YOUNG RIVER
CHAPTER II
IT pursued its narrow way sinuously along between
marshy banks, now winding" among grass-crested
knolls, now gliding over a few feet of sandy beach.
There were some scrub oaks and discouraged-looking
willows here and there, but the forest itself kept well
aloof.
Whether because of her recent escape from the tal
ons of the law, or because the morning sun was
pleasantly warm, or because we had no more lakes to
cross, the bow paddle was very gay.
"See that snipe running along there, Boppo! And
that gigantic fish supper size ! Look at the minnows
scoot ! There's a bluejay flying down the river ahead of
us and telling all the other forest people about us.
They're the worst busybodics in the woods!' 7
It was, indeed, extremely pleasant. Three black
crows sat on three small trees watching us solemnly.
One of them on a branch several sizes too small, did
a slow, ridiculous dance, trying to maintain both his
14
THE YOUNG RIVER 15
dignity and his balance at the same time, but losing
both.
A hawk crossed the river ahead of us. Spreading out
its reddish tail, it landed clumsily on the bank and
peered out into the stream. No wonder! Here was a
squirrel swimming across the Mississippi. Hawk or no
hawk he went on, keeping as much of his sharp ears
and large gray tail out of the water as possible. We
paddled along beside him. Better our company than
the hawk's ! But he only turned a little and looked at
us very much annoyed, like an irascible old gentleman
with a stiff neck and a very high collar. Should we
bang him with a paddle? Here was meat, of course.
Squirrel stew would go very well with macaroni and
tomato sauce. . . . No, he was out of his element.
A man should be a better sportsman than a hawk.
We accompanied him to the bank, but instead of
using our proffered paddle, he dove with a curse into
the bushes, while the hawk, very cold and impersonal,
flew silently away.
Soon the forest disappeared before a wild, flat
marshland covered with tall grass and wild rice that
shut out our view completely. The young river, now
free of bowlders and pebble-bottomed shallows and
steep banks, lost its sense of direction entirely in the
high-growing sedge and wandered like something
gently distraught across a vast, sorrowful expanse
16 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
that had once been the bed of an ancient lake; while
the canoe, like a rabbit in a runway, nosed along- be
tween solid walls of coarse grass higher than a man's
head.
The sun blazed down with unexpected fierceness,
apparently focusing* his attention on one spot of bright
color moving in the midst of that breathless swamp.
For some reason probably the heat 1 decided to
remove my hat.
We stopped for lunch in the scant shadow of the
eroded bank, with the green marsh grass rising high
above. Masses of tangled root fibers, some of them
five feet long, from which the river had washed the
matrix of earth, hung brown and heavy beside us,
their delicate tendrils striving down toward the
water below. Above, among the yeomanly green
blades, shone the tattered swamp flowers of the late
summer wild aster, golden rod, milkweed, daisy,
gentian ragamuffins and grisettes of the marshes in
royal purple and yellow.
Onward all clay under the fierce stab of the sun,
making camp at night in the mosquito-bitten thicket.
There was more to making camp, however, than merely
the fact of making it. Paddling along the twisted
THE YOUNG RIVER 17
water-course as sunset approached, we watched two
anxious hours, seeking a spot in the rank sedge where
our feet would not sink to unknown depths. Here at
last, was a narrow carpet of white sand, edged by the
ever-present marsh grass. We came close to it, and
tried it with a cautious paddle, but the blade sank deep
into quicksand.
Half an hour more we probed and poked and re-
connoitered, coming finally to a fairly solid-bottomed
nook behind a log. Dragging up the canoe, I staked
down the tent in the slightly quaking sand. Quake or
no quake, it was just as well we stayed as there were
no camping places in the sedge for a great distance
ahead. If we had gone on, we would have been forced
to travel all night, with clouds of mosquitoes for com
pany.
So, on into a second day of grilling heat. I decided
to wear my hat.
In the middle of the afternoon, my comrade, now
for variety's sake in the back seat, inquired, "Do your
ears hurt? 7 '
"They feel a little warm. Why?"
"Well, they look thicker than usual. Turn around."
Obediently, I turned.
"Heavens! You're ruined, ruined I"
"What's the matter?"
"Your ears ! They're as big as tomatoes ! They wob-
iS MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
ble every time you turn your head. And your face!
Oh, poor Boppo your face. Doesn't it hurt? 77
"No it doesn't hurt!"
"Well wrap yourself up well. Put a handker
chief under your hat and let it hang out over your
ears/'
We continued on our way. Boppo ! That was a nice
nickname for a dignified writer, long a bachelor!
Boppo. But what was there to be done about it? If I
were to say that she called me Robin Hood, or Bigge
Boy, or Lord Harry, or even Sol for Solomon, I might
get other people who did not know me very well to
believe it. But what about herself?
No. A woman finds out about a man soon enough
without his adding anything like that; it must either
be Boppo or nothing. But I had lived years enough
in a state of single nothingness. Let it be Boppo then.
(Damn, but my face hurt!)
We were nearing the end of the ancient lake site.
Here was a clump of trees, and a road, and a wooden
bridge with an automobile beside it, also a woman,
two small boys and a man, all very neatly dressed in
city dwellers' outing costume. The man was fishing
from the bank. The others watched very intently as he
cast, reeled in his line, and cast again. Put as we came
abreast of them, one of the little boys shrilled out,
"Say, Pop is that a Yindin?" and the woman nmr-
THE YOUNG RIVER 19
mured admiringly, "We had ought to have our ko
dak!"
Ignoring these trivial matters, the heads of the two
parties gave each other a manly good clay, then as
we went on, the same little boy called out, "Good-by,
other man/' Whereupon the bow paddle, who was
wearing a cap, nodded and smiled but said nothing.
"Why didn't you speak to him?" I inquired as we
turned a bend into the last of the sedge.
"Why? Because an ambition of my early life has
just been realized. Some one has thought that I was
a man/ 7
Whether or not that incident induced an exalted
mood I do not know. But shortly, out of the silence
from the back of the canoe, came this :
"Even a mosquito, when seen quite impersonally
against a blue sky looks like a little flower flying." And
that Heaven knows anywhere on the Mississippi,
is a noble thought indeed.
Grass-covered mounds with patches of white sand
between them lined the banks with miniature foot
hills. As we came out from behind a group of willows,
a massive dredge rose like the bulk of a mastodon
above the plain. When we reached it after an hour
20 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
of devious windings, we found it to be a government
affair, with two, large, many-windowed quarter-boats
nearby, each carrying the red flag of the Engineers.
There was no one on the dredge, but a man and
woman came out of one of the quarter-boats to look
at us. And that was no great wonder, for the last
craft they had seen except the dredge and the two
floating barracks was a rowboat that had passed down
the river two months before. No, it was not lonely.
There was a town called Deer River a mile or so
away.
"Those barracks/' observcH my companion, "would
be wonderful places for a dance."
"Yes if they'd let you/' answered the woman dis
consolately.
"Well you're fairly far from Washington," I re
marked.
"Not far enougli/' replied the man.
"I know what you mean/' said T. We pushed upon
our maple blades and went on down the stream, I with
a long-forgotten but swiftly-returning wave of pleas
ure at the thought of being able to clo anything I
wanted to do or say anything I wanted to say without
the eternal threat of court martial a calamity that
lowered more threateningly over many a regiment in
the late war, and with more havoc to nerves and
bodies, than a first class gas attack.
THE YOUNG RIVER 21
Clouds shut out the sun, and a raw south wind be
gan blowing.
The south wind! If I have called him a rascal on
the endpapers of this book, it is not without just cause.
KU7
The young Mississippi
For more than flood water or hidden rocks or currents
or the menace of river steamers, the south wind was
to be our worst hazard on the river.
Again for a short time, the forest capitulated to the
22 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
sedge. We stopped for lunch on a desolate strip of
beach that bore, beside the blackened hulk of an old-
time tugboat, a huge pile of mussel shells, a few shreds
of clothing, and some broken bones. This spot had
probably been used for centuries as a camp site, its
pebbly base keeping it free from the rank marsh grass
and wild rice. We continued on against the wind.
After a few miles of toil, on the right bank we
spied a homestead of rough, unpainted logs, chinked
with moss and white clay. Strips of gray, unpainted
wood ran lengthwise down the roof to the eaves. Half
a dozen out-buildings, all the same shade of deep,
weathered gray, grouped themselves, perhaps better
than the builder knew, against a dark background of
pines.
Children of assorted sizes came running down the
bank, followed by chickens, hounds, and a young calf.
Chickens ! That was an idea. Coulcl we buy a chicken?
"They're running all around if we coulcl only catch
one/' said the oldest girl.
"Is there a place to camp nearby?' 7
"Yes, right clown in the pine grove on the bank. . . .
If you go there, I'll catch one and bring it clown to
you."
When the tent was up, she appeared with an in
dignant white fowl which she gently slapped now and
again to make him behave, announcing that he weighed
THE YOUNG RIVER 23
three and a half pounds, and that they got sixty-five
cents for that size. Then with some misgivings, I took
the hen's son into the woods alone, and despatched
him much more pleasantly than either he or I had ex
pected.
Returning, I came upon a log filled with creosote.
Now here was something fine, something that would
burn, even if we should have rain which we very well
might. I chopped it up, and built a fire near the tent,
and went away for more wood. But when I returned,
the wind and the creosote had already done their dis
mal work. I drowned the fire and started another, but
the creosote had descended upon the tent and every
thing else including ourselves, like a black fog; so that
when we sat down to dine, we looked like a pair of fire
chiefs at the last days of Pompeii, she with a smudge
of black abaft her eyebrow, I with a general change
of color from Chinese vermilion to terra cotta, with
my large, tender ears a delicate and fashionable tone
of rose-beige.
"At last we belong to the Great Unwasfied," she
said, regarding me with something akin to laughter,
only more intense. "Boppo, you are simply unredeem
able. It is perfectly impossible to know what steps
could be taken to fix you up."
It was true. Creosote soot was practically immune
to soap. Yet all was not lost. For when we lifted the
24 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
lid of the blackened kettle, the chicken shone forth in
its garland of golden dumplings pure as the purest lily.
For three days we stood siege in our nine by nine
tent against an almost continuous drum lire of wind
and rain. Some of the rain came through, but not all
of it. With rain coats and blankets and the poncho we
made ourselves as comfortable as -we could, blessing
the man who first thought of putting a canvas floor in
a tent, (For how can a tent blow away when you are
sitting on it?) Our badly sunbaked hands were more
annoying than the rain. In the torrid weather, neither
of us had thought about sheltering them from the
sun, with the result that they swelled up nearly round.
For days afterward, the matter of reaching clown
into one of the canvas bags was something to be con
sidered long and well.
During slight lulls in the rain, I made excursions to
the river with a steel rod and reel that had been lent
to me for the journey. But in spite of the rain, the fish
would not bite on pickled minnows or anything else,
and the only catch I made was a clam that attached it
self to the sinker. About half-past ten of the third
morning, the rain stopped.
"What do you see ?" asked one.
THE YOUNG RIVER 25
"I see that the river has risen a little/ 7 said the other.
"What else do you see?"
"I see a narrow strip of blue sky through the pines."
We bundled our sodden belongings into the canoe, and
paddled on into a wilderness of small ragged pine, with
underbrush of birch and maple. We passed a little, run
down sawmill on the bank. A woman in a red dress
came out and waved at us. The forest closed in and
we left the sawmill behind, only to have its black chim
ney appear ahead of us half an hour later, caught like
ourselves in the fantastic coils of the river.
Then the wind began to blow from the north a
most disgustingly bitter wind for early September. We
realized that we were not only cold, but miserably wet.
Occasional small clearings passed by, and log houses,
chinked with plaster; and magnificent camping sites
among the pines. But we did not stop, for we wanted
to make the town of Cohasset. Logs were floating in
the slow current. They moved silently and rather mys
teriously beside us down the river.
Along came a small boy with hip boots full of water,
carrying a bundle of wild rice which he expected to
exhibit in the country fair. How far was the town,
we asked him ; and was there a hotel ?
Cohasset was about five miles by river, he said, but
there was no hotel because it had burned up. Still,
there was one house where we might find a room. The
26 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
man who owned it, was named Mr. Skelly. He was
married and had a wife. Her name was Mrs.
Skelly. ...
5
We beached the canoe beside a general store near
the single-span bridge, and I went up the bank to in
quire for the house of Mr. Skelly.
It was a good house, not new but comfortable, with
a circular, bowlder-edged grass plot before it, and a
flagstaff that seemed to be the axis of Cohasset. The
house stood in a semi-official position in the very cen
ter of a tiny square. About it were tangled dirt roads,
from which the village, growing into a town and then
a city, would one day perhaps take form, shaping it
self not like a civic gridiron, but into the trace of its
own pleasantly-curving byways and irregular streets*
I knocked. A kindly, ruddy face appeared at the
door ; white hair and a pipe.
"Have you a room?"
"Come in."
"My wife and I are traveling down the river "
"Come in, come in!"
" and are pretty wet."
He ushered me into a room that looked like a small
hall where a select few might foregather nightly on
THE YOUNG RIVER 27
the shining linoleum about the stove. There was a lit
tered table in a corner with some volumes of an en-
cylopedia on it. A black safe stood in another corner.
The stove was a huge cylindrical affair raised horizon
tally like the boiler of an engine on strong supports
the leading member, no doubt, of any cold-weather
gathering whatsoever.
"How many of you are there, did you say?"
"Two; my wife and I."
"Well now, I'm afraid we haven't anything. Just
wait a minute." He went out, consulted, and came
back. "You can most likely get a room in the house
next door that says 'Lunch' on the front."
Just then a pleasant-looking woman appeared.
"How many are there of you?"
"Two; my wife and I."
"It's too bad, now. We're expecting a priest from
Ireland here, and that's all the room we have. How
many was it you said?"
"Two of us."
She disappeared. "It's a pity, as she says/' added
Mr. Skelly. "If you have come all the way by river
from Bemidji, it's a good hundred and twenty miles,
indeed."
"Are you Irish, Mr. Skelly?" I asked.
"I am," said he.
"A beautiful country, Ireland."
28 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
"It is. Do you know Ireland ?"
"Well, I've traveled some over there something-
over a thousand miles, with a donkey. 7 '
To my huge surprise, Mr. Skelly rose up, spreading
out his hands like a benediction.
"So you're the man!"
And as he spoke, his wife was at the door saying,
"How many two? Well the priest who is coming to
night isn't coming until to-morrow. And if you can't
find room next door, come back. Indeed/' she added,
"go get your baggage. I'll find room for you anyway!"
So I went back for my baggage, and found her sit
ting very cold and forlorn in the end of the canoe. But
that was quickly remedied, for, there is hardly a rigor
in the world that will not give way before the combina
tion of a roaring wood fire and warm-hearted hos
pitality.
THE THICKET
CHAPTER III
To the stove at night came five rugged, powerful
old men for the most part pipe-smoking and silent;
men who, in the days of their young manhood had
hewed northern Minnesota out of the forest. Men who
had tracked and hunted through the wilderness at fifty
degrees below zero, who had built the roads and the
railroads with hand mattocks and spades, and who had
felled the giants of the forest with the ruthlessness of
youth in a young country. Now they sat smoking be
side the stove, occasionally vouchsafing gentle opinions
of times and men.
Why, I asked them, was the old boat landing by the
bridge so many feet higher than the present Missis
sippi? What had happened to the river?
They smoked on for a time, then spoke in turn, each
adding to the composite opinion that it was mainly the
cutting of the timber which had reduced the young
river to its present level.* Forests, they said, beyond
all other elements of the earth's surface covering,
*For an opposing point of view W. L. Moore in The American
Mercury, July, 1927.
29
30 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
caught and retained moisture. A large tree, in order
to keep its temperature down, would "perspire"
through its leaves as much as five hundred pounds of
water a day. Thus a forest would give off into the air
thousands of tons of moisture which descends again
and again as rain.
With the passing of the timber, the river grew less.
Many of the more shallow lakes dried up. Small steam
boats that had traveled this northern section of the
Mississippi could no longer pass. Then too, the river
without the forest's moderating" control, became more
subject than before to the immediate action of sun and
rain. It lost its steady flow. In dry weather it was re
duced to a rivulet. In wet weather, now that the rains
and thawing snows were no longer held as they had
been by the great trees, the streams turned into tor
rents.
Dams were built to "regulate the flow of water,"
dams which were also of wonderful assistance to the
powerful milling interests in Minneapolis.
Yes, taking out the heavy timber had turned the
trick. The old steamboat landing was certainly high
and dry. Not that it made any great difference. The
railroads had superseded the river, anyway. The lat
ter had been of greatest value when the country was a
wilderness. And as far as water went, there was still
plenty for everybody.
THE THICKET 31
A few miles to the north rose a great continental
divide where streams flowed off toward such varied
destinations as the St. Lawrence River, Pludson Bay,
and the Gulf of Mexico. A year or two before, a
farmer near Bowstring Lake had been cleaning a
creek that drained north into the Rainey River, but
on removing a certain particular shovelful of dirt,
he found that the creek had turned and was flowing
south toward the Mississippi!
There were other stories about the country and its
people, about the old Indian chief, John Smith, who
lived to the age of one hundred and twenty-four years;
about Drumbeater, who drank alcohol neat; about a
dim host of Indians and lumbermen and trappers of
the roaring frontier. One could hear in the quiet talk
the crash of great trees falling and the shouts of men
across the wilderness.
Well, the old guard was dispersed now, its mem
bers dead and gone, or sitting, like themselves, about
other people's stoves; or out on little farms through
the state, like old John Doob. Old John Doob! There
was a funny old cuss for you ! In the days when Roose
velt was furthering the conservation of water in those
parts by building government dams, the back water
from one of the latter had flooded old John's hay field
and put it a foot under water.
Then the elections came along. "Are you going
32 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
to vote for Roosevelt?" some one asked him.
"Roosevelt hell I Look at my hay !"
Cohasset, as the first town on the Mississippi, was
certainly entitled to a sketch. Nailing my canvas to a
telegraph pole where Main Street meets the railroad, I
got out my paints and set to work. The clay was Sun
day. A group of village youths, very trim and jaunty
in knickerbockers and gay jerseys stopped to look at
the sketch. They talked intelligently about the color,
the paints, the relative position of the several build
ings beyond the railroad track. Then one of them
chanted, "Ha ha ha! Main Street, Cohasset !" The
others, taking up the words, broke into derisive laugh
ter.
Now a man sketching knows when his work is caus
ing amusement. For example, I have been much en
joyed both in Damascus and Ningpoo by observers
whose art traditions did not run parallel with those
of the West. But these lads were not laughing
at my sketch. Gasoline transportation, the moving
pictures, the radio, and recent books have clone their
work. The young men of Cohasset were laughing in
a large, cosmopolitan manner at their own home
town !
Coiiasse/l is the most norlJicrly louni on the Mississippi
proper. It lias the I any of the frontier about it.
THE THICKET
33
Again the south wind, again the threat of rain.
Leaving the town, we paddled into high, white-topped
waves thrown up by the opposition of wind and cur
rent on a river that had widened considerably. Two
hours of hard going brought us to a large government
dam a mile and a half below Cohasset.
Two young girls sat on the dam fishing with rustic
fishpoles. As we approached, one of the damsels
squeaked aloud, and, hauling in fishpole and line hand
over hand, pulled a thirty-inch pickerel out of the
water. Her initial squeak was one of excitement, not
incapacity, for she grasped her prey firmly through the
gills with one hand and kept the other over its mouth,
holding it on her lap like a fretful baby until the fresh
air had lulled it to sleep.
'Which is the best side of the dam to portage over ?"
we called.
"The right side but there are logs below/'
We climbed the bank and looked down. For six hun
dred yards ahead, the river, closely thicketed by rank
underbrush, presented a surface, not of water, but of
logs ! At the far end, small groups of logs, brought tip
stream by the wind, were momentarily joining the
blockade.
With one of the large waterproof bags on my shoul-
34 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
ders, I went along a small path into the underbrush,
following- the river. The path soon disappeared in a
thicket so dense that in order to catch even an occa
sional glimpse of the river it was necessary to remain
within twenty feet of the low bank. The ground be
came swampy. With every foot, the traveling grew
worse. Here were holes filled with stagnant water;
charred stumps and black, decaying trunks of fallen
trees overrun with brush and creepers barred the way.
To avoid the worst of the swamp, I made a detour in
land, but on coming back toward the river, I encoun
tered a grove of small birch saplings growing so thick
together that the bag could only be dragged through
them by the greatest effort.
Here at last was the down-stream end of the massed
logs. I cached the bag under a young ash tree that was
turning prematurely yellow, fastened a handkerchief
to a branch where I hoped it would be visible from the
river, and went back to the dam, keeping a lookout as
I went, for a better route on the other side. But the
bank there was higher and the brush equally heavy.
A slight rift in the logs appeared just below the dam
where a canoe might work its way forward a few
yards. We piled the rest of our dunnage on the em
bankment and covered it with the poncho; then por
taged the canoe over the bank and paddled carefully
down stream, pushing the logs aside until their in-
THE THICKET 35
creasing number made further progress impossible.
Working our way toward the shore, we pulled the boat
into the underbrush, intending to drag it through the
wood to the open water where I had cached the bag.
Now came a few drops of rain, then a soft, increas
ing spatter on the leaves above us, and finally, such a
drenching downpour as one would only expect far to
the south. The leaves became small sardonic gargoyles
with spouting tongues, the bushes sloshed us with
buckets of water, the fallen logs turned black and
slimy like the backs of so many giant eels. Slipping and
stumbling, we dragged the canoe a few feet into the
underbrush. That wouldn't do at all. It was less man
ageable for two than it would be for one. Yet if I put
it over rny head, how could we find the way through
the bog to the young ash where I had left the sack?
This, at least, was certain: if we stayed where we
were, we would shortly be bogged. I turned the canoe
over, crawled under it, got my shoulders against the
bottom and, with my head in a position of profound
thought on my breast, came to my feet. Then, with
my well-intentioned companion guiding the inverted
bow as well as she could and at the same time fighting
her way through the underbrush, we turned inland
into a nightmare of swamp and burned trees and
brush and lashing twigs and rain.
With an occasional rest, we went on, I from the
36 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
dark but by no means cozy interior of the canoe, try
ing to circle around the swamp's edge and at the same
time attempting to avoid the logs and bogs and bushes
that kept popping up with devilish persistence into my
restricted view. Cut my feet had lost their accustomed
lightness because of the canoe sitting on my neck, and,
slipping on a log, I went plop, the canoe extinguishing
me as a snuffer its candle. Stupidly enough, I lay there
for a moment to get my breath, and on appearing like
Caliban out of his den, I found my sweet friend in
tears, out of fear that I had broken a leg or perhaps a
neck. And I never saw anything* so pathetic or so be
draggled in my life, she with her little hat melted onto
her head, and many black smudges from the burned
trees on her face, and the water both from the heavens
and her eyes running off her rain coat and into her
boots, while all the while she wept most sadly, think
ing that her man was either sorely hurt or dead.
I made her mind as easy as the situation would per
mit, and when I had my wind back, tracked off alone
in the direction in which I thought the river lay, keep
ing well within shouting' distance, however ; for when
the towns are separated by twenty miles of timber,
even second growth timber, it is not good to travel
alone.
I could not find the river, nor anything except the
rain that' was even vaguely suggestive of it. I climbed
THE THICKET 37
a tall pine, but the view was a rim of trees. Sliding
down, I worked around the other radii of the circle.
No luck at all. We spent perhaps half an hour trying
to get some sort of bearings. Then gradually first
with a slight sense of amusement, then without any
amusement at all it drifted in upon us that we were
lost. And we wondered if such a trio had ever before
been lost in the woods a man, a woman, and a canoe.
If the man and woman of us could have wandered
off together, we might have found some clew as to
the direction of the river. But if we left the canoe by
so much as twenty feet in that incredible underbrush,
it would be as good as gone until winter cleared away
its impenetrable screen of leaves.
Then, as we sat in the rain looking wistfully up at
the little tent that prisoners call the sky, my com
panion's face lighted with an idea. "See ! The wind up
there seems to be blowing from the right. If it hasn't
changed, then the river should be somewhere to our
left/ 7 I got under the canoe again, and we went on
through the boscage, banging into certain trees,
stumbling over others, now getting the canoe into
harrow places from which we would have to back out,
until at last she would not let me carry it any farther.
We rested, and then went on, I at the front, break
ing the way, she at the back, holding on with both
hands, until at last we came to the faint trace of a
38 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
disused path, and fifty feet beyond, an abandoned
cabin with its roof grown up with weeds and half the
floor caved in; while there, shimmering faintly be
yond an aspen thicket was the river !
The cabin had a broken stove in it and some dry
boards. I started a fire so that one of us might get dry,
then pushing the canoe into
the, river, which at that
point was an inlet full of
logs, I managed, by half-
crawling and half -wading, to drag the boat a hundred
yards to open water. Paddling up stream, I came to the
handkerchief which fortunately showed from the river,
and, by pulling the canoe over a few more logs, I got
ashore. Then came three trips back through the under
brush to the dam for the most important of our as
sembled dunnage journeys which I haven't any par
ticular desire to remember.
I loaded the sacks into the canoe and returned to
the cabin.
THE THICKET 39
She had brought the fire to that mellow state where
it consumed even wet wood. The cabin was warm and
something like heaven after the sinister, chuckling
swamp but there was certainly a hole in the dirt floor
next to the door, ten feet across and five feet deep, and
it kept crumbling in at the edges. The passage be
tween the wall and the hole was narrower than when
I had left, but the stove was still a good three inches
from the rim. Since it must fall in before we did, and
thus give notice, we strung a line and dried our clothes,
and did ourselves well with some vegetable soup, break
fast by that time being already nine hours away.
But there were still a number of things under the
poncho at the dam, and as it was growing late, she
insisted on going back with me through the torrent to
the branch with the drowned handkerchief on it, and
thence through the swamp to the dam, I going ahead
and making what path I could, she coming after."
Through the sodden, reeking half mile to the dam,
and then all that miserable journey back, she struggled
after me with a paint box and the iron grill in one
hand, the poncho filled with tableware in the other,
and under her arm, the well-wrapped-up sketch of
Cohasset now slipping on the wet logs, now fighting
40 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
breathlessly through the thicket, the rain upon her,
and new stripes of black from the burned saplings
across her cheek but always coming on. And it seems
to me that it is not only good for a man to have a mem
ory like that, but to set it down somewhere.
So we returned to the cabin, and whatever discom
forts we had known fled away with the one excep
tion of that ominous caving floor. But the broken stove
bless its soul! stood like a warm-hearted tutelary
god at the edge of the dark pit, and we slept without
harm.
LADY INTO CATFISH
CHAPTER IV
BY morning, the rain and wind had gone. The logs,
now released from their place below the dam, were
quickly filling the inlet. We loaded our gear into the
canoe; then with the good canoeist in the stern, and
myself lying out over the prow, we slowly separated
the logs ahead, coming at last into open water.
Sunlight on the river. A faint dimpling of the sur
face by the current. Looking down, we could see the
thick foliage reflected as through a slightly uneven
mirror. There came a desire to paddle slowly not
through laziness of the paddlers, but through loveli
ness of the day. The lifted blades tossed out shining
rows of pearls which glided along like quicksilver for
a few inches and disappeared. The suggested reflec
tion of a hawk passed across the vitreous surface.
There, high above, was the hawk itself, sailing down
an invisible lane of sky. The floating logs drew close
together forming irregular rafts. I lay out over the.
bow, pressing them apart again in order that we
41
42 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
should not join them and become drifters like them
selves.
Here was the town of Grand Rapids, with booms
of chained logs, a dam, a paper mill, and a portage of
nearly half a mile. We passed the boom by pushing
one end of a chained log deep in the water while the
canoe slid over; and as for the portage, the mill lent
us a two-wheeled cart with a friendly horse and driver
St. George and the dragon
thereto. We hoisted the canoe aloft; and the horse, as
proud and excited as the steed of St. George carrying
home the dragon, pulled carefully to the meadow below
the dam, and then, in an emotional moment, nearly
spilled it into the river. But his intention had been
good, so we thanked him with an apple, and, saying
good-by to his master, went on our winding way.
A few miles below Grand Rapids, there came after
us a well-built wooden skiff driven by a small out-
LADY INTO CATFISH 43
board motor, with a man, very fine and rugged, stand
ing amidships. This was Lewis Ransome Freeman, a
great traveler and adventurer, writing about the river
for The National Geographic Magazine. He carried a
bedding roll in his skiff, great friendliness in his heart,
and an expert knowledge of how to cook rice and rai
sins. For two days we camped together on a high bank
where the grass was level as a putting green and
shaded by fine elm trees.
He also had first-hand knowledge of lion hunting
and fleets and canyons and battle fronts and the jungle
of all terrific adventure, in fact, except marriage.
Yet the most astonishing of his tales was a typical
story he had heard on the lower Mississippi about two
shantyboat fishermen who were tired of their wives
and had decided to exchange them. There was a rather
fine point involved in the exchange because one of the
wives weighed fifty pounds more than the other.
Finally they decided that the man receiving the lighter
wife was also entitled to a bonus of three times the
difference in the weight between the two ladies that
is, one hundred and fifty pounds of catfish.*
A small well-kept path lead from the camping site
up through a ravine to a farm occupied by a numer
ous family of Finnlanders. The man, a short, power-
*We found later on the lower river that there was every reason to
believe this story.
44 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
ful peasant with a face marked by toil and kindliness,
had come there alone, and, like Isak in Growth of the
Soil, had hewn his farm out of the forest. It was a
strange thing to see his wife, who spoke no English,
pattering bare-footed over the well-scrubbed floor to
answer the telephone, while beyond the doorsill stood
their shining, seven-passenger automobile.
He showed me with pride the first small log house
he had built with his own hands and the farmland he
had cleared ; and when we had drunk his bitter Finnish
beer together, he submitted the greatest favor of Finn
ish hospitality: that since it was Saturday night, we
should bathe with his family.
Inquiring for the sake of my lady into the manner
and order of the bath, I found that it was a semi-
weekly ceremony, that it was accomplished by steam
in a bathhouse built especially for that purpose, that
it was well-conducted and decorous, and not co
educational.
But when I told her, she would have none of it,
claiming that steam always made her sneeze.
Returning to the house in the evening, I found cer
tain members of the tribe glowing pinkly-purple and
very merry. With such of the men as still retained
their natural hue, I retired down the lane to the bath
house. The latter was divided into two rooms. A bench
ran round the wall of the outer room. We removed
LADY INTO CATFISH 45
our clothes; then the inner door was opened, and one
by one we disappeared within into a cloud of hot vapor.
The eyes, accommodating themselves to the light of
a dim lantern, saw a rough dais at one end of the
room and rough log walls apparently blackened by
heat. Near the dais were pails of hot and cold water,
and soap, and bundles of laurel for beating oneself
on the back. Close by, one of the sons was tending a
brick oven that was covered with an iron lid. A round
iron container full of good-sized bowlders stood on
the oven. The youth in charge threw over them a small
quantity of water. There was a sharp, sudden hiss.
White vapor enveloped us. We experienced that first
delightful pain one feels on getting into a bath tub of
too hot water. In order to protect the lungs against the
heat, one had to contract the nostrils like a camel and
breathe with considerable care.
Gradually we became acclimated. The pores opened
sympathetically. There descended upon us the broad
expansiveness of opinion so often to be observed in the
hot-room of an athletic club. I caught sight of my vis
age in a small lookingglass. I too, like my neighbors,
had turned a rich, crepuscular pink. Rejuvenated, I
dressed, thanked the good man of the house, and re
turned to the tent.
"You missed it I" I exclaimed merrily to the concen
tric blankets within.
46 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
"Yes?" came the response very calm and dulcet
too calm, indeed, to go unchallanged.
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing." (This, very cool and perfect.)
"Yes there is. What's the matter?"
"Oh nothing. Only you aren't so much."
Thus I found that, while one might bathe by lan
tern light with water out of a pail, another might pre
fer starlight and the silent river; and that Saturday
night venerable institution ! had been Saturday
night for all
Before dawn had so much as peeped, we were up
and about, and breaking camp to be on our way. Then,
appearing over the hill with the sun, came two little
boys and a girl carrying my hat which I had left in
the bathhouse, also two pounds of honey on a plate.
And this was not the pale, insipid honey of the in
dustrialized town bee, but the rich, mottled spicery of
the buccaneers of the open who have gone roistering
across the buckwheat fields of the north, to come reel
ing drunkenly back with their redolent plunder.
We thanked the young Finns, and waved good-by,
going southward into a day of glorious sun and sculp
tured clouds. For the time, the banks of the winding
LADY INTO CATFISH 47
river had become park-like grass-grown terraces, ris
ing up, one level above another, and covered with
groves of young elm and oak and maple. Nature, al
ways capricious, had indulged in a species of forestry
almost Teutonic in its efficient neatness. The valley of
the Mississippi might well have been the Isarthal. It
would have been no great surprise, on rounding a
clump of well-regulated willows, to have come on some
white swans gliding; and beyond, a white German
Wirthaus with its green tables, bearing Augustiner-
brau and naturschnitsel and music from the Fleder-
maus rising from among the trees.
In lieu of all this, we went ashore and had some
"roasting ears," and eggs, and grilled bacon, none of
which were at all difficult in the taking. Then I sat on
a rock in the sun, watching my sweet slim friend
"plumping out her admirable proportions/ 5 as George
Moore puts it, with honey and cheese on thin pieces
of bread.
"In a previous incarnation, you were certainly a
mouse."
"That isn't very nice. Mice aren't so heavenly."
"Well, what do you think you were then?"
"I think I just never saw any cheese before. That's
why I'm so fond of it now."
"But what do you think you were ?"
"I don't know. I might have been a nun a bad nun.
48 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
Because I have a feeling of fear at being shut up any
where."
"What! Have you ever been in the hoosegow?"
"Hoosegow?" she inquired.
"Yes jail."
"No. Anyway, the thing I mean wouldn't be like
that. What would baffle me most would be a domina
tion I couldn't break because it was too kind."
"Do you ever feel that way about marriage?" I in
quired.
"No. Marriage never has had the slightest feeling of
jail at all. I don't see that it has any barriers."
"Just what, for Pete's sake, do you mean by that?"
"I mean that I can do anything I want to. Only
don't be too kind."
"All right; whenever you feel that I'm being too
kind, just bring me that little hatchet and I'll know
what to do."
Instead she came over and sat on my knee, and look
ing at me very intently said, "Boppo, you have been
sitting in the sun again. Your face is all in chips. What
was that queer-looking man we saw at the circus in
Madison Square Garden a hundred years ago?"
"You can't mean, 'Boy born in the Skin of an Alli
gator!' "
"Yes, I do!"
Then in a huge rage I spilled her onto the grass,
LADY INTO CATFISH 49
and we went on again, quite as pleasantly as before.
Redwinged blackbirds flitted back and forth across
the river, disturbed by the distant shooting of pre-
seasonal duck-hunters, who, like small boys with fire
crackers before the Fourth of July, simply couldn't
hold out any longer.
Half -submerged logs, with their heads pointing
down stream, occupied our attention, though only cas
ually, for we were becoming more and more expert at
paddling together. "Bobbers," these logs are called;
while their completely water-logged brethren, lying, no
doubt, in great numbers along the river bottom, are
known as "deadheads."
If a hundred million logs have floated down the
river, how many deadheads are there? No one knows.
They lie there, perhaps a million of them, year after
year, unhurt by the running water. A small percentage
is hooked, chained, and dragged to the surface by
river men who make their living that way. Many logs
have been found bearing the marks and symbols of
lumber companies that are now forgotten. Men have
looked up the symbols in the old forestry records in
St. Paul and have found that some of the salvaged
logs still as good as new are sixty years old.
Bobbers make excellent resting places for turtles.
So easy to climb up, so easy to slide down. For some
reason or other, the river turtles were very shy. We
50 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
never came within forty feet of one. Perhaps that was
attributable to the red canoe.
For ourselves, we were getting quite accustomed to
the canoe's flaming color. People admired it so! We
spoke about repainting it less frequently than we had
before.
As the afternoon wore on, great numbers of
gossamer-winged Mayflies came flitting and dancing
out over the river. What were Mayflies doing on the
river in September? Committing suicide, it seemed.
Sometimes, lured by their own reflections, they dipped
to the surface of the water only to find themselves
caught and helpless in the strange, cold terror be
neath. Others, fluttering above, would brush one of the
captives with their wings, and she, or perhaps he, feel
ing the warm stir of life, would struggle desperately
up, freeing herself from the clinging death; or more
often, falling back, would flutter a few times and then
lie still
As the shadows lengthened, others too, over-zestf ul
of life, or perhaps very tired, would sink down and
embrace the river. Then some hidden eddy, some whim
of the current, would sweep them slowly into line and
send them down stream in a conclave almost stately
the mourners and the mourned all dead.
SSS-BANG!
CHAPTER V
OBSERVE the town of Palisade, Minnesota, with all
twelve buildings on the main street wearing high,
wooden, false-fronts, as so many Muenchner burghers
their dickeys, and great excitement on the street below.
Here was a man with a huge red mustache coming- up
to me and saying:
"Well, stranger, ye're jest in time ta-buy a ticket f er
our fair. There's goirt' ta-bee great doin's at the
grounds jest across the river. There's goin 7 ta-bee a
hundred and fifty Indians, and a sham battle, and two
hundred and fifty dollars' worth of far-works. If ya
stay ta see it, I'll tell ya, ye'll be comin' back next year,
no matter whar ya-bee!"
"Good ! We're in a canoe. Is there a place to camp on
the river?"
"A canoe? Surest thing ya know! There's a corn
field jest across from the fairgrounds with some young
trees on it. Ya can put yer tent under the trees and
rest comfortable, I'm sure."
First, being short of supplies, we went to the gen-
51
52 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
eral store and bought butter and raisins and sugar and
oatmeal. "Have you any brown rice?" we inquired.
"No, not brown rice but wild rice, brought in by
the Indians/' said the storekeeper. And he went on to
tell us how the red men, two in a canoe, could gather
seven or eight bushels a day, one paddling and the
other bending the tall rice stalks over and beating them
into the canoe. The price, he said, was twenty-five cents
a pound. We bought as much as we could manage,
remembering the distant city of New York where wild
rice might be had sometimes for two dollars a
pound. Then returning to the canoe, we went down
past a bridge and a few small rapids to the spot across
from the fairground designated by the red mustache.
The brush had been recently cut along the bank, and
some one had rigged up a wooden framework facing
the river, a sort of rickety fort of log slabs. Cut sap
lings lay under foot. The bank was slippery and
muddy. As we were removing our dunnage with some
care, suddenly the opposite bank bristled with little
boys. They formed an appreciative, nay, enthusiastic
audience as I hauled the bags up the slippery bank and
carried them to the edge of the cornfield. "There's the
settlers," they shrieked excitedly, and sat down on the
bank to observe our efforts more closely.
Now their number was augmented by the appear
ance of thirty or forty adults of both sexes. We heard
SSS-BANG! 53
the word "settlers" being passed back and forth among
them in animated tones. A brass band in a grandstand
back among the trees struck up a march of the yester
year, and the crowd, drawn by the new attraction, dis
appeared; while the settler's wife, still all aglow from
the unexpected house-warming, retired to the cool
depths of the tent, expressing in winged words her de
sire for perfect and immediate solitude.
"But, sweet friend, this is really a good place to pitch
the tent. How was I to know that "
No use ! I climbed sadly into the canoe and went to
the fair alone.
Its grounds, enclosed by the river and an encircling
fence, were pleasantly shaded by many large trees and
held several new, unpainted buildings, one for garden
and household exhibits, others for refreshments, and
still others for the horses and cattle. The crowd was
gathered about the bandstand where the man with the
red mustache had taken command.
"First we'll have a bar'l race. I want four men quick,
the quicker the better. There's the bar'ls hangin' side
ways on ropes halfway clown the course, one bar'l to a
man. You've got ta-climb througli twice, once goin'
and once comin' back. Here's two Indians ready ta-
run. Whar's the white men? Finer'n silk! Now when
I say go -"
He kept up a running comment during the race.
54 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
"Good boy! Look at John, stuck in the bar'l! He'd
make a horse laugh! Look at that bugger go! Hay,
John, ya better save ya money becuz ye're goin' ta-stay
a long time in that bar'l !" While he was talking, one
of the underfed Indians slipped through to the finish,
winning almost at a walk.
All out for the tug-of-war! A great event this, be
tween the Indians and the whites. A rope is laid on
the ground between the goal posts, and a number of
white men take their places. But there are not enough.
"Come oh, Homer!"
"Naw, I've got a headache."
"Tug-o'-war's good f er a headache ! Come on, Bill."
"Nix. I don't want to get scalped by those men from
Sandy Lake."
"Git in there, Roy."
"I hurt my hand crankin' my car."
"Youthen, Jake!"
"I got the baby."
"Give me the baby. Now one more white man. There
you are !"
The Indians, a scrawny crew in smoke-darkened,
nondescript clothes, stand ready at their end of the
rope fifteen in all, some large, more small, one ne
groid, one with traces of Chinese blood. Another a
replica of a dark-skinned Kentucky colonel with gray
goatee holds them steady with raised hand.
SSS-BANG! 55
"When I say 'three/ " calls the red mustache, "then
go. One, two go!"
The rope snaps rigid. For a tense moment, the hand
kerchief at its center remains motionless.
"Pull, white men! Pull, Indians! Pull, you scalpin'
braves" Still the handkerchief remains quiet. Then
the white men get together. Heave ! Heave ! Heave!
Inch by inch, foot by foot, the dusky ones give way.
Instead of facing their decline with savage resolution,
the Indians begin to grin. The grins disturb their
equilibrium. They pull not as a team but as individ
uals. As their efforts are overcome, they give a final
grunt, and break into giggles like so many schoolgirls.
They're done. That's the end of the Noble Red
Man. . . .
But suddenly the line stops. The Indians themselves
look surprised. They take heart. They seize the rope
and pull. Now the white men are tugging and grunting
like red Indians, but in vain. They stagger. They give
way. More than that, they go down on their backs,
their legs passing by like abject signals of distress
through the air. Amid great excitement, the Indians
walk away with the rope. Good work, Chippewas !
What has happened? Has anyone helped them by
pulling on their end of the rope ? Certainly not !
Nobody but those four husky white men from Ait-
ken. . . .
56 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
I paddled back to her whose need for solitude, I
hoped, had moderated a little. It had. Together we re
turned to the fair, arriving just in time to hear the red
mustache announce: "Ladies, it has been hinted that
we're neglectin' ya. Since that's the case, we want
twenty-five women for a rooster race. Make a circle,
then we'll let loose a rooster, and the one that ketches
it, gits it."
The ladies, however, demurred. Perhaps the mem
ory of the finale of the tug-of-war deterred them.
"How about lettin' 'em chase a man?" some one sug
gested.
"Good! Mr. Olsen, will ya let the ladies chase ya?"
"Chase me? I've been trying to get the ladies to
chase me for twenty-five years. How about yourself?"
"Me? No! They want a good rooster. I'm only a
Long Island Red."
"Good f er you !" Great laughter.
"Now, ladies " But the rooster race did not come
off; so he of the roseate tushes announced a squaw
dance, which was to be the final event of the after
noon.
A few Indians seated themselves about a meagerly-
decorated war drum. As before, they wore dingy caps,
SSS-BANG! 57
mackinaws, and undistinguished trousers. For color,
one mangy-looking head bore a green celluloid eye-
shield, They sat laughing and joking lazily together
and trying out the drum, each with a mallet like a flex
ible, long-handled wooden spoon. The squaws, it
seemed, were dressing in the garden exhibit building.
Now, to the accompaniment of a faint falsetto
chorus, the drum spoke out in unhurried but insistent
rhythm. Three squaws appeared. They wore black
sateen dresses trimmed with red bands, and bangles of
tin. They were fat and pleasant-looking, and one had
her hair in a pair of short braids. Two similarly
dressed little girls with bobbed hair and square bangs
tripped like colts at their mothers' heels, squaws and
daughters all doing a sort of lame-duck step about the
men, very stiff and stupid and out of time.*
Two braves in soiled shirts and blue denim pants
which were festooned by bright rags- joined the
squaws, and the lame-duck went on ad infinitum, sawue
qui peut. There was one feeble consolation. These peo
ple were considerably more Indian than the several
full-rigged "princesses" in the distant lodges of Man
hattan, whose calliope altos pour sky-blue water into
one's afternoon tea.
* Later, one of the little maids posed for the sketch at page 58.
Her great-grandfather was Mis-qua-dos, chief of the Sandy Lake
Chippewas, who made early treaties with the white men.
58 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
It was over. I sought out Long Island Red and
asked him a question that had been smoldering in my
mind all afternoon.
"When we pitched our tent over there, why did the
people come running to the bank and call us settlers ?"
"Well, ya see, to-night we're goin' to have an at
tack by Indians, with far- works, just at the place whar
ya landed. And I took the liberty to tell folks at the
fair that you were the settlers the Indians were goin j
to attack. I hope ya'll excuse the liberty,"
Excuse the liberty ? With pleasure ! Sweet land of
liberty. . . .
But in the evening a drama took place, which, for
want of a better title may be called, "The Settlers'
Revenge."
Evening, but neither silence nor darkness. The fair
ground echoed to the raucous howling of motor
horns. A huge pile of logs and kindling that had been
assembled to light the battle refused to ignite. The
spectators, not to be disappointed, brought their cars
to the bank and turned a battery of lights upon the
river and fort.
We did not cross to the fairground, but stayed on
our own bank near a few other stray or defiant souls
This is n,ja-bHi-iw-(jiie (Girl of the ll'cst Country). She
foniul '// necessary la cry it Hlilc afler being sketched,
but a chocolate bar consoled her.
SSS-BANG! 59
who hid their identity in darkness. The voices of these
came to us through the night.
"What's going on?"
"Nothing, yet."
"This side of the river is better than the other. 7 '
"Sure, fifty cents better."
"They've got two boxes of blank cartridges over
there for the battle."
"Let's get your gun," said a mischievous lady whose
bulk loomed large through the dusk, "and shoot a few
good ones in among 'em."
A truck drove along the river road, stopped, and
deposited several men and a number of gunny sacks.
The men crawled down through the bushes to the fort.
"The real battle's going to begin to-morrow/' ob
served the stout lady. "That bank's covered with
poison ivy."
Now an anemic war-whoop sounded from down the
river. The red men were about to attack. Here they
were, two boatloads of them creeping timidly into the
area illuminated by the headlights, their pathetic old
clothes blowing about them in the night breeze. They
. lighted their Roman candles; the attack began.
The defenders of the fort replied with similar am
munition of their own, shooting of course, not into
the boats but into the river. But the Indians in their
zeal aimed directly at the fort, and their fiery balls
60 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
came popping in between the slabs, causing the defend
ers to jump about like grasshoppers in a smudge, and
at the same time giving great cheer to the stout lady
on the bank.
With another war-whoop, the Indians cautiously
came ashore; the white men disappeared above, the
fort burst into gasoline flames. One might have be
lieved that the battle was over, but in that case, one
would have been very wrong. The real battle had just
begun.
Sss-bang! A rocket went up from the bank above
the fort. It burst into a cluster of variegated stars,
spraying out in delicate tendrils of fire above the Miss
issippi. The stick, describing a wide, beautiful arc,
disappeared with a dull thud among the cars on the
opposite bank, leaving in its immediate vicinity a small
ripple of excitement. The crowd, however, went on
talking merrily.
Sss-bang! Again the burst of illuminated balls;
again, the stick, nosing its way downward like a near
sighted watersnake, landed among the cars with a hol
low thud. A hush fell over the throng.
Sss-bang! Now there was a gasp of anticipation.
Plop, said the stick followed by silence. Sss-bang!
Another gasp of anticipation. Plop, said the stick this
time followed by a grunt. Then out of the ensuing
SSS-BANG! 6 1
hush, a familiar voice inquired, "How hard did it
hitya?"
Sss-bang! Sss-bang! Sss-bang! Plop! Plop! Plop!
The cannoneers were warming to their work. Sss-
bang! The air was full of cries.
"Say, you!" some one yelled, but the sound of rock
ets filled the air. Sss-bang! Sss-bang! Sss-bang!
From the opposite bank came the noise of engines
being started and the wild call of horns. Plop! Plop!
Plop! The cars backed away from the river, and like
a stampeding' herd of buffaloes on wheels, disappeared
into the grove beyond. Sss-bang! Sss-bang! Sss-
bang!
Plop! Plop! Plop!
The last rocket rose over the Mississippi and
thudded to silence on the now deserted bank. The can
noneers came marching up the road, smirched but
happy.
"I guess we gave them their money's worth/ 7 said
one.
The stout lady rose up in the darkness, wiping her
eyes. "Yes, brother/' she said, "you certainly did!"
SOME WHO STRAY
CHAPTER VI
RAIN and cold, cold and rain the river lying with
all the gayety of a corpse in a French morgue, under a
steady, congealing drizzle. Above the layers of clouds
that furnished the rain, spread other layers of cloud.
It was very well thought out. The upper strata pre
vented the sun from drying out the reeking ones be
low.
We shivered, we froze. We went to bed in every
thing but our shoes. In a fury of frigidity, I donned
two suits of wearwithalls, three pairs of socks, two
vests, a brace of sweaters, and a suit of pajamas!
What weather for September ! There were reports of
snow in Iowa and Illinois a hundred miles to the south.
One morning we woke after a night so cold that we
wore caps to bed to find that the frost king had in
deed come down the river, touching the banks with
his transforming garments as he passed. Gray sky
above, gray water below, but beside us, a carnival of
green-yellow and golden-yellow, lighting up the fore-
62
SOME WHO STRAY 63
ground as though with splashes of sun against the
dark, judicial velvet of the pines.
Here were delicate maples with leaves pink as peach
blossoms, dun-colored poplars, oaks and elms still clad
in Lincoln green ; while sumac, with its vermilion dan
ger signal, flashed the way southward toward the sun.
The trees seemed taller now. Early deforestation had
not so ruined these river banks as those farther to the
north; or if it had, twenty-five years had reclothed
them very lavishly again. But it was necessary to rush
on past all this beauty; otherwise we might have re
mained to observe it from a canoe stuck in the ice.
Cold or no cold, we had not yet become entirely
gelid. We were still able to enjoy our food. One eve
ning my voyageuse stopped at a solitary, semi-
dilapidated little house set high on the river bank
among vegetables and flowers. She wished to buy a
few of those lowly but robust pearls of the soil that
give such kingly relish to a stew. A woman with un
mistakable refinement about her and sadness back of
her eyes, came out of the house. They talked together
about a number of things, as women will, but when it
came to paying for the tubers, she refused to take any
money at all, adding that there was a good place to
camp at the bend of the river, and that she and her
husband would like to have us come to see them in the
evening.
64 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
"We have a nice warm fire/ 7 she said.
Later, with the beam of the flashlight leading on, we
picked our way through the dew and darkness to the
house. Beside the woman, there was a pretty, acquies
cent girl in the cheerful room, and a man with an
ascetic, birdlike face, a man who looked like a bird that
had been swept along on a far flight and that had
come to earth lost and buffeted by the elements.
Shortly a preacher came in with his wife and baby.
He was a simple, untutored man with a great frame,
and a heavy, jovial voice which he could make super-
hearty a sky pilot of the wilderness, with a circuit
extending across a hundred miles of timberland. His
huge voice wrapping and warming us like a good
woolen blanket, he told us about his work of the last
eleven years in the lumber camps and settlements, his
ruddy, hardship-strengthened face shining large and
friendly across the room.
The baby, unimpressed, had immediately fallen
asleep. Its mother, a robust young woman, sat listen
ing to her man, content in the knowledge that he was
holding his audience.
He told of the logging camps the long, low in
teriors of double-decker bunks with the stove at one
end and the grindstone at the other and of how, on a
winter's night, when the temperature was thirty de
grees below zero, and when all the men were in after
SOMEW HO STRAY 65
a day's work, and smoking their pipes and drying their
socks and shirts around the stove with the door and
windows sealed, the atmosphere was nearly enough to
bowl you over. It had been even worse in the old days,
he said, for then the bunks which were called "muzzle-
loaders" had been three tiers high, with the heads on
the aisle ; and six men two in a tier had occupied a
space only four-and-a-half feet wide. Now conditions
were somewhat better. Two men, one in the upper
bunk and one in the lower, had a wall space of six-
feet-and-a-half.
Most of the time, the men were very decent about
listening to him. He had had to strip off his coat to
fight a few times, but usually the job was taken out of
his hands. A few weeks earlier, for example, he had
been talking to the men when a Swede in the back of
the barrack had started the grindstone and held a
kettle against it. The preacher had remonstrated in a
friendly way, and the Swede had stopped. But when
he went on with his talk, the "kettle-music" began
again.
After the third repetition of this discourtesy, a
nearby Irishman arose, and in a voice that shook the
camp, announced, "Somebody tell that if he does
that once more, I'm going to land on him." The kettle
sounded off again, the Irishman jumped, and a pair of
Scandinavian heels "cracked like a gun" on the floor.
66 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
They dragged the now unconcerned Swede to the door,
and the sky-pilot went on with his sermon.
One thing about the lumberjacks was, he said, that
they had no hypocrisy about them. If a man shook
hands with you, it meant that he liked you. If he didn't
like you, he wouldn't shake hands. Of course there
were a lot of yeggs and criminals among them. "If a
murderer gets into a logger's costume and leaves a few
days' beard on his chin, the Lord Himself would have
difficulty in picking him out from the rest/'
"What is the greatest hardship in your work?" I
asked him.
"It's the funerals/' he said. "Weddings aren't so
bad, because they let you know a few days beforehand.
But when it comes to dying, folks die most any time,
even if you have just left them and are fifty miles
away over terrible roads. Then you have to come back ;
and -perhaps you have word that some one at the other
end of the circuit is very sick and wants to see you.
When a man drives a Ford over these roads for forty
or fifty hours without sleep, he begins to see people
in the road where there aren't people at all."
So he talked on, stopping at last to ask the man
with the birdlike face how things were coming on about
the new dam.
A power company, it appeared, held a concession
from the government to build a dam a few miles be-
SOME WHO STRAY 67
low the little house, and if it were built, all this land
would soon be under water. Of course, the power com
pany would pay for the land, and pay the taxes too,
and the man would build again on higher ground on
the other side of the river. "It makes it bad about the
big bridge, though/' he said. "The bridge has to be
raised seven feet. That is going to cost the county a lot
of money five million dollars, or something like that."
"Five thousand, isn't it?" said his wife, looking at
him gently.
"Well, maybe it is. Five thousand, then/' Conversa
tion died down into a contemplative silence, but the
preacher revived it with further stories of the lumber
camps, inquiring at last about our journey and listen
ing with visible enjoyment to the narration of certain
of our adventures. Finally we talked about cities up
and down the river, while the man .with the eager, dis
tant look in his eyes listened but never said a word.
Well, we must think about going back to the tent.
What time was it, anyway?
But now the birdlike man, quietly leaving the room,
returned with a cardboard box in his hands. And in
the box were dozens of beautifully carved objects of
wood chains made all of one piece ; intricate nests of
cages ; pincers and pliers for every use and trade, each
exquisitely carved and finished from one piece of wood,
opening and shutting on pins that were also a part of
68 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
the same piece of wood. Undirected, his artists' spirit
had spent itself with infinite, pathetic care on these
useless things.
As he showed them to us with a strange, suppressed
eagerness, his wife kept looking and looking at him.
But I think I was the only one who saw that. For my
own companion, who has a first hand knowledge of
wood-carving cried, "This is wonderfully fine work."
"He hasn't done any for a long time," said his wife
soberly.
"How did you come to make them?" I asked.
"Well when I was in the fields alone, and there
wasn't anything to do, I passed the time working this
way. I enjoyed it." He brought out a large card, hand
somely mounted with other sets of chains, puzzles,
tableware, and pincers. "I sent these to the county fair,
but they didn't have a class for them so they came
back."
Then his wife said in a quiet voice, "He has been
making ax handles lately. How many is it you have
made?" she asked him.
The distant, eager look died out of his eyes,
"Twenty," he answered. "Twenty."
Not until the Mississippi has traveled a hundred
miles below Palisade does it take on the first semblance
SOME WHO STRAY 69
of majesty. The vast marshes of sedge and wild rice
to the north of Cohasset had not dignified the river,
for it had run like a pale thread through their midst.
Such broad stretches of water as we had met lasted
only a mile or two. Frequently it would have been easy
to toss a pebble underhand across the stream.
But now the shores drew back into low hills ara-
besqued with the jagged magnificence of spruce and
hemlock, while the river, spreading out under the wide
sky, passed on with fuller curves and contours to
ward a ripening maturity.
Above the town of Brainerd, we found the way
blocked by a double boom of logs under a bridge, and
beyond the bridge, a vast mill like the one at Grand
Rapids, for turning logs into paper. By virtue of some
careful study, we threaded the canoe through the
upper boom. But the timbers of the lower barrier were
chained solidly together. We could find no place to
penetrate it.
A hawk-faced old man was tinkering with a launch
beside the bridge, but he walked away as we ap
proached. Two women were fishing from one of the
piers. With them was a horrible little infant, sex un
known, who whanged first one, then the other of them
with its own fishpole, and in return received a series
of cuffs over the head, which it appeared not to mind
at all.
70 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
"How do we get through the boom?" we asked.
They paused long enough in their divertissement to
reply that as far as they knew, we didn't. But a youth
with a shot-gun strode across the bridge and said,
"Just go up to the mill, and ask for Mr. Long. He'll
help you across whether he wants to or not." *
Shortly, we crossed the lower boom, and were as
sisted around the dam below, and went on between
high banks to the town. But Brainerd, which rises
nearly a hundred feet above the Mississippi, did not
expect guests by river, and so had no suitable spot for
pitching a tent except in a tourists' camp high above
our heads. We paddled back to the best bank we could
find, with the uptown sewage polluting the river, and
the town refuse dump functioning not far away, and
made camp to the distant accompaniment of trains
snorting, dogs barking, children calling, and some one
playing a cornet.
So, sitting there near the town but not of it, and
listening to a particularly spurious blat of the cornet,
I thought without any ill-intention at all toward
Brainerd of old John Bunyan's town of Vanity
"where a lusty fair was kept." But when I mentioned
* Contrary to current opinion of many dwellers along the banks, it is
not compulsory for companies having dams or booms across this section
of the river to assist voyagers. We found however, that in every case,
help was most generously and courteously given.
SOME WHO STRAY 71
it to my tentmate, I found that she had a far lovelier
picture in her mind.
It reminded her, she said, of France and an early
evening in Chartres, when she had walked out into
the little park on the hilltop where the cathedral rises
above the valley. And from the valley came the sound
of music like a light, quivering murmur of birds a
sound which thrilled and gladdened her, for she had
never heard anything just like it before in her life.
Then she walked to the edge of the balustrade back
of the cathedral, and looking down, she found that
the gentle, unknown sounds were the voices of human
beings in the little valley far below.
As the towns on this section of the river lie fifty
miles apart, it was necessary for us to buy supplies at
Brainerd. The only possible hitch in that plan would
lie in the non-arrival of a letter we were expecting in
the general delivery. Rising early, we climbed the hill
and went toward the town. Brainerd, high on its bluff
above the river, contains some nine thousand for-the-
most-part friendly people. Even the county jail, which
has all the charm of a parsonage, held its modicum of
sociability, for as we passed, one of the inmates
72 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
spying my companion's cheering yellow slicker began
to chant, "There she goes, on her toes " changing at
that point to "I wish I had some one to love me "
"Is that a hoosegow?" inquired the subject of the
serenade.
"Yes/' I answered and hurried her along out of ear
shot before any sentiment should arise which might
mar the beginning of an otherwise propitious day.
At the post office we found much mail, but not the
particularly desired letter. We looked in our pockets
again. No luck. Hardly enough for lunch. Indeed, we
had traveled the last seventy-five miles of river on the
tag end of a five-dollar bill. At least, we had our other
mail. We would try a local bank.
Finding one nearby, we entered, went to a small,
precise man who was the manager, and attempted to
get a check cashed, with no more means of identifica
tion about us than the following :
A letter from the editor of a well-known magazine.
A letter from Dodd, Mead & Company, containing
a royalty statement and check.
A bank receipt for money recently deposited.
A letter from Alderny Castle, in Ireland.
Two reviews from English papers of my last book.
Two wedding announcements.
The banker looked over my papers, very courteous
and grave, and when he was done, he shook his little
SOME WHO STRAY 73
mouse-colored mustache, saying that he was very
sorry. I could see that he thought I had like as not
forged these papers in some kitchen of hell and come
all the way to Brainerd and to his bank to get the
money ; and I could tell by his eye that he thought we
were a couple of peculators of the first water. Or it
may be that I do him wrong, and that he considered
the wedding invitations liabilities that completely over
balanced all the rest. And yet again, it may have hap
pened that his agents up the river had seen my femi
nine accomplice emerging silently from a cornfield
carrying a dozen ears of corn. . . .
At any rate, "So many checks come back/' he said.
"So many tourists go through. . . ." Then I noticed
a neat brass tablet on his desk bearing the legend, "Mr.
Peefendinkel/' or something like that, and I said to
myself, "God help us/' and to my companion, "I think
we had better go."
Leaving him to his fate, we repaired to a telegraph
office, and with our few remaining coins, sent out a
telegraphic S.O.S. Then, seeing another bank, we
went in to the manager, whose name ended, not in
dinkel, but in the very proper Minnesota syllable of
quist.
"Do you ever cash checks for unidentified people?"
"We do almost anything sometimes/' he answered
merrily. So we left him a few minutes after with our
74 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
pockets comfortably lined. Then the money came by
telegram, and in the afternoon, the expected letter.
"I have an idea ! Let's go back and buy Mr. Peef en-
dinkel's bank!"
"No, we could never get it into the canoe."
So we bought our supplies instead, and, sitting in
state in the town's most official taxicab, we returned
past the now silent gaol to the enfolding silence of the
river.
On through the forest with its increasing variations
in autumnal color. On past lonely farms with sheep and
cattle staring strangely at us from the bank; on past
deserted log cabins and neglected fields covered with
rank overgrowth. Now the river had got well out of
its infancy, and, responsive to the quickening rain, it
flowed along full and silent between its banks. On
through the constantly changing landscape, with only
the substantial realities of ourselves and the red canoe
fixed firmly in the shifting pattern of days.
Sometimes one sat in the bow, sometimes the other.
When she took the front paddle, I steered, and vice
versa. There was considerable difference in our tech
nique as steersman, also an accompanying discussion
that was as long and as flowing as the river itself.
SOME WHO STRAY 75
Longer, in fact. For while the river stops at the sea,
our affirmations as to how to travel down the Missis
sippi will probably go on forever.
On the whole, the current throughout
the length of the river flows like this:
That is, the momentum usually forces the
current away from the shallows and in
toward the overhanging banks. One of us,
feeling that directness was best, wanted
to travel thus :
Whereas, the other, believing that the
current was an important factor in
helping us, liked to travel thus:
The truth is, of course,
that either method has its
advantages. In following a
straight line, there is dan
ger of being caught on a
sandbar at a shallow point, or of getting
into a backwater where the river actu
ally travels up stream. On the other hand, in following
the channel too persistently, there is likelihood of losing
a lot of time by going back and forth across the river.
So our various judgments, estimates, opinions and
appeals furnished us considerable amusement and a
little grief, and occasionally kept us nicely warm even
though the weather was cold. For if marriage is "a
76 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
state of balanced tension/' what, in the name of Count
Herman Keyserling, is marriage in a canoe?
But we adjusted the balance by agreeing that we
take turns steering day by day at the back paddle, and
that he at the back should steer on his day as he chose.
Varied by stretches of less classic timberland, the
park-like banks of the river continued. As we came
around a sharp curve in the valley on the second after
noon beyond Brainerd, the sun burst through the as
tonished clouds and shone gloriously on a group of
yellow willows against a landscape of deep blue gray.
A painting in that !
We stopped. I unloaded the canoe, set up a canvas
and began to sketch. She watched me for a while ; then,
'Tm going to look for a well," she said.
Taking the water bucket, she paddled off across the
river to an opening between the trees which showed
the corner of a badly neglected field. Pulling the canoe
up onto the bank, she disappeared.
Half an hour passed. Then the sun dived behind the
clouds, causing a total eclipse of color, and changing
the mood, the quality, the very composition of the
subject. I worked on; but the sketch, which had not
progressed very far, grew weaker and weaker, dying
at last of acute alteration. I scraped it down, cleaned
up the palette, pitched the tent, and collected some
firewood.
SOME WHO STRAY 77.
Another half hour passed. I fished a little but the
pickled minnows caught nothing. Collecting more fire
wood, I looked frequently toward the opposite bank.
No one in sight. I got out a few of our small, blue-
covered volumes from Girard, Kansas. (Whatever
their limitations from a bibliophile point of view, they
are superlative for light housekeeping in a canoe.)
But somehow or other, "The Three Strangers 77 did
not have its expected appeal. I was getting worried.
It was now an hour and a half since she had gone to
the opposite bank. I could see the canoe lying there, its
bow pulled a foot or two up out of the water.
I walked along the bank, whistling a signal whistle
that we both knew. I stopped now and then to shout
"Hello!" at the top of my voice. There was no re
sponse, no echo, even ; only the underbrush, the corner
of the ragged field, and an exceedingly empty silence.
Taking my Savage .38 to the top of a nearby knoll,
I fired several shots at intervals of a minute or so.
The shots might help her establish her direction. Yet
from the crest of the knoll, I could see that the river
did not go a hundred yards before twisting away in
a series of perplexing loops. Even if she heard the
shots, she might come toward them only to find herself
confronted by an entirely strange section of the river.
I imagined a dozen possible situations. She was ly
ing in a ravine with a badly wrenched ankle. There
78 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
were tall ferns in the ravine, half-hiding the trunks of
fallen trees, and over one of these she had plunged
headlong. I could even see the water pail she had been
carrying. It had rolled among some ferns and there
were drops of dew on its new tin surface. . . .
Now she was wandering through such a thicket as
we had met at the abandoned cabin up the river. She
still carried the water pail, but her face was scratched
with briars, and she was crying, but very quietly. . . .
She had gone half a mile down the field and knocked
at the door of a squalid house. A long-armed, chinless
brute of a man had come to the door.
"May I have some water at your well?"
"Yes come in. The pump is in the kitchen. Are
you alone?"
"No; my husband is with me. He is on the other
side of the river. I crossed in our canoe."
"Then he can't get across?"
I do not know that I allowed my mind to visualize
beyond that. At any rate, there came a slight feeling
of nausea, and it became urgently necessary for me to
cross the Mississippi. And I remember thinking to
myself, "What I do now must be done right/'
More methodically than usual, I made everything
snug about the camp, slung the holster of the Savage
Automatic high around my neck; took the flashlight
and hatchet; put matches inside my hat; caught up
SOME WHO STRAY 79
the remaining paddle, and returned to the river with
the urgent feeling that I must hurry.
A raft of logs lay along the bank buried in the
mud. I tried to pry it loose but it was immovable.
Heavy chains and railroad spikes held it together. Even
to cut one log from it would have taken an hour. A
half submerged tree lay beside it. I pushed it off, but
it refused to float.
On a sandbar there was another tree, short, heavy,
thick, with a huge fist of roots sticking out of the
water. I managed to shove it off. Getting astride the
trunk, I began to paddle. First came the knob of roots
rising like the head of a charger from the Mississippi,
then myself, apparently sitting waist-deep on nothing
at all and working the paddle, then a small limb of the
tree, rising out of the water behind like the charger's
tail. I remember looking around and thinking that the
situation should be humorous, but somehow the ele
ment of humor was entirely lacking.
The water was swift, I had to paddle hard. As the
current caught the log, it lunged and jumped about in
a surprising way. But I managed to keep the holster
around my neck dry, and landed on the opposite bank
some distance below .the starting place. There was no
trace of footsteps leading from the canoe, nor across
the ragged -field. Apparently she had walked on the
grass at the edge of the wood. To eyes untrained in
So MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
woodcraft, no marks of any kind were visible. I cut
across the field away from the river. She had been gone
more than two hours now and darkness was coming 1
on. / must hurry.
And then, as I stumbled over the weed-grown fur
rows in my water-logged boots, out from behind a
cluster of trees far down the field came that dear, fa
miliar figure.
She was walking quite wearily, tugging with both
hands at the handle of the water pail. Reaching her, I
took the pail from her silently, and, wet clothes or not,
put my arm about her, and we walked to the canoe.
It was no wonder she was tired. Going and returning,
she had carried the pail nearly five miles.
"At the end of the field," she said later, "I saw a
sharp-roofed house standing beyond a fringe of trees.
I went up to the house, but it was abandoned, and the
well was full of rubbish, and there were a lot of old
boots and other things around the yard. A sandy road
ran into the wood, and I followed it a long way, but
I could not tell how much farther I should have to go
because the woods were very thick. I went on and on.
I thought, it can't be much farther now; and I thought,
if I go back now, I'll have to walk all that way without
the water; and I thought, we haven't any water any
way; and I thought oh Lord
SOME WHO STRAY 81
"Then I came to a clearing, and before me was a
vast, flat plain, level as a floor, with tiny distant
groups of farm buildings on it, each with its own barns
and its own windmill, and the whole scene looking wide
and thunderous like a woodcut by Rockwell Kent
black, newly-plowed fields, a blue strip of hills, and
white groups of buildings cut fresh and sharp against
the blue. There were motor trucks too four or five of
them traveling- at great distances apart over the wide
plain like little mechanical toys.
"I came to a house with hundreds of sheep in the
yard, and a woman gave me water from the well. Her
nearest neighbor, she said, lived two miles away across
the plain, and we could see every detail of the neigh
bor's house through the clear air. But the woman who
never got away from her work, had never called on
her, and did not know her name. . . ."
Thus my companion found that we had come out of
the wild timberland of the north into the Minnesota
plains, and that a pail of water is heavy.
And her companion found that there may be a
strange and rather grim adventure of the spirit where
there is really no adventure at all. And that he would
rather, oh, considerably rather, do without water at
all, than travel on alone.
GOOD-BY CANOE
CHAPTER VII
So, despite the heavily-wooded valley of the Missis
sippi, with its trees and undergrowth as thick as ever,
we had left the actual forest country behind. And now
all the clouds that had gone north in wet, impenetrable
blankets, came south again in flint-like shards driven
by an even colder wind. We pitched our tent in hollow
banks, in gravel pits, in dense brush, even in ruined
cabins anywhere for protection.
Just in the nick of time came the well-lighted town
of Little Falls perched at the edge of its high power-
dam. We stayed at a hotel there two days, and warmed
our warping bones. But ice was in the gutters. We
must go on.
A second huge dam, holding back a forty-five foot
head of water blocked the way seven miles below Little
Falls. Between the two dams, the river became an
elongated lake. As we started, a chill north wind was
blowing across the wide water. Shortly it changed to
the northwest. We made our way down the lake with
great care, hut a violent squall of wind struck us, tear-
82
GOOD-BY CANOE 83
ing the poncho off the canoe and causing us to ship
water over the side. The strain of the wind was very
great. Only the fact that the heavily-laden canoe ex
posed not more than three inches of its sides to the
wind kept it from taking that position made famous
by the turtle, but which no self-respecting turtle will
voluntarily take.
At any rate, we shipped water badly, and had to stop
at once on a promontory covered with young oak trees.
There was a pyramidal mound on its top built of
rounded field stones a government surveyor's mark,
we thought, set here to mark some territorial division
in the wilderness.
A bronze tablet showed among the stones. We read
it and received a thrill; for what we had stumbled
upon by sheer accident, was this :
THESE ASSEMBLED STONES FORMED THE CHIM
NEY OF THE FIRST BLOCK HOUSE BUILT IN
WHAT IS NOW MINNESOTA IN OCTOBER
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED BY LIEUT. ZEBU-
LON MONTGOMERY PIKE EXPLORER
AND SURVEYOR OF THE LOUISIANA
PURCHASE.
Thus we had happened upon one of the earliest his
torical relics of the United States in the Chippewa
country.
84 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
The wind moderated. We crawled into our frail boat
and went on. What a river! Always panoramic, al
ways changing its character. Always shifting the
painted canvas of its scenery. Now, among the pine and
spruce and tamarack, were powdery clusters of gray-
green sage. The contour of the shoreline reflected
a new swiftness of current. Instead of being clothed
in foliage or sedge as before, one of the banks, sixty
feet high, dropped sharply down to the water like a
railroad fill, baring itself, in a half-mile bend to the
devouring teeth of the current. While on the other side
long since conquered and forgotten by the shifting
river a low, indeterminate shore rose from the water ;
a swampy, willow-clad thicket where roots and
branches and dead leaves assisted by earthworms,
would form new soil and again give contour to the
river as it ate slowly into the opposite bank.
Here were some small rapids, the swiftest we had
so far met on our journey, with the canoe starting for
ward like a horse under the touch of a whip as sub
merged steps of rock, well below the surface, dropped
us forward to slightly lower levels. On the shores were
clean, tall groves of standing pine, with the unfit trees
thinned out and lying in neat piles on the banks,
this being a sign of a scarcity of timber and govern
ment supervision; for men in the Northwest were sel-
GOOD-BY CANOE 85
dom economical of their timber until they were or
dered to be.
The river too, bore traces of further economy, for
we passed a number of two-man rafts, each raft built
like a horseshoe, with a derrick and capstan above the
opening for raising deadheads from the bottom of the
river. The men poled the rafts slowly up stream with
long pike poles, feeling at the same time, for dead
heads along the river bottom. On finding one, they
raised it a little with their poles, slung a chain under it,
lifted it to the surface with the capstan, and moored
it to a raft where it would not sink again. Simple
enough to tell about, but to accomplish not quite so
easy.
We passed the piles of timber, coming at last to a
place where the river seemed to have a wooded is
land in its midst.
"Which side, left or right?"
"We shall have to go to the right/' she said. "That
isn't an island, because the channel on the other side
isn't cut through at all."
"I think it is," said I.
"I don't/ 7 said she.
"All right, cigarettes against nut bars?"
"Correct!" We reached the lower end of the so-
called island, but it was a long one, and it was impos-
86 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
sible even from that point of vantage, to see whether
the left-hand channel was cut all the way through.
"I'll pay you your cigarettes/' she said magnani
mously, " but it's not an island/'
"Come back up the left-hand channel, then," said I.
"No," said she.
"That's not good sportsmanship," said I.
"Why not?"
"Because you say it isn't an island, but you won't
give me a chance to prove that it is."
"All right, well go back then."
So, like a couple of idiots and in spite of more than
two thousand miles to go, we turned the canoe around
and fought half a mile up the left-hand channel against
the wind and current. As we progressed, the channel
widened out, and I saw that the island was an island
after all and that I was going to win. As I looked at
her struggling at her paddle ahead, compassion came
over me, and I came very near saying, "I'm wrong,
it is not an island. You win." But that unfailing urge
which husbands have for making their wives always
finer and nobler kept me silent. Then she said in a
rather subdued voice, "I guess it is an island, all
right." I answered, "Yes, it seems to be." And we
turned around again and went down stream, I not
feeling half so magnificent as a winner ought, nor very
GOOD-BY CANOE 87
much like anything else except a spanked pup, full of
shame.
The logs gave place to rocky shores. The current be
came swifter, with rocks above and just below the sur
face. These made ominous, V-shaped ripples which
appeared to travel up stream with astonishing speed
and were upon us before we knew it, giving us many
a desperate pull at the paddles and many a correspond
ing moment of relief.
Here was a landscape from an earlier, more ro
mantic century than ours, with unctuous groups of
autumnal trees, and the broad, golden vistas of a Six
teenth Century tapestry, turning, toward dusk, into
something still simpler and more tender, like a wall
painting by Puvis de Chavannes.
We stopped at a farm lying halfway back into the
landscape to buy some vegetables; however, the
farmer insisted on giving us not only cucumbers and
corn and carrots but a pail of butternuts as well. He
was a young man, apparently Anglo-Saxon, with wife
and children, and was farming one hundred and ten
acres alone. His name was Wolhart.
"You don't look like a German."
88 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
"No, I'm not/' he answered. "My grandfather's
name was Willard, but there were so many Germans
on this part of the river, that he changed it to Wol-
hart." That was the first time I had ever heard of a
man in this country changing his patronym from an
English to a Germanic name.
"There are rapids below the Watab paper mill," he
said as we made off.
"Are they bad?"
"Well, I came up stream once from St. Cloud in
a canoe with my brother-in-law, and we were green at
it, so we carried the canoe around. But it will prob
ably be easy for you" (Did you hear that, mate?
There's a man of perception !) We waved him a hearty
good-by.
From a distance, the mighty Watab paper mill, rear
ing its decorative bulk against the sky, seemed to block
the way. But just in time, the river veered to the right,
bringing up, as usual, at a dam. As we sat before it
considering ways and means, the chief engineer sent
four good men to our assistance. We lowered the canoe
over the rotting wooden barrier of a dry spillway, car
ried the cargo down by the same route, and took off
into the swift water below.
The purling and mantling of the river did not stop.
The current became stronger and more constant than
we had ever seen it before. Now came a series of
GOOD-BY CANOE 89
rapids, with ourselves all at the alert as the brown,
half -hidden rocks flashed by ; then safety, and with it
a pleasant sense of elation. A bit of a village huddled
on the left bank, and there was a bridge over the
river with a few people on it who seemed to be watch
ing us even more intently than the gay canoe would
warrant.
We had gone on perhaps for a mile more when the
steady sound of rushing water came to our ears. Be
fore us, under another bridge, was a glint and sparkle
that meant more rapids. The bridge put us a little off
our guard. One didn't expect much in the way of
rapids near a bridge. For the moment we had forgot
ten that there is also a bridge at Niagara Falls.
Looking at the line of foam, we decided to keep to
the left, and we headed in that direction. It might be
well to stop and consider, a little. Then before we
knew it the current seized the canoe and shot it for
ward into a seething chute of water. Here and there,
flat, boiling surfaces flashed by, but they gave us no
comfort for we knew that rocks were under them. Be
ing well caught, and since there was nothing else we
could do anyway, I shouted, "Right through the
middle!"
"Go to the right bank," came a faint voice just au
dible through the rushing waters from the head of the
canoe.
9 o MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
"We can't I 39 I shouted. We couldn't. Then came a
noise like an express train in our ears, a glimpse of
twisting, boiling waves, and we were in it, bearing
directly down on one of the black circles edged with
foam. No time to try for the side ! Right through the
middle, nerves set for a crash and a sudden deluge of
cold water.
Somehow, we slipped across the submerged rock
without hitting. Now came the stone abutments of
the bridge, and a bowlder to the right as big as a ten-
ton truck, and now . . .
Directly before us, the surging current curved, in
two successive billows, down a four-foot drop into a
wall of foam. The canoe did not hesitate, after the
manner of the best fiction, for an undecided moment
at the top. It turned its nose downward in a thoroughly
businesslike manner, and plunged. Splash! We twisted
a little sideways and shipped several buckets of water.
I gave a desperate wrench at the paddle. Splash!
Hardly touching the bottom of the second step, we
dove into the barrier of foam, rose over its boiling sur
face, righted ourselves and went on into quiet water.
For the sake of the complete verities, I must add
that in St. Paul a few days later, we again met Lewis
Freeman, who, among his other achievements in the
open, has probably shot more rapids than any other
GOOD-BY CANOE 91
man in "America. And I learned from him that from
a professional standpoint, these particular rapids,
though the worst on the Mississippi, are not a great
affair, being what is generally known as a "riffle/' On
the other hand, when one is a novice in such matters,
I submit that shooting the Sauk Rapids, catch-as-
catch-can, without
any preliminary i* A hilltop near St. Cloud
study, is a rather
breath-taking epi
sode that carries
with it an inde
scribable feeling
of exhilaration.
Fortunately,
there are neutral
izing elements in
nature which pre
vent man from remembering his successes too long
or too well. On the very next day after the great rapids,
we came into a series of insignificant riffles below St.
Cloud; and as we were looking at the dozens of small,
beautiful islands that divide the river at that point, the
canoe stuck crosswise on a rock, and it was instantly
necessary for one of us to tumble into the water to keep
the canoe from capsizing. So one of us did.
92 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
Monticello, Elk River, Anoka. . . . Quiet villages,
these, on a quiet, lovely stretch of river. Dayton too,
the quietest village of all, hiding like a memory of New
England among avenues of ancient trees; a village
still holding gently and a little sadly to the knowledge
that once, in the long ago, it had come within two votes
of having the state capital just across the river bank.
But the two votes had been lacking, and so 1 St. Paul
had won.
"We never growed," said the old ferryman there;
a in fact, we're only half as big as we were twenty
years ago/' And very likely he knew whereof he spoke,
for he had been at that spot for twenty-five years
and nineteen years logging on the river before that.
"How high have you seen the water here?" I asked.
"Right up to my doorstep," he answered indicating
a spot some ten feet above the present level. "It's goin'
to come again, but next time, big. One of the old dams
up the river is goin' to give away, and then another
and another, and carry everything before. It may not
be in our time but it's cominV As I remembered
back over the twenty portages we had made in that
four hundred and forty odd miles of river, it seemed
to me that the old man's idea might bear some serious
GOOD-BY CANOE 93
pondering. So I add my statement thereto, that several
of the dams seemed to be old and rotting. It would do
no harm at all if some good Minnesota legislator were
to find out whether or not the dams are being properly
inspected.
Below Anoka, the valley took on that squalid, half-
settled, factory-ridden look which frequently means
the approach of a great city. On a scrubby, marshy-
looking bank all lined off with stakes and bits of
string, was a new, vulgar tin street sign with "River
Terrace" on it placed there, perhaps, by George F.
Babbitt himself; for undoubtedly by this time, that
gentleman has a Minneapolis office.
Here was a workhouse on one bank, and a handsome
new filtering plant like a palace on the other. A dam
was being built for the filtering plant, but there were
still spaces under the low, temporary bridgeway where
the current was running swiftly and where a canoe
could pass. However, as we approached, a foreman
came running along the scaffolding and told us in no
uncertain terms not to go under it.
Following his directions, we made for the side of
the river, nosed around a dredge, lay flat on our backs,
and shot under the bridgeway into a pile of clay which
the dozen or more workmen who had come up, had
failed to tell us about. Extracting the canoe, we asked
94 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
why we had not been allowed to go through the middle
section as we had planned. They answered that the
day before, two boys had tried it, and that their canoe
had been smashed and one of them drowned. In the
weeds near the bank half a mile farther down the
river, we saw one of the halves of the canoe, broken
off across the middle with surprising sharpness.
Beyond, making a last stand against the city, were
several small, wild islands covered with young cotton-
wood trees and underbrush. Then came a bridge with
a by no means attractive tourist camp at one end of
it, and a little creek into which the up stream current
had blown the floating gray filth of the city. We
beached the canoe and poked around amongst the tents
and automobiles. But the place had a greasy, bread-
and-buttered look ; and I, for one, when I sit down to
contemplate the wildwood, don't enjoy rising up off a
half -eaten chocolate cream.
Then too, some tourist had cut himself a nice, slick
little pile of firewood, and had piled it just so, with a
sort of ant-like efficiency, beside his tent. But we had
had five weeks of sky-freedom and had been freed from
the hokus-pokus of how things should be done, by the
wind and the rain. We went back to one of the wild
islands with its cottonwood trees, and pitched our
tent for the last time.
GOOD-BY CANOE 95
A day or two later, we paddled under the city's
dozen or more bridges to the Pillsbury flour mill at
the head of the series of concrete coffers that have
replaced the once beautiful Falls of St. Anthony in the
middle of the city. Half a dozen husky millers in white
aprons and caps helped lift the canoe out of the water
and up to a truck on the street. A few squares beyond,
we turned down into a winding path below the last
cluster of dams, launched the canoe again, and, pass
ing another short rapid, we found ourselves in a beau
tiful, heavily-wooded gorge flanked by fine residences,
university buildings, and parks. On the left bank at the
river's edge hummed the expansive, embattled fac
tory of Henry Ford, with the arc of a splendid con
crete bridge cutting the sky overhead.
Ford cars will soon be shipped down the river for
five hundred miles by barge, supplying a territory sixty
thousand square miles in area. The great plant beside
the new bridge marks the northern end of actual navi
gation on the Mississippi. From that point, river pack
ets and tow boats can run all the way to New Orleans.
New Orleans. . . . We continued our way down
the river. Loiterers on the bank might have wondered
at the slowly-drawn paddles of the two voyageurs in
96 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
the red canoe. The fact was, that the change from
portage navigation to the uninterrupted possibilities
of the two thousand miles ahead marked an approach
ing change for us too. In St. Paul, eight or ten miles
below, we would be leaving the canoe for a stronger,
roomier craft and we had certain regrets.
It had been a staunch friend. When unloaded, it was
sensitive and skittish. But with ourselves and two hun
dred and fifty pounds of luggage aboard, it had been
admirably suited for river work, lying not too deep in
the water to endanger itself from rocks and waves,
and not too high to cause trouble from the opposing
force of the south wind.
We had reciprocated by a constant watch against
rocks and logs, and by keeping it free from mud. In
side, there were a few pleasantly uncertain inch-long
places where the wooden veneer had chipped away,
showing the canvas. We had had a can of marine glue
aboard for possible accidents, but we had not needed
it, for the canoe did not leak a drop.
And that statement about a boat leaking or not leak
ing brings me almost automatically to the Isador P.
Finkelstein.
SHANTYBOAT
CHAPTER VIII
As we came riding down the current to the com
manding bluffs where St. Paul stands, I kept my
weather eye out for the Isador P. What a change in
the water front! When I had left the city five weeks
earlier, there had been a wide strip of something that
might by courtesy be called beach below the Robert
Street bridge, with several houseboats high and dry
on it, and several others swinging lazily in the slow
eddy at its edge, their gang planks firmly ashore.
Now, where the beach had been, there was water,
with strange houseboats and familiar houseboats and
masses of nondescript lumber all jumbled together and
floating around in a disorganized mess. At the lower
side of this hodge-podge, near some piling, three large
houseboats were moored to each other in a row out
from the shore. The boat farthest out I recognized as
belonging to one John Lierrick; and beside it I espied
the object of my search.
"There it is," I said.
"Where?"
97
98 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
"There. Do you like it?"
"It's beautiful!" she said.
The Isador P. Finkelstein was indeed something
pleasant to contemplate. Small enough for one man to
handle, it was big enough to hold two men, or even a
man and a woman. The external length o the hull
from one end of the deck to the other was twenty feet.
The width of the hull was seven, but there was also a
little runway along each side on which, with luck, one
could travel from the back to the front deck without
going inside or overboard. The cabin, sitting solidly
upon the barge, was seven feet by fourteen. It had two
windows on each side and doors at the ends. Standing
on the deck in front of one of the doors, you could
just see along the top of the gently-rounding tarred
roof. In order to enter the cabin, it was necessary to
bend the head a little and go down two steps.
We knocked at John's door. No one answered, but a
slight, wiry man with gray hair and a rather ascetic
face who was puttying windows on the boat nearest the
shore told us that John was away at work. Then a
rather pretty, black-haired girl came out, followed by
a little boy and a yellow old woman who had a goitre
and who was playing with a puppy on a string. A few
other people strolled out on their decks.
I inquired of the gray man if he had come from
down the river.
The St. Paul Cathedral from the river.
SHANTYBOAT 99
"Oh, I belong here/' he answered. "I was down the
river, but I've been here off and on longer than any of
them. Is that your boat?"
"Yes, the small one."
"It will make a good little boat for you, with a bit
of fixing. John left the key with me."
We moored the canoe, went on board the houseboat,
and looked it over. Old John had promised to clean it
up when I had bought it from him for a hundred and
twenty-five dollars, five weeks before. Perhaps the time
had been too short.
"Let's get some paint," said my friend,
"Right," said I, "but we'll have to hurry because it
is late and to-morrow will be Sunday." We went ashore
on the long mutual gangplank before the row of house
boats, crossed under the railroad tracks and raced up a
steep hill past some warehouses and water front cafes
to the town. But when we returned with the paint, we
found that we need not have hurried so, for it was only
Friday a slight miscalculation on our part which
seemed to put the boat people considerably at their
ease.
We unloaded the contents of the canoe onto news
papers in the houseboat, filled "General Ketchall" with
the things we needed most, and took ourselves off to a
modest, friendly hotel on Robert Street.
"So you like the boat," I said.
ioo MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
"Like it? I love it ! There's only one thing . . ."
"Yes?"
"Why, for Heaven's sake, do you call it the Isador
P. Finkelstein r
"I call it the Isador P. Finkelstein so we won't for
get New York City." She looked at me solemnly for a
moment, and then turned away, gently shaking her
head.
"Or if you prefer/' I added, rather wilted, "we'll
just call it the Isador/'
With a galvanized tin pail and brushes, overalls
and washing powder, I went down alone to the boat.
Old John had left the place in a vile mess ragged hats,
shoes, clothes, rags everywhere, and an unnameable
collection of grimy chattels under foot. I cleaned it out
and down, and scrubbed it; then, prying up several
square sections of floor boards, I shoveled out the
mud and water that had accumulated on the bottom.
Shortly the mate appeared. While I was busy on the
outside of the boat, the painting began within. She
painted the ceiling, the walls, the cupboard that stood
in one corner, the table that folded against the boat's
side. The walls were two shades of gray, the ceiling
white. In the city she, bought a gray, two-burner Per-
SHANTYBOAT 101
f ection oil stove for cooking and to keep us warm ; and
a bed, half of which pulled out from underneath itself.
She bought some cloth, not green nor blue but both,
and from it she made curtains for the windows, and a
table runner, and a cover for the bed. Since the bat
tered aluminum dishes from the canoe would now be
very infra in our new dignitas, she bought a magnifi-
The last of the red canoe
cent set of china from the five-and-ten-cent store. She
bought a lamp and a book-rack for the blue-covered li
brary, and towels and a mirror, and pots and pans and
tableware.
While she busied herself arranging these things
within, I was at work without. The tar-paper roof
needed re-pitching; all the exterior paint must be
scraped and re-painted sides white, deck gray, win
dows and trimmings green-blue, and the chimney, Eng
lish red. I traded the canoe for a rowboat to be fas
tened as a tender to the back of the Isador. I bought a
102 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
four horsepower, two cylinder out-board motor, new
and shining. With Pete Groshan, the gray, kindly fel
low who had greeted us first, I rigged a step-like ex
tension on the back deck just above the waterline. We
cut a hole in the step and set the fifty-five pound motor
temporarily into place. The horizontal flywheel lay
parallel with the deck. Directly beneath was the flat
gasoline tank and the cylinders, then the long shaft
running down into the water, with the propeller and a
small aluminum rudder at the end. Would a four horse
power motor run a four ton houseboat? Would the
Isador respond to the tiny rudder ? These matters were
in the laps of the gods with the possible exception of
the god Mercury. For whatever the result, it certainly
would not be a matter of speed.
A large window was built into one side of the house ;
a pair of seats were installed on the back deck to hold
the five-gallon cans of gasoline; a hundred feet of good
rope was bought. It smelled splendid.
We bored a four-inch hole in the overhanging roof
and another directly underneath in the back deck,
threading a long, heavy pole through the two holes and
allowing it to rest on the shallow river bottom for an
anchor.
All these things came under the head of pleasure.
But there was also a secret sorrow. The Isador leaked.
The day after I had shoveled it out, there were again
SHANTYBOAT 103
2 inches of water in the bottom. I pulled up some more
sections of flooring and investigated. Several of the
front planks were dubious. One was plainly bad. A
slow succession of minute bubbles rose from the black,
wet wood, and with them escaped a trickle of water.
The thing to do, of course, was to remove the plank
and put in a new one. But how take out a plank when
the Isador was sitting on it?
"That's easy," said Pete. He found a block and
tackle on his work scow and came wading back in his
hip boots, pushing a rowboat full of tools. We turned
the houseboat endwise to the bank, laid a runway of
wet timbers under it, and with the tackle and jacks,
heaved its four tons quite easily up out of the water.
Then Pete hit the condemned plank a tap with his maul
and it broke into three pieces.
"By gad/' he said, "we just got that plank out in
time! The tail of a yellow-bellied catfish would have
finished you. A little boat like that sinks quick, too."
"How long would it take?"
"About five minutes."
"Old John said it was seven years old. Should a
plank go rotten in as short a time as that?"
Pete picked up a piece of the plank and scraped off
some of the old pitch. "Look here." A small, rust-
colored nail hole was visible.
"That boat's made of second-hand lumber." He ex-
104 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
traded a good plank from his floating lumber pile,
ripped it up, planed it down and set it into the hull.
Then, digging a hole in the river bottom so he could
swing the maul below water, he pounded five great
spikes upward into the boat's timbers. We caulked it
with oakum not too tight, for the new plank would
swell and then Pete covered the bottom with soft
pitch. There was the Isador, black-bellied and motion
less, standing on its four jacks like a contemplative tor
toise; and all the time the mate was painting and paint
ing on the inside, with the doors and windows wide
open.
I talked to Pete about the roof leaking. He said he
had some tar we could have cheap ; but the mate, in a
sudden frenzy of economy, called out, "Why can't we
use the gallon of ebonol that we got at the paint store ?"
Pete, interpreting her remark as something a bit de
rogatory, and being a sensitive soul with no commer
cial intentions against us, closed up like a clam which
was very unfortunate, for his conversation about the
river was more valuable than the price of much tar.
But she went on painting unawares, and presently
called out, "Why don't you let him fix the hinges on the
cupboard?" Then I had to go inside, and shut both
doors, and make a gesture of trampling her underfoot,
explaining sotto voce that if she wished for the best,
SHANTYBOAT 105
she would treat Pete a little less like an employee and
more like a friend.
So later when he was putting- on the hinges, she laid
down her paint brushes and devoted herself so much to
him, now helping- him with the door, now holding- the
hammer for him, that the poor man was quite breath
less from her attentions.
"Your missus is making- a pretty good job painting/ *
he said to me later. Which in the bashful, inhibited code
of the river, was a compliment de luxe.
Now there was nothing- to do but let the paint dry.
Good ! We would look at St. Paul.
OFF
CHAPTER IX
OF two cities lying 1 near each other, I have, often
thought that the smaller city gains infinitely more than
it knows by its proximity to the larger one. I am sure
that the jovial city of Milwaukee understands its place
in the cosmic universe much better than it would with
out Chicago. Rock Island and Moline see the light with
considerably clearer eyes, thanks to Davenport across
the Mississippi. Berkeley is not less the priestess of
learning on her hillside because of the earthy presence
of San Francisco beyond the bay. St. Paul too, holds
an eminently human attitude of civic mind. Like those
others, it is able to think of itself without swelling up
and going off in a loud series of pops.
Quite aside from the informing influence of Minne
apolis, St. Paul is highly intelligent in its own right. It
has a home rule commission that works. It has elimi
nated its ward boundary lines. It publishes annually a
number of excellent books; and one of the local papers
runs a daily column on the finer arts by a man named
106
OFF 107
James Gray that is as erudite and distinguished a col
umn as any in the country.
Here is a quaint, mellow city of distinct charm, ris
ing on irregular bluffs above the river and culminating
in the high cross of its cathedral which towers three
hundred feet above the portal. Several massive bridges
link the city with South St. Paul across the river. Like
Minneapolis, it splays out into a charming countryside
of parks and small lakes and agricultural units of the
University of Minnesota.
Its early days rest firmly on the establishment of a
military post at Fort Snelling, in 1820. It was not until
January, 1841, that the village was christened St. Paul
by Father Boltien It has grown considerably since then
to reach its present population of three hundred thou
sand not however, as fast as its younger confrere,
Minneapolis. The two cities, originally ten miles apart
are now joined by several quite solidly built up thor
oughfares.
One day, through another voyageur on the river, the
daily press found us and took photographs of the Isa-
dor and its crew, and set us on the first page with a
column containing names of books and distant places.
We wondered what effect this would have on Pete and
io8 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
our other shantyboat friends. But I think that by that
time they liked and trusted us, so it made no difference
at all. Indeed, the fact that we had not pestered them
with our grandeur worked to our credit. As I sat one
night on the back of Pete's work scow with half a
dozen other river rats, one of them said with a sort of
vicarious approval in his voice, "I've got a cousin who
has traveled all over the world. Jeez there's nowhere
he ain't bin! Borneo, Alaska, the Philippines. . . .
He's a good skate, though. You could be working by
him and talking to him all day, and he'd never say a
word about it unless you asked him! 3
The fact that I was taking notes on the river, seemed
to draw Pete out rather than the reverse. Sitting to
gether in the evenings, we had long talks in which he
told rne of his life and the life of the shanty people.
Sometimes, we would sit silently for a while looking
out at the reflected lights from the bridge, swaying and
balancing on the dark river.
"I was thinking about my kid/' he said one night.
"If he'd lived he'd be fourteen now."
"Then you lost him when he was very small?"
"Yes. There was a sort of strange thing. . . . Two
weeks before, I was going along through a thicket of
spruce or it might have been pine a little way up
the river thinking about a boat I was building, when
I heard some one call, 'Pete!' I stopped and looked
OFF 109
around, but there wasn't any one near, and there was
no house within a mile. I went on, and then, just as
plain as day, I heard the voice again. I stopped and
went to the thicket and looked all over thought it was
some fellow I knew playing a trick on me, but it was
empty, so I went on. Again some one called Tete !' "
" 'What is it?' I asked. And it said, 'You're not go
ing to raise your kid/ Two weeks later, the kid was
taken with cholera inf antum. The next day at noon, he
was dead. He was a fine little kid. . . . Whenever
any other children were fighting, he'd cry until they
quit. He was a great little feller. . . ."
The shanty man stopped talking and drew long and
deep on his mellow pipe. "That was the only time I ever
heard voices, but I've had lots of hunches all my life.
When any of the family are away, I can tell when they
are coming home almost to the minute. I didn't use to
pay much attention to my hunches, but I do now. A
man's got to keep himself free from being all tied up
by this or that if he wants them to work/'
We went on talking about hunches, both agreeing
that too much domestication spoiled a man's instinct;
and I told him how Mary Austin, had written about
hunches in a book called "Everyman's Genuis," telling
about a gambler who forgave himself for leaving his
family because his child's crying spoiled his gambling
hunches.
no MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
Pete said with conviction, "By golly, that's right!
There's gamblers on the Mississippi River who won't
let you put your foot on the rung of their chair. There's
Indians in the North too, where the women won't let
the men do any work around the house because it
might spoil the men's hunches."
That was entirely correct, we agreed. Men ought to
be free. . . . But we weren't able to talk about it any
longer because the mate was waiting for me to fill the
lamp from the five gallon can; and when I looked out
again, Pete's wife was standing there watching him
as he went up to the freight house after a pail of
water.
Now the Isador was ready. But it listed badly to the
left rear.
"That's all right/' said Pete. "Get you some ballast/'
So we went tinder the railroad viaduct and up the
street, my friend and I, and, no policeman being in
sight, we borrowed six large cobblestones from the af
fable city; and these were a great help to us all the
way down the Mississippi, first in one corner, then in
another, depending on the condition of the cupboard
on the left side and the water keg on the right.
We got into our river clothes, ate in our last cafe-
Pete of the Mississippi He believes in hunches.
OFF in
teria, went to a final picture show, and then, for the
last time, came down the hill past the dark factories
and warehouses and the dimly lighted cafes filled with
toughs and drifters of the river front.
She was dressed in a sort of tan sweater and skirt
and a small tan and orange hat, with no collar and
cuffs showing because she wore none. I too, had on an
ancient sweater, and breeches, and lumberman's boots
and a cap. As we passed the river cafes, she laughed
and said that I looked a lot tougher than any of
those within ; and that was exactly my intention con
sidering the two thousand unknown miles ahead of us.
So I seized her like a particularly villainous apache
would and dragged her roughly under the viaduct and
down the gangplank past the silent house boats, and
we disappeared into the Isador, stifling our laughter.
Friday, the thirteenth of October. Great activity
on the deck of the Isador. How were we to get past the
rows of piling of the old bridge below the shanty-
boats ? Should we have to row up stream far enough to
swing the boat into the main channel where the water
- was open, or should we try to ease it down between the
piles in the narrow space at the side? We decided on
the latter. I tied the rowboat, nose up stream, to the
ii2 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
front of the Isador. Pete made his dingey fast to the
stern, then while the mate stood ready on the deck with
a pike pole several sizes too large for her, we warped
and woofed the Isador down through the piling and
into open water.
Now came a more serious question. Would the rud
der on the little out-board motor steer the ship? I
started the motor, and we turned down stream past the
buoys that marked the channel. Now for the test! I
pulled hard on one of the guide ropes. Groaning, the
Isador turned and with deliberation, oh extreme de
liberation, headed back up stream. I pulled the other
rope. Cumberously but perfectly the boat performed
the figure eight ! Good !
With a farewell grip of the hand to Pete, we turned
down stream. Sans doubte, we were on our way. Now,
beside the customary black buoys and the red buoys,
we saw the first of the white wooden shore marks set
up by the Lighthouse Service as guides to navigation.
The government engineers in St. Paul had given us a
small book called a Light List which told the name and
number of each shore mark or buoy, its distance in
miles from St. Paul and its position to the left or right
of the channel. We were to pass to the left of the white
buoys and to the right of those that were red.
Also we had with us a set of one-inch-to-the-mile
maps from St. Paul to the mouth of the Missouri
OFF 113
River, six hundred and fifty miles below. While the
original drawings of these maps had reached the ven
erable age of forty-eight years, they had been partly re
drawn and posted up to 1915, and that was infinitely
better than no maps at all.
Coming into the woodland beyond the scattered fac
tories of several great Chicago packing companies, we
saw that while we had lingered in St. Paul the autumn
had been advancing to the south. Even the hardy oak
groves on the far hillsides had turned russet against
Seventy-five wing dams in five miles of river!
the gold and scarlet of the more delicate trees along the
river. Long lines of willows ran out into the water at
right angles from the shore and extending nearly half
way across the river. These marked the first of the hun
dreds of wing dams that had been constructed by the
engineers for the purpose of guiding the current and
helping the river to dig out a permanent channel.
These wing dams are solidly built of crushed rock,
and their saw-tooth tops, which are frequently sub-
ii 4 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
merged a few inches below the surface, give foothold
to thick rows of willow saplings. As we continued
across the morning and down the afternoon, it seemed
as though the wind, observing us, had said, "What first
lesson shall I teach these two who go so recklessly
down the river?" Then it came on us from behind and
blew against the cabin; and instantly the fact became
plain that in a good breeze the flat-bottomed Isador,
with eight feet above the surface and ten inches below,
would do whatever the wind advised.
At that moment, the motor, consuming its last drop
of gasoline, coughed, swallowed, and stopped; where
upon the wind laughing at our efforts with dingey and
pike pole, bundled us into, the mouth of a little creek
hardly wider than the boat itself and held us there like
some fussy old nurse maid, saying, "Now take good
heed of what I am doing so you don't get caught
again!"
We did, observing that there is no craft so difficult
to handle in a breeze as a houseboat, and particularly a
houseboat named the Isador. And that was the lesson
of the first day.
The sun is getting low. Time to tie up for the night
but how do you do it ? Certainly not by running into
the shore when you are going down stream at six miles
OFF 115
an hour ? Here are some trees on a pleasant bank, with
no wing dams in sight. The current is rather swift but
the trees are something to hold to. I swing the boat
around with the bow up stream and we nose in toward
the shore, the mate gauging the depth of the river with
the pike pole.
Six feet, four feet, three feet. . . . Now we are
within a few good jumps of the bank. I shut off the
motor and drop the "spud" or anchor pole. The latter
catches on the river bottom and the boat, swinging
around, places its nose against the bank. I carry a rope
ashore and fasten it to the trees before the Isador can
start out again. The spud pole, resting on the sand bar,
keeps the back of the boat steady in the stream; the
ropes hold it to the trees on the bank All's well on the
Mississippi.
That is, all is not entirely well. For a slight cool
ness had arisen between us over the manner in which
we had left our mooring in St. Paul, she holding that
it would have been necessary only to drift easily down
stream between the rows of piling, whereas I still
stuck to the safer way of tying the small boats to the
front and back.
So we went to bed very aloof, and considerably trou
bled within ; I, determined in spite of all, to navigate in
n6 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
the Isador with the greatest care. Because when it
comes to the final analysis and obituary after an ac
cident, it is the man who is the responsible party. So,
in a matter of this kind, he may as well avoid the fry
ing pan and jump with both feet right into the fire at
once, hoping that in time his sweet friend may come to
understand that the very one he is being sizzled by, is
the one whose life he is protecting, noble fellow !
I dreamed that night that there was a great storm on
the ocean and that I was saving a strange lady on a
snowy pier; and that, as I carried her up the pier, I
asked her where she lived and she gave me a certain
address. But when I got her to a taxicab, she told me
she did not live there after all, and I said to her very
indignantly in my dream, "What do you change your
story for?"
In the meantime, my companion dreamed that she was
gathering crab meat ; and as she walked along the beach
she came upon several sizeable crabs, one of whom
seized her by the foot. But she very neatly cut off his
claws with a little ax she had brought for the purpose
and put them on a dinner plate, and chopped all the
claws off all the other crabs she could find, and marched
triumphantly back to the place she had started from.
At breakfast we told each other our dreams and
made certain comments thereon, each secretly taking
stock of the other's state meanwhile, and observing,
OFF 117
with rising spirits, that a calm was brewing. Soon we
were great friends again, and in the exuberance of the
moment I untied the Isador, pulled up the spud pole,
and we drifted down the river. But a little breeze came
sneaking along, and in spite of great activity in the
skiff, we bore down with speed on a submerged wing
dam covered with bushes and small trees. The Isador
caught it broadside, and stuck there like a dead fish on
an intake grating.
I tried to pole out around the dam, but without suc
cess. We would have to stay there, it seemed, and let
the sand drift up around us, and found a new city, with
the boat for the city hall.* But finally, with the help of
the very wind and current that had traduced us, we
managed to squeeze our four tons out between the
young trees and into the open water beyond.
Voyaging on, we came to the Pretzel Islands, decid
ing that if that was not their name, it ought to be, for
they look like this :
The Pretzel Islands
* Many of the islands and bars in the Mississippi are actually formed
over the wrecks of old packet boats and barges.
n8 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
Beside them perched the town of Red Wing, with
a small sudden sky line of grain elevators and semi
skyscrapers, and a trim grass-covered water front
spread out before it like a clean green bib. A great
rock called LaGrange (the barn) stood over against
the town ; it was named by the French who settled there
so long ago that no man alive remembers their coming.
There is an editor in Red Wing who can tell you
more about the countryside in the course of half an
hour than another man could tell you in a month. He
will relate, perhaps, that the island directly across from
Red Wing was the worst hole in Wisconsin, but that
he drove the desperadoes out, and that it has been
turned into a park for the city. And when he is
through, he will doubtless take you to the intersection
of the two main streets of Red Wing and say to you,
with a twinkling eye, but also with an emphasis born
of conviction, "Here, my friend, is the center of the
universe !" Who knows ? He may be right.
A WRECK OR TWO
CHAPTER X
THE Isador had traveled only a mile beyond Red
Wing when the wind came up and the night came
down, both with great suddenness, and we took shel
ter, in a deep, narrow, outflowing channel to the left
of the river between two islands with heavily wooded
banks.
While dinner was preparing, there came a sound of
a heavy body passing stealthily through the under
brush across the creek. "Probably a cow/' said the
mate, pulling down the shade. That seemed plausible,
but at the same time, I remembered that we were some
distance beyond the place where the editor had cleaned
up the islands for the town.
An hour passed. We finished our meal and sat down
with nothing more on our minds than the pleasantly
reasonable thought that this had been another day.
Then, out of the calmness, came the slow, put-put-put
of a powerful one-cylinder engine. It turned from the
river into, our slough. I had not thought it necessary
to light the lantern on the cabin. But if the slough were
120 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
being used by other boats, it might be well to take that
precaution, for the government will criticize you se
verely if another boat runs you down when you are
showing no light. I went out on the deck.
A long low-lying power boat was approaching from
the river. Then the engine stopped, and the boat, under
its own momentum, came on through the darkness.
"Hello/ 5 I called. "Who's there?"
Silence. The boat came on.
"Hello there! What do you want?"
Silence.
"Who are you, and what do you want?''
"I'm nobody," came a low voice.
The boat was only six feet away now. At that mo
ment, some one came gently up behind me put my Sav
age -38 an d a flash light into my hand.
The man on the skiff rose up, a great bear of a man
and put his hands' on the Isadoras deck to climb
aboard.
"Get off!"
He made a negative sound.
I flashed the light onto his hands. "Get off that
boat, or I'll put a hole in you."
He removed his hands at once from the deck and
sat down. I kept the light on his hands which he held
very carefully before him, hanging them out over his
knees in plain sight.
AWRECKORTWO 121
He spoke again in a considerably altered voice. "I
wouldn't pull a gun on a fellow for just getting on
my boat."
"You know the rule of the river. No strangers
aboard after dark/'
"Well, we've been having a lot of hard times down
here. People always watchin' us and comin' after us.
My name's Elmer Heany,* an' I own a lot of land on
both sides of the river. Who are you?"
Now it was my time to be silent.
"Who are you?" he asked.
Silence. I kept the light steadily on his hands.
"I told you my name," he whined, "and you didn't
tell me yours." His boat was drifting away on the cur
rent.
I told him my name, adding that I spent the after
noon with the editor of his newspaper up in the town.
"What paper?"
"The Republican"
"That ain't our paper/' he returned. "This side is
Wisconsin. . . . Writin', are you? Well, you can put
me in it."
"I don't know enough about you to put you in it.
I'm minding my business. Mind yours."
There was nothing more. The darkness swallowed
him. He spun his flywheel and went down the channel.
*This name has been changed.
122 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
But a hundred yards away the engine stopped omi
nously leaving us in some doubt as to where he was.
Half an hour later, when I went out to bring in the
motor, a strange whistle sounded from the island not
far away.
Within the Isador, comfort had fled. We went to bed
in our clothes, with the curtains of the windows wide
open, to see what we could in our circle of moonlight.
The wind which had died down, came up again. The
bumping of the spud pole and the swish of overhang
ing branches against the roof made sounds incredibly
human. They sounded like men breaking their way
stealthily through the thicket ; there even seemed to be
the thud of feet on the deck.
Before dawn, while the white moon staggered
drunkenly among the flying clouds, two men did pass
again in the same boat driven by its all too familiar en
gine ; but they kept well over on the other side of the
channel and played their flash light hurriedly on us as
they passed. They talked continuously and their voices
had the high, plaintive note of men who wanted to let
some one else know that they were near.
There is not the slightest doubt but that Elmer
Heany will see this book. People, even as far away as
China, always discover themselves in books. If he will
write me the story of his grievances against society, I
AWRECKORTWO 123
shall be glad to add it here as a footnote in the next
edition (always hoping that there may be one.)
A few miles below the Pretzel Islands the river ran
out into Lake Pepin a glacial trough for catching the
north wind, thirty miles long by two and a half miles
wide, with a steep, harborless shoreline between rugged
hills. Pete had warned us against Lake Pepin. It rose
with remarkable suddenness, and had claimed many
lives. A steamer named the Sea Wing had been over
turned there and a hundred and thirty people drowned.
(But who takes advice when he can learn by experi
ence?)
The wind was blowing a little when we came out
from between the islands at the head of the lake ; nev
ertheless, we set out for the south. The wind made for
the south too. It made better time than we did. (That's
quite all right, Wind. Go right ahead. We won't try to
keep up with you. . . .) Soon it was a gale. The Isador
rose high and pitched dizzily. The waves lashed up into
a surprisingly high sea. Pans slid from the stove, plates
crashed on the floor. The mate discontinued her break
fast in order to hold on with both hands. The motor rose
on high, spinning furiously, then sank into the depths.
124 MOSTLY. MISSISSIPPI
It choked, coughed, sputtered, and went on again, the
electrical connections soaked with water. Twice it
stopped, leaving us wallowing perilously in the trough.
I succeeded in starting it; the Isador went careening
on its way.
The wind changed. To go directly down the lake was
now no longer possible. We must steer diagonally for
the right shore half a mile away, or the boat would go
over.
Waves were breaking and surging on a rocky shore
ahead. We could make out a short strip of sandy beach
under some cottonwood trees. Would there be rocks
there too? We would know in a few moments. Speak
ing objectively, the lake was beautiful. The forest-
covered hills rose up steeply from the rocky shore.
We were within twenty feet. Now! The mate
A WRECK OR TWO 125
dropped the spud pole and I jumped into the surf, ran
up the beach, tied to a cottonwood tree, and ran back.
At that moment the skiff which, by the way, was one
of the stupidest little boats ever built by man, swung
around the back deck and whanged the motor a das
tardly blow on the gasoline tank. Then, as I leaned
down beside the mate to detach the motor and take it
inside, a good-sized wave smote us hip and thigh and
back of the neck, and, dashing over us, went ravening
like the lion into the cabin.
Somehow, we got the motor in and the door shut;
but the Isador had dragged the anchor pole so that
while the waves continued breaking over the stern, the
nose kept banging against the none too genial shore.
I took up a section of the floor and pumped ten buck
ets out of the bottom, but the water ran in through the
tiller holes nearly as fast as I pumped it out. We were
hitting against submerged rocks. Again I jumped into
the surf, and instead of pushing the Isador off the
rocks, I dug the rocks out from under the Isador.
Now the pounding grew so thunderous and the boat
squirmed so much in all its joints that we decided to
take it to a slightly sheltered depression farther down
the shore. So, while my completely saturated friend
held a rope from the shore to the boat, I waded out
again and held it off shore while the wind carried it
126 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
two hundred yards down the lake to a more desirable
spot below.
Unfortunately for her who held the rope, several
large groups of willows grew at the water's edge, pre
venting her from carrying the line down the shore un
hampered. Rather than leave me to my fate, she went
resolutely out into the mid-October surf, made her way
around the willows and came to the shore again still
holding the rope.
The waves were smaller here but the wind was still
veering around to the west. The slight shelter we had
found was at best only temporary, but it allowed time
to get into some moderately dry clothes. We recon-
noitered down the shore. Half a mile to the south, a
point jutted out into the lake with a buttress of rocks
at its prow. Behind the point was a bay, and in the bay,
comparatively smooth water. We got the Isador off the
beach again, and somehow started the motor; then
while the mate ran along the shore (for there was no
use in our both getting wet again), I took the reeling,
careening houseboat down before the wind to the new
haven.
It came into port as thankfully as the Mayflower,
and apparently not much less battered. The cupboard
had come open during the last scramble, and, besides
the earlier wreckage of pans, cutlery, and plates, food
A WRECK OR TWO 127
of the most anaesthetic nature, like stewed corn and
applesauce, diagrammed the floor. When the mess was
cleared away and another ten pails of water pumped
out, we found by degrees that the ship was not wrecked
completely. But when I looked with the electric flash
light at the bottom, I found that near the water line at
the back, one of the planks of the boat's bottom had
lost a chip an inch long and an inch thick. Taking a
pocket knife as Pete had done, I pushed it into the two-
inch plank. It ran right in a full inch and a half as
easily as though it 'had been cutting cheese, and only
stopped then because the blade was no longer! That
left a half inch of wood between ourselves and the
Mississippi. Rotten wood? I did not know. A longer
knife blade might have gone right through. Where the
ends of the plank joined the sides of the boat it was
spongy too. If you pressed hard with your thumb, you
left an indentation on the wood. How had Pete hap
pened to miss a thing like that ? Perhaps he had thought
that putting in a plank at the front was work enough.
At any rate, from that time on, we knew that noth
ing must hit the back of the Isador at the water line;
and there was no chance of forgetting it, because now
the boat leaked two good pails a day.
"YOU'LL TIE UP"
CHAPTER XI
No longer having the shantyboat to bullyrag, the
wind died down. As twilight came on we considered
Pete's further advice about navigating the lake at
night. Certainly the wind was now only a breeze, and
Pepin itself had lost the power behind its rollers. We
lit the ship's lantern; then, guided by government
lights on the Wisconsin side and the pier light of a lit
tle town across the way, we started down the lake.
To the right Point-no-Point lay like the profile of a
huge stranded whale, cut out of blackness against
the moon. We trotted on for an hour, but the whale-
like profile did not change for the very good reason
that the headland was not a point at all, but an enor
mous, semi-circular mound with a constant silhouette
that held unremittingly to its original shape for a dis
tance of several miles.- At last, the whale grew a wen
on his nose, the wen developed into a complete facial
breakdown, and beyond the whale's wrecked visage,
twinkled the lights of the little village of Frontenac
where the French first settled in this north country.
128
"YOU'LL TIE UP " 129
On through the night went the Isador, down mile-
long streaks of foam made by the storm of the day, on-
past rows of coulees, or half -hills, standing like stark,
beheaded mountains of the moon against the moon's
own light, and throwing black, headless reflections of
themselves into the lake's dark mirror. Here was Point
Ausable, where, Pete had told us, the Indians had once
kept the whites out on the land's end and they had
sobbed and shivered all night, hence Point Au-sobble!
In a roundabout way there may have been some truth
in the story, for Point Ausable, of course, means the
black point.
At two in the morning, just as the moon dropped
behind the coulees, the encircling hills closed in, form
ing a black portal where the lake again became the
river. Flowing in from the left as though to compen
sate the Mississippi for its temporary loss of identity,
was the first considerable tributary the Chippewa
River. We moored to some half-submerged willows in
the high water at its mouth. The sky was calm and
clear, but at dawn a cold wind came blustering up from
the south, and my heroine of yesterday added a woolen
bathing suit to her other protective coverings. Dante
Alighieri, 'but it was cold! It would not do now to steer
with the front door open. We stopped at a bedraggled
little water-side village called Read's Landing, and a
man who was said to be a pretty good carpenter es-
130 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
sayed to put a window in the front door so we could
stand inside the cabin and steer. Very shortly, it be
came evident that instead of fingers he had thumbs, five
to each hand. He cut the hole too big and broke one
piece of glass, then cut another too small. But he real
ized his own infirmities, for when he had finished, he
gave me his decrepit glass cutter, arguing, rightly
enough, that if he didn't have it, he couldn't put any
more windows in. But since it was neither useful nor
ornamental I threw it into the river. The front door
looked like the devil, with the window stuck on like a
misplaced postage stamp.
An old man of the village told me that in the old
days there never was a time when you couldn't see at
least one steamer coming around the point. They
weren't little freight-pushers either, but three deckers,
side and stern wheelers, costing from twenty to forty
thousand dollars each. Their average life was about
five years, for they almost inevitably blew up, burned
up, or snagged. During the great days every boat had
made money, he said. The larger the boat, the better
the profits. A boat would sometimes more than pay for -
itself in a single season. In the one year of 1857, si x
hundred and twenty-five steamers had registered dur
ing the season at St. Paul.
St. Paul was right tough in those days, he added,
but Read's Landing had been worse. Indeed, it had
"YOU'LL TIE UP " 131
been one of the toughest places on the Mississippi
above St. Louis. In the heliotrope QO'S, there had been
nineteen so-called hotels and just as many saloons
there. He had seen as many as seven hundred river
men and raft men gather there of a Saturday night.
The Mississippi men would fight the Chippewa men,
and there had been many killings right before his own
eyes. But all that was past and gone now. Read's Land
ing had shrunk to a harmless little village. The only
foul play we saw was what happened to the window
in our front door.
Filling the gasoline can, we coaxed the motor into
action and went on. But it was thankless work. Again
we pitched and tossed. The wind came blustering about
the boat, driving it toward the wing dams, first on
one side, then on the other. More than once, the Isad-or,
tugging like a refractory calf-elephant on the end of
a rope, shook off all control, and I had to turn it in a
complete circle before I could lead it on down-stream.
After a particularly austere half-mile of wing dams,
wind, and chopping water, came the town of Wabasha.
"Look!" said the mate. There like a ghost of sixty
years ago rising white and tall, its shining black
smokestacks standing side by side, its paddle wheel in
the stern, its hull glistening fresh and new, was the
first river steamer we had seen on the Mississippi.
The intrigued Isador anchored under its bow. We
132 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
came out on deck and looked at the great boat long and
silently. Altair of the Port of Minneapolis. The glam
our of the old days was about her. Almost we could see
travelers with carpet bags and colored frock coats bus
tling up the stage plank; immaculate gamblers in
gaudy vests and light strapped trousers watching for
suckers to come aboard ; ladies in flowered poplin with
lace gloves and tiny parasols. The color of the old days
came vividly back the cries of porters, the clang of
bells, the voices of laughing negroes, a sweat, a stench
of life, a maggot vitality rising up from the river.
I went ashore and talked with a grim, solitary old
man who was fastening some brass-work along the
gunwale. The Altair was not a passenger boat after
all, but a freighter. It had just been completed, and
there had only been enough fire in the boiler to "turn
the engines over." There were eight cabins with
double-decker beds for the crew, a cabin for the cap
tain, and another for the owner. The pistons had a six
foot stroke, and a twelve inch bore. There was power
behind them, and lots of it.
A new eighty foot barge lay moored at the shipyard
just beyond. Would the Altair tow three barges like
that, I asked. Three? She'd tow a dozen of them up
stream against the swiftest current the river had.
These river boats had power. He went on to say that
once he had come from Louisiana, Missouri, to Hud-
"YOU'LL TIE UP 53 133
son, Wisconsin, with a dredge that had pulled twenty
quarter boats and barges up stream after it. We came
out on deck and looked at the Isador. "I saw you out
there, cutting circles and trying to keep off the dams/'
he said, "What have you got on the back to make it go,
an egg-beater?"
"Something like that," I answered. "Anyway, we
are hoping it will take us to New Orleans."
"You'll never get there/'
"No?"
"No, sir. You'll tie up to the bank. I've been a long
time on the river, and seen 'em start before. You'll
never get there."
I thanked him and went back to the Isador,, not par
ticularly impressed. But if his prediction was wrong,
at least it was not useless, for there were several times
on the lower river when the expedition needed just
some such impetus as the memory of that grirn old
man saying, "You'll tie up to the bank. You'll never get
there."
Several days of much-needed calm followed, in
which to repair our somewhat battered constitutions.
It was good to find a strip of quiet water beside a wing
dam in the evening, and good to lie long in the morn
ing, debating the question, "Shall we attempt to raise
our bruises and lumbago and rheumatism and broken
backs from the bed, or shall we not?" the vote being
134 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
imanimously in the negative. Or perhaps we might
consider rising if we only had a block-and-tackle fas
tened overhead, or a rope hanging to the ceiling with
an iron ring on it. It was pleasant to lie there, bat
tered and lame, and to think of the other swinging
nimbly on an iron ring. If the motor went back on us,
we might even rig a sort of squirrel cage (squirrel
rhyming with Cyril) a squirrel cage, and take turns
running in it and so propelling the Isador down the
Mississippi.
Then up and to breakfast and again on our way,
watching what was taking place on the Wisconsin side
of the river. The partly submerged groves and thickets
gradually gave place to lofty, scrub-covered buttresses
of rocks that veered vertically up like the palisades of
the Hudson. Now they jutted ruggedly over the river,
now drew back like retreating Titans into the blue dis
tance, making a landscape as magnificent and mighty
as the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
Ducks were flying south with their heavy twinkling-
flight; wild geese, too. No more practice flights now,
with uncertain wheelings and pivotings. The great
urge had come that swift, deep impetus driving them
relentlessly southward to the waiting guns of the hunt
ers. One night as we sat at dinner, there came a sharp
metallic crack from the back deck. Going out, we found
one of our graniteware kettles with a bullet hole
''YOU'LL TIE UP 5 ' 135
through it. But rifles are not used for ducks and geese.
Perhaps some one had taken a pot shot at us "just for
luck."
At La Crosse, Wisconsin, between the left end of
the big bridge and certain factories farther down the
shore, there is an eddy. The eddy has dug itself a hol
low in the bank. It revolves smoothly and slowly, re
pelling by its rotation, any waves that attempt to enter
it from the river. Such an eddy, of which there are
numbers on the river, often makes a good place to an
chor. We anchored.
There was another river-dwelling at its edge a
strangely-assembled little mouse-trap of a house, half
over the water, half over the land. After we had passed
back and forth up the bank to the town a few times, a
little old gnome of a man with a totally bald head came
out of the house, and beckoned to me.
"I'll tell ye something/' he whispered. "Two hun
dred yards down the bank there is a carload of creo-
soted blocks, dumped there by the city. They make fine
fuel. I thought maybe ye'd like to know."
But we had already had our hour with creosote ; so
I said, "We use an oil stove, thanks. Doesn't the creo
sote come out of the blocks and ruin you?"
"Only on the roof. Before I started using them, it
136 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
leaked in a couple of places. Now it doesn't leak at all."
He took me inside his house. The single room which
looked as though it had been salvaged piecemeal from
the city dump, was strangely neat. The stove seemed a
little blackened at the joints, but there was no stray
soot on the ceiling. An enclosed observation porch ex
tended out over the river.
"You are very snug here."
"There isn't a finer mooring place from the Falls of
St. Anthony to New Orleans, and I'll tell ye why.
Right there is the bridge on the great highway between
San Francisco and New York. There is the tourist
park across the river, and over there beside it, the city
bathing beach. I've got neighbors all around but none
too close."
"You don't like them close?"
"Well, since my wife died ten years ago, I've been
living alone. I could go live with my children, but I
like my little nip once in a while. People don't like to
have ye around drinkin'. You know how it is. Besides,
I've been a long time on the river; indeed, I've been
living on the Wisconsin side for fifty years. My peo
ple left Chicago at the time of the fire. They came away
while the fire was still burning, and I'm glad they did,
for I like the State of Wisconsin."
"I have some great friends in Milwaukee," I volun
teered.
"YOU'LL TIE UP " 137
His eyes sparkled. "Milwaukee ? That's a fine place !
When I was a boy I was in the State Reformatory at
Waupun, and I knew a lot of fellows from Milwaukee
there. Did you ever meet any of that Reformatory
bunch? Perhaps we might have some, now, mutual
friends."
"I don't remember any at this minute although
most of mine should have gone there/'
'That's right/ 7 he agreed, nodding his head gravely.
"Everybody is alike. It's just a question of whether
you get caught or not/'
"Do you think we'll have much more cold weather
going down the river?"-
"Oh, you're all right/' he encouraged. "As soon as
ye get to St. Louis, it will be summer. But when you're
on the lower river, I warn ye keep your weasel eye
open! Don't leave the boathouse empty. Always let
one of you be home all the time. There's a lot of bad
men on the river. What ye need is a little dog to give ye
notice."
"But the cabin is only seven by fourteen."
"That's all right. Build 'im a little house on the deck
Put a couple of gunny sacks in it, and he'll be all right."
I said good-by, and went back to the boat. A little dog
house on the deck. . . . There were possibilities in
that.
SLOUGH, BIRD, MODEL
CHAPTER XII
ON the right bank, the long-enduring State of Min
nesota had given way to Iowa. On the left was Wis
consin. The mighty corroded banks of that infinitely
vaster river which had preceded the Mississippi now
drew four or five miles apart, rising grandly aloof
from the flat farmland and orchards of the bottoms be
tween. The colors of autumn flamed across the valley,
sweeping away into mauves and russet echoes on the
palisades beyond. The river curled away like a twisted
silver ribbon through the plain. On the ribbon, like a
conscientious and highly determined bug, the Isador
inched its solitary way. We had overtaken the autumn
now. The days were a flashing complement of gold and
blue. At times the river exhaled a faint purple mist.
The nights were filled with stars and untroubled sleep.
We anchored in the mouths of rivulets or sloughs un
der a mantle of trees. Then in the mornings, while the
birds were at their matins, the mate would take the
tiller line, and I would climb the roof and sweep the
heaped-up leaves into the Mississippi.
138
SLOUGH, BIRD, MODEL 139
It was not all so idyllic as that. We had for one
thing, a moron in our midst. I refer to the small skiff
which I got in trade for the canoe at St. Paul, and
which was undoubtedly the dullest, most utterly ig
norant boat ever made by the hand of man. No matter
how or where we tied it up at night, we could depend
upon hearing it come thump, thump, thump with its
abject snoot against the delicate ribs of the houseboat.
It did not leak, but it was always a quarter, full of wa
ter. When we passed a river steamer, of which there
were now a number, it would take fright and try to
leap onto the back deck, usually missing its jump, and
- hitting the flywheel of the motor. There was only one
name for that boat. We called it the Abject Stupidity.
The motor was no moron, but it was nervous and
temperamental. With the help of the three-mile cur
rent, it carried the boat down stream at a speed of five
or six miles an hour.* When the weather was rough,
and the Isador began to mingle with the river, the mo
tor would get a little water on its connections and faint
dead away. Like a mid- Victorian heroine, it suffered
from the vapors. It would up and faint almost any
time, for the very good reason that it wanted to get
away from something it considered unpleasant.
Then there were those small spicy incidents of
* In the lower river where the current was stronger, we occasionally
reached a speed of seven miles an hour. One filling of the motor's
gallon tank would last two hours, and nearly fifteen miles.
140 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
chance, which gave infinite variety to the journey. This
for example, is a day just south of Prairie du Chien :
We had spent the night up a slough or narrow chan
nel of the river beyond a wooden railroad trestle which
just allowed the Isador to pass through. The sunrise
was beautiful, not a cloud anywhere. Good ! We would
make at least thirty-five miles to-day. Breakfast then,
and an early start !
I spun the motor, and we went down the slough.
Suddenly there was a dull snap, the Isador staggered,
hesitated, and w r ent on. What was that? I stopped
and investigated. One of the mooring ropes had slipped
off the back deck, caught itself over a stump, and
broken off short. Starting the motor again, we went on
toward the trestle. No use trying to make it with the
motor going. We shut off the power and poled the boat
by hand under the narrow viaduct.
As we passed out from under the trestle, a little
breeze caught the Abject Stupidity, and swung it be
hind a post, stopping the Isador. More breeze puffed at
the houseboat and swung it into a patch of water
weeds. I tried to start the motor, but it caught its pro
peller in the weeds, sighed, and fainted. Now the wind,
which had been waiting for just this impasse,, sprang
at the Isador,, making the boat quite uncontrollable
and pushing it farther into the weeds. We dropped the
anchor pole and considered. There was only one thing
SLOUGH, BIRD, MODEL 141
to do : let the houseboat drift back against the trestle,
hold it there cross-wise, revive the motor, and start
off again.
I pulled up the spud, while the mate shoved us off
with the pike pole. But the bottom of the slough was
clay. As we got clear of the weeds, it seized the pole
roughly out of the mate's hands and left it sticking up
right while we drifted off unarmed toward the trestle.
To retrieve the pole, I jumped into the Abject Stu
pidity, gave a mighty pull at the oars and one of
the oarlocks ripped off ! Meanwhile, the Isador was very
close to the beams and piling of the trestle. I came
aboard again, ran to that side of the houseboat which
would strike first, put my back to the side of the cabin
and my foot to the trestle, and crack, splinter, crash!
In went the thirty-six inch window glass behind my el
bow.
At last we were at rest beside the trestle. We cleared
out the glass, mopped the ever-present, mysterious mud
from the decks, and again started on our way. But wa
ter from the mopping had accumulated in the hold so
that the boat now rode lower in the water than before.
A sunken dam at the mouth of the slough had not
bothered us at all w r hen we went in. But now, as we
passed out, there was a scraping bang and we slid over
the top of a submerged concrete block, doing Heaven
only knew what, to the Isadoras bottom. So we went
142 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
on for a mile down the river, not knowing whether we
would sink or swim, or both.
Now, thanks to the wind, the water was growing
rough. It began to splash over the decks. We put in at
the lower end of the slough, tied up, and ate a little
food. Then I attached the motor to the Stupidity and
went in the rain (for that had started) back to Prairie
du Chien for a rope and a pane of glass. By the time
the new glass was in the window, it was four in the
afternoon. The rain stopped, the wind died down suf
ficiently to allow us to go on for an hour to anchorage
in the mouth of the Wisconsin River. It was pleasant
to know that at that point in 1673, Louis Joliet, Father
Jacques Marquette, and their five voyageurs had
floated wonderingly out through half -concealing mists
onto the Father of Waters. But coming down consid
erably farther in history it was not quite so pleasant
to remember that after a day of perfectly astonishing
activity, the present discoverers had only done a very
scant three miles out of their well-intentioned thirty-
five!
The French, coming into the country both from Can
ada and the Gulf, quite as early as the English did on
the east, claimed jurisdiction over the whole valley,
SLOUGH, BIRD, MODEL 143
even going up the Ohio River to the present site of
Pittsburgh. "New France" included the whole terri
tory between the Mississippi and the AUeghanies. New
Orleans itself was part of the Roman Catholic bishop
ric of Quebec.
But the English, on the eastern seaboard, did not en
joy being so confined hence the French and Indian
Wars which lasted a hundred and fifty years, coming
to an end with the fall of Quebec and the Treaty of
Paris in 1763 a treaty which left France only "a
hamlet in lower Louisiana."
The French have placed their indelible imprint on
the upper river. La Crosse, the field where the In
dians played their game; Prairie du Chien not liter
ally "prairie dog" but prairie of "The Dog" ; a famous
Indian chief; Frontenac, Trempeleau, Dubuque, Tete
des Morts Creek, Pomme de Terre Prairie these and
many other names remain. In the Light List, which
gives the names and numbers to fourteen hundred odd
buoys, lights, and day marks, between St. Paul and
St. Louis, there are also such vague appellations as
"Frenchtown Buoy" and "Frenchtown Village Day-
mark" and again "Frenchtown Light/ 5 where the very
names of the settlements seem to be lost, and their
144 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
memory lingers on only in the generic designation given
them by the early surveyors of the river.
These first surveys must have been grilling work,
yet the young men who went out to measure the river
had their fun, too. Pig Island, Vermilion Slough,
Parsons Bar, Sourwine Bend, Beef Slough Buoy,
Polly Towhead, Viola Daymark, Elsa Light, carry
the possible overtones of merriment and laughter.
Something small and alive was floating in the mouth
of the Wisconsin River. It made no particular effort
to avoid us, so I ran the skiff alongside and picked it
out of the water. In general effect, it was a small duck
with the tail feathers shot off. The wings and back
were a grayish brown ; the waistcoat light tan, the bill
long and sharp, and there was a huge pair of shovel
feet, laid out in front like black snow shoes. There
were three bad shot wounds in the head and neck.
We put the little fellow in a box by the stove where
he would be as comfortable as possible ; at first he kept
twisting about and trying to get away from the pain.
Finally he settled his head in the middle of his back,
swelled himself up like a dingy powderpuff, and went
to sleep.
The next morning no change was apparent in the
SLOUGH, BIRD, MODEL 145
patient's condition. There was however, a change in
the weather, with glare ice on the deck of the house
boat. Spurred on by that fact, and by the north wind
behind us, we traveled that day fifty miles from the
Wisconsin River to the excellent, rectangular harbor
that had been cut out of the Iowa shore by the city of
Dubuque.
We moored beside a row of boat-sheds. A man in
hunting costume who was puttering around near by,
told us that our wounded guest was not a duck but a
hell-diver, very difficult to catch and nearly impossible
to shoot. Hell-divers moved so fast in the water that
they would dive between the time that a gun was fired
and the charge could reach them. Our patient, he
thought, had been shot by accident, for its kind mi
grated south with the ducks. Would he get well? The
hunter thought not. He had never seen one caught be
fore. If it were too sick to dive, it was more than likely
too sick to live. Certainly it looked that way, twisting
its head round and round in an epileptic manner until
one almost expected to see that necessary appendage
drop off onto the floor. We left water and weeds and
wild rice beside it and went out to see the town.
There is in New York a now well-established publi
cation called The New Yorker. It is modish, light-
hearted, and very frequently clever. In its early ado
lescence it spoke of itself as being a magazine "for
146 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
every one but the old lady from Dubuque." Thus
had come by the impression that not only "the <
lady/' but the town itself would be very solemn a
stodgy. Dubuque, however, is neither. We found it
be a neat, prepossessing little city at the foot of a hi
bluff, very lively and busy, with a very fair quota
"citizens of the world" in it. Indeed, with a jov
breadth of spirit, several of its news-stands sold 7
New Yorker. There was an idea in that! We woi
find an old lady and
We found one, never mind how, up three rear fligl
of outside stairs, past and under a week's washing,
beyond a little kitchen full of washboards, steam, a
babies.
"Grandma, some one to see you/ 5
A beaming, fiery old lady with cap and cane thumj
into the room.
"Come right in. You're just in time. Won't you
down and have something to eat?"
Since the old lady had never heard of us before, a
since we carried no letter of introduction, that,
opined, was hospitality de luxe. We thanked her, s<
ing that we had had breakfast, and that my compani
was making sketches of people along the Mississip
Would she be willing to pose ?
"Pose? Of course I'll pose! When we were in c
boat, wasn't Pike Curtis always making pictures, a
Old lady of Dubuqiw reading The New Yorker.
SLOUGH, BIRD, MODEL 147
didn't we black our faces and have our photos took!"
"On your boat?"
"Why certainly. Come in and sit down. When I was
a girl my father had a side-wheeler eighty feet long
and two decks high, on the river. There were eleven of
us on it Ed Groom and his wife to make photographs,
and Pike Curtis who did sketches in crayon and Indian
ink, and my father who was a doctor up and down the
Mississippi. Then of course there was my man and
myself, and those who ran the boat. We traveled the
river for years, then my father sold it, but my God, he
didn't get what he gave for it. My man was a river
pilot. Father took him on after we nearly got busted
in a big storm and I married him. . , . What do you
want me to do, stand on my head, or sit? I'm great at
sitting!"
I said that we would be in luck if every one was as
willing to pose as that. She leaned over and slapped me
familiarly on the knee. "Say, kid! I've been all over.
That's why I can bring you in here and treat you like
my own folks. I feel like I know you. Ethel, show him
the baby." A young woman brought in a baby that was
fairly popping with milk and health. A fine baby the
young woman's of course?
"No," said the latter, "I'm the grandmother." The
little girl doing the washing was the mother, it seemed,
and she of the cap and cane was the great-grand-
148 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
mother, having- qualified as a grandmother at the age
of thirty-seven. The young woman began playing with
the baby. "Our rna is a great old ma/' she said. "What
are we going to do with her if she lives much longer?"
"Har!" laughed the beldame. "A year from now I
may be on a boat again going down the Mississippi.
You're not a river man, are you?" she asked me.
"No, he's a writer/' explained my mate. "He's
writing about the river." The other looked up with ad
miring eyes. "Say ! I'll bet you make more money than
a feller who works for his living I"
Eventually she settled down and posed for the sketch
on the opposite page, in the meantime, reading a copy
of The New Yorker that we had given her. When the
sketch was done, we asked her whether she liked the
magazine.
"My God, it's fine!" she said.
So, as we returned to the boat, we decided that it
must have been quite a different old lady from Du-
buque that The New Yorker meant.
CITIES
CHAPTER XIII
MEANWHILE the hell-diver was becoming restless.
He deserted the box by the stove, wobbled to the end
of the boat and stood there ready to leap into the abyss
between the floor and the planks below. The mate re
turned him to his box and held a saucer of water up
before him. He drank, but more frequently he put his
bill down beside him on the sack. No doubt, having
spent most of his life afloat, it was his habit merely to
lean down and take a drink ! He moved around uneas
ily, but as soon as we started the motor and left Du-
buque harbor, he settled down again to a state of ap
parent content. Perhaps that sixth sense in which birds
are infinitely superior to man, told him that he was go
ing south.
The tawny water of the river seemed perfectly still.
Again, the landscape had that rare decorative quality
which we had sometimes seen far to the north massed,
billowy tree groups and the rich unctuous vistas of
Watteau and Boucher. It seemed possible that behind
those trees might be a little grassy hill with a white
marble belvedere on it, and a dozen slightly shopworn
149
ISO MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
shepherdesses in rich brocade and lace playing with
lambs on the grass, while a bored monarch sat yawning
in the shade. Lovely islands rose from the river, the
channels between opening to blue hills and idyllic farm
land.
Then came a dark smudge of smoke on the sky, and
under it, the squalid manufacturing city of Clinton
made a dismal smirch over the landscape where the
Lincoln highway crosses the Mississippi. We spent the
night in a stinking creek that was filled with strange,
unpleasant excretions of a dozen factories-, feeling
a certain annoyance at an industrialization which, in
its fever after profits, forces men to work out their
lives in such sordid surroundings.
We went on, anchoring the next night at the mouth
of a small inlet. The hell-diver's health seemed con
siderably improved. He would quack mildly; some
times he would get out of his box and wobble about
the floor. But he had eaten nothing for four days. Per
haps that was for the best. When one was used to
standing on one's head and pulling grass from the bot
tom of the river, Quaker Oats on a plate would prob
ably be a severe shock. We realized a little sadly that
we should have to let him go.
In the morning we carried him to the weeds at the
edge of the inlet and set him in the water. He looked
around, drank twice, paddled out a little way, took a
CITIES 151
good stance, and dove, reappearing again a few feet be
yond. Excitement came into his manner ; apparently he
realized that he was home. He pushed out a little
farther, and again went under. Only a ripple along the
surface of the water showed the direction he had taken.
Up again, with still greater animation.
"He has forgotten us already,"
said the mate.
"He never bothered very much
with us, even in the beginning,"
said I.
He was half way across the
inlet now, shaking his head gayly, twisting himself
this way and that. We watched him a moment; then,
Hip, and he was gone for good.
"He was a fine little chap," she said.
"I thought he was a bit petulant."
"He was a lot pleasanter than most people with three
bullet holes in them would be."
We went back to the Isa dor. It was strangely empty.
What we needed, we agreed, was a dog.
Wisconsin on the left, Iowa on the right. Before us
is the head of the Rock Island Rapids, and running
along beside them, a canal with a government lock at
the southern end. This is to be our first lock with the
Isador. Ahoy, and heave ho ! Let's be very shipshape
and nautical! Overhaul the clew lines, mate, let the
152 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
portcullis fall. When I say "Avast," shut the engine off
to half speed.
Here is the lock ahead. We chug down the canal and
approach the lock. "Avast there, my hearty. Avast
shiver my timbers !"
The black gates open before us, and we sail majesti
cally in. I signal the mate again; she shuts off the en
gine, and we draw up to the side of the lock. There are
rows of strong iron hooks along the concrete walls.
The lock keeper looks down and from above tells us
to fasten to the hooks while the water goes down. Very
good. I take a trim coil of rope from the back deck and
carry it to the front; dropping it, I try to find one of
the ends. The ends have both disappeared into the
rope. I remember Pete's advice, "Take your time, but
be on time/' The rope rolls itself into an orgy of loops.
Out, damned knot ! I work away, but it is as obstinate
in its coils as a boa constrictor. The lock keeper gives
up hope and begins to let the water out of the lock.
Holding on to one of the iron locks with one hand, as
the Isador goes down inch by inch, I labor feverishly
at the pile of rope with the other. But I might as well
spare myself the trouble. Now we have dropped the
required six feet, and the doors at the lower end of
the lock are opening wide. I know from the map that
across from Moline, five or six miles down the river,
there are more rapids.
CITIES 153
"Shall we take the river, or the lock?" I inquired.
"If you take the river, you'll swim/' answers the
lock keeper laconically. I'm afraid he has not appre
ciated our seamanship.
On the Iowa bank the factories of Davenport be
gan; on the Illinois side, were the first houses of Mo-
line. We traversed the canal, dropped down another
six feet through a lock, skirted the lower end of the
beautiful two and a half mile island that carries the
Rock Island Arsenal, turned back between the island
and the mainland in a slough that is known as "Syl
van Water," and came to rest in a marshy overflow
of the river beyond the Rock Island railroad station.
Davenport, Rock Island, Moline. Three cities at
grips with industrialism. To the passer-by, they ap
pear to have come considerably farther in understand
ing than Clinton up the river. No doubt their advan
tages are greater. They appear to be well on the way
toward making industry sufficiently human to provide
material comfort for its workers. I did not see a great
deal of Rock Island, even less of Moline. I was in
Davenport only half an hour. Has a man who spends
half an hour in a city a right to express an opinion of
that city?
154 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
I think so, provided he makes it very clear that it
is a half hour opinion. If he has wandered consid
erably over the face of the world, giving full play to
his receptive faculties, there is a possibility that he may
have developed a certain intuitive accuracy in regard
to the personalities of towns and cities a hunch that
resembles, in a way, the sense of smell. I should like to
try out my hunch about Davenport. If it isn't right,
somebody will undoubtedly tell me.
Without having talked to anyone about it, I think
that Davenport is a little bumptious. I think it may be
inclined to bully Rock Island and Moline on the other
side of the river. I think it is trying very hard to be
a large city heaven knows just why. A hundred years
from now, when we have ceased in a degree to meas
ure values by bulk, Davenport, like our other large
cities, will no doubt be fighting just as strenuously to
reduce and the sloughing-off process may not be so
very pleasant, either. I think that in Davenport there
may be too much "boosting/' too many men of vision
whose vision ends at the top of skyscrapers and fac
tory chimneys.
In other words, I think that Davenport is very much
like any other American manufacturing city. Imagine
going into a manufacturing town and saying to an
average American manufacturer, "Beyond the factory
chimneys are the stars, which make a vaster music
CITIES 155
than the whir of your greatest machinery." The next
music to be heard would probably be the rythmic in
tervals of some one being kicked down a long flight of
stairs! An American manufacturer, somewhat better
than the average, might, if the above quotation were
called to his attention, feel a little uncomfortable or a
little annoyed. He might be sentimentally silent for a
moment, but almost inevitably a protest would rise
in his mind. "Yes I know all that/ 7 he might say,
"but I have to haul in just so many thousand dollars
a year or know the reason why. I help support the art
society and the municipal orchestra. But I haven't any
time to fuss about the stars. Besides, I don't want to.
It might make me different from the rest of the crowd,
and it's hard enough to keep in with 'em now." *
The fact is that neither Davenport nor the rest of
industrial America has any time for contemplation.
Our philosophy is frankly industrial, finding its re
ward in mechanical achievement. Its worst feature is
its intolerance of the ideals of others. Aside from that,
there is nothing greatly wrong with it although it
may not entirely please those of us who do not enjoy
being members of this or that standardized group.
Pessimists to the contrary, out of this intensive in
dustrialism may come more time for leisure and such
*An American manufacturer an actual person submits this: "You
can't look at the stars without food in your belly and we provide
food."
156 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
new arts the new architecture, for example as will
take firm root in our vigorous, enthusiastic soil.*
But now, under a fusillade of discarded machine
parts from the factories of Davenport, and tomatoes
unfit for its canneries, let us return to the comparative
safety of the river.
A century or more ago, Ma-ka-tai-mi-she-kia, or
more familiarly, Black Hawk, was a name of impor
tance in this country. Lieutenant Zebulon Pike, whose
trail we crossed several hundred miles to the north,
came ashore on August 9, 1805, and talked with Black
Hawk at the mouth of the Rock River, two miles be
low the present city of Rock Island. After a friendly
speech, Pike requested the Indians, who were waving
British flags, to wave the American flag instead and
to give up the medals which had been presented to
them by agents of the Great Father in England, adding
that he would send them medals from the Great Father
in Washington. Black Hawk, who had "one of the
finest heads that heaven ever let fall on the shoulders
of an Indian," decided that under the circumstances it
would be a good thing to have medals from both the
Great Fathers !
His medals did him no good, however. Years later,
expatriated and broken, he addressed his conquerors in
* "The sculptors of the future are the engineers," says a modern
artist This is heresy but invigorating heresy.
CITIES 157
a few words of profound pathos and dignity, saying.
"This was a beautiful country. I liked my towns, my
corn-fields, and the home of my people. I fought for
it; it is now yours."
We approached Burlington, Iowa, just as darkness
fell precipitately over the river. Like many of the cities
on the Mississippi, it displays an armored water front
of cobble-stones sloping down to the water. We
avoided this dangerous incline, and picked a spot just
back of a large Naval Reserve barrack, thinking that
there, at least, the anchorage would be good.
I took a line ashore; but there was a slight breeze
blowing just enough to send the Isador crashing
against a large submerged building block of unknown
purpose but very definite position. Feeling about with
the pike pole, I came upon several similar blocks. That
was no mooring place, in spite of the proximity of the
Naval Reserve barracks. So up anchor, and in rope,
and down against the wind through the darkness to
the mouth of what proved to be the Burlington sewer,
where a slight indentation in the shore line gave a little
protection against the wind. There, we 'thought, was
rest. But the wind pushed us toward the bank, the oars
hit on shallow mud, and I called to the mate to drop
the anchor pole before we ran so badly ashore that we
158 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
could not get away. A slim, square-shouldered old man
who looked like an ancient knight came out of an amply
built houseboat on the shore and directed us to a nar
row mooring place between two launches. Finally we
made it, hands numb with cold, feet soaked, clothes
daubed with unattractive mud off the ropes. The old
man had long since gone indoors. There was no one
in sight. But the next day, the Burlington Press an
nounced our arrival as follows :
"A small but immaculate houseboat drifted up to
the levee as darkness fell upon Burlington last night.
A man dressed in khaki trousers, a khaki shirt and
high leather boots, guided the boat to her moorage,
made her fast as easily as the best boatman on the
river, and then gazed upon the bluffs of Burling
ton. . . ."
I shall keep that clipping. If I keep it long enough,
I may be able to persuade the mate that that was what
really happened.
For thirty-seven years, the knightly old fellow had
been a diver. Eugene Farris was his name, Captain
Eugene Farris, and he was not inclined to talk. But
I persevered; and presently, walking on before, like
an old-time warrior in his armory, he showed me his
forge, and his well-equipped tool shop, then his diving
suits with their bulging insect eyes, their valves and
CITIES 159
water-tight wrist bands and ponderous-soled shoes, ex
plaining that the belts he wore with his under-water
outfit, ranged from seventy-five to a hundred and fifty
pounds in weight, depending on the depth at which he
was working.
Then, as talking was not so unpleasant after one
had made a beginning, he told about the numerous
family of river folk to which he belonged, most of
whom were now gone. At one time, twenty-five men In
the family were licensed captains, mates and engi
neers, but they had passed with the great days of the
river. He himself, so far as he knew, was the oldest
deep-sea diver in the United States now that Jobin
and DeWitt and Folick were gone. How old was he?
"Sixty-seven years; just sixty-seven on the twelfth of
October," he added with care.
"Of course you don't do under-water work any
more?"
"Oh yes, I finished a job on an intake just two weeks
ago." An intake job sounded prosaic enough, but, with
that fine simplicity so often apparent in men whose
lives have been spent facing danger, he went on to tell
about the intake valve where at different times three
divers had been killed. He had approached as warily
as though the thing were a crafty enemy, finally sub
duing it with an inside valve which he had invented
himself.
i6o MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
Once, in fifty feet of water, he had removed one hun
dred and sixty-nine bodies from a sunken packet. At
another time he had taken one hundred and thirty
from a steamboat that had turned turtle the very Sea
Wing, of which we had heard before at Lake Pepin.
He had been a steamship captain himself in the days
of the great steamboat lines the Northern Packet, the
Red Collar, and the Diamond Joe. No wing dams in
those days, but plenty of sand bars. He had seen as
many as three steamers at once aground on a sand bar
off Plum Point, sitting there like turtles and working
the mud soft with their paddle wheels until they slid
off again into the river.
"You ought to write your story/' I said.
"No, I don't care for that/'
"Do you ever wish you were on the river again?"
"Well, I have thought of it. I have the timbers for a
new barge but I guess I'll never get around to it.
I'm all alone now, you see."
"You have your children," I said, for he had spoken
of them.
"They're all away."
"But you said your grandchildren write to you?"
His face lighted up. "Yes, they do. Here, I'll show
you " He hurried off and came back with a letter
from his small grandson. "He has the same name as
mine Eugene." Then he brought me the photograph
An old knight of the river still a deep-water diver
at sixty-seven.
CITIES 161
of a comely-looking* woman, a woman with a motherly
expression, and tranquil, understanding- eyes.
"She has been gone two years," he said. With that,
the memory of his solitariness came flooding back ; and
the old knight of the river, stalwart and fine, but with
the deep, pathetic grief of a lonely little boy, turned
away his head.
MORMONS
CHAPTER XIV
WHEN we pulled in toward the levee at the city of
Ft. Madison, we did not expect to see a woman waiting
for us on the grassy bank; even less did we imagine
that she would wave a welcoming hand; and least of
all did we expect the figure to take on the lineaments of
a tried and trusted friend.
We approached, one of us mingling exclamations
of joy with thanks to heaven that the dishes were
washed, the other, divided in his mind between pleas
ure and wondering if any other man had ever come so
strangely upon his mother-in-law !
She would not come aboard at the time, however ; so
at her hotel we learned how she had arrived. Knowing
when we would be on this section of the river, she had
come from visiting friends in a nearby state to Rock
Island, only to find that we had left that city two days
earlier. She had followed, then preceded us, by train,
trolley and bus, through Davenport, Muscatine and
Burlington, to Ft. Madison, always getting word of us
from those along the river, but never quite catching
sight of the Isador. An hour or two earlier, she had
162
MORMONS 163
been a little in doubt as to our whereabouts, because
the evening paper reported that we had "gone down
the Mississippi past Ft. Madison on our way to New
Orleans." But the complaisant host of the hotel had
notified the police and, unless I am mistaken, the fire
department; so that when we came under the bridge
above the city, the news was brought to her at once.
Next day, we carried her from Ft. Madison to Nau-
voo, Illinois, past mile after mile of strange dead for
est whose blackened limbs rose starkly up out of the
flooded waters. The weather, praise God, was all that
it should have been; so when she took the train at
Montrose that evening and expressed herself as being
fully satisfied with the boat and its crew, I could see
that she would visualize us as sailing down the river
through a paradise of calm and idyllic days. Indeed,
she will not really know into what an Odyssean voy
age I had led her daughter until she reads this book;
and by that time the journey will be so many months in
retrospect, that I hope I shall be forgiven anyway.
The present Nauvoo rises from the meadows and
woodland a mile from the river. We had without know
ing it, anchored beside the oldest house in the vicinity.
It had been a good house of roughly squared lime
stone, but now it was half submerged by the back
water of the dam at Keokuk a dozen miles to the south.
When Lincoln pleaded his cases in that house before
164 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
the judge of the Circuit Court, it had been several hun
dred yards from the edge of the Mississippi.
Going up from the river along the dirt road that
leads past cornfields and orchards and isolated houses
of red brick, one is impressed by the fact that the en
tire meadow land below the pinnacled hill of the town
was at some time in the past laid out into city streets.
These old man-made "improvements" have been so
changed by the ebb and flow of the seasons that now
their straight outlines are nearly obliterated under a
lovely garment of meadow-grass, wild asters and
goldenrod.
Here and there, within nodding distance of each
other, are the substantial red brick houses, all of an
earlier time and distinctly of the same period. At the
top of the hill stands the pleasant, ordinary little town,
with its schools, its banks, its newspaper. But what is
the meaning of the grass-grown streets below?
When Chicago was only a hamlet, Nauvoo, now a
village of a few hundred, was the thriving capital of
the Mormons. Driven out of Missouri with his fol
lowers, Joseph Smith, the prophet and founder of Mor-
monism, came in 1839 to this beautiful stretch of valley
anci river. In a few years the town became a hive of
commercial activity. Between 1840 and 1850 the
population rose nearly to fifty thousand. Unfortu
nately, the prophet found it impossible to leave politics
MORMONS 165
alone, thereby bringing down on himself the dislike of
both Whigs and Democrats. The Mormon city and its
leader became very unpopular in the state. In addition
or perhaps because of that fact there was much
murder and outlawry in the vicinity. Horse-thieves and
cattle rustlers had the unpleasant habit of driving their
stolen stock in the direction of Nauvoo so that the Mor
mons would be blamed for their outrages. The city
became a rendezvous for criminals. The political ac
tivities of the Mormons brought on a conflict with
their neighbors. In 1849 Joseph Smith and his brother
Hyrum were shot to death in the county jail at Car
thage, Illinois, where they had been taken under the
alleged protection of state troops. Two years later most
of the Mormons were driven from Illinois. After
severe hardships, a small percentage under the leader
ship of Brigham Young, reached Utah. Here were
included hundreds of women whose husbands had been
killed in the recent disturbances, and who certainly, in
those rough days, needed protection. Polygamous mar
riage followed. But those Mormons who remained in the
Middle West, never engaged in polygamy, nor in cer
tain other early malignant policies of the Utah faction.
After the Mormon evacuation, other settlers came in
to occupy the deserted houses. An old building near the
ferry, bearing the name upon it of Johann Georg
Kauf mann, carried this inscription under its roof tree :
166 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
"Dies Haus ist mein und doch nicht Mein,
Wer nach Mir konnnt wird's auch so sein.
Ich bin hier gewesen;
Wer das wird lesen, der is auch hier gewesen/
When I went in to the local barbershop, The Chi
cago Tribune, which functions under the blushing title
of "The World's Greatest Newspaper/ 7 had just ar
rived carrying an article on Nauvoo, entitled, "The
Weirdest Place in Chicagoland." If one were to judge
by the remarks of the group of citizens about the stove,
the world's greatest newspaper was badly out of order.
"Chicagoland, my eye!" said a stout red-faced citi
zen, 'casting a dark look down the offending column.
"They send a guy down here to write us up, and all
he does is to turn over the old bones."
"Yeah/' said a short young man in leather puttees,
"You'd think we were just a cemetery for preserving
the remains. Where does he get that 'weird' stuff, any
way?' 7
"They have to have something to write about/ 7 said
the first speaker, "and they don't give a damn what it
is as long as it's what they call 'news/ "
*This house, though mine, is not mine, too.
Who follows next, will find that's true.
Still I have been here; who reads this
Will also have been here, I wis.
MORMONS 167
"Yeah, that's right. It wouldn't be news if they
should tell 'em we had deposits for a couple of mil
lions in the banks or the best schools in Hancock
County. It wouldn't be news to tell *em we shipped a
hundred and fifty carloads of grapes out of here last
season/'
"All they care about is the murders, and ole Joe
Smith with the gold tablets in front of him/'
"What is that story about the tablets, friend ?" asked
another, apparently a traveler.
"Why, Joe Smith said he found them when he was
monkeying around in a cave, but it's funny nobody
saw them before him. He used to put a chunk of neph
rite up before one eye and a chunk of something
else up before the other, and a sheet over his head,
and read the tablets by the hour. Oh, he was smart,
Joseph Smith. I knew his wife, old Emma, and she
was a kind old lady. I don't know how much she be
lieved in him herself, but she wouldn't say anything.
The New York Herald sent a man out here to inter
view her one time, but she only told him that the Mor
mons never preached polygamy here, and that was
right, too."
"Do the red brick houses down the hill date from the
Mormon time?" I asked.
"That's right," said the young man with the puttees.
"Have you seen Joseph Smith's house?" When he
i68 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
found I had not, he added, "I'd be glad to take you
around in my car." So he showed me the landmarks of
the town Joseph Smith's mansion, with its secret
chamber and the chimney, the site of the Mormon
temple, Brigham Young's house, the Nauvoo House
built as a tavern by the prophet, and the homes of
several of the present elders of the church. A friendly
old lady took us through the house where Joseph Smith
had lived. Next to the fire-place in his room was a
secret closet, with still another closet leading from it
and a ladder going up into the darkness of the loft
above. I found the Mormons to be a pleasant, simple-
mannered people, living plainly but well, like the So
ciety of Friends. They were not, I found, expecting
Joseph Smith's return from the dead as some one had
told us. The dwelling places of the early Saints were
only being kept in repair out of veneration for the
founders of their sect.
"There's one thing more to see," the young man
said, "and that is the oldest house in Nauvoo. Lincoln
and Douglas used to plead their cases there."
Thus, automatically, he returned me to the Isador.
Ducks again by the thousand, spraying out into
wisps and smoky tendrils high above the water. Wild
MORMONS 169
geese too, curving and cavorting, whirling and spin
ning undecided, perhaps, whether to, stop with their
lesser kindred or to carry on down another hundred
miles to the south. Some left, some stayed. The latter
settled down in wide circles about the houseboat. They
had learned several lessons since leaving the north, one
of the most essential of these being the necessity for
resting at night in open water as far as possible from
the shore and the islands, which held sudden, crashing
death.
The number of duck hunters in Illinois alone during
the season was extraordinary. Perhaps in one day we
might see eighty or a hundred. We passed thousands
of decoy ducks, some sitting calmly on the water be
cause they were wood, others flapping their wings be
cause they were bored. Sometimes it seemed as though
there were more decoys than wild ducks.
'The river broadened again into a lake. Neat farms
and orchards, beautiful bluffs and rolling fields, the
best of middle western farm country appeared dis
tantly on either side. Twelve miles below Nauvoo the
river pulled up short before the Keokuk dam.
Its concrete mass is thrown .across the entire width
of the river. At the Iowa side, forming an L below the
dam, is a power station of immense proportions, and
beside it a lock one-third greater than any in the Pan
ama Canal. If you should walk from Illinois across
170 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
the dam, then through the power house, and across
the lock to the Iowa shore, you would have traveled
two miles. High steel towers carry the current away
to various cities, including St. Louis, one hundred and
forty-four miles down the Mississippi.
We were told higher up the river that there had
been a slight but cumulative mistake on the part of
the engineers who had figured the water power at the
dam. We were advised (with an accompanying nudge)
to look carefully at the fifteen electrical generators,
for we would see only seven of them turning at one
time. However, let it be stated that when we walked
down the length of the power house, all fifteen were
turning with a pleasant, steady hum. Thus the serpent
is crushed by the advancing heel, and truth goes stag
gering on.
The trouble with the advancing heel on a journey
like this, is however, that it advances too fast. In my
note book I find only the following entry for the town
of Keokuk: "Pop. 14,483. Excellent up-to-date library,
run by two charming ladies. Best-smelling town on the
Mississippi."
To the left Illinois ; to the right, the slightly draggle-
MORMONS 171
tailed border between Iowa and Missouri. Behind us,
above Keokuk, rose a parachute of smoke, composed
perhaps, of the aroma of its candy factories, baker
ies and coffee roasting establishments. The river
stretched straight before us, freed from many curves
by the speed of its current. Up to this time it had been
rising; now it began to fall a little, exposing along
the banks several feet of dusky mud. Sandbars too,
began to appear. Sometimes we ran into them, but we
always managed to back off again.
Now, out of a pother of sandbars and islands,
Quincy, Illinois, appeared. Quincy is a pleasant,
slightly mussed, solid-looking town, full, I should
judge, of citizens of not too Attic temperaments. "We
are the kind of people," one of them told me, "who
never take a chance. We would rather sit tight on three
per cent, than gamble on anything." Of its 35,974 in
habitants, it is represented in Who's Who in
America, only by four. There is not much excuse
for that low average on the basis of an invasion by
poor foreigners. It is a purely American town to which
foreigners have not been drawn by high prices for
cheap labor.
There is a cordon of very pleasant parks about
Quincy, with Indian mounds of great archeological in
terest. Washington Square, in the center of uie-town,
has more squirrels to the peanut and more pigeons to
MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
the bread-crumb, than any other park I have ever seen.
On the water front is an old-time Mississippi store run
by Mr. C. L. Adams, where you can buy anything
from an anchor or a pound of oakum, to a bunch of
carrots and a box of talcum powder. The public li
brary is fine. The people of Quincy were friendly. The
local papers made agreeable comments on our jour
ney. I have only the most kindly feelings toward the
city; nevertheless, I have something unpleasant to say.
After nearly thirty centuries of progressive civiliza
tion which include the teachings of Christ, Plato, and
Gautama Buddha, the awakening of pity, the sculp
ture of Rodin and Praxiteles, the unceasing effort of
messiahs and poets and philosophers to attempt to
shape and lift the world's vision to their own vision,
a city of thirty-five thousand souls in the center of a
nation which prides itself on being in the van of civili
zation proudly brings forward as one of its leading
civic achievements, the following: "Quincy is the larg
est producer and fonvarder of railroad tonnage per
capita in the State of Illinois."
That quotation will either mean something to you,
or it will not. To me, it seems the most pitiful, ant-
like negation of human values that we found on the
entire Mississippi.
BECKY AND IGNITION
CHAPTER XV
THE water front of Hannibal, Missouri, was deso
late with the desolation of rain and a falling river
which left a thirty-foot smear of maltese mud along
the cobble-stoned jetty. We coasted along its edge seek
ing a harbor, but there was none. Was that a creek
ahead? Good! We turned into it through the fog and
rain, only to find shade of Marat that the creek was
not a creek after all.
Up stream again and into a cup-like depression in
the mud bank under the straddling legs of a red freight
house that overhung the water. Poor shelter this for
facing the mile wide stretch of water. As we tied to
the pier fore and aft, up out of the prevailing grayness
came a bellowing monster of the Mississippi, the first
three-deck packet boat we had seen, snorting and thun
dering, and blowing hoarsely for the bridge to open
for it. Partly because it loomed so huge in the river,
partly because its waves would shortly send us rollick
ing like a Chinese junk, it seemed greater than the
mightiest ocean liner.
173
I 7 4 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
This captured leviathan passed up stream, leaving
to the rear of its stern wheel a series of six-foot waves
like spines on the back of a dragon. I read on its stern
Cape Girardeau of New Orleans,, but read no more,
for in a moment we were jigging between our wooden
posts like something unhappy at the end of a hang
man's line.
!R/<?r beast
In time the river composed itself again, and the rain
came down as it had before the Cape Girardeau in
terrupted it. We went up through the dingy, dripping
city and bought a copy of Huckleberry Finn. A man
in Keokuk had told me that people in Hannibal were
queer, for if you stopped one of them on the street
and asked him where Mark Twain's house was, he
would unfailingly direct you to the Mark Twain Ho-
BECKY AND IGNITION 175
tel. We tried it several times, but since man, woman
and child invariably gave us the right information, I
suspect that the man from Keokuk had inquired,
"Where is the Mark Twain house?" And since
"house" is often used with a hotel's name, like "Parker
House" or "Palmer House," the people he questioned
naturally thought he meant the Mark Twain Hotel.
One ancient man in that hostelry said he remem
bered Samuel Clemens himself, and that Sam was a
rotten pilot.* Sam had bumped the snoot of many a
good ship on a sandbar; at least, that was the reputa
tion he had had. Besides, a good pilot, one who liked
his job, would never have given it up just to be a
writer. There weren't many people left who knew
Sam from the old days but the girl who was Becky
Thatcher in Tom Sawyer, now nearly ninety years old,
was living seven or eight miles out of town at the old
Ritchie farm.
"Do you think she would pose for a sketch?" I
asked.
"Sketch? That's easy. Call up her son, Ed Frazer/'
So I called Mr. Frazer on the telephone and stated
my case and credentials. Would the lady who was
Becky Thatcher pose for a sketch to-morrow?
"I suppose so/' he said, a little wearily. "What time
would you like to come out?"
*Mr. Archibald Henderson in "Mark Twain" states otherwise.
176 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
"Would t(
It would.
"Would ten o'clock be all right?"
She sat in her chair, very sedate and still as my
companion began drawing. She seemed to feel upon
her the necessity for silence. Was she thinking of the
early days, when a little beribboned girl of six, and a
slim, slouchy little boy of seven attended Mrs. Horr's
school together ?
I essayed a question. "Do you remember much
about Mark Twain, Mrs. Frazer?"
"Yes, I remember a great deal about him/' she said,
in a quiet, grave little voice, which immediately hur
ried back into silence. Was she thinking about the little
boy doing cartwheels in front of her house, and walk
ing to school with her? Or did she have, perhaps, the
memory of another more dramatic period in her mind
a series of events which began when General John
McNeil of the Federal Army had been invited out of
the rain into the house of a young girl for lunch. The
young girl's husband, a Southern sympathizer, was not
at home, for the very good reason that he was in hid
ing.
Appreciating her hospitality, General McNeil in
formed her that her husband Dr. Frazer, might come
BECKY AND IGNITION 177
home without fear. So he returned, but was arrested
soon after and held in the military prison at Hannibal.
Shortly after that General McNeil, as a measure of
war retaliation, ordered the execution of ten Southern
prisoners. The girl, desperately anxious, went to Pal
myra to beg for the life of her husband, but was given
no hope. She hurried to the Hannibal prison. Dr. Fra-
zer, unaware of- the impending tragedy, greeted her
tenderly. A few minutes later, the doors opened, and a
Provost Marshal entered with two lists. "Becky
Thatcher" listened, her arms about the young physi
cian who was still ignorant of the grim game of life
and death that was taking place.
"Dr. Frazer," read the Provost Marshal, "to be
transferred to St. Louis."
She took rooms near the prison in St. Louis. After
ceaseless effort, she succeeded in bringing about her
husband's release.
That's the kind of girl Becky Thatcher was. Sam
uel Clemens, it seemed, had chosen accurately and well
when, long before, he picked her for his first heroine.
"Will you tell us some of the things you remember
about Mark Twain?"
"Well, Mr. Clemens and I went to the same school,
you know. We girls didn't bother much about the boys.
(Of course not, Becky Thatcher!) Samuel was just
an ordinary boy, very average, and didn't show much
178 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
ability of any kind. He had a habit of telling stories in
a slow, drawling voice that somehow made you listen.
They weren't very good stories. If any one else had
told them, they wouldn't have amounted to anything;
but when Samuel told them, they usually sounded quite
funny. He had no gift of writing, as far as any of us
knew. He used to get into scrapes quite a lot, and he
often played hookey from school, but he was a nice
boy and used to divide his candy and oranges with me.
Like a great many other American boys, he had his
pockets filled with queer things to trade."
"And you first met him as he tells about it in Tom
Sawyer?"
"Yes. Pretty much that way. The first meeting was
when Samuel turned hand-springs in front of our
house, and accidentally struck me on the head. He in
quired about whether I was hurt, but I wasn't. Then
we became acquainted and soon were very good
friends. A great many years later, he invited my
granddaughter and me to his home in Connecticut. It
was a fine visit. Mr. Clemens said he was just going
to be a farmer. He didn't know whether he would raise
turnips on trees, or what. My granddaughter took a
photograph of us, and he called the photograph, 'Tom
and Becky/ "
She had another photograph to show us too, one of
Mark Twain taken not long before his death, on which
Becky Thatcher, Mark Twain's first sweetheart. "Every
thing is true except about our being lost in the
cave together. Mr. Clemens made a
mistake about that."
BECKY AND IGNITION 179
was written, "To Laura Frazer, from her earliest
sweetheart." She lapsed into silence again, and would
not be persuaded from it.
Now the portrait sketch was finished. "There is just
one more thing I should like to ask," I said, as we rose
to leave. "Did you get lost in the cave as it is described
in Tom Sawyer?"
Her face grew serious. "No; we went there often on
picnics, but always with a party of friends, and we
always had a guide," she said. "I was never lost in the
cave, and I never went in alone with any one. . . *
Mr. Clemens was mistaken about that."
Tossing and bumping against the mud bank, with
the freight house on one side, and the river on the
other, the Isador passed a cold, benightmared night,
groaning as though in terrible pain. We rose to find
Hannibal in the act of crossing the Alps, with half an
inch of snow on the Isadoras roof and the water keg
frozen nearly solid. Fortunately, there were one or
two pilgrimages to be made in the town. Certainly it
was no day for going down the river.
Since Mark Twain's time, Hannibal has moved to
the south and west, leaving the writer's little old house
in a drab back-water of the city, surrounded by second-
iSo MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
hand dealers, cheap restaurants, pool-rooms and pawn
shops. The Planters' Hotel, a few yards away, fur
nishes dinner for thirty-five cents ; "Room and Board,
Seven Dollars a Week," says a sign on a shabby house
across the way.
The house itself is a two-story wooden structure,
utterly plain, utterly commonplace, and decidedly ugly.
Next to the house there is a broad magenta fence, with
no Tom Sawyer to keep it white. That is probably just
as well, for the railroads and factories of the rather
ugly little river city are no better than they should be.
In looking at that squalid house one has the feeling that
it was a very good thing the river pilot came away.
There's no great need for sentiment about the treat
ment Mark Twain received at the hands of early Han
nibal. He was ignored for years ; only when he became
famous did they make much of him, and even then the
praise came for the most part from a newer and more
appreciative generation.
But certainly the Hannibal of to-day sincerely ven
erates the memory of her most distinguished son.
There is an excellent group of Tom Sawyer and Huck
leberry Finn at the foot of Cardiff Hill. When, after
ten minutes of stiff climbing, one arrives at the top
of the hill, one finds a proper setting for the spirit
that rose from the squalid little house below. There,
facing twenty miles of river, stands a bronze figure
BECKY AND IGNITION 181
of the great-hearted writer himself. If, when no one
is about, he should turn a little to the south as he un
doubtedly does, he would see another twenty miles of
river, curling majestically away among his beloved
islands and hills. (Turn a little more, Mark Twain.
Now ! Don't you see that fine old farmhouse out there,
of yellow brick, with the figure of some one standing
at the door ? Can't you see her without getting down ?
Well, it won't be the first time you have gotten down
off your pedestal to see Becky Thatcher !
We returned to the houseboat and stood watching
it from the frozen bank as it pitched and tossed in the
waves, butting into the bank with surprising vigor.
Even while we had been away up the hill, the tempera
ture had dropped another two points to twenty above
zero. If we watched much longer, the north wind
would freeze the very marrow in our bones.
Two minds with but a single thought, we retreated
to the steam-heated luxury of the Mark Twain
Hotel.
Morning is cold again. On the deck of the Isador is
ice; on the roof, icicles. But the wind has died down
and the sun, off over the Illinois shore, is nerving him
self for the day's work. I chop the houseboat loose
i&2 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
from the frozen ropes, pole it out into the river, put
on the motor, press up the carburetor, caps, push down
the choke, rock the fly-wheel a few times, and bump
it against compression.
No answer. I bump it again. Still no answer. I rock
it and bump it; I look at my spark plugs; I fiddle with
the timer; I blow into the gas tank. Meanwhile we are
drifting down the river. I rock the wheel fourteen
times. No reply ! I bump and rock, and rock and bump,
a suspicion rising in my mind. The motor gives every
indication of rigor mortis.
The current is with us, and the wind too. A wing
dam is approaching fast. The mate takes an oar from
the Stupidity and paddles from the front of the house
boat. We avoid the wing dam; but here is a light-
buoy, a privately-owned buoy set out by the Portland
Cement Company which has a factory on the hills
south of the city. Evidently the Isador does not like
privately-owned buoys. The river is nearly a mile wide
here, but the boat comes right up to the buoy and at
tempts to hit it on the nose. I prevent this discourtesy
only by running to the front deck and kicking off the
buoy myself. I return to the motor.
Spin, bump; spin, bump. As often before, blood
from my knuckles smears the top of the wheel a rusty
red. I may as well stop my efforts. I am only tamper
ing with a body from which the life has fled. The next
BECKY AND IGNITION 183
thing to do is to tie tip and consider. We are fairly
near to the Illinois bank. We pick a spot just below the
island where Tom Sawyer, Joe Harper and Huck Finn
"looked their last" at civilization. I get into the Stu
pidity,, and tow, but the current and wind are strong.
Before we reach the bank, we have passed a second
wing dam an ugly one, all teeth on our way down
stream. (A lucky thing I did not impose my will
against that of the river, for if I had we should prob
ably be sitting on the dam with a hole in the ship's bot
tom.)
As it is, we make the bank just above the second
dam. I take a few more ghoulish turns at the dead
motor, but no use. Gloom settles down upon the entire
party. When will the river freeze over, we wonder,
and lock us within its rigid embrace? I go inside and
thaw out my fingers.
There is only one thing to do. I must take the motor,
together with its tools and a can of mixed oil and gaso
line, and row back to Hannibal. But Hannibal is now
four miles up stream. Up stream against that wind is
an impossibility. In the skiff I find that the best I can
do is to reach the other shore without going down
river. A man and a few boys are tinkering with an old
row boat on the bank. The man is in shabby overalls,
and wears a week's beard on his face. His leathery
features look as though they were retreating into the
184 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
underbrush. I inquire how I can best go the four miles
to Hannibal with the motor.
"Now that's a right hard question. There's no car
here and no train stopping except the Polak at three
this afternoon. But there's a store down the road a
piece where they have a truck. They might take a man
to town if he had to go/'
"How far would you say the store is?"
"Well, I reckon it is a good quarter mile."
"Will the boat be all right here?"
"Sure! No one will touch it."
I take pains to explain that the five gallon can I am
leaving in the boat contains a mixture of oil and gas
oline, not suitable for running an automobile. Then I
lift the motor to my back, take the small valise with
the tools in it old General Ketchall, in fact and
start off toward the road.
The first few hundred yards are enough to bring a
vivid realization that an outboard motor is not de
signed to be carried. It has more gadgets and knobs
than Perseus and the Gorgon's Head cast in bronze. I
shift the position a little, pressing inadvertently on the
carburetor valve, and instantly receive a generous liba
tion of oil and gasoline down my neck. I shift my bur
den again. Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle. The warmth of my
body has affected the motor. Shade of Emma Bovary,
a brown, unknown liquid emerges from the pump's
BECKY AND IGNITION 185
mouth and runs down the housing. I stagger on at
least half a mile. Where the hell is that store? The man
behind the beard, trying no doubt to encourage me,
has made the distance shorter by two-thirds than it is.
I feel as though I have been walking with the motor
on my back for days, and that I shall have to walk
many days more. I can note quite objectively the poison
of exhaustion creeping into the muscle fibers. The mo
tor is like an old man of the sea astride my back. How
long must this keep up? Where is the store? Fatigue
no longer passive takes command. I'm done! I stop,
lean down and set the thing gently on its heel. It over
balances my outraged muscles and we go over. I keep
it from hitting the ground, but it pushes me over onto
my back and lies on me. I am prepared to be a little
annoyed at that, but I get over it at once, remember
ing that the motor, poor thing, is dead.
So I stand the deceased by a fence, and go on a quar
ter mile to a farm-house, where the farmer says that
the store is another quarter mile beyond. In the store
there is a comely Russian woman who is the wife of
a Czecho-Slav, who in turn, is away hunting. The
woman, out of the goodness of her Muscovite heart,
offers to telephone to town for a taxicab. The address
she gives the taxi-man is, Monkey-Run-by-the-Cement-
Works. In spite of that peculiar address, the taxicab
gets there.
186 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
In Hannibal I take the motor to a scholarly-looking
man who resembles Woodrow Wilson. He has a boat
house and repair shop on the water front filled with
the customary quota of large, husky, warmly dressed
gentlemen who sit about the stove and occasionally
condescend to feed it with a morsel of the scholarly
man's wood. The latter, who is mending a cracked
cylinder head, pauses to look at the motor and says,
"111 be with you directly." Soon he is taking it apart
and inquiring, ".That is a Katwater-Ent ignition sys
tem isn't it?"
"Yes."
"I never did like that Katwater ignition/' he con
tinues, tickling the trigger with a doubtful screw
driver. It occurs to me that perhaps the reason he
doesn't like it is because he doesn't understand it. At
taching the batteries, he twiddles the timer a little, and
then a little more. Presently it snaps out a spark or
two.
"Ouch, I got it/' he cries. "There's a short in the
stop-button." Taking the timer to his bench he comes
back with a washer so thin that one can hardly feel it
between finger and thumb. "You better keep this, you '
may need it," he says. I drop it into a vest pocket, say
ing, "Yes," very intelligently, just as though I knew
what it was for. He claps the top on the timer before
the spirit escapes ; then we fasten the motor to a board,
BECKY AND IGNITION 187
prime it, rock the fly-wheel, and bang! The thing
barks back to life with a vitality more intense than
before. I get into the taxi, and with the motor in my
arms, bounce back over hill and dale toward the house
boat, grateful indeed that we shall not have to winter
at Monkey-Rirn-by-the-Cement- Works. And I feel so
carefree after the suspense of the day that when we
pass a sign which says, "This way to Mark Twain's
cave," I ask the chauffeur how much he will charge
for waiting while I go through the cave, and he re
plies, "Six bits." In a small house near by, we find Mr.
Cameron, who owns the cave (and while he is light
ing his gasoline lantern, we'll slip unnoticed back into
the past tense).
'5
He threw open a narrow door and we walked down
the dark, much-traveled passage. Sometime far in the
past, the long, tortuous galleries were cut through the
rock by the action of water. Various strata were
etched and eaten away into fantastic formations along
the walls. All about us, in the irregular seams and folds
of lime-stone, strange shapes appeared the Eagle, the
Monitor, Adam's Foot, the Devil's Backbone all
the old metaphors to be found the world over when
man, through some trick of nature, is forced for
iSS MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
once to have a good look at his surroundings.
On the walls and ceiling thousands of names had
been scratched into sooty smears made by the wicks of
closely applied candles. Here was the signature of Ad
miral Coontz, there the names of two privates in the
Army more interesting, too, than the Admiral's, for
the date that followed them was 1863. Nearby, some
one had drawn a small round-stomached hieroglyph of
a man hanging by the nape of the neck from a gallows
and had scrawled underneath it, "Jeff Davis/' Some
one else obviously another artist, for the technique
is quite different, had drawn another long figure
hanging beside the first, this one bearing the title, "Abe
Lincoln."
Here was Becky Thatcher's own rounded signature
not actually "Becky Thatcher," nor "Laura Fra-
zer," but Laura Hawkins,* her maiden name bear
ing the date, 1855, and under it the signature of some
old time admirer of hers. The chirography of the name
"Laura" seemed to be identical with that which ap
pears under the sketch at page 178. As I examined her
autograph on the cave wall, an impression came to me
from somewhere, that very probably Samuel Clemens
and he of the name that stood next to hers, had shared
the privilege of admiring the young lady with a good
many more,
* Mark Twain used the name "Laura Hawkins" in The Gilded Age.
BECKY AND IGNITION 189
Mr. Cameron proceeded down the irregular, twist
ing tunnels ; plainly, it would be easy enough to get lost
there. He himself had once been astray in the cave for
three hours. Once a member of a party had roamed
away from the guide and had stayed in the place all
night. Small bats, clinging head downward from the
ceiling, glared evilly at us.
"One man asked me if they were alive," remarked
Mr. Cameron.
"I told him that if they weren't, they wouldn't -be
hanging there for long. They'd rot and drop down on
him." He laughed a hollow, macabre laugh, which has
probably brought thrills of terror and delight to the
small boys of the neighborhood whom he brings into
the cave quite often. Here indeed, was a hole in one
side of the passage, where an urchin could climb along
twenty or thirty yards through the darkness, and come
up into the gallery again a hero.
As we passed back to the entrance, I asked my guide
if he had known Mark Twain. He replied no, that he
had only seen him once distantly, when the writer had
returned in his latter years to Hannibal on a visit. He
had all of Mark Twain's books though all that come
in the set. However, a lady he had been taking through
the cave recently, told him about another book that
Mark Twain had written. Had I heard anything about
it?
190 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
"Do you mean that It wasn't the kind of book that
is published in the set?" I asked.
He looked at me scandalized. "Mark Twain never
wrote any kind of a book that couldn't come in a set."
"No?"
"No."
"Oh." *
The taxicab stopped within a hundred yards of the
spot where the Abject Stupidity was lying. I carried
the motor down to the river. The man with the beard
came along, and said, "Did you get it fixed?"
"Yes, I think so. By the way what was that train
you called the Polak?"
"Oh, that's just the local train/' he said blushing
pinkly above the rim of his beard. "It's an engine with
two cars that runs down here from the town loaded
with Hunkies who work in the cement mills."
I got the motor started, said good-by, and took stock
of what was or was not in the boat. The five gallon can
had not been touched. I had done wrong to be sus
picious. There was nothing gone at all that is, noth
ing except the pair of copper tips that had been fas
tened to the ends of the oars.
* For the sake of verities, I refer Mr. Cameron to page 185 of Van
Wyk Brook's, "The Ordeal of Mark Twain,"
THE SMOKY SAINT
CHAPTER XVI
FOR twelve days of savage wind from the south, we
went on in a running fight down the river, now creep
ing along close to the shore, now dashing across an
open stretch of water, now getting caught unawares in
a tossing channel where the wind and the opposing
currents made battle. Often, as we turned a point or
came around an island, the motor, hardly recovered
from its last illness, or suffering a relapse in the pres
ence of the wind, would cough and spin and go dead.
Then the waves would heave the Isador into their
trough and try to swamp us there, until with groans
and grunts and elbow grease, and the generous appli
cation of gasoline, I would revive the failing car-
burator, and we would totter on. Those twelve days
were not very happy ; sometimes we would be forced to
lie for hours at a time behind wing dams or small is
lands or in the mouths of sloughs, watching for that
uncertain moment in which to cross the river.
The rudder acted badly too. One cold day I found
191
192 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
that the housing had sagged, taking quarter-inch bites
out of the blades of the propeller. There was too much
play between the rudder and the frame that held it.
Washers were needed on the upper and lower rudder
bearings. I leaned out over the motor. In my interest
I put my hand on the tipped-up horizontal rudder bear
ing. Forgetting that the motor was not solid I leaned
out a little far. Splash ! Down head first into the frigid
water but not for long, however. Before the mate
had got to the door of the houseboat I was back on
deck. Indeed, the return from the depths had been ac
complished with such splendid zeal that there were
spaces on my clothing that were not entirely wet !
There was, I am sure, landscape along this section
of the Mississippi, but it was of quite secondary in
terest to the wind.* Once, at dusk, as we completed a
desperate passage across the river to a protected point
of land, two large steamers came panting up the
stream, heading directly for the same point. A white
channel guide stood on the bank. The steamers were
well within their rights to follow the channel; in fact,
if they had not followed it, they might have run
aground. There was only one thing for the Isador
* If I have not devoted the maximum of space here to the landscape I
must beg for clemency in the words of a vigorous friend who read the
manuscript: "If the mechanics of the voyage was a drag on you some
times, it would have been a futile fake to rhapsodize about the scenery
when you really were wringing bilgewater out of your socks.'*
THE SMOKY SAINT 193
to do, and that was to head out into the river again.
Darkness was coming on, and with it more wind. As
we floundered toward the opposite shore, I thought I
heard some one hailing us from the first of the two
stern-wheelers, but the message was lost in the wind.
Somehow we succeeded in making a slough ; but when
we moored under a sheltering bank, I found that the
Abject Stupidity was gone. At some time during
that passage, it had snapped its chain off short and
had left for parts unknown. To go out after it with
the houseboat into the darkness and wind was impos
sible.
Perhaps the skiff was not so stupid as we had
thought. When it left it took its oars with it. We never
saw it again.
A small freight steamer passed us bearing the name
Genevieve of the Port of Hamburgitt. We went on,
wondering where on the face of the earth Hamburgill
might be. Certainly it was not on any map that we car
ried ; but a few miles farther on, we came to the village
of Hamburg, 111. ! Hamburg was the center of the apple
district. I went ashore there for gasoline and water
over mounds of crushed apples and apple skins. A scent
of apple juice, and better, filled the air. Large men in
194 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
high laced boots and hunting costumes stood around
looking at me suspiciously. There was a sense of mys
tery about the place that was not relieved by any ful
some pretense toward hospitality.
"You ain't from Hamburg, air ye?" an old shop
keeper inquired.
"No, that's my boat down there. We are on our way
south as fast as we can go."
"Well you've got more sense than the wild ducks,
ain't ye?" he said grinning.
"Do you mean that some of them stay around Ham
burg and get shot?"
He winked a bleary eye and laughed uproariously.
"A feller's all right here if he minds his business," he
said.
So, with the large men still eyeing me suspiciously, I
made my way down over the mounds of crushed ap
ples to the boat, leaving Hamburg at ease again, in her
virtue or iniquity, as the case might be.
There was something ominous about the river now.
Its power was increasing, and the power was malig
nant. I felt its force, myself, and I could see its effect
in the mate's face. Those arduous days had gradually
THE SMOKY SAINT 195
broken down the strength of her resistance. There was
dread in her .eyes when we had to cross the river.
We were approaching the great joining of waters,
the place where the power of the Mississippi com
bines with the power of the Missouri ; and now we had
no small boat in which to get away in case of trouble.
Mist drove up from the south, half hiding the shore
and changing the trees and the high bluffs into paint
ings on a Japanese screen. We passed to the right of
an island that hid the moutH of the Illinois River, and
came to a wide expanse of the Mississippi that ended
abruptly to the south in a strange band of white lying
along the surface. The white streak came rolling up
through the mist. We made for the shore, but it rose
and enveloped it. We passed out of the world into
a no-man's land of grayish white space, with the heavy,
wet fog sweeping silently, mysteriously, to the north.
We went on, listening apprehensively for the sound of
a steamer's horn, or for a bell, straining our eyes for
a glimpse of a buoy, red or black, in the nothingness
about us.
Now a red buoy glided past close on our left. Good;
we were still in the channel. I let the Isador take its
own way. An hour later the tops of cliffs appeared on
the Illinois shore. Beyond, out of the fog appeared
colossal steel frames similar to those we had seen in
196 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
Keokuk, one hundred and sixty miles to the north.
These, like the others, were carrying electrical power
over their inch thick cables to St. Louis.
The city of Alton rose up out of the emptiness. We
tried to buy a skiff there, but no skiffs were for sale.
We got fuel, and went on. The river had quieted down
under the fingers of the fog, but the island at Alton
Slough where we expected to spend the night, had dis
appeared under high water. The river was vastly dif
ferent from the map we carried. Nosing back of a nar
row sandbar, we found shelter beside a thick edge of
weeds, the lights of the city twinkling beyond the
foliage like fiery flowers.
At five we rose. The morning was calm, but as we
started on our way, our old enemy came up the river to
oppose us. No wonder early man believed that the
winds and the currents were malevolent deities! I
think that we too half believed there was some malign
influence standing across the river trying to bar our
way to St. Louis, twenty miles farther on. We were a
little doubtful about St. Louis anyway; where on the
vast stretch of municipal docks and water front would
we be able to find a mooring place for the I sad or?
The channel led along the left bank, the edge of
which had been rip-rapped, or roughly paved with
broken stone into a sloping, formidable bulwark. The
waves were high, not high from the standpoint of
THE SMOKY SAINT 197
ocean traffic, you understand, but high for a house
boat. The water took on a muddy, reddish hue which we
had not seen before. On the left we passed the mouth
of a small creek that was pouring sticks, branches and
froth out into the river. The waves went higher; in a
moment the motor would submerge and stop. The mate
stood looking at me from the back deck. Watching my
chance, I turned the Isador around and tried to make
the mouth of the creek, but the turbulent water rush
ing past the stone embankment was too swift. We
hung for five minutes in exactly the same spot below
the creek's mouth, the motor chugging feebly against
the current. What to do next ?
Far across the river, I saw a sandbar with what
seemed to be an inlet below it.
"We'll have to cross;" I said.
"No no!"
But there was no other way. The waves in the center
were huge as large as they had been on Lake Pepin.
They rose up in patches where the wind wrestled with
the current. The motor doused under and stopped but
I started it again while loose objects crashed to the
floor. Tossing wildly, we approached the sandbar, and
found ourselves opposed by another current of the red
dish water which appeared to be pouring from behind
the bar. It traveled along in streaks, quite independent
of the olive-drab water of the Mississippi. The sand-
198 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
bar, we found, was an island. I steered in slowly
toward that bank of the reddish stream which lay be
low the bar.
As the boat, contesting every inch, was forced slowly
backward by the new current, we watched tensely. I
eased the left tiller rope a little. Slowly now ! Not too
much of a turn, or the current would seize us and twist
our bow down stream. We sidled in slowly toward the
bank. Now we'had stopped losing ground ; we remained
stationary in the rushing water, the lashing propeller
just holding its own. A little closer in shore! Ten
sion . . . Then, no faster than the crawl of a snail,
trees on the bank began to move past. We were going
ahead. Now we had gained an inch on the bank, two
inches, a foot, a yard. Ten minutes later we slipped
into quiet water beside the shelving bank, cut off the
power, and dropped the spud.
What was this reddish tide that came pouring into
the Mississippi? Was it a chute of the river coming in
around Maple Island, tinged by the waters of the Illi
nois? We looked at the nearly useless map. No, that
must have been Maple Island where we anchored last
night and that was Mobile Island over there. Then
this we looked at each other with a strange surprise.
Then this
We had in fact, without knowing it, fled for protec-
THE SMOKY SAINT 199
tion into the tawny mouth of that mighty brother of
the Mississippi the Missouri.
4
Up before dawn.
A quiet river again ; and again, just before sunrise,
the freshening breeze making the sixteenth day of
wind from the south. Even now it was not too late for
the sullen gods standing astride the river to do with
us what they chose; for St. Louis was still seventeen
miles distant. But perhaps they would relent. Such a
small houseboat, after all! So, with uncertainty upon
us, we went on past the long, jagged embankment,
down past the two high mid-river castles from which
St. Louis gets its water supply, carefully past the dan
gerous "chain of rocks," that have bitten holes in the
bottom of many a boat, and then past the large squalid-
looking houseboat colonies, the quays, the bridges, the
mills, factories, docks, and steamboats, to the fog that
is St. Louis. In the heart of the city just above the
Eads Bridge, we found a cozy floating dock with quiet
water inside, also a gang-plank to walk upon, and the
best accommodations that we had seen for the Isador
on the Mississippi.
If we arrived there in spite of the wind, it was partly
200 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
luck and partly because we knew no better; for we
learned that tug-boats and barges ten times our size
the Ghost, and the Silas Buck, and the Old Bill which
should have made St. Louis from up the river long be
fore us, were still wind bound far to the north. We had
covered nearly five hundred miles by canoe, and nearly
seven hundred by houseboat from St. Paul to St. Louis.
We had navigated what is known as the Upper River.
The Lower River was still before us and a distance of
thirteen hundred miles.
A fine, worn old city is St. Louis, rich in achievement
and in memories. A city not at all worried about what
New York or any other metropolis is doing; a city not
self-conscious and jumpy like Chicago, a city standing
firmly on its own precedent, with no hint of the gauche
or nowveau riche about it, like Minneapolis. Cities, like
individuals, often benefit in 'manners by having a few
generations of breeding back of them. If St. Louis ever
went through any period of crass adolescence, that has
been left many years behind. The young city's religious
training was long and excellent, the first mass having
been celebrated there in 1764.
The pride of every true St. Louisian's heart is the
old courthouse, on the east steps of which, in early;
Slaves were sold from the steps of this fine old court house
in St. Louis.
THE SMOKY SAINT 201
days, a slave market was regularly held. Certain fac
tions have suggested plans for remodeling the fine old
Doric edifice, but the city springs at once to protect the
landmark against any such desecration. "It may not
be what you call a handsome courthouse/' said one
citizen to me, " but just try an' tear it down!"
St. Louis calls the Mississippi
"The Big Muddy/' and pays very
little attention to it. Indeed, the city
has more or less turned its back on
the river. But in Forest Park, the
site of the World's Fair, there is a
little creek. After a heavy rain, the
creek sometimes rises up quite
harmlessly, and fills its channel with
rushing water. Then you will find
automobiles parked wheel to wheel
for a mile while their occupants, in
some excitement, watch the little thing bubbling along
in its infant rage.
During our days in St. Louis there was snow the
heaviest November snow on the government record;
snow that broke down countless wires and fifty tele
graph poles in the city, giving the out-door statue of
Saint Louis a garment of ermine and transforming
the park into a land of exquisite unreality, where very
real, runny-nosed little children, both poor and rich,
Statug of Saint Louis
in the city's oldest
church.
202 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
enjoyed themselves to their possible, under the silent
indulgence of the guardian snow-clad trees.
The city, marshalling its hundreds of workers, its
trucks and tractors, moves majestically along through
the smoothly geared cycle of its snow-removal prob
lem. While I, having several fewer gears to my do
mestic economy,, climbed on top of the Isador with a
dust-pan and shoveled off the roof.
My companion enjoyed St. Louis, too. Her first ob
servation was a delighted, "How well-dressed the
women are here I" Her last was expressed in a final
sigh of regret when at the last possible moment she left
the splendid Union Market, with its white enamel,
marble, and plate-glass, and its remarkable concentra
tion of the finest fruits, meats and vegetables to be
found on the Mississippi. She liked the city's art gal
leries, its old churches, its parks, its monuments and
its people. So did I. If during the week we anchored in
that hospitable harbor, we took aboard enough soot to
alter the appearance of the houseboat for several hun
dred miles, we accepted it with a certain equanimity.
For when we left St. Louis, we carried with us the con
viction that its interest in the art of life extended to
planes that were untouched by the soot of its factories.
At the office of the Mississippi River Commission, I
procured thirty-seven sheets of maps, at the scale of
THE SMOKY SAINT 203
one inch to the mile, for that section of river between
St. Louis and the Gulf; but I returned them for I
found that on twenty-three of the sheets, the channel
was not marked at all. Instead of these, I was forced
to buy a book containing maps one-half inch to the
mile, which were published thirty-five years ago. Ap
parently they were printed at that time too, for the
paper was so brittle with age that it immediately broke
to pieces under the fingers.
As far as being a guide to the present river was
concerned, this book, we found, was nearly worthless.
Towns marked on it had disappeared; others had
grown where none were designated. Great bends in the
river had become solid land; chutes had opened; is
lands had disappeared; the channel of the river itself
had shifted so far from its marked course, that for
miles the country was not recognizable. True, Cairo,
Thebes and Memphis still flourished on their ancient
sites, but if we had not been provided with the up-to-
date and reliable list of channel marks from the Light
House Service, we should have been adrift indeed.
Mucli time was occupied in trying to find a row-
boat. I combed the St. Louis water front from the
204 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
Eads Bridge forty blocks north to the water-works
and the shantyboat colonies which, by the way,
seemed to contain a very high percentage of sullen peo
ple and bad tempered dogs. Then I went south from
the bridge for another forty blocks, past factories and
municipal plants and gas tanks, coming at last on the
water front to the house of a furious-looking, but
affable little old man with red eyes very near together,
who kept bees and ran a launch to a truck farmers' is
land across the river. At first, like the others, he said
there were no boats to be had.
"People don't build row-boats around here any
more," he said, "they steal 'em." But he bethought him
self of a man, a farmer from the island, who might
have a row-boat, adding that the man was inside his
house at that very minute. He called out a rotund, en
ergetic Jew to see me, saying to him, "Here's a nian
who'll buy that boat of yours that got away and that
I tied up down at the Point."
"All right, by golly; that's obsolutely the fines' boat
you could get, strong built and everything The only
think is is she still there?"
"Sure, she's there. I tied her up with a piece of wire.
She's there and sunk and full of mud."
"The mud I can get out with a shovel."
"Does the boat leak?" I asked.
THE SMOKY SAINT 205
"Not! If she leaks a drop, 111 buy her back for
double."
"How old is it?" He did not know exactly; he got
it along with his farm on the island, and he had had
the farm for seven years.
"What is it worth?"
"Twelve dollars/'
The up-shot of it was that we took the launch and
went down two miles against a bitter wind to the other
side of the river. Near the bank the gunwale of a boat
appeared above the water. The Jew, who had hip boots
on, jumped in and shoveled out the mud, bailing out
the water until a large, ungainly shovel-nosed craft,
all full of ribs and with no seat, rose above the surface.
It did not look very prepossessing, but since it could
not be stupider than the Stupidity, and since there was
nothing else to be had, I bought it, and took it back
across the river, and tied it up beside the old man's
launch against the time when we should leave St.
Louis.
At the Eagle Boat Store where the New Orleans
packets come in, I bought some oars, at twenty cents
a foot. Then we filled the Isador with provisions to
the place where the scuppers ought to have been,
shoveled a little more new-laid snow from the roof,
cracked the ice off the ropes, filled the water keg and
206 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
sputtered off down the river. At which time, I regret
to state, the south wind again sprang upon us. The
water too, was rough because of many packets and
freight boats and ferries. While I steered as well as
I could through the mangled and choppy wakes of the
greater boats, the mate stood silently on the back deck.
When I glanced at her in an unexpected moment, her
face had the look of a child who had been hurt, and
who awaits the same hurt again; and I thought to
myself, are we going to hate the river ? Shall we, like
Charles Dickens, "never hope to see the Mississippi
again except in troubled nightmares and dreams?" In
stead of this being a pleasantly rigorous adventure,
will her our dread of the savage power of the river
increase as we go on, until that dread over-balances
the element of pleasure, and the journey becomes only
something to be remembered as a long, painful dream?
We picked up the skiff beyond the gas tank and, with
the old tension on us, went on past ten miles of fac
tories, into a country of low, beetling hills lying
foliage-clad and swarthy under the snow. As the after
noon progressed, the wind slunk away; reality re
turned to the scene; the river flattened its glittering
folds and the sun descended slowly into a cloud-hung
chamber of copper-rose and green. We took heart
again, finding anchorage in the quiet mouth of a
THE SMOKY SAINT 207
slough. The waters, slashed with short, vertical reflec
tions of the stars, became a mirror for the night. In
spite of the week's rest in St. Louis, we slept the pro
found sleep that usually follows exhaustion.
LAND OF EGYPT
CHAPTER XVII
WHEN we rose, there was plenty of water in the
skiff, also plenty of mud, and a two-inch layer of ice.
It leaked, of course; but we could not sell it back to
the Jewish farmer for double the price as he had sug
gested, because we were twenty miles away. Poor
man ! How bad he would have felt if he had known !
The day before, when we had stopped for the skiff,
the old man had not been at home, but his wife was
there; so while I put on the oarlocks she invited the
mate into the kitchen to get warm. She was a fat,
brisk, rosy-cheeked woman, with a background of
clean linoleum. For seven years she had lived on the
island where the Jew now lived, sending her three
young boys over the river every day to school. Al
ways for the boy who was littlest, she had a big cov
ered wooden box with a folded quilt in the bottom. She
would put him inside, lower the cover, and wrap a
tarpaulin over the box. Then her husband would carry
it down to the boat, motor across the river, open the
208
LAND OF EGYPT 209
box and take the little fellow out dry. She had done
this with three boys in succession. The neighbors used
to laugh, but each of her three sons went his eight
years to school, never missing a day.
Never missing a day wasn't so much, of course ; but
when she herself had been young, she was the only
girl in the family, and as a result, when "anything
happened/' she had had to stay home. Once when her
father was sick, she had been kept out of school for
nine weeks, and as a result, "got put down/' She
vowed afterward, that if she ever had any children,
they should never have to miss school. No doubt when
once the little lads got their mother's ideal firmly fixed
in their minds, they themselves were mainly respon
sible for that three-times-eight-is-twenty-four-year-
record; and no doubt their daily task of crossing the
river, rain or shine, made them not a whit less excel
lent men.
Again the wind hounded us all day, running us at
last onto a sandbar, from which we managed to es
cape by a liberal application of the pike pole and good
luck. Late in the afternoon, we found a little slough
or chute, separated from the river proper by a narrow
strip of sand at a sharp bend, near Cinq I'homme
Light. During the early part of the night, five packets
went laboring and snorting around the bend, making
210 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
a wake that hissed on the sandbar like a storm at sea,
but leaving us snug and quiet in our chute a few feet
away. When we arose at three-thirty and lit the lamp
to prepare for an early start, another huge three-
decked river beast came blowing and panting around
the bend. On stepping inside the cabin after looking
at it, I found that the mate had turned the light down.
When I inquired the reason, she said that she didn't
want the monster to see us, for it might get some queer
ideas, and come wallowing and splashing in behind our
sandbar !
Rowing in the skiff to- the mouth of the chute, I
found the narrow channel clear, with a swift current
flowing out between willow thickets into the river. A
few moments later, with the motor purring good-
naturedly in the damp air, we swung down the chute
and into the composite, many-toned darkness of sky,
and hills and water. There was an indescribable sweet
ness about the night air ; only a faint breath from the
south came into our faces. Shore signal lights, a mile
or two apart, lay before and behind us, those down
the river coming into sight one by one, as those be
hind disappeared back of points of land and invisible
groups of trees,
One could imagine the lights carrying on and on
infinitely fragile links of security a thousand miles
southward to the Gulf. The moon, peering out from
LAND OF EGYPT 211
behind the mottled doorways of cloud, lent the glamor
of its sorrowful, mildly-demented presence to the
scene.
Almost imperceptibly, the east began to awake. Now
a faint gray thread of light lay along the horizon, as
though a painter,
spreading broad
stripes of cool col
or with his palette
knife, had got a
speck of flake-
white on the knife
blade and had
drawn it across the
canvas with the
rest. The stars lost their sight, the moon faded; the
hills emerged from their garments of blackness. We
seemed to be looking through a blue screen of slightly
frosted glass on which the channel lights and the in
frequent lamps of early-rising farmers were pricked
out in a naive, golden pattern. Soon, even the blue dis
solved. Silver radiance filtered out between the eastern
clouds. The sky and river turned to hand-wrought
silver. Then the sun rose, embossing the landscape
with the sharp splendor of his newly-burnished gold.
All day we traveled down vast open vistas of the
river, dodging twice around islands to avoid traffick-
Government shore tight
212 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
Ing with bawdy river steamers that seemed to smell
out our frail craft with rare persistence. The surface
of the Mississippi lay like 'quick-silver under a warm,
quiet sky. We sat on our camp chairs on the front deck,
and steered idyllically down stream for a distance of
nearly seventy miles. 'This/' we said to each other, "is
the sort of thing our friends meant when they said,
'How we envy you that glorious journey down the
Mississippi f " But the next day
The next day started with a little breeze from the
usual direction. However, Cairo, Illinois, where the
Ohio River flows into the Mississippi, was only
twenty-three miles away. Perhaps we could reach it
and find some sort of shelter there. On turning a bend,
we were shut off near the left bank by rough waves.
Ahead of us a semi-solid breakwater of drifted trees
that had been roughly cabled together, jutted out from
a high bank into the river. Immediately above the
breakwater, the river, forming an eddy, had eaten a
fifty-foot semi-circle out of the bank. Here, at last,
was temporary protection. We ran into the eddy, let
down the spud, and tied the front of the boat to the
breakwater.
But as the minutes passed, an oblique wind blowing
toward us from down across the mile-wide river,
keyed itself to a higher and still higher velocity. Grad
ually the small area of quiet water about us decreased
LAND OF EGYPT 213
and disappeared. The Isador was filled with emotion.
The spud pole began ripping open a larger hole for it
self in the deck. I moored with four ropes forward to
the breakwater, and took the anchor, with fifty feet
of rope, to the shore on the opposite side of the eddy
so that our stern would not swing against the bank.
The wind became furious. The houseboat reared and
bucked like a horse with a burr under his saddle.
Holding on to the walls, we prepared a little food,
but the cavorting was too much even for our well-
seasoned stabilities. My light o' love wore a strangely
sad and preoccupied expression, as though she were
listening pensively to an inner voice. We crawled
wanly over the tree trunks of the breakwater to the
shore. At the top of the fifteen foot bank, spreading
away to a sycamore grove, was a field of stiff, brown
pods topped with a thousand white puffs of cotton.
We sat down on the bank and watched the lightly
jumping Isador and the rheumatic old skiff which was
gradually filling with water beside the mud bank. The
wind still came roaring and howling over the river.
One thing was certain : there was no more possibility
of sleeping aboard the Isador than on the dasher of a
washing-machine. So I clambered out over the logs
again, put bread and honey and stewed pears in a bas
ket, found a rubber sheet and raincoats and a poncho,
and returned over the raging waves to the shore.
214 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
The mate had collected a huge pile of dry grass and
put it in the middle of a little thicket. There we rigged
a shelter tent the poncho below, the rubber sheet slop
ing up from the ground away from the wind and
fastened it at the ends to a pair of small trees. At the
edge of the cotton field a few hundred yards away,
there was a solitary negro hut. I went to it and
knocked. A bulgy negress came to the door.
"My wife and I have a boat on the river, but we
can't sleep on it because of the wind. We have put up
a tent in the thicket over there. I'm telling you so you
won't be frightened if you see a light."
"Oh, no, sah ! We wouldn't be afraid/' she said, her
eyes rolling at the mere thought of a light in the
thicket; "we wouldn't be afraid!"
I returned and we climbed into our snuggery. The
wind howled over our heads but did not penetrate the
underbrush. Any native mosquitoes were now blown
miles away. We ate our supper, settled down and
slept man superior to nature.
A vivid flash of lightning woke us. The storm was
bringing up its artillery from the southeast. Who
cared? The careening Isador was not bumping any
thing, and we were snug enough in our shelter. The
LAND OF EGYPT 215
voice of the gale rose to a howl carrying" with it the
spatter of rain. Being on the side nearer the storm,
I held down the lower edge of the rubber sheet that
protected us. That was easy enough, there was no
great pressure of wind on it. Then the howl became a
yell. Rain crashed across the river. The lightning, al
most venomous in its white intensity, left the eyes
blinded before the shattering report of the thunder.
We shrank back into the smallest dimensions possible.
The mate, who had been getting a little damp from
water splashing up from the grass, removed a small
forked stick at the end of the rubber sheet, uninten
tionally replacing it in such a manner that the sheet
made an efficient reservoir for collecting a goodly
supply of rain above us. In spite of the fury of the
storm, a great calmness came over me.
"Man superior to nature/' I said aloud.
She giggled.
"Why do you laugh, my simple friend?' 7
"Man superior to nature but his wife has to wear
rubber boots to bed !"
A moment or two later the improvised tent sagged
down against my nose. It had a strange, bulbous feel
ing. "A lot of water has collected up there. Wait a mo
ment I'll raise it up and let it run out."
Unfortunately the poncho that was under us had
curled up outside the tent against some saplings; so
216 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI'
that when I pushed upon the reservoir above, allow
ing the water to rush down the rubber sheet, the cur
rent turned inward and it seemed for a moment as
though the bank had given way and we were in the
Mississippi. We rose moistly enough, gathered our
possessions together and crawled out over the tree
trunks to the Isador. The rain grew less, the wind died
down a little, allowing us an hour or two of sleep.
But at five A. M., it came blustering up again, blow
ing furiously until the boat hopped about like a wild
thing. Once more we dragged our harassed carcasses
to the frost-covered shore again, each with his boots on,
each carrying a pair of shoes, swearing not to return
until the river should regain its poise. And as we came
to the land, we saw that the waves had eaten five feet
into the solid bank beside the houseboat.
Cairo could not be many miles away. We plodded
inland, across the black, semi-liquid fields. As each
foot went up and down, it gathered to itself more and
more of the sticky, viscous mud. The mate struggled
on ahead, her feet apparently encased in two large
black valises, which stuck out stiffly in several differ
ent directions. Suddenly she turned with animation in
her eyes.
LAND OF EGYPT 217
"Boppo, do you know what day yesterday was ?"
"No/' I answered weakly, "what day was yester
day?"
"It was Thanksgiving!"
Thanksgiving Day for some people, I said, but not
Thanksgiving Day for me; and I went on to add that
if any one ever told me that I should have been thank
ful on that day, I would punch him in the eye and call
him a bad name as well. Then, as we plodded along,
we came to the first growing persimmon tree that
either of us had ever seen, I hurled a club at the
persimmons, and they came down, thump, thump,
thump, in the mud and water. But the mud made no
difference, for we found that unless one has eaten per
simmons before breakfast on a cold frosty morning as
they fall directly from the tree, he has never really
eaten persimmons at all. My friend looked at me and
laughed, saying:
"Who would have thought that I should ever see
you standing at six o'clock on a frosty morning, where
Illinois and Kentucky meet, eating persimmons and
mud !" Though she laughed gayly, she looked pale and
tired. I hated to see her so played out ; and as we went
on through the muck toward the road to Cairo, I
evolved what I thought was a fine plan.
"How's this: When we get to Cairo, you will stay
at the hotel, then take the train on to Memphis and
218 MOS.TLY MISSISSIPPI
wait for me to come with the boat. You can rest there
four or five days, and when I arrive with the Isador,
youll be ready to re-join as mate."
But she said, "I'm afraid you can't manage it
alone."
"Oh, yes, I can. I'll string a wire through the
throttle to shut off the power from the front of the
boat. As far as food goes, I can throw some bacon and
eggs on the stove any time. There are plenty of canned
things, and vegetables, and bread. Don't you think it
is a good idea?"
"Well perhaps "
But as I went on enlarging on the plan, I saw that
it did not "take." There was something else in her
mind, something besides her comfort in the hotels at
Cairo and Memphis, something beyond the fact that
I should have to prepare my own food; and then it
came to me quite clearly that in spite of her weariness
she was thinking of the houseboat in a storm with one
man alone on it.
"No, I won't go to Memphis," she said.
Of course, a man's mate is supposed to stand by
him at least, that frequently seems to be the original
intention. Nevertheless . . . And I went on through
the cotton wondering despite Mr. Mencken and the
rest just how I had managed to stagger along down
my own muddy field, through so many years of single
LAND OF EGYPT 219
cussedness. . . . Then trudging silently, we reached
the road. A farm truck came along and took us into
Cairo.
4
Fifty years ago Cairo, lying on a low point formed
by the juncture of the Ohio and Mississippi, was by
no means what it is to-day. Mr. Charles Dickens
passed that way twice in a rage; once in a rage com
ing down the Ohio on his way to St. Louis, and once
in a rage on his way back.
"At that juncture of the two rivers," he wrote, "on
ground so flat and low and marshy, that at certain
seasons of the year it is inundated to the housetops, lies
a breeding place of fever, ague, and death ... a dis
mal swamp on which the half -built houses rot away;
cleared here and there for a space of a few yards ; and
teeming then, with rank unwholesome vegetation, in
whose baleful shade the wretched wanderers who are
tempted hither droop and die, and lay their bones ; the
hateful Mississippi circling and eddying before it, and
turning off upon its southern course, a slimy monster
hideous to behold. A hot-bed of disease, an ugly sepul-
cher, a grave uncheered by any gleam of promise; a
place without one quality In earth or air or water to
commend it, such is this dismal Cairo."
Lest all this apparent venom remain upon the early
Cairo, let us quote part of a letter written by Dickens
220 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
to his brother-in-law three weeks earlier a letter in
which he shows the real reason for his distaste for the
American scene :
"Is it not a horrible thing that scoundrel book-sellers
should grow rich here from publishing books, the au
thors of which do not reap one farthing from their
issue, by scores of thousands; and that every vile
blackguard and detestable newspaper, so filthy and
bestial that no honest man would admit one into his
house for a scullery door-mat, should be able to pub
lish these same writings side by side, cheek by jowl,
with the coarsest and most obscene companions. . . .
I vow before high Heaven that my blood so boils at
these enormities that when I speak about them I seern
to grow twenty feet high and to swell out in propor
tion."
This holy rage, like many other holy rages, was
purely economic. Dickens was notably choleric about
royalties. The American publishers at the time were
breaking no international copyright law because there
was none to break. In any event, the "gleam of prom
ise" that the great novelist failed to see, has developed
Cairo into one of the most attractive and well-kept of
the smaller cities of the Mississippi Valley.
It lies in that part of Illinois called Egypt, where
the great alluvial delta begins. The name Egypt dates
from a year when the corn crop failed in central Illi-
LAND OF EGYPT 221
nois and the inhabitants came down into the land of
Egypt to get corn. Not far away are Thebes and Kar-
nak, and the county itself is Alexander; but that
comes very near to being a bore unless the early settlers
were moved by a sense of humor, which I somehow
doubt.
No doubt the early Cairo was not too attractive. A
wilderness city at the juncture of great rivers is likely
to collect much more disagreeable drift than merely
logs and mud. But Cairo to-day has a statue by George
Grey Barnard in the center of its square. It has a
fountain by Janet Scudder before the public library.
Within that attractive building there is a portrait by
William M. Chase. Perhaps the happiest and the most
remarkable feature of the little city, "uncheered by
any gleam of promise/' is that while the population is
sixteen thousand, its public library during the last
year, issued one hundred and ten thousand books.
It was in the newspaper file of the same public li
brary that we read :
"Little Rock, Ark. An eccentric tornado or series
of tornadoes traveling northwest, killed at least fifteen
people last night in three Arkansas counties. In
Brownsville, Mo., three are dead."
No wonder the Isador had jumped.
HERE'S DIXIE
CHAPTER XVIII
BY this time we had learned the very important
lesson that when there was a moon, night traveling, on
the whole, was better than day traveling, for the river
was usually calm at night. So, at two-thirty A. M.
under a moon washed clean of rain, we left the doubt
ful protection of the eddy and went on to the mouth
of the Ohio. Two miles up that river glowed the white
street lights of Cairo. These, casting their reflections
in the seemingly motionless water, blazed like a
double row of brilliants along the shore. In their center
flashed the magnificent, intermittently-appearing ruby
of the harbor light.
Here, Illinois gave way to . Kentucky, while Mis
souri carried darkly on down the right bank. Affi&l
dawn I went ashore at a little Kentucky town
Hickman for gasoline. As I walked up the street, IKS
world seemed to have become a place with more cour
tesy in it. When one finds a town where a filling station
man stops his work to carry five gallons of gasoline
222
HERE'S DIXIE 223
down to a boat, where a venerable druggist goes
around the block to change a ten dollar bill for a
stranger, where an unknown old gentleman standing
near a soda fountain says to you, "Have a drink, suh !"
then you may believe without the slightest doubt that
the frost and cold weather will not bother you much
longer, for you are getting near the South.
On that day, tra
veling from two-
thirty in the morn
ing till four in the af
ternoon, the house
boat made its record j
run of ninety-five |
miles. Nearly forty
of those miles were
spent in a vast double
loop where the river
turned due north to
ward the town of
New Madrid. A crow just an ordinary crow, or even
a crow that was slightly sub-normal wishing to get
south, would have reduced that journey by exactly
twenty-five miles. On the other hand, he might have
failed 'to be impressed by the very interesting geograph
ical fact that for ten miles a section of the State of
Ke&tricky lies west of the Mississippi.
Kentucky irredenta
224 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
The havoc caused in and about New Madrid by the
great spring flood of 1927 was not the first rough
treatment this country has had. The low ground has
not only been swept by previous floods, but it is also
a region of small earthquakes. In the early days of
the white men, some of the fissures, which generally
ran north and south, were so bad that "the settlers
felled trees east and west, building their cabins on them
so they would not be swallowed up."
As we passed Caruthersville, Missouri, we saw that
the river had begun a flanking movement against the
town. A numerous government fleet had gathered there
tugs, dredges, hundred-foot barges filled with stone
and willow saplings for revetments, quarter boats with
their laborers and engineers all the paraphernalia
that has been mobilized to prevent the depredations of
the ever-changing river.
From Cairo on, the Mississippi to quote one of the
engineers I talked to "is just simply hell on wheels."
Obviously it cannot be driven ; it must be persuaded to
behave. The basic difficulty rests in the fact that the
river, which formerly in high water spread over an
area of fifty to a hundred miles in width, is now con
fined by levees to an average width of not more than
a mile and a half. Thus thousands of square miles are
reclaimed for agriculture s but occasionally the river
HERE'S DIXIE 225
takes back its own as we have recently seen.
Both Mr. Hoover and Mr. Harris Dickson describe
the dangerous part of the river as a rough trough ex
tending from Cairo to the Gulf. But if I had not seen
the river itself, that description would not be adequate
unless it were explained to me that the river is not like
a trough in the ground, but like a wooden trough
standing on the ground's surface, with raised sides not
of wood, but of reenforced dirt. These sides, of course,
are the levees; and unfortunately, the dirt of which
they are mainly composed is alluvial dirt of the kind
into which a stream of water can eat with great ease.
In high water, there are certain places in its course
where the river backs up into vast, temporary lakes.
When these lakes once get away, all that man has
made goes out before them. Apparently the difficulty
does not rest in the fact that the river bottom has been
raised up by alluvium dropping on it, as was previously
thought, but in the fact that the river is compressed by
artificial bulwarks that are neither strong enough nor
high enough to guide it on its way. Higher and
stronger dikes will, no doubt, be built. The matter is
in the hands of the country's greatest engineers but
it is also in the laps of the gods. After a thousand miles
on the Mississippi, one begins to realize that the gods
are powerful gentlemen.
226 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
Kentucky had turned its river front over to Ten
nessee. Across the way, Missouri had capitulated to
Arkansas. Flat lands folded away on both sides. There
were few farms; distant sandbars and more distant
banks were covered with timber. We passed down
the river in sunlight. It was an enormous river now,
nearly three miles wide, stretching out lazily in the
heat, uncoiling its huge folds good-naturedly.
We found the entrance of a chute * at" the right, and
turned into it. The day was perfect. Reflected in the
chute before the trotting Isador, was the blue sky with
white clouds in it At the sides, there were low willow
thickets brown with rose-colored tops and giant,
white-trunked cottonwood trees shining out against a
haze of purple underbrush beyond. Above, as below,
like the completing line of a triolet the blue sky again,
with white clouds in it.
Here is an unpainted ramshackle little group of
farm buildings, lending the tonal beautitude of their
gray to the bright color about them. A man with a dull,
hopeless face, is standing immovable in his doorway
* A chute is a small or large channel that leaves the main waterway
for a time, rejoining it again farther down stream. It may go many
miles through forest and field before coming again to the river. Here
one travels intimately through the countryside, and finds relief from the
vastness of the great river.
HERE'S DIXIE 227
watching us. Perhaps he was born in that house, or
perhaps he was brought there when he was very young
and has grown up there, and has married there, and
will die there on the bank of the chute without ever
having had a view of the river beyond the island. As I
look at him, I feel for a moment, as though not he, but
I were standing heavily there. The impression is so
vivid that the very color of the landscape, which I am
sure he does not see, goes out of the day as though a
cloud has passed over. A strange, slight dread comes
over me, and the necessity for escape. Escape from
what ? I do not know. A remembered sentence comes to
my mind "They did not complain because in all their
lives they had never known anything else." Perhaps I
want to escape from the uncomplaint in the man's eyes.
Here was the village of Luxora, a study in chocolate
mud from the recent cyclonic storm, with roads axle
deep in mire and no one to repair them. Soon the mud
would be gone, though. The sun was hot hot for
the first time since the far-distant days of the canoe.
The man who occasionally sold gasoline at the river
bank had gone fishing. I walked up over the levee and
down into the town beyond. When I looked into the
little stores, no white faces shone out through the win-
228 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
dows. Here was the Black Diamond Barbershop, cer
tainly with action inside; yet only the barber's white
Down shimmering miles
coat was visible. There ,was no head above it, nor any
other heads, only a feeling of darkness and richness,
like ebony. In front of the Luxora Five and Ten, clus-
HERE'S DIXIE 229
tered a dozen dusky men of infinite leisure, from whom
rose the sound of slow, lazy laughter. And when I re
turned through the hot, steaming mud to the boat, my
friend said, "Oh, Boppo do you hear the little insects
singing in the trees again ? Fd like to live always where
we can hear the little bugs singing."
We went on drowsily through the day, down shim
mering miles of the ever-growing river past distant
points and promontories and islands, set far, far away
to the right and left in a vastness of space that was
awe-inspiring. Whole sections of the country were
under water. Channels had become lakes. Bends had
straightened themselves out by flooding their banks,
only to become segments of still greater bends which
faded away beyond the flat horizon.
Then came a faint breeze and a ripple, breaking the
tawny, blown-glass surface. When we had crossed the
next wide area of water with its sandbar and willows
and mighty cottonwood trees, we were glad to take
shelter in a winding chute, set off by willows and sedge.
We tied to the willows and stayed there all day. Tke
wind came down upon us but the waves could never be
very large. They played against our bow with a few
distinct, silvery tones like the often repeated notes of
a primitive xylophone. As night came on, we shut the
doors, but the tinkling of the waves against the bow
MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
grew clearer still, resolving itself into a monotonous
little tune, warranted to produce sleep :
No towns on the river now. No more, indeed, until
Memphis. Here are a few houses compositely called
Osceola. Fill up the gasoline cans, for Memphis is sixty
miles away. What a river it is, and how different from
the map! Where is island No. 35 ? Where is Bateman's
Bend? Is that Beef Island Chute, or is it the Amazon?
The shore across the river lies below the blue hori
zon line. Perhaps this is the sixty-five mile wide
Yangtze-Kiang. Keep your eye open for a pagoda
or two.
A pair of minute government patrol boats, like near
sighted water-bugs, come nosing up the shore a few
yards apart. They are watching the bank with meticu
lous care, looking for any of the great trees that may
be about to fall with the caving bank and become a
menace to passing steamers; watching the river eat
into the levees to find a lower channel to the Gulf ; ob
serving the twisting currents and eddies, which in
the course of a few days, may cut hundreds of feet
HERE'S DIXIE 231
into the soft alluvium, leaving the tag-end of a cotton
field sliced off sharply like the upturned, scalloped blade
of a cake knife.
Now twisting to the east beyond Yankee Bar, the
river narrowed to a quarter mile, rushing past a forty
foot bluff and returning again in a series of whirl
pools, which, cutting into the high, eroded bank, had
thrown down a hundred large trees. They lay like sym
bols of destruction scattered down the red clay slope.
This great mound of earth was the first of the Chick-
asaw Bluffs. In May, 1541, either from these bluffs, or
from others somewhat farther to the south, Hernando
De Soto first saw the Mississippi River. No doubt his
legend lingered long among the Indians as the symbol
of something decidedly unpleasant. DeSoto had learned
a few things about handling natives with Pizarro in
Peru. This time, among other accessories, he brought
with him a pack of Irish greyhounds.
Landing near Tampa, Florida, he immediately struck
inland across the swamps of what is now Georgia and
Mississippi, attempting "the conquest of Florida/' But
since the whole country was Florida to him, conquer
ing it was a large order. He, had his troubles. In one
encounter with the Indians, one hundred forty-five of
his men are said to have received a total of six hundred
eighty-eight arrow wounds. The booming of guns
then; the shrieks of the stricken horses; the groans of
232 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
sick and dying; the sound of hammers pounding to
gether the quickly-constructed barges; the tumult of
passage to the western side ; the noise dying away into
the wilderness out of which De Soto never returned.
The red men saw no more white faces for one hundred
and thirty-two years, not indeed, until Louis Joliet and
the restless Jesuit priest passed the bluffs on their way
down stream in 1673.
Nine years later, Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de
La Salle, with twenty-three Frenchmen and some In
dians, came out of the mouth of the Illinois River and
proceeded down the Mississippi. Of the hundred miles
below the Ohio and the present site of Cairo, his chron
icler notes: "From the mouth of this river you must
advance forty-two leagues without stopping, because
the banks are low and marshy and full of thick foam,
rushes, and walnut trees/ 7 Forty-two French leagues
are equal to one hundred and forty-five miles just
the distance from Cairo to the first Chickasaw bluff.
Reaching the lower end of the Mississippi where the
river divides itself into three channels, La Salle erected
a column which bore the French coat-of-arms and the
inscription: "Louis le Grande Reigne; Roi de France
et de Navarre, Le Neuvieme Avril, 1682." Hence the
name, Louisiana.
A little later, two other Frenchmen, Bienville and
Iberville, ascended the river, founding settlements here
HERE'S DIXIE 233
and there. But in time, what was French became Span
ish. Finally, the new government of the United States
claimed land on the east bank of the river. A fort rose
on the lower Chickasaw bluffs, and Memphis began.
Below the upper bluffs, not far from Beef Island
Chute, occurred what is probably the worst single ma
rine disaster on record. One day, in the spring of 1864,
the steamer Sultana went up the river from Memphis
with two thousand four hundred people aboard. When
she reached a group of small islands called Paddy's
Hens and Chickens, her entire battery of five boilers
blew up at the same time. The boat burned to the wa
ter's edge and sank on a sandbar near Bradley's Land
ing. Two thousand lives were lost.
A narrow rivulet appeared to the left of Beef Is
land Chute. We went into it gratefully. The sun was
shining. Birds were singing in the meadow grass. The
waterway, only a few feet wide, wound among trees
and underbrush that had felt no touch of frost. It
joined with another little river, and ambled peacefully
on. A factory appeared to the left. The dual rivulet
joined, still another; then, winding down past house
boat colonies, boat works, tugs, barges and ancient
hulks through a mile more of the most picturesque
flotsam arid jetsam imaginable, it led us to the base of
the high bluff on which rises the city of Memphis,
Tennessee.
234 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
As we came up to a private dock, a young* fellow
with bronzed skin, red cheeks and long, blonde sun
burned hair flying out like Medusa's locks all over his
head, pulled alongside in a row-boat and asked us
whether we didn't want to tie up to the bank across the
way. One could tie up for nothing there, he said. Was
he "on the river?" we asked. Yes. He and another
chap had drifted, in that yellow houseboat over there,
all the way from Iowa.
Later, they came aboard the Isador. They had just
finished college, and were making their way down the
river to New Orleans, where they wanted to tie up to
the bank and become writers. They resembled each
other only in the fact that they both wanted to write.
MacGovren, the first who had greeted us, was a small
blonde god, full of earnestness and nervous energy.
He could not always find words to express the subtlety
of his ideas, and so he made slow, clutching gestures
with his two hands as though he would seize his syl
lables out of the air. Rork, the other, was a black
haired, blue-eyed Irishman with a bump on his nose,
a very quiet manner, and a rare sense of humor. Their
solidly-built boat, a little larger than the Isador, was
always in a great mess because they were young and
didn't care. We were to see them again and again on
the river.
OFF DUTY
The old "Patonia" at Memphis, Tenn., has carried her last
gay party of gentlemen in brocaded waistcoats
and ladies in crinoline.
HERE'S DIXIE 235
Memphis was captured by the Federal forces early
in the Civil War, and was held under a number of
commanders, including Grant and Sherman. One of
the most pronounced characteristics of the city at that
time, seems to have been its mud. An English war cor
respondent went so far as to write :
"I wonder that they gave it such a name of old renown,
This dreary, dismal, muddy melancholy town?"
'But Memphis, high on its bluff overlooking the lit
tle Wolf River and the Mississippi beyond, has be
come a very attractive city. After the manner of Ten
nessee its theaters and moving pictures are closed on
the Sabbath. A few months preceding our arrival, it
had been impossible to buy gasoline there on Sunday.
On the other hand, alcohol was at all times to be had.
The islands across from the city were "jammed with
stills." No one in Memphis would rent a boat to a gov
ernment prohibition agent, for very shortly the boat
would be sunk or disappear. I had it direct from sev
eral newspaper men, who always tell the exact truth
when they are not speaking officially, that the holiday
supply had flooded the market with corn whiskey until
it could be had at the still or F. O. B., if you had a
236 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
boat for $2.25 a gallon. Transporters who formerly
worked on a fifty cent margin had been forced to drop
to twenty-five cents. A decent man could not live on
a stipend like that!
The newspapers reported that George White's Scan
dals would be "forced to undergo a searching investi
gation by the Protestant Ministers' Association of
Memphis on the opening night," and that the average
annual fall of soot in the city was "six hundred and six
teen tons to the square mile."( !) In other words, Mem
phis is an interesting and lively American city in an
-age that may some day be known as the Transition
Period.
There are pretty girls in Memphis. The southern
flapper resembles her northern sister in everything
except that she is a little more wobbly. Her legs wobble
a little more when she walks ; her body wobbles too. I
think she is clever enough to wish to give the impres
sion that her brain wobbles (which in most cases, it
doesn't), but that is a matter of technique. Possibly in
this walkless age, flappers' legs are generally weak and
wobbly. But certainly the terrific array of limbs one
has to observe on Fifth Avenue, leaves no such impres
sion of shakiness as those seen on the lower Missis
sippi. Perhaps where man is so gallant, woman be
comes more dependent. It is strange to think that these
delicate, wobbly little creatures may one day become
HERE'S DIXIE 237
solid, square-rigged, resourceful young matrons, look
ing out at the world with the shrewd, understanding
eye, telling their husbands just exactly what is what,
and what is not. Strange, and a little sad.
Memphis has by no means turned its back on the
Mississippi. The river, in fact, does not permit it to.
For one thing, the city promenade by the post office is
on the bluff facing the river. For another thing, the
parking space for Memphis automobiles is located half
way down the wide slope of the bluff. For still another,
the island across from Memphis that is formed by the
narrow channel of the Wolf River on the near side and
the Mississippi on the far side, is gradually getting so
long that it may make trouble for the shipping. Then
too, just a week before we got to Memphis, a plot of
land half a block from the river, nearly six hundred
feet long by one hundred and fifty feet wide, with sev
eral buildings on it, had sunk slowly, deliberately
down, like an elevator, eighty feet so straight down
in fact, that some of the structures on it were not dis
turbed at all. This phenomenon was probably due to
the washing-out of a stratum of sand by a subterra
nean channel of the river. And finally so Memphis
might not forget the river there was the matter of the
Thanksgiving Day storm, which played havoc with the
houseboats and shipping in plain sight of the bluff.
A thirty-ton stern-wheeler, that of the only "show
238 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
boat" man whom we saw on the entire river, was tied
near the Isador. The showman had lost a sixty foot
barge containing his tents, four hundred seats, and all
his scenery and properties in that storm. Later, his
troupe of seven had broken up, leaving himself and
his wife stranded for the winter in Memphis, where
he was making the best of it by taking a small part in
a local stock company.
We found Padriac Colum, the good Irish poet, in
Memphis, lecturing; and in his honor, the mate sub
mitted chicken a la Maryland with baked yams and
cranberry jelly, and a dessert that melted in the mouth.
But he ate sparingly, as becomes one whose hunger is
primarily intellectual; so that I, who enjoy my food,
was hard put to it not to suffer by comparison, and
still get enough to eat.
During the long afternoon, he lay talking among the
gay cushions on the couch, starting up occasionally
under the impetus of an idea; and the small cabin of
the Isador was filled with the color of his thoughts
shining in the rare matrix of such simple and beauti
ful Gaelic English that it would be an injustice for
me to attempt to re-capture his ideas in my own words.
"What have you learned from your journey down
the river?" he asked at last.
(What haven't we learned, sweet friend!) "Well,
HERE'S "DIXIE 239
for one thing, we have learned that the girls in the five
and ten cent stores from Bemidji to Memphis, should
take a special course in wrapping up packages/ 5
Immediately he became very solemn. "Is that really
so, now ? Isn't it fearful ! Oh Lord books come to me
at home; people sending books and saying, Tve had
so much joy out of this book would you please in
scribe it and send it back? 5 Oh the paper and the
string! It's that that makes it such a trial. Do you
know, that is one reason I stay with MacMillan for a
publisher. Sometimes I am in town with my arms full
of bundles, with the string coming off all of them ; and
I go to MacMillan's, and there is a wee girl there who
will wrap them for me."
But now he must be going. He had his lecture to
give that evening, and he must prepare it. I accompa
nied him to his hotel, and came back alone through the
busy, well-lighted streets. A pleasant town, Memphis,
combining southern hospitality with northern activity.
On its streets were amiable people, well and comfor
tably dressed. That reminded me that I needed a new
pair of shoes a good pair of shoes, well mated and
efficient, that would take me on in my confirmed pe
destrian way. Here on Main Street, was a shoe store
with an illuminated sign over head. I read it and stood
transfixed :
240 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
BANNISTER
SHOES
COOK & LOVE
For such highly talented foot wear I had not hoped !
When you go to Memphis, you can read the good news
for yourself.
ALONG THE LEVEES
CHAPTER XIX
Now the land is constantly guarded by levees. Some
of them rise directly at the water's edge, others cut
inland out of sight beyond the forest to head off the
river in case of flood. The small river towns have taken
shelter behind their formidable sod-covered fortifica
tions. Only a few wisps of smoke and the tops of their
chimneys are visible from the river.
Below Memphis, it rolls magnificently along past
distant yellow sandbars. Low willow thickets lie like
a red miasmic haze against the mauve background of
ragged forest. In spite of the prevailing presence of
high, massive timber, the landscape is broad and hori
zontal. Only when we approach the bank do the trees
loom up before us like the giants they are. Some, slip
ping into the water, clutch with enormous roots at the
crumbling edge of the bank in their last grim battle
with the river. Sometimes the edge gives way and they
go down with a mighty crash, sending a small tidal
wave out into the Mississippi.
The town of Friar's Point passes us beyond its levee.
241
242 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
There are nine negroes to one white man in this par
ticular county. The river, Heaven be praised, is nar
rowing just a little, pulling in its banks, so that it does
not appear to spread quite from the Alleghenies on one
side to the Rockies on the other, as it did above Mem
phis. We can see details on both shores at the same
time. On one side a government dredge with tugs and
quarter boats is repairing the levee; opposite is a tented
logging camp where negroes cut the condemned trees at
the edge of the bank and dragthem to safety with power
ful horses before the hungry river swallows them.
We jab the anchor pole for the night into a sandbar
where the tracks of wild water-fowl have made an In
tricate tracery in the wet alluvium. As twilight sifts
down over the sedge, a low-lying black-hulled freight
boat of the Mississippi-Warrior Line comes panting
gently up the river, pushing three immense barges.*
Wild geese, disturbed by this caravan, fly toward our
sandbar. On seeing the 'Isador, they change their
minds and wheel away, making small noises of wistful
complaint. Darkness comes. Other geese settle on the
bar, and talk to each other in tones almost human. But
soon they fly off, and only the QUACK QUACK-QUACK-
QUACK: of ducks on an inland puddle disturbs the silence.
Gradually they too settle to rest. A few dogs at dis-
* A towboat recently conveyed barges carrying 224,000 barrels of oil
from Lake Providence to Baton Rouge ; that is as much oil as 25 trams
of 40 carloads each could carry.
ALONG THE LEVEES 243
tantly removed farm-houses, bark out to each other the
uneventful news of the day. No big head-lines evi
dently ; just the usual routine of rabbits and fence posts
and kicks. Now they are silent too.
I go out and look at the depth gauge that I have
made by sticking a notched sapling down into the sandy
river bottom. An hour and a half ago, the water was
just at the notch. Now it is an inch lower. That is too
much of a drop for our present shallow mooring-place.
If we do not move, by morning we shall be stuck on the
sandbar. In the slow current I pull the boat around the
end of the bar, holding when necessary to a hook on the
outside of the cabin. Clip! Out comes the hook. I lose
my balance on the narrow runway, waver for an in
stant, then leap for the bar hoping it is not quick-sand.
Excellent ! I light firmly in a foot of water.
My ribulet, hearing the splash, comes running out ;
and, perhaps a little relieved to find me standing there,
cries, "Now your shoes are all wet/'
"The hook came out."
"Of course it did ! It has been loose for a month ! For
Heaven's sake, how many times are you going to fall
into the river, anyway?"
So with chastened spirits I climbed aboard. But the
next day dear reader, how can I make you believe
it was actually the next day? I can't. You'll have to
write and ask the mate.
244 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
The next day, as my companion, the before-men
tioned mate of the Isador, was leaning out to grasp
some willow branches when we were about to anchor
beside a towhead for lunch, something happened. Aft
erward she explained the technique exactly how she
had reached for the willow, how it had broken off,
how she walked three steps along the runway and
reached for another ; and how, missing it, she had lost
her balance and splash! Whatever it was that hap
pened, the mate was gone.
I ran back along the runway. The willows, growing
up out of the water, were within three feet of the boat's
side. There was only one possible place where she could
re-appear. I waited, in the fullest, most terrific mean
ing of that passive word. How long? Long enough.
Then, breaking up through the tawny water, like some
thing necessary and promised and inevitable, came that
dear, dark head.
"It wasn't very c-cold/ ; she said. "It wasn't very
c-cold. . . ."
"What were you thinking about when you went
down?" I inquired, after the morbid manner of my
kind.
"I was thinking/' she said, "about yesterday."
"You mean, when I ?"
.ALONG THE LEVEES 245
"Yes."
And at dinner that evening my favorite pudding ap
peared of pears, apples, cinnamon, and sugar, all
baked to a delicious brown; with super-dumplings so
light and excellent that they were not dumplings in the
usual sense of the word at all.
On the Arkansas side, we stopped in a little creek of
clear water with some fishermen who, after their kindly
manner gave us fish and wished that we could stay
longer. Their wives told the mate how lonely it was.
No doubt that was true, for whereas the men managed
to get away sometimes to the town in their power boats
with loads of fish, the women saw the same faces and
landscape every day. And though the landscape and
faces too were changed from time to time under
seasonal foliage, the women were not content with
that.
"Nature is wonderful but what are you going to
do about it?" seems to be their attitude. The men, how
ever, busy and satisfied with their active work, do noth
ing about it. So the women grow old quickly, some
times so much more quickly than the men that they
appear to be of an older generation.
As recently as fifteen years ago, the river was a
246 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
highway for a large number of houseboat vagabonds.
They built their houseboats in the fall, and, trapping
and shooting on the way, drifted down to New Orleans.
Then they sold their boats and the skins they had col
lected; and, buying a lower deck ticket on one of the
packets, they returned to some spot suitable for grow
ing a few rows of corn and cabbage until the next fall,
when the journey would be made again.
Now, however, the river people for the most part
settle either in colonies near the towns where the men
can find work in the factories, or locate in near-by
chutes or bayous from which they can take their fish
to market in their shovel-nosed John-boats. On the
wooded shores of the creeks they build huts for their
chickens and ducks and pigs. Sometimes they own
cows. When the water rises, all must come aboard un
til, on some local Mount Ararat, when the disembark
ing begins again, they give notice of their tenancy, per
haps, by putting up a sign like this one, which we saw
in a chute in Arkansas:
ALONG THE LEVEES 247
They waste no time in superfluous English. "No-
ticea" means, I believe, "Notice here." A little farther
down the river was a houseboat bearing the terse mes
sage : Keep out or get shot.
So far, we had had no animals aboard except the
hell-diver. With ice on the deck at St. Louis, the idea
of having a dog had gradually fallen into disfavor.
But somewhere in Arkansas, we took aboard a ship's
mouse.
At first, beside a few incursions into the sweet po
tatoes, and the rustling of paper bags, he made no
trouble at all. But one night I was awakened by some
thing crawling slowly up my spine between my pa
jamas and my back. The human frame is so con
structed that it is difficult to seize with any great pre
cision an object moving along between the shoulder
blades. Besides, the idea occurred to me that it might
be a large spider, and a spider as roughly shod as that
one was should by no means be tapped into eternity
against one's epidermis.
I awakened the mate and. asked her for the flash
light. She, half asleep, but sensing some imminent peril,
advanced the light with such right good will through
the darkness that she thumped me a wicked blow over
248 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
the eye with It. In the ensuing illumination, I saw the
ship's mouse, (who by that time had left my company),
scuttle down the companionway, round the chart-
room, and disappear into the galley. Now belay me
with a marlinespike ! That wouldn't do at all. A ship's
mouse should know its place.
The following night he crawled over my ear. I an
nounced the fact.
"Oh, no, no! It j s your imagination!" But the next
moment came a squeak that was not from the mouse.
This was too much. We decided to be rid of him.
But that was not so easy. All the next day we trailed
him into his haunts under portfolios, into the pantry,
among our shoes, between the motor tools under the
table. The poor creature was really very unhappy; he
had nowhere to go. Once I saw him disappear under
the floor. So, taking the flashlight, I illuminated the
murky, dripping space between the flooring and the
boat's bottom just in time to see him picking his way
nervously across the flat, wet boards, raising each
foot very high like a fussy old maid with galoshes in a
flooded sub-basement.
The poor little devil looked so unhappy that we unset
our traps. But that night he crawled on us again. Why
didn't he keep out of bed? That was really the only
thing we held against him. We steeled our hearts, set
the traps again, this time with bacon. And while we
ALONG THE LEVEES 249
were reading in a week-old newspaper about things
that had happened in the far-distant United States,
there came a sharp click, and the mouse had gone on
his way. Whereas a soldier might wish to die with his
boots on, or a miser counting his gold, or a holy man
on his knees, what more could a mouse wish than that
he be let die instantly with his mouth full of certified
and government-inspected bacon?
So on to Caulk' s Point which the maps of 1892
called Cork's Point and on through the pleasantest of
weather to a bend in the river where a sawmill stood
smoking and roaring on the top of the levee. On the left
hand the river ran around a sandbar ; on the right was
another sandbar under an impenetrable growth of
young willows. A village called Arkansas City should
be back of it. As we drew near the mill, a narrow chan
nel appeared through the thicket. We plowed into it,
got stuck, freed ourselves, followed its devious, jungle-
like windings, finally coming out into a strip of open
water with the bar on one side and the levee on the
other. As usual, beyond the levee, was the town.
To be a true exponent of pathos, the bearer of that
quality must not be aware of its presence. Arkansas
City is one of the most pathetic places I have ever
250 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
seen. On the main street, a few two story buildings
with high wooden verandas facing the still higher
levee contain the stores of the town. Back of the main
street the rickety houses fray out to the edge of town
in a sea of mud. The levee is by far the highest point
on the landscape. The town's fifteen hundred inhabi
tants live in constant hazard of the slightest whim of
the river. In spite of the poverty of the place, apples
bananas, even were sixty cents a dozen. Canned food
on which the unhealthy-looking citizens lived, was
higher than at any other place on the river. Supplies
from New Orleans were shipped first to Kansas City
or St. Louis, and then back by a branch railway to
the town.
Without exception, the people with whom we came
in contact, were friendly and generous. They were en
tirely unaware that I was taking notes on the river.
It was enough for them to know that I was a stranger.
A hardware merchant gave me several bolts for the
motor, which had been gradually strewing its parts
down the Mississippi. A machine shop mechanic turned
a rudder nut for me on his lathe, and refused payment.
A colored man carried the gasoline cans to the top of
the levee. The feeling of the poor little place was ami
cable and kindly. Yet I have never heard nor read any
thing but ill of Arkansas City.
In April, June and July, 1927, the town suffered
ALONG THE LEVEES 251
three distinct floods which swept away nearly two
hundred houses, ruined one hundred and twenty-four
more, spoiled three attempted crops and forced the in
habitants to live for weeks at a time on the levee top.
As far as I can find out, these misfortunes have been
met with a rare and courageous fortitude.
South of Arkansas City, our previously-employed
imaginary crow, flying as crows , generally fly, would
have had less opinion of our intelligence than ever;
for while the river, in vast serpentine coils, led us a
tortuous forty miles, the crow would have flown eleven.
We saw the smoke of a steamboat a mile away across
a neck of land, but we had to travel fifteen miles before
finding out that it was a Mississippi- Warrior tug
boat, with its underwater paddle-wheel and its com
mon-sense wake not a huge confrere of the Cape
Girardeau, sending back a succession of bed waves
each of which might be considerably higher than the
Isador itself.
Greenville, Mississippi, and the fifteenth of Decem
ber arrived simultaneously. We moored in a pocket
which already housed six or eight small yachts and
motor-boats. The water sweeping up stream close to
the bank and down stream beyond, gave us a harbor
immune from waves.
So much for our location but what about the fif
teenth of December? You can't hide from the Christ-
252 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI'
mas spirit in a pocket of the Mississippi ! Indeed, you
don't want to. But some way or other, river mud and
white tissue paper with holly ribbon, don't synchronize
at all. You can't wrap up your gifts and spread them
out in the next room, when the next room is seventy
feet deep and full of catfish. What to do? Come, dear
friend, use that excellent brain of yours. Mine has all
oozed out long ago fighting the wind and the rain on
this everlasting river. Give us an idea for a Christmas
greeting.
She did. She went into Greenville and bought one
square foot of linoleum from an astonished household
furnisher; she bought two chisels; then in the after
noon she traced a drawing I had meanwhile made,
upon the linoleum and began to cut out the back
ground with the chisels and a pocket-knife. She worked
eight hours one day and nine hours the next. How
pleasant it was to see her swift, accurate progress, par
ticularly when I was doing nothing. But by the third
afternoon the effort was beginning to tell on her. Mak
ing a linoleum cut is interesting work, but the worst
part of it is that you must not make a mistake, for a
mistake cannot be repaired. The least I could do was
to get supper. Was I capable of doing that? Yes, I
thought so. I opened a can of soup and seasoned it
and set it proudly alongside some lesser viands on the
table, but unfortunately the top had come off the pepper
ALONG THE LEVEES 253
shaker. I retrieved it out of the soup with a large
spoon, but not all the pepper. She tasted it, and looked
at me with a strange, contemplative eye.
"What did you do to it?"
"To the soup? Oh, it's pepper I just seasoned it."
"I should think so !"
"What, don't you like pepper?"
"Well not quite as much as that/'
"I'll fix it." So I took her soup away, opened another
can, heated its contents and brought it to her.
"Aren't you going to have some o this, too?" she
inquired.
"I? Oh no ! I liked it the other way. That's the way
the Mexicans eat it." I admit that I made the remark
out of pride ; but as I ate, I saw her looking at me quite
amused, and that was very good, for it relaxed her
nerves and she could work so much better when she
was happy. Besides, one must make sacrifices to the
Christmas spirit. But the going with the well-peppered
soup was terrible. Before I got well into it, my fore
head broke out in a cloud of mist and my larnyx be
gan working like a hysterical caterpillar. By the time
I reached the bottom of the plate, I was suffering from
acute arson ; the Christmas spirit was a total loss, and
I was thinking in terms of hairless dogs, haciendas,
barracuda fish and libertad.
<By the end of the third day, the background was cut,
254 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
leaving- the drawing in relief. We got some red paper
and printed it by rolling printer's ink onto the linoleum
with a rolling pin, then putting the inked linoleum face
downward on the paper and stepping on it, thereby get
ting a result like the little sketch on the title page of this
book, but larger. Then, when we had sent off prints
with a blessing, I went out to find the man whose pres
ence had led us to stop at Greenville.
COLOR OF THE SOUTH
CHAPTER XX
WILLIAM ALEXANDER PERCY sat in his private
room of a law office in the rather musty old building
that is occupied by the town's attorneys, judges, and
insurance men. He was young, small, slightly built,
with steady blue eyes, sun-tanned face and hair that
was nearly white. I was unknown to him, but he
greeted me with a friendliness and a courtesy so in
stinctive that I doubt whether he himself was aware of
the rareness of its quality. My first impression told me
of fineness and breeding; my second assured me that
the first impression was right. Indeed, at the time I
could not bring myself to speak about his poetry. We
talked instead of a number of incidental things, and
finally, about the river.
He told me how, for months and years at a time,
the river sweeps untroubled and untroubling past the
Greenville dikes. Life in the beautiful little town of
fifteen thousand goes quietly on under the shade of its
broad-leaved oaks and cypresses and magnolias. The
out-lying estates and cotton plantations quietly raise
255
256 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
the great cotton crops for which the district is famous.
But at last, inevitably, comes the time when the Missis
sippi rises to the high-water mark. Interest focuses it
self on the river. As the waters advance past the flood
stage, excitement in the town rises to a higher and
higher pitch of intensity. The swirling tide rises up the
side of the dikes. Now comes the ceremony known as
"guarding the levees." There is an old fiction, or per
haps a distant truth, that at times dwellers on one bank
of the river have cut the levees on the opposite bank to
lessen the pressure on their own. Not that people in
Greenville, for example, actually remember when their
Arkansas neighbors cut the levees however, it is well
to be on guard ; and at any rate the river is rising and
must be observed.
The town's entire male population pours out for a
distance of seventy-five miles along the county's water
front, "guarding the levees." Negro workers from the
cotton fields concentrate in camps along the river.
Sometimes at night they sing together in that strange,
barbaric rhythm and harmony which gets into the
blood of listening white men, and makes the pulse beat
faster. One very valid object of guarding the embank
ments is to watch for "boils." Boils occur when the
water of the river, eating under a levee, rises like a
small geyser on the inside. This, if not stopped at
once, becomes larger and larger, gnawing at the inter-
COLOR OF THE SOUTH 257
vening levee until the rampart goes down and the
river rushes in. It does no good to try to block the boil
with dirt. A well of sandbags must be built around it.
The water gradually rises in the well. When it reaches
the level of the water outside the levee, the boil ceases
to boil. For the time, the danger is over.
While he was telling me things, I suppose we had
been taking stock of each other. I asked him to pot-luck
with us on the Isador; he invited us to meet some of his
friends at tea and to dine with him so that we might
meet his mother.
So for several days we felt the presence of an elusive
evanescent gayety different in type from that to be
found in the North ; we perceived about us a freedom
of spirit, a rare appreciation of the art of living; we
noted that here people were not all of a pattern, not
all turned out of the same mold. Why not? Perhaps
because the senses had not been dulled and dominated
and possessed ad nauseam by an urge toward stand
ardized prosperity.
I talked again and again to the young lawyer, who is
one of the South' s authentic poets. There was a gayety
about him and a flashing humor that is not to be found
in his poems, for they are the consummation of his
finest thought and they carry their clear starlike beauty
beyond the place of laughter. His first two books, In
April Once and Sappho in Levkas contain passages of
258 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
that rare loveliness which the name of Keats evokes for
us as perhaps no other name can that beauty, which,
because of its infinite delicacy, may easily turn brittle
in lesser hands. I said, "Considering the fragility of
your verse, what seems strange to me and what I do
not quite understand, is the apparent balance that you
have found between the reality of life and the reality
of the dream. Coleridge fused the two with opium ; Poe
had his alcohol; Milton his blindness; Edna St. Vincent
Millay her quest for the Carthaginian rose "
"And I," he said, laughing, "am a lawyer."
But that was not enough. The law, might give one
some necessary unf ulfillment, might be a compensating
enough balance to make a man produce verse of con
siderable lyric beauty; still, in his third volume, Enzio's
Kingdom, there was, along with its beauty, a newly-
found power which transcended even such a negation
as a law practice. As we talked, I came by degrees a
little way through the surface barrier, so subtle yet
so strong, which a poet, whether he wishes it or not,
carries with him as an armadillo its shell He told me
how Greenville had fought the Ku-Klux-Klan and had
defeated it, but that it had been a terribly bitter ex
perience, more bitter and disillusioning than the war.
He had not known before what hatred was, what it
was to hate and to be hated. For months he had gone
Poet of the Delta
COLOR OF THE SOUTH 259
armed ; for weeks he had not permitted his father, who
was leading the fight, to go out alone.
Their house, which had never been locked before,
was now locked at all times. One night during a storm
there came a knock at the door. A stranger was there
saying that his automobile had broken down and that
his two sisters were waiting in the rain some distance
away. The response was, of course, immediate. But as
the motor was being brought around the house, the
sheriff of the county happened to. come up the walk.
The stranger, whom the sheriff recognized as a par
ticularly cold-blooded gunman, disappeared into the
darkness.
Now the young poet would have no more of serious
ness, but must roll up the barrier of laughter before
him, telling how, after a talk he had given on poetry
in New York City a strange woman had come up to
him and had said, "I love your soul !" And how a less
strange man had said, "Damned if I know what your
poetry is all about." We agreed that of the two, we
much preferred the man, for he, at least, was honest ;
whereas if a woman really loved your soul, she
wouldn't say so in just that way.
Farther down the river, we heard of this young man
as a lawyer, both from white people and from black.
Perhaps his most famous colored case occurred not
260 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
long ago, when news came to Greenville of a black
prophet who had found a spring of healing water a few
miles away in a white man y s cotton field. A great num
ber of cures had been made among the colored people.
The halt, the lame and the blind, to say nothing of those
with angina pectoris, hay fever, St. Vitus dance and
hair-lip, flocked to the little pool of ditchwater in such
overwhelming numbers that the white planter's cotton-
field was ruined. (However, no law suit arose over that,
for the planter put a fence around the field, charged
ten cents admission, and made three times the value
of his cotton crop !) At first the prophet baptized his
patients in toto, but as the water in the mudhole got
low, he only sprinkled them ; still, the cures went on.
Certain members of the medical profession, on
whose practice the prophet had made distinct inroads,
brought suit against him as a quack. The colored man
claimed no power himself, but said that whatever cures
took place, were the result of the Lord's will working
through him. When Will Percy arrived in court the
first morning of the trial, the yard was black with
negroes.
"Who are these?"
"They are them that is cured, suh."
He interrogated them.
"Yessuh, Ah was blind from mah childhood. Now
Ah can see."
COLOR OF THE SOUTH 261
"Ah couldn't walk, but now Ah kin."
"Mah a'm was sure nuff stiff, but now Ah can bend
it double."
In his argument, however, he did not use them as
witnesses, but based his plea on the contention that
the man himself was not a quack. The healer had made
no misrepresentations. He baptized the people and they
became well. If Christ were to come back to earth, he
would be indicted as a charlatan too. Why should we
not believe that this man healed by faith ?
While he talked, the negroes in the audience were
swaying back and forth, humming after their manner,
and greeting each point with " Amen-br other !" "Yes,
dat's so!" "Come on, little Jesus' 5 (that was the law
yer) ; "The Holy Ghost done said a mouf full."
The case was won for the black prophet. His fame
spread. Special trains were run to the cotton-field; fer
ries brought loads of pilgrims from across the river.
Everything was serene, until a number of Arkansas
contract labor negroes broke their contracts and came
across the river to the healer. Their angry employers
came after them, entered the enclosure and started to
get the negroes out.
The prophet, probably not understanding the situa
tion, disappeared into his tent, came out with a service
revolver and began banging away, sending the white
men tearing down the road and the colored brethren
262 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
over the fence. That, of course, wouldn't do at all. So
the prophet, like many another, was put away.
We started from Greenville, but had to put in at a
willow-topped island three miles down the river be
cause of wind. After the wind, came rain, a torren
tial cloud-burst of astounding force. It lasted three
hours and when it was over I bailed thirty-one gal
lons of water from the skiff. Then the motor failed to
work. I took it apart and tinkered with it all after
noon; still it did not respond. There was nothing to do
but row up stream to the town. However, that might
leave the mate alone on the Isador for the night, a
plan which was instantly vetoed in my mind because
of the unsavory reputation of the island to which we
were moored.
Not long before, two houseboats had been anchored
near each other there, one occupied by a single man, the
other by a friend of the first a blonde, curly-haired
fellow who was living with a girl. Word spread abroad
one day that the light-haired man had been drowned.
Two weeks later the Greenville police went down to
investigate. They found that the single man was there,
but that the girl and her companion had disappeared.
COLOR OF THE SOUTH 263
They dragged the waters near the island without re
sult. As they were about to leave, some one pulled on a
mooring rope to bring the two houseboats nearer the
shore. Suddenly, coming up stark naked out of the
river, there rose the ghastly cadaver of the light-haired
man. The mooring rope had caught under his arm,
and when it was pulled, the corpse had risen upright be
side it. They found that his body had been ripped open
and stuffed with sand to make it sink. The other man
was tried, but there was no evidence, since the girl did
not come back. Under the circumstances, I did not care
to leave the mate alone on the houseboat.
We rose early and rowed three intolerable miles
against the current to the town, passing a large gov
ernment plant of floating barges where hundreds of
"negroes were making concrete slabs for revetments
and piling them on other barges to be shipped to points
where the river was devouring its banks. The negroes,
who have little respect for river people, since the latter
are frequently "poor white trash" of the trashiest,
watched us rather insolently, but said nothing much
amiss. That was perhaps due to the presence of gov
ernment overseers, who in their turn gave us great
and friendly assistance in getting the motor up over
the barges and into the town. A few years ago when
private contractors worked for the government, no
264 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
woman who appeared to be of the- river could have
passed such an outfit without hearing a number of very
unpleasant things.
This was the only time on shore or afloat when
southern negroes showed the slightest tendency to be
disagreeable. At our various stopping places, we talked
to them frequently, went to their churches to hear their
remarkable chanted sermons and singing, bought their
garden wares, and at times anchored not far from their
houseboats. We found no fault in them. In heart and
mind their simplicity seemed very near to that of chil
dren. And they seemed happier to me than their fellows
in the North.
Again southward, with a new battery and a reju
venated motor. On the left, Mississippi, and on the
right Louisiana. Over both banks there was fog. Only
the right shore near which the Isador plodded like a
slow, faithful turtle, showed its presence by the blue
silhouette of its tree-tops rising out of the prevailing
obscurity. A delicate but steady insistence on the part
of the current against the left tiller line, showed that
its direction was changing to the other side of the
river. Should we follow it, losing ourselves again in
that detached, mysterious world of gray space? The
ayes won. I loosened my hold on the tiller, and let the
boat go where it would. In a moment, the shore was
gone.
COLOR OF THE SOUTH 265
The mate, who had been making the cabin ship
shape, threw a crumpled letter out into the river. We
watched it disappear, a morsel in the mouth o the
fog. A little breeze came up, ruffling the water and
stirring the mist into vaporous shrouds. We chugged
on for half an hour, straining our eyes for the trees
and logs, which singly or in groups, float down the
river, with their talon-like roots ready to pounce on
shantyboats. A slight object, by no means a log, ap
proached us on the water. It was the mate's letter.
Like men lost in the woods, we had made a complete
circle. We set off again, but at the end of twenty min
utes, to our vast surprise, the letter reappeared, com
ing toward us on the same side as before ! About us was
the uncanny presence of the fog, with that bit of pa
per drifting past our bow.
We stopped the motor expecting to find out at once
which way we were drifting. We could not tell ! We
had no way of knowing where the river itself was go-
Ing. Certainly we were moving, but which way?
How was it possible to get lost on a river that had a
current? It happened to us, and it had happened to
many others. Couldn't we tell by the logs and floating
sticks which way was down stream? No. Everything
was floating in the direction we were. Besides, in a two-
mile river like the Mississippi, the eddies sometimes
carry everything up stream for a considerable distance.
266 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
If there is a slight change of the wind, and if the river
itself alters its direction, attempting to find one's course
is made more mystifying still.
We drifted on through the gossamer grayness, hear
ing only the gentle chuckling of the highly-amused wa
ters. Then, very faintly, from the far distance came the
sound of birds singing. After several starts and stops,
Shantyboaters sometimes lash their boats
to floating logs, which keep in the current
and aid progress down stream.
we made certain of their direction and came at last to
an overhanging forest bank that was slowly shedding
great trees into the river. Now the current seemed to
be flowing up 'stream toward Bemidji, but when we
had traveled with it for a time, our minds whirled
suddenly around to the proper points of the compass,
and we went on all day in the warm fog, hugging the
bank, and avoiding sandbars with their eddies, and
COLOR OF THE SOUTH 267
ramparts of beetling snags. Until, as we came around
a towhead, some one hailed us out of the fog a few feet
away, and the animated faces of Rork and MacGovren
shown out of the door of their dilapidated houseboat!
We tied up by them for the night; but the two colle
gians, who cooked with a wood stove, burned some sort
of wet wood that had a vile, sweetish, sickening smell.
The odor of it drifted into our cabin; and the wind
blew the window shut after it; so that when we woke
in the morning, we felt as though we had been em
balmed by an undertaker who himself had long since
crumbled into dust.
In a soft rain, we started down the river together.
It was the day before Christmas, and the mate had
promised us food that evening of great excellence.
Rork, who was the collegiate engineer, sat in their old
John-boat tinkering with their moribund one-cylinder
motor and giving it occasional injections of gasoline,
while their unwieldy yellow ark swung ponderously
behind at the end of a rope.
Soon we had left them far out of sight around a
two mile bend, so we shut off the power and drifted
along in the rain until they came up with us. They
brought the wind with them, and before we could
start the motor, which, as usual, was sulking in the
wet, we drove ashore between a fallen tree and a high
bank. I got us out of that with the skiff, then went
268 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
aboard and spun the fly-wheel into action. But the
wind came in a gust and again sent us shoreward. 1
heard the mate cry out to me to stop, and at the same
moment, a thunderous boom, bang, thud, sounded from
under the ship's bottom. With a final bump, up from
beneath the back deck, rose the end of a black cypress
log two feet thick and as long as the Isador. It missed
the motor by a fraction of an inch and sank down again
into a trough in the waves, while the boat scurried
nervously on.
Why hadn't the square-sawed end, with its scalloped
cypress knobs, smashed in the old planks of the Isa
dor' s bow? For the reason that when it had arrived
within striking distance the mate, throwing herself
down on the front deck, with legs out over the water,
had come down on it with both feet. The sharp end,
suddenly submerged, had slid harmlessly under the
boat's prow.
With only the loss of a slipper, we went blithely on
our way. But after another mile or two, the collegiate
engine, in spite of Rork's most concentrated efforts,
sneezed a few times, again lost consciousness, and
would not be revived. It had chosen a bad spot for its
anesthesia. The wind was high, the river was swift,
and ahead of us there was a decided veering of the
current toward the right bank where water seemed to
be disappearing into a ragged growth of heavy timber.
COLOR OF THE SOUTH 269
We tied the boats together in a sort of caravan
first, the I sad or, then the skiff, then the John-boat,
then the college houseboat each fastened to its pred
ecessor with a length of rope. While Rork worked
away at his engine, we traveled on two skiffs and
two houseboats, shepherded down stream by an out
board motor!
A forest-walled chute appeared to the right in the
center of a long bend. I tried for it, but the motor with
its unaccustomed load did not respond in time, and
we were swept on past the opening down the river into
the worst series of whirlpools we had met. The boats
twisted and sawed. The college shanty turned sideways
and plowed along at a dangerous angle with the water
banking up before it. The Isador, tugging this way
and that in the whirling eddies, refused to respond to
the rudder. We came nearer and nearer to the menac
ing trees. In the forest beyond them we could now see
and hear the water rushing down a three foot drop,
and roaring in among the great trunks beyond. It
looked as though our whole outfit would be dashed
against the trees and held there.
Suddenly we noticed that the rope pulling the other
boats had slipped over to the Isadoras right side; no
wonder that the rudder failed to respond with all that
weight dragging it toward the bank! In a moment we
had it off and re-fastened it to the opposite cleat. The
2/o MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
boat swung out of the current, whipping the others
perilously near the trees. MacGovren came out on his
deck trying to look unconcerned. Rork worked steadily
at his defunct engine. For a few moments it was only
touch and go as to whether or not we would be drawn
by the rushing waters into the forest. Then the motor
took the current between its teeth and carried the
cortege out into the river.
An hour later, we moored side by side in a kindly
chute. The danger being over, now for the dinner!
MacGovren mended his ragged clothes; Rork slicked
down his black Irish hair. Soon they were sitting at
our table, rosy and cub-like, eating slowly and with the
calm certainty of men who have before them a rare and
unescapable pleasure. As the good food warmed them,
they told about their voyage down the Mississippi,
first in a leaky launch which had sunk with them in
four feet of water while they slept ; then in their dismal
houseboat, with the cranky engine to help them out
when it would. It was plain that for both of them, this
was a magnificent adventure. Rork was quiet and com
posed, MacGovren talkative. When his thoughts be
came too much for him, he threw back his head, clutch
ing, after his fashion, huge unexpressed ideas out of
COLOR OF THE SOUTH 271
the air with grasping fingers, and saying no more than,
"I don't know . . . it's wonderful. We've been
cramped up in college for four years. . . . Now we're
free! It's like ... I don't know. ... In Europe,
after college they have a Wander jdhr. Well, this is a
Wander jahr. It's . . . wonderful!"
A man as inarticulate as that, wishing to become a
writer ? Certainly ! A young writer shouldn't begin by
being too sure. A little uncertainty to begin with is
likely to allow him invaluable years of thought-free
dom beyond the age of fifty, when the brains of most
of his contemporaries have become as impervious to
new ideas as though they were made of zinc.
Their adventure was a strange and rare experience.
Indeed, for men just out of college, I don't think there
is another journey in the United States to compare
with a voyage down the Mississippi. The only thing
they could possibly lose would be their lives; and if
they played into luck they wouldn't do that.
SD there we were, on Christmas Eve in the secur
ity of a good chute, enjoying the best of cheer, which
included chicken, and small, dark squashes baked with
butter on the half shell, and sweet potatoes, and car
rots, and tomato jelly, and corn bread, and the already
admired apple-and-pear pudding which is made into
something transcendental by being allowed to stick a
little in the pan. How the mate produced these things
272- MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
on a two cylinder Perf ectipn oil-burner would be a lit
tle difficult to explain ; but certainly she played sweeter
chimes on our ribs than many a gustatory St. Cecelia
attended by damsels and a five-manual white porcelain
stove. Being well-fed to a degree almost mediaeval,
we gathered together such lutes, dulcimers, and haut
boys as the two vessels afforded, and pooled our har
monious efforts with such right good will that before
we knew it, Christmas Eve was gone, and it was
Christmas.
Rising early, we went down the high-swollen river
to Vicksburg on its serrated bluffs, a mile up the
Yazoo River. And as we passed into the Yazoo's
mouth, we received the most thorough and elegant
trouncing from a ferry-boat that we had so far known
on the entire journey.
BUGLE ECHO
CHAPTER XXI
VICKSBURG has what is probably the largest house
boat colony on the river. The boats lie for a mile or
more along the narrow Yazoo, tied against the abrupt
side of the levee. As the water rises, the houseboat peo
ple drive their stakes higher and higher up the bank,
until in flood water they find themselves looking over
the railroad track onto the lower ends of the streets
which run abruptly up a steep hill beyond.
Shantyboats of all kinds and sizes line the levee,
these ranging from tiny craft like the Isador to sixty
foot houses with many rooms. We tied in the lee of a
floating ship-yard. On one side of us rose a large three-
room boat with a woman and children aboard. On the
other, a diminutive home for two was occupied by a
recently-mated pair, themselves not much older than
children. A large trunk stood self-consciously on the
back deck. The trousseau, we thought. But on the
following morning, which was Sunday, the young hus
band wandering opulently in slippers about his mari-
273
274 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
time estate, raised the lid; and out came the inquiring
nose of a small black pig.
"Fine mawninY' said the young man to me.
"Very fine."
He reached down and lifted up the pig, who ex
ploded into a rare cacophony of groans and squeals.
"What you doin',
Robert ?" called a
pleasant-looking wo
man from the larger
boat beyond us.
"Ah'm turnin'
mah hog loose, Mis'
Fine maxmin' Bee.
He dropped the pig among tfie cans and bedsprings
and logs on the side of the levee. A stumpy, tough-
looking "river rat/' with a friendly scowl and a seamed
face, came out beside the woman on the deck of the
large boat and greeted me.
"I noticed you anchorin' last night. . . . Come on
over." The houseboat was clean and spacious, with
two little children and a dog playing on the hardwood
floor.
"My name's Bee, honey or stinger, the way I happen
to feel. This is Mrs. Bee, and these are the kids."
"You have a fine house. Do you belong on the
river?"
BUGLE ECHO 275
"Yes ; I'm just a river rat. I've been off it five or six
times, but I get somewheres where I can see it, and
I'm on again."
A shriveled old colored woman, with a face like a
ripe olive, came aboard over the well-built gang-plank.
The stumpy man turned to her. "Well, Annie ! What
you doin' here this time of day? I declare you're get
ting more triflin' every minute. I guess you've been
makin' up with some good-lookin' brown skin, that's
all."
"Hee . . . hee . . . hee . . " came the other's
slow, lazy laughter. She went into the house to mind
the children.
"Are you a river man?" he inquired of me.
"No, we're just on our way to New Orleans. There
aren't many towns along the river down here, are
there?"
"No, you've pretty near got to get out your gatlin'
gun and take out a search warrant to find some of the
little towns back of the levees. Just you and your mis
sus, traveling down?"
"That's all."
"Bring her over!"
So I brought her over, and they took us into their
houseboat and made us at home with generous and
hearty simplicity, lavishing on us oranges and cake and
candy for the holiday. Bee was an expert ship-builder;
276 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
he worked on the floating ship-yard, and traveled with
it tip and down the river. He knew the lower river like
a book, but liked best to tie up at Vicksburg.
What did he think of Memphis? Memphis was all
right in high water, he said, but when the Mississippi
was low, Wolf River beside the town was nothing but
a sewer. The stench from it was terrible.
"Baton Rouge? I wouldn't tie up there fifteen min
utes. When the wind comes up stream, the river splits
wide open. It's the same at New Orleans, too. Nowhere
in the city to anchor. Big docks and ocean-going ships
all over the place. Of course, when you're young, it's
different. When I was a punk, I and another fellow
pushed off from Pittsburgh in a boat like yours without
even an oar. We went wherever the wind took us. We
didn't care. We didn't even have a line to tie up with.
If we got stuck on a sandbar, we'd wallow ? er off
with a pole and go on. When I got married, I changed
and began putting a few groceries away. Vicksburg's
the best town. These are the most congenial people on
the river. When you go into a store, the merchants
are fine to you. No cash payments, no C. O. D. They
deliver the groceries right at your boat/'
In the meantime, the women had been looking over
the house together. They stopped near us. "I hired her
last year/' the river wife was saying; "then she left
and went to messin' around in the cotton fields, but she
BUGLE ECHO 277
came back without a cent. I was sorry for her, and
said any time she wanted a meal she could come
around. I bought her a pair of stockings for Christ
mas, and put a dollar bill in one of them, and she was
like to die, wasn't she, Harold?"
I looked up suddenly. The river rat, who was very
alert, saw me. "Is your name Harold, too?" he in
quired.
"Yes. 57
He rubbed his nut-like face, and laughed with
unholy glee. "We look like a coupla Harolds, don't
we?"
"Harold is all right when you are young," said I,
"but I keep thinking about a venerable old man, all
bent over, with a cane and a long white beard, and his
hand on the small of his back, and some one saying,
'There goes Harold!'"
He laughed again. "I don't figure on havin' a long
white beard."
Later in the day, Rork and MacGovren came walk
ing up the levee. They had not arrived at Vicksburg
earlier because the night before at the great eddy they
had run out of gasoline, and had been forced to put
ashore on a sandbar where the Vicksburg ferries, some
278 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
of which are said to carry forty freight cars, rocked
them violently until midnight.
They did not seem on particularly good terms with
each other. When Rork went back to clean up their
boat, I asked MacGovren if they had had any trouble.
He looked at me a moment, then burst out, "No, no
trouble ! We're very good friends. But it's the darndest
thing there seems to be something in the air. We
never say anything, but sometimes I think Fll have to
bust out."
I went back to the Isador, considering. Here were
two young men, both writers, living together for three
months, in a cell nine feet by fourteen, eating, sleep
ing, thinking, writing in that cell. What surprised me
was their fortitude in not having punched each other's
heads long ago. Two painters might live together like
that more or less amiably, for they could work on
different subjects. But two writers, both too young to
understand the futility of their first jealousy, each
probably afraid to leave the other very long for fear
that the other would be getting some good "material"
no ! They might squeak through on the river where
there was constant action, but when once they settled
in New Orleans, that single cell life wouldn't do.
I conferred with my shipmate. We agreed that if the
Isador survived to New Orleans, it should be theirs.
Then each would have a small place of his own. Having
BUGLE ECHO 279
some sort of a den to crawl into where you can be alone
with your thoughts, is one way to begin being a writer.
Vicksburg sits rather stodgily astride its ridge, high
above the Yazoo and the Mississippi. It is bounded on
three sides by a vast complicated fabric of hills and
ravines, which bear the well-preserved and carefully
marked Confederate and Federal lines of investiture
and defense. Let us go, if our feet still function, and
spend the day on the battlefield. Have no fear, how
ever, about our wanting to "do" the entire thirty-two
miles of battlefields !
We begin at the National Cemetery where men of
the North and South and East and West lie together
under linden and sycamore and yew Arthur Dolan,
Illinois ; Jacob Koch, Missouri ; John Cromwell, Maine ;
thirty thousand men who have sometime been very
weary but who sleep soundly now beyond the sound
of Maxim or Vickers or howitzer. Then we go up to the
Union lines, where Farragut stands squarely against
the wind, and down a lovely valley between the two
lines, past little negro houses and fields to three small
bridges that cross the road. Beyond these, to the right,
a half-hidden path winds across a field, leading over
a rivulet of sweet water. If we are not beyond the
28o MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
swarming age, we can swarm up the grassy hillside tin
der the fine trees, in the footsteps of Thayer's brigade,
which once strove desperately to take the top of the
knoll from some men of the 26th Louisiana Regiment.
Now, on the hill's crest, we turn to the right, past
Baldwin's Brigade and the station of more men of the
Louisiana 4th and the 46th Mississippi. "Look! That
howitzer was trained over there so that it would not
be enfiladed by any one in that ravine. I'll bet there was
a damned good row here!" And I stamp around a bit,
and smell again the smell of gun-powder. But my com
panion says, "See there's an oriole's nest!" And,
"Isn't it strange how the mistletoe grows up out of the
branches of that oak tree. . . ."
Here's the well-modeled bust of one, John Adams,
Brigadier-General. I stop and read his record:
Cadet U. S. Military Acad- 1841
eray,
2nd Lt. U. S. Army Dec. 6,
First Lieutenant Oct. 9
Captain November 30
(Resigned like a gentleman,
Resigned May 31, 1861 nQ doubti ^ join
of the Confederacy)
to rank from March 16 1861
Colonel 1862
Brig. General Dec. 29 1862
Killed in battle Nov. 30 1864
BUGLE ECHO 281
There's a soldier for you ! What a fijie face. High
open forehead, well cut nose, firm chin under his wide
growing mustaches. The face of a patriot. Killed in
battle, November 30, 1864. Well, perhaps he would
rather have died.
But some one interrupts me, saying, "Look the
maple leaves are turning from vermilion to crimson.
And see that little house in the hollow with the white
fence around it. And all the little clothes hanging on
the fence. There's a tiny baby in there,"
So we go on, a man and a woman, thinking our dif
ferent thoughts, past grim field-pieces which represent
batteries, and stone markers showing where advance
attacks were thrown back, and statues and bas-reliefs
and bronze tablets telling of the work of companies
and brigades and corps.
The various states have different types of markers
which can be recognized at a glance. Many, have raised
fine memorials to their men, not with a blare of trump
ets, but with impressive feeling. The greatest of these
is that of Illinois, where under a beautiful dome of
shining marble are the names of thirty-nine thousand
Illinois men who engaged in the siege of Vicksburg.
We reach the edge of the bluff above the wooded
plain just as the sun is setting. Centennial Lake rides
below, an enormous silver crescent on a carpet of
translucent rose. Looking to the left, miles away, the
28a MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
Mississippi coils and uncoils its serpentine folds into ob
scurity. Veils of blue mist drift down turning the rose
of the plain below to mauve, to lavender, to violet, to
ultra-marine. Behind us the sun's rays linger in a nar-
Shantylroats at Vicksburg
rowing band of brilliant orange-green across the tops
of the trees. We watch the slow, lovely weaving of
colors before us until there will be absolutely no ex
cuse for us if we sprain an ankle in the dark descent.
Then we hurry down between two spurs of the bluff to
the valley. We reach the houseboat, only by stumbling
a mile through the darkness along the railroad track.
Night comes quickly in December, anywhere along the
Mississippi.
MEMORY LANE
CHAPTER XXII
SIXTY miles below Vicksburg is Natchez but there
are a number of things between, including Race Track
Bar, Diamond Bend, Jennie Campbell Light, Cannon
Point, Ship Bayou, and Hard Times Bend. Hard
Times Bend was the despair of the old barge men,
who in pre-steamship days strained and sweated at
their long oars or sweeps, working their cargo-laden
barges up and down stream against wind or current
perhaps only to be raided by river pirates at the mouth
of the Arkansas or Red River. Enough curses have
been dropped overboard in the long arduous curve of
Hard Times Bend to have warmed thoroughly a lesser
stream than the Mississippi. Besides adverse currents,
the wind rises consistently at ten in the morning and
blows until four in the afternoon. No matter which
way the voyageur may be going, the wind seems al
ways to be against him as he crosses the broad loop.
Occasional gray, negro houses appeared among the
prevailing forest of cypress and gum and live oak.
Some of their foundations rose only a foot or two
283
284 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
above the water. A few days more and the occupants
would have to move inland, or remain to be picked*
up when the relief boats came along.
Just as a reminder to us that it was Hard Times
Bend, the nut jumped off the top of the motor, leaving
the fly-wheel ramming around on its shaft and appar
ently about to follow the nut into the river. We found
some copper wire and, winding up the projecting end
of the shaft like a sore toe, we hobbled on our way. But
the motor thundered and rumbled and clattered, and
we learned from our book of directions that at any mo
ment the crank-shaft might be damaged or the fly
wheel hub cracked. Then along came the mustard-
colored ark of the college men. Fortunately, they had
with them a dozen long iron bolts which they had
picked up somewhere as loot, and on the bolts were
nuts with threads that nearly matched the fly-wheel
hub. So we went on to Natchez, stopping and starting
and popping one nut after another into the river to
join the imposing assemblage of articles that we had
already sacrificed. These included one good maple pad
dle, one paint scraper, one rifle, one hatchet, one skip
per and mate (both salvaged), combs, brushes, tooth
paste, funnels, cake pans, a sweater, shoes and on,
ad infinitum. The only way to prevent casualties like
that, is to be born on the houseboat yourself. After
you have lost a favorite doll or lollipop in the river at
One of the last of the river showmen. He had recently lost
his tent, four hundred chairs, his "properties,' 3
and a sixty-foot barge in the tail of an
Arkansas twister.
MEMORY LANE 285
the age of three, there is every good reason to believe
that you will arrange your future affairs to stay where
you put them.
Natchez rises two hundred feet of breath-destroying
climb on a mighty billow of land high above the river.
Across the way the flat-lying village of Vidalia peeps
out over the levee. We came down the Vidalia side
past a snorting dredge to a meadow near the ferry
landing, where the water was lipping the fine, cattle-
cropped grass. Normally there would be no good moor
ing place there at all, but the rising river had run into
a pretty, stocking-shaped depression in the meadow
beside the levee. At the edge of the grass, under some
splendid elms, an old colored man with kinky white
hair was caulking a dilapidated shantyboat.
"This isn't the mooring place of seme other ship, is
it, uncle?"
"No, suh, Cap'n. Come right in. Ain't no one oc-
cupyin 7 that harbor. Proceed, Cap'n, proceed/ 7 We
poled in gladly, secure in the knowledge of grass on
three sides of us and underneath as well.
The mayor of the village lived with his family in a
ramshackle house a quarter-mile beyond us on the
meadow. The water rising higher day after day in our
grass pocket, ran down a depression beside the levee,
and shut his house off from the town, making it neces
sary for his children on their way to school, to cross
2 86 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
and re-cross near the Isadw, where their skiff was
tied. Sometimes returning home after dark, one of the
boys from the house would find that their boat was al
ready on the opposite side of the narrow inlet. In that
case, he would take the skiff of some colored sawyers
who' lived near by, fastening it to the rope of the Isa-
dor. Later, in the darkness, a plaintive voice would
sound from the other side:
"River sho' am milt', son."
"White folks? White folks?"
"Yes?" I would answer.
" 'Scuse me but you seen mah skiff anywhere?"
"Yes. A young boy from the house tied it to our
boat."
"All right. Thank you, Cap'n. I was afraid it done
passed off in the night."
MEMORY LANE 287
The chief out-door pastime of the dwellers of the
village seemed to be to stand on the levee and observe
the river. Indeed, below Memphis, interest in the levees
was almost pathological. The water was rising fast.
We could read the numbers on the gauge marker by
the landing across
the river at Natch
ez as they rose
day by day 37 */*-
R (rising), 38%-
Competitive ferry companies from Natchez sent
their boats two by two across the river. One of the
ferries was changing its landing-place. A dozen teams
of mules followed each other in a wide circle along the
meadow, tearing up scoopfuls of dirt and carrying
them to a new level, while their black drivers cracked
their lines and cried, "Come on, now, Mewl!" Old col
ored aunties with bright bandanna headcloths watched
in the shade, or joked with the old shantyboat negro,
until he said, " 'Scuse me, leddies; I've got to stuff
mah boat wif cotton. High waters shoo gone catch
me unless."
High water would shoo catch him unless ! That was
the middle of January, 1927. By the middle of April,
the spring flood, coming down on the already excep-
288 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
tionally high river,* would drown out Greenville, put
Arkansas City under ten feet of water, and turn Vi-
dalia into a few visible house-tops and a strip of levee.
Natchez across the way was quite apart from Vi-
dalia in character and history. First the home of the
Natchez Indian, the precipitous ridge had in turn been
French, British, Spanish, American Territorial, and
Confederate, finally coming to political rest under the
Stars and Stripes. The Spanish rule 1779 * *797
has left its mark on Natchez in the form of two well-
shaded squares which overlook the river. In one of
these the Spanish citizens enjoyed the air, while in the
other, such citizens as were not Spanish, took what
air was left. On the whole, the Spaniards were bounti
ful gentlemen in those days; they scattered their lar
gess lavishly, particularly in the matter of giving each
other titles. There was, for example : Don Garcia Jo
seph Dabila Ponze de Leon Calderon de la Barca Fer
nandez de Hemestrosa y Borques, Cabalero de Orden
de Santiago, Brigadier de los Reales Exercitos, Gober-
nador Militar y Politico de la Plaze de Veracruz, Inten-
dente de su Provincia, Castellano de la Real Fortaleza
de San Juan de Ulua, Subdelegado, de la Superinten-
* In reading considerable material about the Mississippi's greatest flood,
that of the Spring of 1927, I have failed to find a single article
stressing the importance of the fact that the river was already filled
to capacity by excessively high water during the Winter. If the Winter
level of the river had been normal, there might have been no such dis
aster in the Spring.
MEMORY LANE 289
dencia general de Correros maritime y terrestres, y
Juez de Matricula y Montres en te puerto y ambas Cos-
tas.
The Spanish governor was favorable to American
colonists and donated city lots to those in good stand
ing who asked for
them. Finally, the
United States, not to
be outdone by its -citi
zens, asked for the
town itself, claiming j
that the boundary
line between Spanish
and American terri
tory was consider
ably too far to the
north. So the Span-
j t j , 'At Natchez
lards marched out,
the Americans marched in, and Natchez became an
American city.
During the golden days of the river, when a dozen
packets a day stopped there, the landing far below the
town was a little roaring Babylon well-equipped with
the necessary properties of wine, song and women ; but
high above, Natchez rose in aristocratic aloofness on
its bluff. Even now, as one walks along the well-shaded
.streets, a little apart from the center of town, past old
2QO MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
mansions and older gardens, rich in camellias and vi-
bernum, sweet-olive and magnolia, there comes again
with that blossoming fragrance a nostalgia for the gal
lant days "before the War"; a strange vicarious long
ing for times that one has never known, and indeed
shall never know.
"Angola, La." We read the name on the Light List,
but it connoted nothing to either of us. It was, no
doubt, a place where we could buy fuel. Except for its
iron smokestacks, it hid itself like the others, beyond
its dike. We stopped against a green bank below the
railroad ferry, and I went ashore.
It was not a town, however, but a prison camp, with
brick buildings and well-laid-out road-ways, flanked
by barracks. The arrangement was that of a military
headquarters. The setting sun shone yellow through
a cloud of dust down the road. Many convicts, divided
into small groups, were coming in, proceeded and fol
lowed by mounted guards, who wore broad-brimmed
hats and who held their rifles out like scepters from
their thighs as they rode.
The prisoners halted, stopping in a pathetic, sunken
group. They did not stand upright, these de-socialized
men, but leaned in toward each other, toward the center
of the crowd for comfort, perhaps, or for courage.
MEMORY LANE 291
Some were tall, some short ; some only hideous. In the
front rank, a little man with a weasel face gnawed his
thumb and glowered at me. Beside him, in the stream
ing yellow light, stood a tall, frail, flaxen-haired boy,
with a chronic expression of blanched surprise, and
features like a young archangel. An order was given
They collected themselves, and started raggedly on
their way, men suffering the undiscipline of defeat.
I went in to the superintendent, a man with frosty
red cheeks and pleasant snapping black eyes pleasant,
no doubt, as long as you behaved yburself . Could I
buy some gasoline, I asked, for a boat on the river?
No, they couldn't sell any gasoline, they couldn't do
that. This was state property, you see. There was a
town three miles away, with an oil refinery near it.
"But the man hasn't a car, he has a boat," some
one said.
"That's so. Um . . ." The superintendent rubbed
his well-shaven chin, rose, and beckoned to me. We
went outside. A tall, strapping chap of perhaps thirty,
blue-eyed, clean-looking, was coming up the walk. I
liked his appearance.
"Chief," said the superintendent, "how are you for
gas?"
"Well, I haven't much on hand. I didn't get any
yesterday."
"Here's a man going down the river who wants
292 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
enough to take him to the next town. Can you spare a
few gallons?"
"Right," said the other.
"You go along with him/' added the superintendent,
"hell fix you up."
I followed the tall man down the road, past a watch
tower that looked like an enlarged birdhouse, to the
oil shed. We talked together as he poured gasoline
from a drum into a pail, and from the pail into my five
gallon can. He had about him the buoyant air and man
ner of another eternally young man, named John
Reed, who lies buried in Moscow in the Kremlin. Ap
parently they had good men in charge down here.
."Is this your section of the country?" I asked.
"No, I'm from California," he replied with a broad
smile. I smiled back, I don't know why, unless it was in
response to his own delighted grin as he pronounced
the name of his homeland. "There's no place like Cal
ifornia," he added, "that's where I'd like to be right
now."
"It doesn't seem so bad here," I said.
"No, not so bad. Not so bad. I've only got one more
year to go!'
The mouth of Bayou Sara is only a few feet wide.
Coming down the river, one could miss it easily. Be-
MEMORY LANE 293
yond its mouth, the creek itself a narrow thread of
water, but sometimes deep and high runs f a-r up into
Louisiana. -Louisiana, with its "parishes" instead of
counties, is now on both sides of the river. The village
of Bayou Sara consists only of a handful of broken-
down houses. "Once it was the largest shipping point
between Baton Rouge and Natchez. In 1853, two thou
sand, two hundred white people lived in its parish,
West Feliciana. These had ten thousand, two hundred
ninety-eight slaves. The planters were all rich. They
lived in a manner that has probably not again been
equaled in rural community life in the United States.
For the most part, they were people of brains and edu
cation. The young men were sent to Europe and to the
best American colleges. The libraries that remain in
the old houses give proof of excellent taste. These peo
ple had all the luxuries of a seaport, all the home neces
sities furnished by a country abounding in game, fish,
fruits and garden produce, all the Athenian oppor
tunity for cultural leisure. Many of the hospitable old
mansions still remain, some with twenty or more bed
rooms and their accompanying towers, balconies, ball
rooms, and banqueting halls.
But the animated ladies in bonnets and pelisses, and
the sport-loving gentlemen are gone. Only a few old
people remain in the ancient homes, living on in their
memories, true to the old blood of which they are so
294 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
proud. Kindly people ! Though we met the first of them
only through the most casual of introductions, there
was nothing else for it but that we must visit many
plantations in turn, so that we might better under
stand the life that was led during the days of the old
South' s ascendancy.
Many of the grounds and parks, though suffer
ing unavoidable neglect because one or two garden
ers cannot take the place of twenty, have achieved a
natural loveliness which many gardeners could not
devise. Here is the exquisite ruin of a three-story
hothouse where tropical fruits were grown and rip
ened. There, beyond a broken moss-covered rockery,
is a grove of camellia trees, with a profusion of mag
nificent gardenia-like blossoms, pink and white and red.
All about us are tulip trees and locusts, beach and mag
nolia, and sweet-olive, from which one can break off
a sprig that will be even more fragrant to-morrow.
On the five thousand acre estate of Mr. James Bow
man, a remarkable gentleman of ninety-five, there is an
avenue of massive live oaks; and in their green twi
light, marble statues of the gods and goddesses point
the way to the old manor-house. More than likely be
yond an ancient arbor, you may find an ancestral negro
warming himself in the sun, and he will say of the
other old man in the house, "Yes, suh. We calls him
MEMORY LANE 295
Marse Bowman, or Jimmie. We used to shoot marbles
together when us was boys."
Here was a many-roomed house built in ''flamboy
ant Tudor/' so imposing of entrance with its half-mile
avenue of oaks and its triple-arched gate, that during
the Civil War, the Federal troops, thinking it was a
government building and so not subject to looting, left
it entirely unmolested. We walked through its rooms,
delighted with its fine old furniture and the quaintly
carved cypress decorations of its window casings and
wainscotings. On the stained glass of a window lead
ing to a balcony, some one in the long ago had scratched
the name, "Ada Mead"; and below it, "Ada Mead,
thy . . ." Probably at that point some one else had
pushed the writer's hand.
"Ada Mead?" I said, half to myself.
"Yes," replied our host. "She was a belle of long
ago. She is dead now, but her daughter sings in musi
cal comedy and has taken her mother's name. She calls
herself Ada Mead, too."
And in that moment there came to me a sudden vivid
memory of a theater, and of a very young writer of
music, with broad forehead and flashing dark eyes, sit-
296 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
ting- in the well-filled orchestra ; and beside him another
very young- man who wrote verse Heaven forgive
him for some of it ! and there beyond the footlights,
a sparkling girl, who made something very excellent of
the words and melody; a girl named Ada Mead.
HOBO JUNGLE
CHAPTER XXIII
A "HOBO JUNGLE" is a camping ground usually on
the outskirts of some good-natured railroad city where
hoboes from all over the country meet, exchange their
views and information, share their food, wash their
clothes, and find the impetus to go on. I knew that there
was one to be found in Baton Rouge, and that it was
called "The Willows." I put on old clothes, an easy
job, and set out to find it.
True to its name, the "jungle" lay under a group of
dusty, scrambled willows, where the south edge of the
broad city dump bordered the Mississippi. Finding it
had been fairly simple, for instinctively I had turned
to the river. The first time along the bank I missed it,
because the high dump hid the willows below it from
view. Returning, I walked nearer the edge, and so came
upon the semi-circle of trees at the river's edge. Men
were scattered here and there through the thicket. They
lay or sat in the weeds around several small fires.
Those in the group around the first fire nodded to me
affably. I sat down and looked around. Southward,
297
298 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
over the levee, rose an enormous metallic freight-shed
with a covered runway through which cargoes might
be taken dry from the ocean and river freighters.
Above us, negro scavengers were at work on the dump.
The thicket, a little denser to the north, showed other
men and the smoke of two other fires. Before us was
the river.
There were five men in the group I had joined; a
tall, husky young chap called Chili very alert and
wearing his old suit of tweeds with a cosmopolitan air ;
an older man as tall as the first, very bronze, and with
the manner of a marine from the Philippines; a ewe-
necked, cat-hammed youth of twenty, called "Slim" :
a square bristle-headed man with a Dutch face; and
a bobbing little old fellow whose red, knobbly fea
tures appeared above a long black raincoat that
dragged on the ground and gave him the appearance of
Santa Claus in a black nightgown. He was drying a
pair of brown silk socks on top of a flat oven over the
fire, turning them this way and that with great care.
"Did you stop at Angola, at the prison camp?" the
bronze man asked the thin youth.
"Yeah, I worked for a week or so around the bar
bershop, I'm a barber on the inside."
"How was it?"
"Not too good. The captain up there sure was hell
on the prisoners. I saw him lay onto one poor bastard
HOBO JUNGLE 299
with a strap. Every time he slapped him, you could see
the smoke rise off the poor guy's butt. There was too
much work in the barbershop, anyhow. Always three
or four waitin' around. I got sick of it."
"We goin' to have some rain to-night," observed the
old man in the raincoat.
"How do you know, Johnnie?"
"I can feel it in the ends of my fingers. Just the ends.
I got 'em froze once up on the Columbia River. When
we're goin' to have rain, they tingle like."
"Say, that's a great country, the Columbia River,"
said the bronze man. "I was salmon fishing up there
one season. You hook horses to the seine fifty feet
apart and pull them in. Then you load 'em into wagons
with steel heads. They won't let you take any fish under
twenty inches. I'd like to go back."
"Me, too. One thing I found out down here, they
won't give a Northern man a chance. But now that
I'm here, I hate to leave. I can't stand the cold. It puts
the kidneys on the bum."
"Where are you headed for now, Johnnie?"
"I want to get to Oakdale forty miles out of New
Orleans on the Great Northern. I've got a brother-in-
law who'll stake me there. Where are you goin' ?"
"I'll stay here for a while as long as the town
lasts."
"And I'm heading up into Texas," said the one in
300 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
tweeds, called Chili. 'They tell me they need hands
up there. But I'm afraid of that damn country."
"Look out for Beaumont. They'll give you hell in
that town."
"I know it. I've never stopped there yet. My brother
and me had a cave in VanBuren, Arkansas. We had
money, to eat, but darned if we weren't too lazy to get
wood for the fire. A freight pulled out there one night,
and we rolled off half a ton of coal."
"Ever been to Mounds?"
"Yes. The yard bull there is dirty. He searched me
one night to see if I had any money on me."
"That's the way it goes," said the raincoat as he
continued drying his socks.
In the meantime, the bristle-headed Dutchman had
removed his trousers, and sitting tailor fashion on a
newspaper in his extremely clean under-drawers, care
fully unwrapped some thread, needles and a square of
dark cloth, and began to apply a patch. At intervals,
one or another of the party arose and strolled through
the thicket, gathering driftwood and dry branches for
the fire.
"Well," said Chili, "I think I'll take a boil." He
picked a fairly serviceable tin bucket from an assort
ment which lay near-by, filled it with river water and
set it on the grill, adding a broken crate to the fire.
HOBO JUNGLE 301
"Watch your socks, Johnnie, that's going to be hot/'
When the water was boiling, he went into the willows,
took off his clothes, put on his trousers and coat again,
and came out carrying his socks, shirt and underwear.
These he tossed into the boiling water and poked with
a stick.
A pair of loiterers from the city came along the bank
above. No one paid any attention to them until they
were gone.
"Were those bulls?"
"Naw; collars-and-ties."
"Bulls ever bother you here?"
"Naw. I've worked this town five times, and they
ain't touched me yet/'
"Me, too. I did the main drag all yesterday, but
they never said a word/ 7
While I sat smoking silently, the bronzed man had
been looking me over. "You come in by the freight,
buddy?"
"No, I have a houseboat on the river on my way
south/ 7
"What do you do, drift?"
"No, I have a small motor."
"Say, that ought to be pretty beaner ! You'll get to
New Orleans in a week or so, I reckon."
Just then a yell went up from one of the other fires.
302 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
"That's those damn canned-heaters," added the
bronze man in disgust. "They get a couple of shots
into 'em and they're liable to do murder."
"Canned-heaters?" I inquired.
"Yes, you know the red stuff! Solid alcohol for
alcohol stoves. You buy it for ten cents a can."
"Hey, Slim/' some one yelled from the other fire.
The thin youth rose. "Why don't they git some one
else to fix their stuff for them ?"
"They figure you won't drink any," said the bronze
man, with a sudden grin.
"Well they're right, at that. Not while I'm on the
road. I've seen too many of 'em goin' around on
crutches with one arm off from try in' to make a freight
while they was crazy." He strolled off to the other
fire. I strolled too. There were only three men there.
Terrible looking wrecks, ragged and filthy. One sat
leaning against a tree, another ash-colored lay back
among the litter, while the third was trying with flut
tering, half-palsied fingers, to pry the lid from a small
red can.
He held it out to the youth. "Here, Slim. You strain
it for us. That a good boy!"
"Why don't you lay off the stuff?"
"Jus 5 this can, Slim. Thas a good boy !"
"Where's the rag?" Finding a red-stained cloth near
HOBO JUNGLE 303
by, he opened the can, put the cloth over its top, and
turned it dexterously upside clown over a larger can.
Reddish liquid trickled through the rag, and the solid
wax-like center came out into the cloth. He squeezed it
gently, then harder, until the wax was free from liquid.
He repeated the process with a second can.
"Here you are, Joe." He put the half-filled jar of
red death into the shaking hand of the other.
"Thas a good boy, Slim."
I returned to the first fire. The man in tweeds had
removed his clothing from the boiler and had hung
them up on a near-by bush. Another member had ap
peared, a snub-nosed fellow with carrot hair on which
were several patches of white.
"How did you make oyt, Irish?"
"O. K. I've been eating every minute since I went
up-town, and that was three hours ago. I'm all in a
sweat from it." He took a paper from his pocket and
unwrapped a small cake of yellow soap. "Here's some
fine stuff," he said, holding it up for inspection. "It
don't stick to the paper, and it don't crumble. I've had
it for months."
He went to the river's edge, salvaged a pan of water,
and washed his hands and face, scrubbing his ears with
the familiarity of frequent practice. I was beginning
to revise my opinion of hoboes and dirt.
304 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
"I got a job/' he said, as he stood drying in the sun
with his arms stretched out from his body like a figure
on an anatomy chart.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah; to-night, over at the freight house."
"I wouldn't work nights/' said the bronzed man.
"Well, what are you goin' to do? The box factories
and the saw mills pay you two dollars for twelve hours.
I said to the boss at one of 'em, 'Where am I goin' to
get me shoes when these wear through?' 'Go without/
he says."
The others nodded, and spat contemplatively. Silence
fell over them only interrupted by an occasional husky
whoop from the canned-heaters.
Slim rose, and stretched himself. "Well, I'm goin'
to mootch along and see if I can find something."
"Where you going to flop to-night?" asked Chili.
"If I get a good break, I'll find me a nice, quiet cat
house and rest comfortable."
"I'm at the Volunteers of America. Guest of honor,"
said the Irishman.
"I was there last night," remarked Slim. "The trou
ble with 'em is, they're only good for one session."
"That's right/' agreed the other. "You have to get a
permit from the chief of police. I went up to him and
he said, That's for to-night, and that's all. If you don't
get a job for to-morrow, you're through.' 'All right'
HOBO JUNGLE 305
says I. 'I guess one day's enough to work this town/
'See that it is/ says he."
"I'll come back with some chuck/' Slim announced.
" Anybody want to contribute ?" From nooks in their
vests and trousers, they brought forth a few tarnished
coins. I contributed too. Slim went up the levee toward
the town. By ones and twos, the others rose and drifted
off, with the exception of Chili, who remained beside
me turning his underwear by the fire. When they were
moderately dry, he went into the bushes and put them
on.
"I feel good/' he said, coming back to the fire. "It
makes a fellow feel good to keep clean. You might
think, 'Bums and hoboes' and all that; but there's not
one of this bunch doesn't take a boil every week.
Not one of 'em is lousy; art; least, not if he can help
it."
"How do you like the road?" I asked.
"Me? All right! On the road you're a free guy. You
don't have to punch a time-clock for nobody. Of
course, there's some drawbacks ; you get cold and you
get wet. Some are bothered by one thing, some by an
other. I dread going to the first house for a hand-out.
Did you see that big brown fellow here? He don't
mind going to the first house, but when he gets a little
food in him, he turns shy and don't like to ask for
more/'
306 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
"What do you think is the main reason for men hit
ting the road?" I asked.
"Well, it's mostly hard luck. Almost every bird you
meet has something wrong with him. The Irishman
used to be an acetylene welder, but he broke his right
arm and can't use it. Slim, the kid, has the 'con.' The
Dutchman was a watchmaker, but his eyes went bad.
A few of 'em, like those canned-heaters, are just bums.
But I should say that eight out of every ten you meet,
are working men out of work. Men traveling/'
The carrot-haired man sauntered back to say,
"There's a water tap across the tracks, if you should
want it."
"That suits me/' said the other. They walked to
gether up the levee, I went over to the canned-heaters'
fire. Two of them sprawled motionless on their backs
among the weeds. The third lay with his shoes almost
in the fire. The frayed hem of his trousers had caught
a spark and was smoking. He moved his feet uneasily,
but could not seem to locate the source of his discom
fort. I pulled his legs around and put out the spark.
Then I climbed to the top of the levee.
It was getting late. Lights appeared on the freight
dock where a steamer had just come to anchor. The
smell of cooking was wafted upward from a row of
small houses at the town side of the levee. I walked
down along the railroad to the riverside street, and on
HOBO JUNGLE 307
past an importunate negro girl in the direction from
which I had come. Where the ferry crossed the rail
road, a heavy, florid man who looked like a detective,
was talking to the traffic policeman. As I approached,
he chopped off his sentence and stared at me with a
look that was anything but hospitable, but which car
ried a flicker of surprise. "What t'hell!" I could al
most hear him say; "a bum with lumberman's boots
on !" I thought he was going to hail me up before him,
but no challenging voice of the law followed me. I
went on to the Isador where some one was waiting.
"Why, Boppo ! You look as happy as though the mil
lennium had come. Your face is dirty, and you're cov
ered with burrs and smiles. Where have you been?"
This episode does not end as it should, for by every
rule of conventional matrimony, she should not only
have been scandalized but have made me change my
clothes on the deck as well. Instead, she said, "I haven't
seen you look so carefree in weeks. Go back and play
with them to-morrow. It's good for you."
But I didn't go. Who wants to do what's good for
you?
DRIFT
CHAPTER XXIV
BATON ROUGE is an active and wide-awake city. For
one thing-, it is the state capital. For another, the state
university, newly installed in its beautiful, Spanish-
esque buildings, brings to the city a large number of
young people from Louisiana and its neighboring
states. The sprightly effect of their presence is ap
parent. Street cars advertise, "The safest place on the
street is inside/" The Baton Rouge Welding Company
declare, "We weld everything but broken hearts/'
Newspaper stalls with papers from a score of cities and
in a dozen languages are to be seen. There one can find
the New York Staats-Zeitung^ the Wall Street Jour
nal,, and the Greenwich Village Quill.
The statehouse is a strange-looking Gothic pile, all
turrets and ginger-bread, yet withal having consider
able charm. From the river side, one who is near
sighted enough to miss some of the building's more
minute indiscretions, might imagine that he was look
ing at a splendid mediaeval castle, in the height of good
repair.
308
DRIFT 309
In a little house in the negro outskirts of the town,
I talked to two old colored men who had been slaves
before the war. One was Thomas Herbert, Company
I, 84th Regiment of Colored Infantry, U. S. A. He
had been born and bred in Louisiana. "I was bo'n right
up Bayou Sara road," he said. "My owners was in
Baton Rouge and Bayou Sara. I was bo'n right here
an 7 beat right here. I used to work plowin' an' hoein'
cotton. Nothing else to do. Nothing, only what you tell
me, what the boss tell me. If I didn't, then there would
be something else." The old men looked at each other,
nodding merrily.
"May I see your army papers?"
"Oh, yes, suh. We keeps them all the time." He
showed me his old tattered Honorable Discharge from
the army of the United States, a form similar to that
used in the Great War. "I was mustered out in the
84th, Colonel Dickens in command. That papah stayed
away from me for three years. Then Cap'n come and
say, 'Tom, take care this papah. It's your livinV He
gave it to me bless him."
"And you get a pension from the government?"
"Yes, suh. Thirty dollahs ev'y month. She nevah
miss !" Again they bubbled with silent laughter.
The other, even quieter than the first, was George
Williams, private first class, of the 67th Missouri In
fantry, U. S. A. He was born in Madison County,
3 io MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
Virginia, but had been in southern Mississippi when
the war began. He had fought in several battles at
Mobile, and at Bull Run, and had been wounded, but
not badly.
"Ah was twenty when Ah 'listed in eighteen an'
sixty-one. That was in the 6th Missouri."
"How did you get north to enlist ?"
"Oh, Ah jes' crep' north."
"And you were wounded ?"
"Yes, suh, but it didn't mount to much, jes' in mah
hand."
"How did it happen?" I asked.
"Ah was crawlin' from a trench to the Mississippi
to get some watah."
"And they were firing at you?"
"Yes, suh. The balls was fallin' all round like hail."
"So you took a bucket and put down your rifle
and "
"No, suh! Ah didn't put down mah rifle. Doan you
write that down." They shook again with bubbling
merriment, and the other ancient softly slapped his
knee in a gentle ecstasy of humor, saying, "He put
down his rifle! Oh, Lord! He put down his rifle!"
"I see. You took a bucket and your rifle, and crawled
along through the grass "
"Grass? Weren't no grass!" He looked at me a mo-
"My owners was in Baton Rouge and Bay on Sara. I used to
work plough-in 1 and hoein' cotton. Nothing else to do!"
DRIFT 311
ment, shaking with silent mirth, and then broke out,
"Ah like you, cause you're funny."
"I like you too/' I said. But I gave up the matter of
the rifle and the bucket and the grass, saying, "You
get money from the government, too, don't you?"
"Yes. Ah gets money too." He became serious. "Ah
gets money, but Ah won't wish it much longer. Ah
been here a day or two. Mah time's about out."
They became quite sober now, the two old men;
sober with a quiet and simple dignity. Wrapped by a
calm in which were both hope and wistfulness, they
raised their eyes as though in contemplation of some
distant, shining place.
"We're lookin' forward to pass over any time, now,"
said one. And the other added softly, "Yes, we're
lookin' forward."
Rork and MacGovren, in their gamboge barque,
made the levee at Baton Rouge three days after us.
On the evening before we were to leave, they sat again
with us in the Isador looking about with a restrained
but perfectly natural interest in the boat that was to be
theirs.
"I had a dream about you last night/' Rork said.
312 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
"I dreamed I was going on a voyage in an aeroplane.
First I had to start on a long runway and then fly out
over a precipice. There was some trouble with my en
gine and I didn't think I could make it; so I came over
to you and got your out-board motor for an auxiliary.
We attached it to the aeroplane and started. I had
some doubt about the marine propeller being much
help, but you reassured me and showed me what a cur
rent of air it was making.
"I started down the runway toward the top of the
precipice, but I felt sure the aeroplane wouldn't make
it. In some lucky way or other, just as I got there, I
was able to reverse the propellers, and stop just in
time."
If dreams mean anything, certainly his dream meant
this : that we might give him the Isador, that we might
help him make a start with his writing, and give him
such encouragement and assurance as we could; but
when it came to the final flight of Bellerophon on his
own modern Pegasus, no other man might help him
greatly. He must assay that strange, uncertain pas
sage into letters alone.
Meanwhile MacGovren had been looking over the
blue paper books of our library. On his boat they were
getting out of reading matter, he said. Might they take
a few of these with them ? Certainly.
They attacked the shelf with avidity. MacGovren,
DRIFT 313
frail, red-cheeked, intense, bowing over the books,
frowned with concentration as he chose half a dozen
titles. Rork, quieter and with humor back of his Irish
eyes, chose effortlessly. The contrast was interesting.
MacGovren's were :
Agamemnon, by Aeschylus.
Antigone, by Sophocles.
On Walking, by Thoreau.
The Man who Escaped from the Herd, by Thoreau
Twenty-Six Men and a Girl, by Gorki.
My Brother Paul, by Dreiser.
Rork laughed as he looked at them. "He won't read
much of anything younger than a hundred years. He
likes his wine old/ 7 But the books Rork chose were:
Oscar Wilde's Letters to Sarah Bernhardt.
Byron and the Women He Loved.
Travels of Marco Polo, by Finger.
Creatures That Once Were Men, by Gorki.
The Three Strangers, by Hardy.
Sarah Bernhardt's Love Letters to Sardau.
"He likes his wine red' 3 laughed MacGovren.
"Gee, I certainly did get some rare ones/ 5 said Rork,
blushing furiously. 'Td better put a few of them
back."
314 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
"No use ! We know you. It's too late to change now."
They looked over their selections a little while, then
put them into their pockets, and rose to go. We said
good-by more particularly than usual. Twenty miles
below Baton Rouge, the Isador would leave the main
stream of the river for a time, travel by certain of its
bayous down to the Gulf, and, cutting across the land
via other bayous, would return to the Mississippi at
New Orleans.
Thus came our last day, for a time, on the river.
Back of the levees the land was considerably lower
than the Mississippi. If the levees went out, all this
country would be ten feet under water. The rushing,-
mud-colored river was only half a mile wide now but
it was eighty feet deep. During each second, one
million, five hundred thousand cubic feet of water
passed a given point on the bank. Two and a half
million square miles of territory had emptied their
earth-laden waters into it. In the course of a year,
the sediment that it was carrying to the Gulf was
equal in quantity to a solid block of earth one mile
wide, one mile long, and three hundred odd feet high.*
* These are "official" figures. From another official' source comes the
report that in a year the river "pours into the sea about a cubic mile
of mud." (National Geographic Magazine, September, 1927).
DRIFT 315
And as for our own simple statistics, we had only
twenty miles to travel before reaching the lock at
Bayou Plaquemine. At six miles an hour, we should
arrive in three and a third hours. We must make these
last miles very good ones ! We must make this a very
good day. . . .
But for some reason or other perhaps because of
the very fact that we wanted to make it a good day
there arose a warm and rigorous conflict of ideas con
cerning the art of navigation. After a few miles of it,
we agreed to call the battle off ; and we went on, a little
silent and crestfallen, because then, as so often in mo
ments of best intention, we had not quite achieved as
shining a goal as we had hoped. (However, we might
have spared ourselves any severe regret; for the en
tire human race, from ambassadors to bootblacks
seems to have run itself individually and collectively
flatfooted on just such quests as that.)
Here at last was a shallow harbor in the bank, with
the concrete lock rising beyond it. We shoved our way
in among the massed logs and debris before the gates.
The lock accepted the Isador, lowered it nineteen feet,
opened its farther doors, and ejected us into the bayou
beyond. The town of Plaquemine rose on each side of
the narrow, irregular canal. We found a nook in the
bank near other shantyboats. We tied to a tree, and
slept with a sense of absolute security.
3 i6 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
The skiff, which had been squeezed by some of the
logs coming into the lock, leaked too badly to allow us
to go on. We hauled it ashore, caulked it with oakum,
and gave it a coat of boat pitch. The Isador too, needed
a bit of overhauling and painting. These matters took
several days. We talked to the houseboat people near
us. They seemed not as alert nor as attractive as those
we had met on the river.
"Come over/' said my neighbor on the right, "and
bring your missus/ 7
He was a skinny, loose-mouthed, pale-eyed, brutal-
jawed specimen, and he had pink hairs growing out all
over his face like a shote. I did not go the first day,
nor the second. Then I perceived a coolness coming
over him. In fact, he glowered when I went by. I did
not wish to be involved in a shantyboat brawl. When
evening came, and he played his phonograph, I stood
outside his door and was invited to enter.
The grimy walls were covered with thick, torn pads
of .newspapers to keep out the cold. A soiled double
bed with no bedding on the dingy mattress occupied
most of the cabin. On the middle of the mattress, stood
a greasy, glass-based oil lamp. A stout, dark woman
and a girl of sixteen sat sewing on the bed beside it.
In the space between the bed and the door, the quaver
ing phonograph was grinding out a strange assort
ment of reels, jigs, and ballads. As I listened I realized
DRIFT 317
for the first time in my life that I was hearing Ameri
can folk ballads played in the sort of setting from
which they originated. Between records, we engaged in
the small talk of the river storms, boats, leaks, high
water, destinations.
"Listen to this/' said the shanty man, "here's a real
one." And he played "The Freight Wreck at Altoona,"
a vocal solo accompanied by guitar, fiddle, jewsharp
and mouth organ. Then he turned it over, and played
another which told how
"There was a man in Tennessee
Kinnie Wagner was his name,
He got into bad companee,
A moidera he became.
" 'Twas down in Mississippi
The trouble it began,
For Kinnie got a pistol there
And shot him down a man."
"I knew that boy, Kinnie/' observed the shanty man,
when the ballad was finished.
"You did?"
"I soldiered with him and palled with him. We slept
together at his mother's house; and for what you
might call an ordinary friend, there wasn't a better
man. He might have killed a few people, but he al
ways had a good reason. They hung him at last, but
3i8 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
they didn't get a squeal out of him, for he died game/'
Of the two records, however, I think that ''The
Freight Wreck at Altoona" is to be preferred. If you
are jaded by two much symphony orchestra, or Japa
nese poetry, or French pastry, try "The Freight
Wreck at Altoona/' * And if it doesn't cast a rare,
momentary glow across your worn-out receptivity,
then strike me all the colors of the rainbow, for I have
prophesied in vain.
"Kinnie Wagner's trouble was," went on the shanty
man, "that he didn't make nothing out of himself."
Then, with his thin, weird face illuminated by the light
of the oil lamp, he continued on what was probably his
favorite theme.
"My people landed in Norfolk, Va., March 25, 1776,
and one of them signed and argued the Declaration of
Independence, the history of which may be found in
Independence Hall, Philadelphia. I was 'mancipated by
my parents, or rather, given away, when I was nine
years old. When I was twenty, I was ignorant. You
could have wrote my name with box-car characters,
and I couldn't have read it. Now, I can write with
pencil, or with pen and ink. I can write with both
hands. There was something in me. . . .
"You can build, or tear down, that's what I say.
There are good blood in people, but it can be droven
* Columbia Record, 15065 D.
DRIFT 319
out, or else built to. If I talk about things, it ain't be
cause I seen 'em in newspapers, or postcards, or a ten
cent novel. It's right here," he added, pointing to his
narrow untidy forehead. "I didn't see the Liberty Bell
on a postcard. I seen it in Philadelphia, in Independ
ence Hall, and that's where it is right now."
"No it ain't, boss," said his wife.
"Yes it is."
"No it ain't."
"God damn it, yes it is !"
"No it ain't," she said impassively. "They've got it
hanging on the city hall, all covered with electric lights
and I know how many is on it."
He glared at her, his degenerate face turning dull
red.
"They moved it for the exposition," I put in, "but
they'll put it back later on."
He grinned sheepishly, and rubbed his mouth with
the back of his hand. "That's right. They'll put it back.
And it ain't been rung it ain't been rung " he
raised his voice, "since the death of General Frederick
W. Funston, in 1917." He shot a victorious glance at
me. I suppose there was pathos about him, but his pres
ence was such that it was very difficult to feel it.
"You take these Mississippi River people down
here," he went on ; "you won't find many you can get
in direct conflab with without learnin* what they really
320 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
are. There was a family we knew listen to this : there
was a baby ; how old was it ?"
" About three days bein' a month/' said his wife.
"All right. There was a baby about three days bein'
a month old when the mother died. There was older
children, but what did they care? While the woman
was lyin' a corpse, they got out and played hide-and-
seek. They dumb the bushes and milked the goats I
don't believe one of them shed a tear while the baby
was lyin' in there cryin' day and night.
"I went to the father, Tm sure you can see we're
people with a heart in us,' I said. 'You haven't a daugh
ter can take care of that baby. Let me and my wife
take care of it. If you want it back any time, you can
have it.'
"Well, he got together with the children, and they
haggled over it some days. At last they brought the
baby in to my wife and said, 'Missus could you do
anything for it?' She took it in her hands and looked
at it, and laid it on the bed, and said, 'I think it's dyinV
It did die, too, about one-thirty that evening.
"The next day, the man and his children came over.
I guess you've seen people who were all thrilled up
about goin' to some jubilee. That's the way it was with
them. The funeral was a show for them."
"They didn't have no more kind f eelin's for the baby
than for the mother," put in the woman.
DRIFT 321
"Kind feelin's?" He rose up dramatically. "Do you
know there's people on these bayous who have swapped
their wives., with fishin' tackle thrown in to boot?"
"Do you know them?" I inquired.
"We do. And mothers who have traded their chil
dren for fishin' tackle. Look here did you see that
boy who was around last night?"
"Yes."
"Well, he's my son-in-law, and this girl's his wife.
Back there on the Black River, when he was three
years old, his mother traded him for some fishin' nets/*
The woman nodded in assent. The yoiing girl went on
sewing without raising' her head.
"He seemed a nice lad/' I remarked.
The shanty man and his wife exchanged doubtful
glances. "Well we're not entitled to say we dislike the
boy. But it's like feeclin' a hog all the corn he'll eat.
He won't root any more; he'll go and He down. Still,
the boy's young and the girl's young. If I could only
get them off this dog-goned river ..."
"I suppose they're here because you are/' I said.
"Yes; and I'm at a teetotal loss to this day to know
why I started it. Well, I say, all you can do is to let
your conscience guide you. That's all you can do. At
one time, since I was on the river, I started to make
whiskey. I was backed by the county officials. They
gave me all the wood and water I needed, and I could
322 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
have as many niggers as I liked. I started it up, but my
conscience said, 'No, don't do it.' So I quit."
He lowered his head musingly, his light blue eyes
were fixed on a pin-point of light that was reflected
from the dial of the phonograph. Now he had forgot
ten us.
"I quit/' he said half-aloud. "It was too damned
dangerous."
THE TIDE
CHAPTER XXV
WE rose early, and continued down Bayou Plaque-
mine. We were in a new world and it was just at our
elbow. Roads lined with bungalows, each having a
wooden cistern under the eaves, carried on down the
bayou. Small lumber mills were having their morning
ration of cypress logs from rafts chained end-on-end
along the canal. Green fan palms grew in clusters along
the banks. Under the water oaks and cypresses hung
that beautiful bearded eeriness called Spanish moss. In
the water, green bulbs were floating in irregular
masses. These were water hyacinths. In two or three
months they would spread over the bayous, making
them difficult of navigation for marine propellers and
utterly impossible for square-nosed, cumbersome craft
like the Isador.
Now we were done with the town. Bayou Plaque-
mine had turned southward into the Black River. We
swept passed the gray huts and net-cluttered yards of
a few fishermen, noting that no matter how shabby a
man's house might be, his boat was painted, polished,
323
3 2 4 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
and apparently in most excellent repair. Then the for
est closed in on each side, a semi-darkness of palms,
vines and moss-girdled trees, with water from the high
river chuckling wickedly in through the rank under
growth.
We reached a perplexing junction where two
streams ran together in the forest and departed down
several different ways. Here on the only solid patch of
ground we had seen for miles, stood a fisherman's
houfee. We turned back, worked slowly up stream to
ward the house, and shut off the motor. Several
women, and a gnarly old man, a regular Pithecanthro
pus erectus, gray-bearded like the trees, came out on
the porch.
"Which way to Morgan City ?"
"Thataway yonder I"
We thanked him and went down the lane of water
he designated.
"Did you see that cluster of houseboats hidden up
the other bayou?"
"Yes. If I ever do a murder, you'll know where to
find me afterward."
The forest shut in again. Huge woodpeckers, like
African priests in black robes and flaring vermilion
head-pieces, tapped a solemn mumbo-jumbo on the
limbs of trees. The full, swift water below, the quickly
moving foliage on each side, gave proof of our pro-
THE TIDE 325
gress. About us, the ozone-laden air was fragrant and
tonic. The Isador was no longer a mere insect lost on
the immensity of the great river. Though grimly
somber, the walls of the forest were in scale with the
houseboat.
We moored for the night in a narrow aisle of water
beside the black trunks of cypresses, being careful,
however, not to rest on the shoots or "knees" of the
young trees that rose up like clusters of sharp vol
canic islands out of the water around the central trunk.
At our side spread a thick field of hyacinths. There
must be no misstep off the deck now, with a downward
plunge into that firm-looking bed! The aerated bulbs
appear as solid as a meadow, but their silken roots are
suspended in deep water. One might slip clown between
the bulbs easily enough, but they would re-form
immediately over one's head in a thick impenetrable
mat.
The moon came up between the bearded trees. Bub
bles rising about us on the water, made dark momen
tary circles, which grew and spread into concentric
rings of light. Hoot-owls, each in his own territory,
shrilled out their weird, low notes. Now one flew over
into a domain not his own. Then the deep, mellow
tones, like a flute d f amour, changed to a demoniacal
wow-wow, aw-aw-AW the laughter of a madman
gloating over his victim.
326 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
When the motor started at daybreak, small green
sections broke loose from the hyacinthine main-land
and floated off down stream to find new waters to con
quer. We followed and passed them, coming at last to
another group of gray, pathetic houses, almost com
pletely shut off from the world. But never in our jour
ney had we seen larger or better kept John-boats. Two
little boys, perhaps six and nine years, came along be
side us in a dory driven by a heavy engine. Just ahead
the water was divided left and right, with a substan
tial gray cabin on the land between. "Which way/' I
called again, "to Morgan City?"
The older lad stopped the motor instantly.
"Which way to Morgan City, son?"
"Dis-yere way!" He pointed to the left.
"Thanks. Are you going to school?"
"Yes thar ." He pointed toward the weathered
shack on the bank. We grinned in unison, for all men
understand and sympathize with each other about
school.
On the bayou below was the Pelican Fish Company
a houseboat and fish-market moored to the bank.
"Alligator Hides, Furs, Frogs, Fish, Turtles," it an
nounced on its gunwale. A bright, orange-colored bar
rel stood on the front deck with a three hundred pound
THE TIDE 327
man in a pea-green sweater leaning on it. "Hey ! Hey!"
he called to his companion inside the cabin. They
looked at the Isador and burst into delighted laughter.
No doubt they had never seen a houseboat with a motor
on it before. The Isador waddled calmly on its way
without so much as crinkling a deck board. It had not
gone two thousand miles down the great river to be
bothered by laughter in a bayou !
A mile farther on, we came to a two-room house-
Mat tied under a cluster of moss-hung trees. The doors
and windows were open. The front room was nearly
filled by a broad, white bed with two immaculate pil
lows laid just so, and a snowy counterpane. There were
three women on the boat. They came to the door and
looked at us timidly. They wore little sunbonnets and
tight-fitting waists. Their skirts, which touched the
floor, were rounded out with many unseen petticoats.
Ten miles farther on came the first village we had
seen since Plaqueminc. Here the bayou was obviously
the village street, lined with one-story houses of sil
very, unpainted cypress, and shaded by great shrouded
oaks. These cast their broken shadows over the bayou,
at the sides of which the brightly painted John-boats
flashed out with carnival colors in the intervening-
patches of sunlight. Two row-boats were approaching
with loads of dried moss. The oarlocks were some
what raised above the gunwales and the rowers stood
328 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
up facing forward, as they do on the canals in France.
When I stopped at the general store of the village for
the usual gasoline, some youths came in inquiring of
the storekeeper, "Est-ce que vous avez des 'Carnal!'
cigarettes ?"
Beyond the village a lone fisherman was pulling
black hoop-nets up into his skiff. Fish of various kinds
jumped and capered in the bottom of his boat. Our
course lay near him; the waterway was only a hun
dred feet wide.
"How are they biting?" I called. He gave me a
pleasant, inquiring look, but did not answer. "He must
have been French," I said to the mate when we had
passed. "I shall certainly write it down that we met
a man who did not understand English."
"When you are fishing with a net, fish don't bite/'
she said.
Oh well, of course . . .
Silence on the bayou.
As we progressed, the channel opened into a wide
lake, across the center of which a curving line of piles
pointed the way toward Morgan City, Without these a
newcomer must inevitably have been lost among the is
lands that surround the town. The shores approached
within a half mile of each other, Morgan City being
on one side, and Berwick on the other two flat towns
THE TIDE 329
emerging from the water and joined by a long, low
bridge.
We turned to the left and sought a landing place
above Morgan City in a little bay between some an
chored fishing boats. I had just signaled the mate to
cut the motor to half speed, when the Isador with a
profound shudder, climbed out of the water on a sub
merged pile, and hung there, quaking, with the bows
and part of the bottom in the air. We quaked too ! Had
our second-hand planks cracked? Planting the pike
pole on the lake bottom, I mounted the sloping deck.
Fortunately, after a foot or two of silt, the bottom was
solid. The pole held. By bracing myself against the
cabin's front end, while my colleague hung out over the
back deck for leverage, I was able at last to push the
boat off the piling.
We went on toward the bridge. Its broad band of
T-iron was very close to the water. The Isador could
by no means pass under it without having the chimney
forcibly removed. We skirted across to the Berwick
side where one of the spans was a turntable. The mate
Slew a whistle which we had acquired for just such a
pass. Workmen who seemed to be making repairs,
stood still on the turntable and looked at us. Plainly,
for the time being, it did not open.
Where the bridge left the shore, there was a short
330 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
section with a slightly higher clearance than that of
the rest of the structure. But the current was strong
along the bank, and a few feet south of the bridge a
wooden shed jutted out into the river. Could we make
the narrow passage under the bridge and then turn out
in time to avoid the building? We could try. But as we
started for the narrow place, a fishing boat darted in
from the other side ; so, since our motor would not re
verse, we had to turn again up stream, finally passing
under the bridge at an angle we had not wished. The
shed was immediately before us. The houseboat re
fused to turn out for it. I rushed to the back deck and
shut off the motor. In spite of great effort with the pole,
we made straight for the solid side of the shed.
There was a splintering crash. One end of the shed's
siding bent inward, cracking under the strain; but
instead of breaking off, the heavy cypress boards
sprang back into place. The houseboat bounced away,
slid around a pile, and made off with the utmost intel
ligence into open water! We looked ourselves over
for damages. The mate, the Isador and I were intact.
Somewhere in the stress of the moment, the mate had
lost another slipper.
South of the town on a wide point lined with fishing
smacks, John-boats, trappers' tugs and shantyboats, we
found a spot which seemed unoccupied.
"Give me a rope/' said an old man on the shore, "I'll
THE TIDE 331
help you in." I passed him a line, but as we came in to
ward the shore, we struck gently against an impedi
ment.
"What's that?"
"Oh, it's just an old barge that's sunk. You'll come
in over it as soon as the tide is up."
The tide. We knew it would be here, of course, for
the Gulf was only eighteen miles to the south. Cer
tainly we had come south past Vicksburg and Mem
phis and Baton Rouge. The pine and spruce of the
north had given place to sycamore and ash, then to live-
oak and cypress, bearded by the gray moss. But here,
beyond all variation in climate or foliage or accent, be
yond all other proof of our journeying, was a thing,
vast and irrefutable. Here was the tide.
THE BAYOUS
CHAPTER XXVI
ON three sides of the flat south-pointing nose of
land which bore the town of Morgan City, several
broad, subdividing channels swept southward to the
Gulf. We gathered together some lunch, fastened the
motor to the skiff and, leaving the houseboat at its
moorings, started down one of the bayous toward the
south. The mate was on the middle seat, I at the back
beside the motor. There was good color in her cheeks
after these months, and gayety in her eyes ; and, as her
hair blew back in the freshening wind, she looked at
me and laughed with exhilaration at the present small
adventure. But she did not feel how the rudder was
tugging at its ropes, nor seem to realize the strength of
the wind, nor know at what a nice angle I had to meet
the crisp, salt waves. She paid no attention to the steer
ing at all. Was she actually relying on my judgment
after all these miles and months ? That settled it ! We
would take no chances now. I stopped at an inlet where
fishermen were mending their nets and went ashore.
332
THE BAYOUS 333
"We want to go down to the Gulf. Would you risk
it in this wind ?" I inquired.
They looked at the skiff and shook their heads.
"No, we wouldn't go outside to-day, even with our own
boats/'
I started the motor and turned the skiff back up the
bayou. She looked at me inquiringly.
"It's too rough; we can't make it."
"All right. Let's go for a ride." So, like the two
motormen who spent their holiday riding on the street
cars, we tracked down into a narrower bayou and had
lunch under a group of cypresses, beyond which ap
peared the quite novel spectacle of automobiles pass
ing along a road.
The wind died down early in the afternoon. We re
gained the great bayou, turned south, and made a dash
down a broad expanse of lake bounded by low hori
zons; then across the lake past a ragged line which
marked the end of the thickets and the beginning of
swamp grass. Now the distant grass melted impercep
tibly into the blueness of Atchafalaya Bay,* while the
skiff rose and fell slowly on swells from the Gulf. And
all this time there had been growing in me a great and
increasing respect for the fiery old Spaniards, who,
with no maps, and with only their crude instruments of
navigation, entered these broad waterways from the
* Called Shaffel-eye Bay.
334 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
Gulf when there were a thousand similar flat channels
to choose from. Imagine trying to find your way back
between the same two islands that you had left months
or years before. Sometimes they made mistakes. The
strange part was that once leaving, they were ever
able to return at all.
A larger wave than the others splashed over the
front of the skiff. We had seen and felt the Gulf. That
A bayou oyster boat
was enough; besides, the wind was bestirring Itself a
little after its midday repose. We would do well to
come in out of the open before it got the sleep out of
its eyes and recognized us. Half an hour later we had
recrossed the lake and had come again into the curv
ing tree-edged protection of the narrower bayou. We
skirted the shore watching the isolated groups of fish
ermen's huts and the chunky, tight-cabined fishing
tugs, pulled up on the sand. Strange people these
fisher-folk of strange, mixed races. Here French,
Italian, Spanish, Kanakas, West Indians, Japanese
t ,'
the ancient cemeteries of New Orleans were
raised above the ground since water lay only a
short distance below the surface.
THEBAYOUS 335
and Mexicans intermingle and marry, fusing into a
race of water gypsies indigenous to the bayous alone,
who fish, trap and loaf, living somehow through the
floods and the terrific storms that sweep upward from
the Gulf.
Something round and flat and russet was floating
near the shore. It looked like nothing so much as a large
turtle shell. I circled back to it thinking that if it were
clean, I should send it to a brother of mine, who is
studying medicine at Harvard ; he, who as a little fel
low only a few years ago, had written to me, "My
birthday will be in nine days more. I expect to hear
from you soon." Lord how the time had flown! Now
he was twenty-two, and nearly a doctor ; some one to
feel your pulse and tell you that you weren't really
sick at all, even if the death rattle were in your throat.
My reverie was interrupted by a squeak from the
mate. "Oh ! it's not a turtle shell !"
I looked. "That's so. It's a "
"Don't go near it; don't go where I can see it."
"Why, it's only a "
"No ! Don't tell me what it is. I don't want to know !"
We circled away and went on. What a state she was
in! How can a man know anything about a woman
anyway ! Sometimes a woman who isn't squeamish at
.all, will suddenly become as squeamish as possible
even though she may be the only woman who has dared
336 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
the Mississippi from end to end in a small boat. Any
man who expects the same behavior from his feminine
companion on all similar occasions must suffer many
a shock. Very perplexing, but undeniably pleasant.
Why pleasant? -Because it gives a man such a gratify
ing sense of his own solid dependability.
I suppose that enough time has elapsed so that she
would not mind reading what it was that was lying
there on the water. It was a
On second thought, I don't think I'll take a chance.
We talked to the old man, who had helped moor
the Isador, about the bayous we had seen north of
Morgan City. His daughter was a schoolteacher in a
bayou settlement near Teche, and he himself knew the
bayou people well. The girls, he said, seldom went be
yond third or fourth grade in school. For by that time,
they were usually married. Sometimes, when a little
girl of fourteen or so was married, and was well off so
that she could keep coming to school,, she brought her
baby with her. The boys left school even a little
younger than the girls. Once in a while there would
be a boy of fifteen or sixteen who was ambitious, and
who would come back to the school. But the little girls
gave him no peace and were at him from morning till
THE BAYOUS 337
night. By the end of the year, he was always married
too.
Worse than the girls, said the old man, were
the mosquitoes. In summer, they were "something
enorme." When the children went to school, their legs
would be covered by mosquitoes, like brown fur. They
would smooth their hands over their legs, and their legs
would turn red with blood as though they had been
painted.
There were a few places where oil was found in the
swamps. The bayou people knew where it was, and
they sometimes smeared themselves with it. But it did
not give perfect protection against the mosquitoes,
which always came up at a certain time before sun
set. It was better to make a heavy, stinking smudge
of wet moss and fill the whole house with its fumes,
shutting the doors and windows and sleeping in it.
"The bayou people don't need schools/' added the
old man, "what they need is moving pictures. That's
something you ought to have a boat with moving
pictures on it. A fellow came along here a year ago
with a boat about fifty feet long, and a picture outfit.
He stopped at all the landings along Bayou Shane and
Bayou Black, and when he came to give a show, every
seat was full. Advance agent? No, indeed. He'd give
a couple of niggers tickets to his show, and they'd run
down the bayous with the news. People carne from
338 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
miles around, even from Morgan City. There's a pic
ture show here in town but people wanted to see
pictures on a boat. That's the sort of business you
ought to have/'
"It sounds very interesting. What became of him?"
"He was drowned. He lost his outfit and his life in
a storm in one of the bayous."
"And that's the kind of business you advise me to
go into?"
He shook his head whimsically. "Well, I don't know
how it is with you, but I believe when a man's time is
up, it's up. I believe in destination."
And since he had brought up the subject of destina
tion, we were forced to remember that we had one too.
Carefully avoiding three right-hand turns which led
directly to the Gulf of Mexico, the hador turtled
slowly down Bayou Shane into Bayou Black. There
was practically no current now, to help us on our way.
We traveled about three and a half miles an hour.
Bayou Black was well named a dismal, sinister
water-canyon through a lowering cypress jungle, shut
in by giant vines and draped with the bearded parasite
moss. There was a feeling of wickedness about the
place, a gloating, exultant fecundity of vegetation and
insect life. There were no settlements here, only an
occasional house clinging to a strip of earth between
the bayou and the jungle. Lines stretched among the
THE BAYOUS 339
trees, and on these hung rows of black, drying moss.
Later the moss would be brought to the trading post
which was located where two bayous met. We talked
to the trader there. Ten thousand pounds of moss had
been weighed the day before, and shipped north to
automobile factories where it would be used for filling
cushions.
The aspect of Bayou Black changed. Narrowing to
a fifty foot canal, it wound through the midst of plan
tations. There were roads on each side now, and small
houses facing the road, with their backs to the canal.
The poorer dwellings had no glass in the windows, but
solid wooden shutters to keep out the rain. Little truck
gardens ran right to the edge of the six foot bank be
side the canal. Negroes, their mouths hanging open
with surprise, came out of the houses to look at the
Isador. There were hundreds of them. We went down
a landscape punctuated with glistening white teeth.
Dozens of bridges spanned the canal. Some of these
were rickety foot bridges, others would bear the weight
of a wagon or motor car ; always they turned by pivot
ing on a mid-channel pier. Sometimes darkies pushed
them around, sometimes white men. Most of the bridge
men responded to my whistle and had the draw open by
the time the Isador, going at half speed, came to the
bridge. Once an old French woman and three little
boys strained their bridge around.
340 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
Only one, a white man, sought any honorarium for
his work. I had stopped the boat at the near side for his
bridge had not been opened. He sauntered up with his
helper.
"I am absolutely under orders not to open the bridge
for any boat that will not go under. Won't your boat
go through there ?"
"No, it won't quite make it."
"Isn't the chimney removable ?"
"The chimney may be, but the roof isn't."
He looked at me sharply. What kind of a shanty
man was this anyway, who was laughing good-
naturedly? A regular shanty man should have been
turning red and apologetic, should have been offering
him some of the little money he had managed to get
together. But this one was only merry. So the bridge
man took one more look at us, opened the bridge with
unexpected celerity, and we passed on.
Clouds like white cotton-tufts scudded across the sky
under the flick of the wind. A pickaninny sat eyeing us
in the fork of a tiny tree, still and shining as a large
black plum. On the bank beside him, we saw for the
first time in our lives, a cow with a double chin. Here
was a temporary bridge of the pontoon type an in
credibly clumsy wooden barge with a heavy superstruc
ture of beams across it. As we approached, two dark
men who looked like Mexicans, ran out on the bridge,
THE BAYOUS 341
unbolted the ends, and, with the help of a winch and
drum and steel bars, attempted to swing the ponder
ous barrier to one side. It stuck. They worked at it
feverishly, with all the good will in the world. Time
after time they pried it nearly
free from the end supports with
their steel bars, but the hellish
thing kept sticking like a new
stint designed for Sisyphus.
"I sorry I kip you waiting/'
cried the older of the two. "I
lak to have the breedge open
when the boat kam. I hope
pretty soon they begin new
breedge."
"Will you have charge of the
new bridge ?"
"I tink. Least, I hope. I been
here two years."
We left them levering their
heavy sorrow back into place,
passed under another bridge
with an inch or two to spare, and turned for the night
into the busy canal of the town of Houma where the
oystermen come in with their cabined dories from the
oyster beds. Their boats, the Reine y the Young Joseph,
the Good Mamma, the Esperoirc, the Bon Jour, lined
342 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
the canal. Dusky men within talked French and what
not to their dusky women. Laughter rose from the
cabins at the Isadoras "egg-beater." The oystermen
thought of us as competitors. And what kind of an
outfit was that, mon Dieu, to go after oysters in !
* On then, across miles of flat marshland, with the
clouds dipping down to their images in a thousand
broken pools below ; until, by virtue of a few low dikes,
the marsh turned into magnificent fields of black, even
furrows, awaiting the early sowing of spring; while
the canal, not to be outdone by the fields, led on to
Lockport and the Bayou LaFourche.
We tied beside a bridge while I bought gasoline
and filled the always thirsty water pail from a cistern
back of the town garage. As usual, half a dozen un
occupied young men appeared from nowhere, struck
silent by my Minnesota boots. Had I come far? Yes,
from beyond St. Louis, even from beyond St. Paul. In
a boat? Yes, a houseboat. They walked with me to the
canal side to see such a boat, it being hidden by the
twelve foot bank. As we looked down, there, great
Heaven, was the mate standing nearly on her head on
the front deck and holding on with one foot, both arms
in the water and an expression of rapt bliss on her face
as she gazed down into a small metal sieve in her hand.
I approached alone. "What under the sun are you
doing? All those men up there "
THE BAYOUS 343
"See, I've caught a tiny crawfish!" She had indeed
with great emphasis on the tiny. He was nearly half
an inch long. She ran and got a pail of water for him ;
and no sooner had we left the town than she was
down again on the front deck, and when she dipped up
another out of the moderately clear water as we
plowed along, she got into such a wild state of en
thusiasm that I made her fast with a line and held the
end of it while I steered the boat, so she wouldn't go
overboard with her foolishness.
When she had caught half a dozen, she cried, "Come
on you catch a few !"
"No."
"Yes come catch some/ 7 And she was so insistent
that damned if I didn't have to give her the rudder
line and get down on my belly on the deck and catch
crawfish so as not to mar the fine edge of her gayety.
"Put your arm down in the water, and hold the sieve
with the top just below the surface. That's right."
Presently I caught one, and then another as it shot
away through the green water; whereupon, I re
linquished my place to her, and she stayed there all
afternoon, now catching a very little fellow, now a
somewhat larger one, but never any more than an inch
long.
Later, we dropped one in boiling water, and it turned
slightly pink, a martyr to domestic science. Then, of
344 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
course, some one had to taste it, and when he did, an
other martyr to domestic science was instantly had, be
cause the small insect tasted vile. So, after all the fuss
and feathers of the afternoon, we turned the others
back into the bayou. (But really I, too, was quite con
tent, for I had seen her happy as a small girl at play. )
THE JOYOUS CITY
CHAPTER XXVII
IN its time, Bayou LaFourche has been a pictur
esque and writer-haunted stream. Many of the early
French expatriates from Canada settled along its
marshy sides. In Donaldsonville, at its head, where
water from the Mississippi formerly flowed into the
bayou, there is a tree called the Evangeline Oak, in
memory of her who sought for so many long years for
her beloved Acadian.
Now LaFourche has been blocked off from the great
river. Like Bayou Plaquemine, except in exorbitant
flood, it is no longer subject to the rise and fall of the
Mississippi. The high green levees running for miles
close along its sides have been cut through in many
places showing glimpses of fertile farmland beyond.
Down the twenty miles that separate Lockport from
the village of LaRose, houses follow one after an
other along both sides as closely as along a country
road at the edge of a village. Except for the presence
of the negro, the physically picturesque elements have
gone from LaFourche. True, the natives still call to
345
346 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
each other in peculiar French across the canal, but
most of them have Ford cars. What remains is only
that which is to be found anywhere else in the south
country.
We stopped at LaRose, where, at right angles to the
bayou, a government canal cut straight as a slightly-
bent arrow to Lake Salvador, eight miles distant. At
Pharaoh's hosses
our whistle the bridgeman looked out to make sure
that we were not a boat that looked official, then kept
us waiting half an hour while he finished his breakfast.
Coming out at last he asked quite gruffly to cover his
offense the name of our boat and how we had ar
rived there, information which was almost none of his
business. Finally he unwound the bridge, and we went
on past his little show of authority, toward the greater
worry that was Lake Salvador.
On a large-scale map of the United States, Salvador
THE JOYOUS CITY 347
is barely a dot. But when you get to it, particularly in
a houseboat driven by an out-board motor, you'll find
that it is twenty miles long and eight miles wide. As we
came out of the canal into the lake, a light breeze
splashed certain small waves against the boat's flat
nose until the spray flew up into view, bringing with it
the old, old question, "To go, or not to go? 7 ' But as so
frequently before, the forward motion of the Isador
settled the matter for us and we went on. Soon the
morning settled down into such a day as would have
been the envy of Como or Maggiore, with voluptuous
clouds painted in a gay moment by some celestial Ru
bens (in ethereal memory, perhaps, of the gifted
Marie F.).
A bulky lighthouse rose to the right at the apex
of a tree-girded bay. We passed it, came into a nar
row channel, turned to the left, and found ourselves
in the loveliest bayou of all. Here were wide grassy
banks with fishermen's houses under superb live-oaks
and cypresses, from which dripped the clustering moss ;
here were arborescent vines twining among the rank
undergrowth of palms. Here were dense timbered
thickets, ending in the somber frustration of cypress
swamps. Here were flowers, fragrant and exotic, and
the sound and sight of innumerable birds which were
led in color by the cardinal, and by the wood-thrush in
song.
34 8 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
For two days we traveled without haste along the
luxuriant bayou, having nothing more to bother about
than the nightly sword-dance of the mosquitoes be
fore our door. At last, reaching the end of the bayou,
we went down four miles of straight canal, which
ended abruptly in three bridges before the steel gates
of a lock. We moored to the bank amid a dozen or two
oystermen and cabin boats and government launches
in the two-hundred-citizen village of Harvey, then
walked a few yards up the by-road, and climbed the
grassy bank beside the lock. There, swirling along a
few feet before us, was the frothing, Brobdingnagian,
magnificent old Mississippi; and just beyond, the mu
nicipal docks of the joyous city of New Orleans.
We took the ferry -then, on the other side, a street
car whose name was Tchoupitoulas, and came down
through miles of palms and smells and negro houses
and iron balconies and fruit markets, to the center of
the city. Reserving its sights and sounds as something
to be enjoyed later, we searched up and down the long
water-front for a mooring-place for the Isador. The
huge docks, the many-thousand-ton fruit and cotton
and coffee steamers, the enormous warehouses with
ten-foot waves from sea-going tugs dashing against
The (l 'Quarter 3 of New Orleans abounds in mellow court
yards zvith rich foliage and hundred-year-old walls.
THE JOYOUS CITY 349
their piling would certainly be strange and rough
neighbors for the gentle-mannered little houseboat.
However, just at the foot of Canal Street, behind
a large gay river steamer called the Island Queen, we
found a little pocket that would hold the Isador. Canal
Street is the greatest artery of New Orleans. Its
esplanade runs directly to the river. Here, above all
places, would be the spot from which to see the city.
Two evenings later, as we returned to Harvey on
the ferry, from the Dock Commissioner's office, we
heard the irregular put-put of a badly-tuned motor on
the river behind us. Certainly we had known that un
even snort and sputter before. Looking out across the
water, we -saw a small skiff coming toward us. Rork
and MacGovren, of course their boat tossing about
like a splinter in the wake of a ferry. They tied near the
lock, and dined with us on the Isador.
They had arrived a day or two earlier and had
moored their houseboat two miles above us near Au-
dubon Park. What with Gulf winds and an opposing
current, the river had given them a bad time from
Baton Rouge. Once their dory with the engine in it,
taking fright at something, had leapt up on the back
deck of their houseboat and refused to get off. There
had been some compensation x f or their difficulties,
though, for they had met a traveling preacher who
not only had his houseboat and his wife with him, but
350 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
a farmboat too, with many chickens and nine goats
on it. He was full of good works, but so short of gaso
line for his launch, that he had taken six months get
ting seventy miles up the river from New Orleans,
That would make writing !
Rork, who had been so silent when we first met, had
gradually become more and more fluent. Now it was
MacGovren who listened quietly. Shyness had come
over him. Perhaps he thought that we now found
Rork more attractive. Since Rork had begun to talk
and to find himself, MacGovren seemed to have begun
to suffer and to have misgivings about his own value.
The fact that he was embarrassed over nothing may
have made his discomfort greater still. He may have
even brought himself to the place of believing that It
was Rork who was to have the Isador. My sympathy
went out to him and I wanted to say, "Don't worry,
dear man, about your sensitiveness. Even if you doubt
yourself and mistrust yourself for a time, that won't
hurt the quality of your work; for by looking into
yourself and seeking within for the reason of the man
you are, you shall come to understand other men and
women and their intrinsic values always better and
better." But there was no opportunity to say it.
The next morning, the mate and I took the Isador
through the lock, and down two miles of tumultuous
THE JOYOUS CITY 351
river to its new berth back of the Island Queen. And
now the city lay before us.
New Orleans is twenty-three miles long and nine
miles wide. Normally, it is from four to seven feet be
low the level of the river. In high water, eighteen to
twenty feet below. But that does not matter. The spirit
of the place is miles high. For color, for sparkle, for
gayety, there is no other city in the country to com
pare with it.
Canal Street, once a bayou where the alligators
roared, divides the city into the old and the new. The
new section .is a district of municipal conformities. It
has its standardized business blocks, its banks, broker
age house, barbershops and hotels ; it has its Liggetts,
Child's, Woolworths, Thompson's Lunch, Loew's, and
other sub-classic institutions. But it is in the old quar
ter, east of Canal Street, the Vieux Carre that the
city has a municipal jewel beyond price.
As long ago as 1718, on the low, undrained marais
between Lake Ponchartrain and the Mississippi, Bien-
ville began building a city. He laid it out in a parallelo
gram, with a parade ground near the river front where
the troops might form, and mount guard, and drop
352 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
their muskets in the mud, for the pleasure of small
boys and the Kings of France.
Back of the Place d'Armes, the city was laid out as
regularly as possible, a few blocks wide and a few
blocks long, with street-names such as Chartres,
Dauphine, Bourbon, Burgundy, Orleans, and others
that were called up by heartache or loneliness or pride.
In time, within this square city later protected by a
fifteen-foot rampart and a forty-foot moat, complete
with drawbridges and five forts grew up the quaint,
old-world houses, courtyards and atmosphere that re
main to us in the Vieux Carre.
The early history of New Orleans, with its floods,
pestilences, pirates, and changes of government from
France to Spain and later back to France, contains a
hundred incidents of compelling interest. For example,
there is the story of the "Cassette girls." Prior to 1727,
large numbers of girls and women had been sent to
New Orleans from houses of correction and hospitals
of France to suit the salty dispositions of the first
swash-buckling pioneers. But as the better class of
citizenry increased, there came a call for helpmates of
a little higher quality. Whereupon came the ''Cassette
girls/' poor but all-right young women, each of whom
had been supplied by the king with a cassette or little
chest, full of clothes. Ursuline nuns, who had long been
in the city, took charge of the girls upon their arrival.
THE JOYOUS CITY 353
Thanks to the young blades of the colony, however,
this arrangement was only temporary; and "many
well-known New Orleans families trace their origin
back to the marriage of some gallant French gentle
man with a lovely fille de la Cassette"
This and other delightful incidents may be found in
the excellent guide to the city published by the New
Orleans Times-Picayune, a newspaper old in years,
but exceedingly young in heart.
Walking along the narrow streets of the Quarter,
under the remarkable wrought-iron tracery and trellis
work of the balconies, one catches a glimpse of small,
fountained courtyards where shafts of sunlight play
on century-old walls, or filter into rare patterns under
the rich foliage of palm and banana tree and mag
nolia. At the back are the old slave quarters, now
changed into apartments, in which almost any man
might live with enormous content. What a cycle of
habitation the old Quarter has had 1 After the pioneer
days, it was occupied by the elite of the town, Creole *
families, the best society of New Orleans. Then came
the War and its following desolation. The slave quar
ters which had sometimes held seventy or eighty
slaves were empty. The better families moved away to
a new part of the city. Only the poor and a few of the
* Creole: A descendant of French or Spanish (or French and Spanish)
settlers in the gulf States, preserving their speech and culture.
354 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
very proud, remained behind their closed blinds.
Foreign immigrants came in, Sicilians of the lowest
type, making a slum which became a rendezvous for
prostitutes and their accompaniment of rakes and
thugs. Then a few artists came in and others who ap
preciated the charm of the old streets and houses.
Gradually the tone of the Quarter improved.
Now it is filling up again, attracting, after the man
ner of Greenwich Village, its quota of pseudo-
Freudians and gif te shoppes, and human dismalia who
pester hell out of artists by talking to them about some
thing of which most artists care nothing, called "Art."
But I do not think they'll spoil it, because the Quarter
has already been through a more searing baptism of
fire than they can give it. And as for the physical as
pect of the place, there is a municipal building com
mittee which sees to it that "repairs" on the old
buildings do not, peradventure, blossom into ten-story
apartment houses.
4
At the corner of Chartres and St. Louis Streets
rises a beautifully proportioned French house of old
gray-painted plaster. The mansard roof, cut by five
round-topped dormer windows, slopes up at that slight
THE JOYOUS CITY 355
angle which you will find in Avranohes or Meudon or
Nantes. There are four chimneys irregularly placed on
the roof, and in the center a black cupola. Across the
front of the second and third floors are seven win
dows. These are hidden by faded green shutters ex
cept for two on the third floor near the center, which
are open, disclosing the rich yellow-ocher window
frames. The ground floor is occupied by the Napoleon
Grocery and Cafe.
Walk down St. Louis Street, then turn around again
and look at its weathered gray walls, its mansard roof,
and its blue-green blinds against the bright billboards
where the old St. Louis Hotel stood, with Royal Street
beyond. It is a part of France and it should be, for
this house was built for Napoleon Bonaparte himself
by those who expected to help him escape from St.
Helena. He died, however, before the plan could be
carried out.
Three doors down Chartres Street is another dwell
ing bearing the legend, "This house was built for
' Napoleon Bonaparte." That, it would seem, is not
correct. I was assured most emphatically by a fine lady
who had spent her girlhood in the corner house and
whose father, I found later, was a friend of Louis
Philippe, that the maison with the cupola is the Napoleon
house.
556 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
Alone or with pleasant companions we browsed
about day after day, coming back at night to our berth
in the lee of the Island Queen. At eight o'clock on the
first evening, we had been surprised to hear the great
ship bellow forth with the thunderous toots and
wheezes of a steam calliope on its upper deck; still
further surprised, when at eight thirty p. M., to the
accompaniment of the music of a large orchestra, it
started down the river with hundreds of pleasure-
seekers aboard, leaving a mile-wide stretch of choppy
water in which the Isador lurched and rolled disas
trously.
However, the Island Queen returned at eleven, and
at twelve the dancing was over. Shortly, we regulated
our absence to its own, spending our evenings as well
as our days in the city. We went to its theaters and its
restaurants; some of the latter were good, some were
not. Some have been praised so highly that they have
become quiveringly self-conscious of the excellence of
their food, and hence, uncomfortable. At Antoine's,
for example, several of the waiters were patronizing
to a degree that would not be tolerated for a minute in
any foreign city, except by Americans. I prefer La
Louisiane around the corner. There the atmosphere is
thoroughbred, the food is good, and they let you alone.
THE JOYOUS CITY 357
Above the other restaurants, I like Madame Begue's
on the old Place d'Armes, which is now called Jack
son Square. It is located on the second floor of one
of the two Pontalba buildings which flank Andrew
Jackson's statue. The hallway is old and shabby, and
the restaurant itself is not much better. But the busi
ness has been in the family for two hundred years, and
the food you get there is not of Paris, you can find
something approximating Parisian food in several
cities in the Unkedr States it is that of a good res
taurant in a provincial city in the s'outh of France. A
young girl will wait on you. Her name will be Pauline
or Nicoline Begue ; and you will retain the same knife
and fork for all your courses. You will eat good, sim
ple food; and afterward, in great peace, you will go
out along the old side-streets with their square cobble
stones set diamond-wise, cobblestones which, at the
suggestion of some very shrewd governor, were
brought over as ballast in the ships of long ago. Even
on the newly-paved streets where the old cobbles are
forgotten, they are not gone. The new paving is laid
above the old.
You may go to the Little Theater the Petit Theatre
du Vieux Carre. As you reach the Cabildo, that an
cient palace of the Spanish governors, now used as a
museum, perhaps you may come upon such a sym
bol of the gayhearted city as we did. Going along St.
358 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
Peter Street, we saw a light inside the Cabildo, shining
through one of its ground-glass windows; and there
against the window in that old building of the Spanish
grandees where Lafayette was later entertained, was
the silhouette of two young people who thought they
were quite hidden, kissing each other rapturously, for
all the world to see.
Later, you may saunter up to the equestrien statue
of Andrew Jackson in the Square, and if it is not too
dark, you will note that his sword, which has fallen
off at some time in the past, has been fastened on
again upside-down ; and you may hope that no one will
change it back again, for it makes the bronze statue of
the fiery old warrior much more human than it could
possibly have been before.
The collegians came down to see us once again,
climbing out over the piling of the old coffee dock to
say good-by. Their houseboat was already in the mouth
of the Industrial Canal below the city, awaiting ours.
They would get a fisherman with a launch to pull the
caravan through the canal, up Lake Ponchartrain, and
back into Bayou St. John to a mooring place they had
found in the city. If it suited our plans, they would
call for the Isador at three the following afternoon.
THE JOYOUS CITY 359
7
We were ready at two. We sent our bags and the
boxed motor to the near-by station, our trunk and hand
luggage to the St. Charles Hotel. We gave the boat a
last inspection to make sure that it was shipshape and
clean. We were leaving it just as we had lived in it
the stove filled with fuel, dishes in the cupboard,
water in the water-keg, the library and lamp on the
book-case, the green curtains at the windows, and the
gay cushions not quite as gay as they had been two
thousand miles earlier on the couch. We put the
key on the shelf outside the door, and went away.
After dinner, we wandered back to the river front.
The Island Queen was brilliantly illuminated for her
nightly voyage. {Had they taken it away?} We went
slowly around the corner of the Esplanade, and looked
at the narrow space of water between the great boat
and the coffee dock; and then the former mate of the
Isador was saying, "It's gone. Our poor little, funny
little boat! It leaves a great emptiness against the
river." We turned silently away.
The myriad lights of the Island Queen attracted us.
Soon she would be heading out there into the darkness.
Moonlight to-night on the Mississippi. We looked at
each other. A bell on the bridge, vibrating under the
slow strength of a man's arm, sounded the warning
360 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI
signal. One . . . two . . . three. . . . One . . .
two . . . three. . . .
"Come on!" We hurried aboard. With a rush of
steam, the light-studded gangplank rose high above
the narrow moat of water. The hawsers unwrapped
from the pierheads. The whistle roared hoarsely, splut
tering careless drops of water on the deck.
"Turn J er out slow, sir." The ship eased slowly away
from the row of piling where the Isador had lain.
"All right, sir. She's clear."
People were dancing on the broad, shining floor; a
burst of laughter and the bleat of a saxophone came
out to us through the open door.
We climbed to the upper deck. No other passengers
were there; only the steersman, well forward on the
enclosed bridge. Beyond the rail, its darkened waters
moving with tremendous power, surged the great river.
What force! What inexorable tenacity of purpose!
flowing like that down through the days and nights,
down through the cycle of the years. If a man, learn
ing the lesson of that irrepressible tide, could set him
self to a certain goal, freeing himself from all lesser
things, casting aside all trivialities
Some one put her arm on mine. "They're dancing
downstairs/' she said.
"Yes?"
"Yes. They're dancing downstairs "
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