Anthology
of Louisiana Literature
Mark Twain.
Life on the Mississippi.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
The Mississippi is Well worth Reading about.—It is Remarkable.—
Instead of Widening towards its Mouth, it grows Narrower.—It Empties
four hundred and six million Tons of Mud.—It was First Seen in 1542.
—It is Older than some Pages in European History.—De Soto has
the Pull.—Older than the Atlantic Coast.—Some Half-breeds chip
in.—La Salle Thinks he will Take a Hand.
CHAPTER II.
La Salle again Appears, and so does a Cat-fish.—Buffaloes also.
—Some Indian Paintings are Seen on the Rocks.—“The Father of
Waters” does not Flow into the Pacific.—More History and Indians.
—Some Curious Performances—not Early English.—Natchez, or
the Site of it, is Approached.
CHAPTER III.
A little History.—Early Commerce.—Coal Fleets and Timber Rafts.
—We start on a Voyage.—I seek Information.—Some Music.—The
Trouble begins.—Tall Talk.—The Child of Calamity.—Ground
and lofty Tumbling.—The Wash-up.—Business and Statistics.—
Mysterious Band.—Thunder and Lightning.—The Captain speaks.
—Allbright weeps.—The Mystery settled.—Chaff.—I am Discovered.
—Some Art-work proposed.—I give an Account of Myself.—Released.
CHAPTER IV.
The Boys’ Ambition.—Village Scenes.—Steamboat Pictures.
—A Heavy Swell.—A Runaway.
CHAPTER V.
A Traveller.—A Lively Talker.—A Wild-cat Victim.
CHAPTER VI.
Besieging the Pilot.—Taken along.—Spoiling a Nap.—Fishing for a
Plantation.—“Points” on the River.—A Gorgeous Pilot-house.
CHAPTER VII.
River Inspectors.—Cottonwoods and Plum Point.—Hat-Island Crossing.
—Touch and Go.—It is a Go.—A Lightning Pilot.
CHAPTER VIII.
A Heavy-loaded Big Gun.—Sharp Sights in Darkness.—Abandoned to
his Fate.—Scraping the Banks.—Learn him or Kill him.
CHAPTER IX.
Shake the Reef.—Reason Dethroned.—The Face of the Water.
—A Bewitching Scene.-Romance and Beauty.
CHAPTER X.
Putting on Airs.—Taken down a bit.—Learn it as it is.—The River
Rising.
CHAPTER XI.
In thg Tract Business.—Effects of the Rise.—Plantations gone.
—A Measureless Sea.—A Somnambulist Pilot.—Supernatural Piloting.
—Nobody there.—All Saved.
CHAPTER XII.
Low Water.—Yawl sounding.—Buoys and Lanterns.—Cubs and
Soundings.—The Boat Sunk.—Seeking the Wrecked.
CHAPTER XIII.
A Pilot’s Memory.—Wages soaring.—A Universal Grasp.—Skill and
Nerve.—Testing a “Cub.”—“Back her for Life.”—A Good Lesson.
CHAPTER XIV.
Pilots and Captains.—High-priced Pilots.—Pilots in Demand.
—A Whistler.—A cheap Trade.—Two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar Speed.
CHAPTER XV.
New Pilots undermining the Pilots’ Association.—Crutches and Wages.
—Putting on Airs.—The Captains Weaken.—The Association Laughs.
—The Secret Sign.—An Admirable System.—Rough on Outsiders.
—A Tight Monopoly.—No Loophole.—The Railroads and the War.
CHAPTER XVI.
All Aboard.—A Glorious Start.—Loaded to Win.—Bands and Bugles.
—Boats and Boats.—Racers and Racing.
CHAPTER XVII.
Cut-offs.—Ditching and Shooting.—Mississippi Changes.—A Wild
Night.—Swearing and Guessing.—Stephen in Debt.—He Confuses
his Creditors.—He makes a New Deal.—Will Pay them Alphabetically.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Sharp Schooling.—Shadows.—I am Inspected.—Where did you get
them Shoes?—Pull her Down.—I want to kill Brown.—I try to run
her.- I am Complimented.
CHAPTER XIX.
A Question of Veracity.—A Little Unpleasantness.—I have an
Audience with the Captain.—Mr. Brown Retires.
CHAPTER XX.
I become a Passenger.—We hear the News.—A Thunderous Crash.
—They Stand to their Posts.—In the Blazing Sun.—A Grewsome
Spectacle.—His Hour has Struck.
CHAPTER XXI.
I get my License.—The War Begins.—I become a Jack-of-all-trades.
CHAPTER XXII.
I try the Alias Business.—Region of Goatees—Boots begin to Appear.
—The River Man is Missing.—The Young Man is Discouraged.—
Specimen Water.—A Fine Quality of Smoke.—A Supreme Mistake.
—We Inspect the Town.—Desolation Way-traffic.—A Wood-yard.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Old French Settlements.—We start for Memphis.—Young Ladies and
Russia-leather Bags.
CHAPTER XXIV.
I receive some Information.—Alligator Boats.—Alligator Talk.
—She was a Rattler to go.—I am Found Out.
CHAPTER XXV.
The Devil’s Oven and Table.—A Bombshell falls.—No Whitewash.
—Thirty Years on the River.-Mississippi Uniforms.—Accidents and
Casualties.—Two hundred Wrecks.—A Loss to Literature.—Sunday-
Schools and Brick Masons.
CHAPTER XXVI.
War Talk.—I Tilt over Backwards.—Fifteen Shot-holes.—A Plain
Story.—Wars and Feuds.—Darnell versus Watson.—A Gang and
a Woodpile.—Western Grammar.—River Changes.—New Madrid.
—Floods and Falls.
CHAPTER XXVII.
Tourists and their Note-books.—Captain Hall.—Mrs. Trollope’s
Emotions.—Hon. Charles Augustus Murray’s Sentiment.—Captain
Marryat’s Sensations.—Alexander Mackay’s Feelings.
—Mr. Parkman Reports.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Swinging down the River.—Named for Me.—Plum Point again.
—Lights and Snag Boats.—Infinite Changes.—A Lawless River.
—Changes and Jetties.—Uncle Mumford Testifies.—Pegging the
River.—What the Government does.—The Commission.—Men and
Theories.—“Had them Bad.”—Jews and Prices.
CHAPTER XXIX.
Murel’s Gang.—A Consummate Villain.—Getting Rid of Witnesses.
—Stewart turns Traitor.—I Start a Rebellion.—I get a New Suit
of Clothes.—We Cover our Tracks.—Pluck and Capacity.—A Good
Samaritan City.—The Old and the New.
CHAPTER XXX.
A Melancholy Picture.—On the Move.—River Gossip.—She Went By
a-Sparklin’.—Amenities of Life.—A World of Misinformation.—
Eloquence of Silence.—Striking a Snag.—Photographically Exact.
—Plank Side-walks.
CHAPTER XXXI.
Mutinous Language.—The Dead-house.—Cast-iron German and Flexible
English.—A Dying Man’s Confession.—I am Bound and Gagged.
—I get Myself Free.—I Begin my Search.—The Man with one Thumb.
—Red Paint and White Paper.—He Dropped on his Knees.—Fright
and Gratitude.—I Fled through the Woods.—A Grisly Spectacle.
—Shout, Man, Shout.—A look of Surprise and Triumph.—The Muffled
Gurgle of a Mocking Laugh.—How strangely Things happen.
—The Hidden Money.
CHAPTER XXXII.
Ritter’s Narrative.—A Question of Money.—Napoleon.—Somebody
is Serious.—Where the Prettiest Girl used to Live.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
A Question of Division.—A Place where there was no License.—The
Calhoun Land Company.—A Cotton-planter’s Estimate.—Halifax
and Watermelons.—Jewelled-up Bar-keepers.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
An Austere Man.—A Mosquito Policy.—Facts dressed in Tights.
—A swelled Left Ear.
CHAPTER XXXV.
Signs and Scars.—Cannon-thunder Rages.—Cave-dwellers.
—A Continual Sunday.—A ton of Iron and no Glass.—The Ardent
is Saved.—Mule Meat—A National Cemetery.—A Dog and a Shell.
—Railroads and Wealth.—Wharfage Economy.—Vicksburg versus The
"Gold Dust.”—A Narrative in Anticipation.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
The Professor Spins a Yarn.—An Enthusiast in Cattle.—He makes a
Proposition.—Loading Beeves at Acapulco.—He was n’t Raised to it.
—He is Roped In.—His Dull Eyes Lit Up.—Four Aces, you Ass!
—He does n’t Care for the Gores.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
A Terrible Disaster.—The "Gold Dust” explodes her Boilers.
—The End of a Good Man.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Mr. Dickens has a Word.—Best Dwellings and their Furniture.—Albums
and Music.—Pantelettes and Conch-shells.—Sugar-candy Rabbits
and Photographs.—Horse-hair Sofas and Snuffers.—Rag Carpets
and Bridal Chambers.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Rowdies and Beauty.—Ice as Jewelry.—Ice Manufacture.—More
Statistics.—Some Drummers.—Oleomargarine versus Butter.
—Olive Oil versus Cotton Seed.—The Answer was not Caught.
—A Terrific Episode.—A Sulphurous Canopy.—The Demons of War.
—The Terrible Gauntlet.
CHAPTER XL.
In Flowers, like a Bride.—A White-washed Castle.—A Southern
Prospectus.—Pretty Pictures.—An Alligator’s Meal.
CHAPTER XLI.
The Approaches to New Orleans.—A Stirring Street.—Sanitary
Improvements.—Journalistic Achievements.—Cisterns and Wells.
CHAPTER XLII.
Beautiful Grave-yards.—Chameleons and Panaceas.—Inhumation and
Infection.—Mortality and Epidemics.—The Cost of Funerals.
CHAPTER XLIII.
I meet an Acquaintance.—Coffins and Swell Houses.—Mrs. O’Flaherty
goes One Better.—Epidemics and Embamming.—Six hundred for a
Good Case.—Joyful High Spirits.
CHAPTER XLIV.
French and Spanish Parts of the City.—Mr. Cable and the Ancient
Quarter.—Cabbages and Bouquets.—Cows and Children.—The Shell
Road. The West End.—A Good Square Meal.—The Pompano.—The Broom-
Brigade.—Historical Painting.—Southern Speech.—Lagniappe.
CHAPTER XLV.
"Waw” Talk.—Cock-Fighting.—Too Much to Bear.—Fine Writing.
—Mule Racing.
CHAPTER XLVI.
Mardi-Gras.—The Mystic Crewe.—Rex and Relics.—Sir Walter Scott.
—A World Set Back.—Titles and Decorations.—A Change.
CHAPTER XLVII.
Uncle Remus.—The Children Disappointed.—We Read Aloud.
—Mr. Cable and Jean au Poquelin.—Involuntary Trespass.—The Gilded
Age.—An Impossible Combination.—The Owner Materializes and Protests.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
Tight Curls and Springy Steps.—Steam-plows.—“No. I.” Sugar.
—A Frankenstein Laugh.—Spiritual Postage.—A Place where there are
no Butchers or Plumbers.—Idiotic Spasms.
CHAPTER XLIX.
Pilot-Farmers.—Working on Shares.—Consequences.—Men who Stick
to their Posts.—He saw what he would do.—A Day after the Fair.
CHAPTER L.
A Patriarch.—Leaves from a Diary.—A Tongue-stopper.—The Ancient
Mariner.—Pilloried in Print.—Petrified Truth.
CHAPTER LI.
A Fresh "Cub” at the Wheel.—A Valley Storm.—Some Remarks on
Construction.—Sock and Buskin.—The Man who never played
Hamlet.—I got Thirsty.—Sunday Statistics.
CHAPTER LII.
I Collar an Idea.—A Graduate of Harvard.—A Penitent Thief.
—His Story in the Pulpit.—Something Symmetrical.—A Literary Artist.
—A Model Epistle.—Pumps again Working.—The "Nub” of the Note.
CHAPTER LIII.
A Masterly Retreat.—A Town at Rest.—Boyhood’s Pranks.—Friends
of my Youth.—The Refuge for Imbeciles.—I am Presented with
my Measure.
CHAPTER LIV.
A Special Judgment.—Celestial Interest.—A Night of Agony.
—Another Bad Attack.—I become Convalescent.—I address a
Sunday-school.—A Model Boy.
CHAPTER LV.
A second Generation.—A hundred thousand Tons of Saddles.—A Dark
and Dreadful Secret.—A Large Family.—A Golden-haired Darling.
—The Mysterious Cross.—My Idol is Broken.—A Bad Season of
Chills and Fever.—An Interesting Cave.
CHAPTER LVI.
Perverted History—A Guilty Conscience.—A Supposititious Case.
—A Habit to be Cultivated.—I Drop my Burden.—Difference in Time.
CHAPTER LVII.
A Model Town.—A Town that Comes up to Blow in the Summer.
—The Scare-crow Dean.—Spouting Smoke and Flame.—An Atmosphere
that tastes good.—The Sunset Land.
CHAPTER LVIII.
An Independent Race.—Twenty-four-hour Towns.—Enchanting Scenery.
—The Home of the Plow.—Black Hawk.—Fluctuating Securities.
—A Contrast.—Electric Lights.
CHAPTER LIX.
Indian Traditions and Rattlesnakes.—A Three-ton Word.—Chimney
Rock.—The Panorama Man.—A Good Jump.—The Undying Head.
—Peboan and Seegwun.
CHAPTER LX.
The Head of Navigation.—From Roses to Snow.—Climatic Vaccination.
—A Long Ride.—Bones of Poverty.—The Pioneer of Civilization.
—Jug of Empire.—Siamese Twins.—The Sugar-bush.—He Wins his Bride.
—The Mystery about the Blanket.—A City that is always a Novelty.
—Home again.
APPENDIX.
A
B
C
D
THE “BODY OF THE NATION”
BUT the basin of the Mississippi is the
Body of the Nation.
All the other parts are but members, important in themselves, yet
more important in their relations to this. Exclusive of the Lake
basin and of 300,000 square miles in Texas and New Mexico, which
in many aspects form a part of it, this basin contains about
1,250,000 square miles. In extent it is the second great valley
of the world, being exceeded only by that of the Amazon. The
valley of the frozen Obi approaches it in extent; that of La
Plata comes next in space, and probably in habitable capacity,
having about
8⁄9 of its area; then comes that of the
Yenisei, with about
7⁄9;
the Lena, Amoor, Hoang-ho,
Yang-tse-kiang, and Nile,
5⁄9; the Ganges, less than
1⁄2; the Indus, less than
1⁄3; the Euphrates,
1⁄5; the Rhine,
1⁄15.
It exceeds in extent the
whole of Europe, exclusive of Russia, Norway, and Sweden.
It
would contain Austria four times, Germany or Spain five times,
France six times, the British Islands or Italy ten times.
Conceptions formed from the river-basins of Western Europe are
rudely shocked when we consider the extent of the valley of the
Mississippi; nor are those formed from the sterile basins of the
great rivers of Siberia, the lofty plateaus of Central Asia, or
the mighty sweep of the swampy Amazon more adequate. Latitude,
elevation, and rainfall all combine to render every part of the
Mississippi Valley capable of supporting a dense population.
As a dwelling-place for civilized man it is by
far the first upon our globe. —
Editor’s Table,
Harper’s Magazine, February, 1863.
Chapter I
The River and Its History
THE Mississippi is well worth reading about. It is not a
commonplace river, but on the contrary is in all ways remarkable.
Considering the Missouri its main branch, it is the longest river
in the world—four thousand three hundred miles. It seems safe to
say that it is also the crookedest river in the world, since in
one part of its journey it uses up one thousand three hundred
miles to cover the same ground that the crow would fly over in
six hundred and seventy-five. It discharges three times as much
water as the St. Lawrence, twenty-five times as much as the
Rhine, and three hundred and thirty-eight times as much as the
Thames. No other river has so vast a drainage-basin: it draws its
water supply from twenty-eight States and Territories; from
Delaware, on the Atlantic seaboard, and from all the country
between that and Idaho on the Pacific slope—a spread of
forty-five degrees of longitude. The Mississippi receives and
carries to the Gulf water from fifty-four subordinate rivers that
are navigable by steamboats, and from some hundreds that are
navigable by flats and keels. The area of its drainage-basin is
as great as the combined areas of England, Wales, Scotland,
Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Italy, and
Turkey; and almost all this wide region is fertile; the
Mississippi valley, proper, is exceptionally so.
It is a remarkable river in this: that instead of widening
toward its mouth, it grows narrower; grows narrower and deeper.
From the junction of the Ohio to a point half way down to the
sea, the width averages a mile in high water: thence to the sea
the width steadily diminishes, until, at the “Passes,” above the
mouth, it is but little over half a mile. At the junction of the
Ohio the Mississippi’s depth is eighty-seven feet; the depth
increases gradually, reaching one hundred and twenty-nine just
above the mouth.
The difference in rise and fall is also remarkable—not in the
upper, but in the lower river. The rise is tolerably uniform down
to Natchez (three hundred and sixty miles above the mouth)—about
fifty feet. But at Bayou La Fourche the river rises only
twenty-four feet; at New Orleans only fifteen, and just above the
mouth only two and one half.
An article in the New Orleans “Times-Democrat,” based upon
reports of able engineers, states that the river annually empties
four hundred and six million tons of mud into the Gulf of
Mexico—which brings to mind Captain Marryat’s rude name for the
Mississippi—“the Great Sewer.” This mud, solidified, would make
a mass a mile square and two hundred and forty-one feet high.
The mud deposit gradually extends the land—but only
gradually; it has extended it not quite a third of a mile in the
two hundred years which have elapsed since the river took its
place in history. The belief of the scientific people is, that
the mouth used to be at Baton Rouge, where the hills cease, and
that the two hundred miles of land between there and the Gulf was
built by the river. This gives us the age of that piece of
country, without any trouble at all—one hundred and twenty
thousand years. Yet it is much the youthfullest batch of country
that lies around there anywhere.
The Mississippi is remarkable in still another way—its
disposition to make prodigious jumps by cutting through narrow
necks of land, and thus straightening and shortening itself. More
than once it has shortened itself thirty miles at a single jump!
These cut-offs have had curious effects: they have thrown several
river towns out into the rural districts, and built up sand bars
and forests in front of them. The town of Delta used to be three
miles below Vicksburg: a recent cutoff has radically changed the
position, and Delta is now
two miles above
Vicksburg.
Both of these river towns have been retired to the country by
that cut-off. A cut-off plays havoc with boundary lines and
jurisdictions: for instance, a man is living in the State of
Mississippi to-day, a cut-off occurs to-night, and to-morrow the
man finds himself and his land over on the other side of the
river, within the boundaries and subject to the laws of the State
of Louisiana! Such a thing, happening in the upper river in the
old times, could have transferred a slave from Missouri to
Illinois and made a free man of him.
The Mississippi does not alter its locality by cut-offs alone:
it is always changing its habitat bodily—is always moving bodily
sidewise. At Hard Times, La., the river is two miles west of the
region it used to occupy. As a result, the original site of that
settlement is not now in Louisiana at all, but on the other side
of the river, in the State of Mississippi.
Nearly the whole of that
one thousand three hundred miles of old Mississippi River
which La Salle floated down in his canoes, two hundred years
ago, is good solid dry ground now.
The river lies to the right of it,
in places, and to the left of it in other places.
Although the Mississippi’s mud builds land but slowly, down at
the mouth, where the Gulfs billows interfere with its work, it
builds fast enough in better protected regions higher up: for
instance, Prophet’s Island contained one thousand five hundred
acres of land thirty years ago; since then the river has added
seven hundred acres to it.
But enough of these examples of the mighty stream’s
eccentricities for the present—I will give a few more of them
further along in the book.
Let us drop the Mississippi’s physical history, and say a word
about its historical history—so to speak. We can glance briefly
at its slumbrous first epoch in a couple of short chapters; at
its second and wider-awake epoch in a couple more; at its
flushest and widest-awake epoch in a good many succeeding
chapters; and then talk about its comparatively tranquil present
epoch in what shall be left of the book.
The world and the books are so accustomed to use, and
over-use, the word “new” in connection with our country, that we
early get and permanently retain the impression that there is
nothing old about it. We do of course know that there are several
comparatively old dates in American history, but the mere figures
convey to our minds no just idea, no distinct realization, of the
stretch of time which they represent. To say that De Soto, the
first white man who ever saw the Mississippi River, saw it in
1542, is a remark which states a fact without interpreting it: it
is something like giving the dimensions of a sunset by
astronomical measurements, and cataloguing the colors by their
scientific names;—as a result, you get the bald fact of the
sunset, but you don’t see the sunset. It would have been better
to paint a picture of it.
The date 1542, standing by itself, means little or nothing to
us; but when one groups a few neighboring historical dates and
facts around it, he adds perspective and color, and then realizes
that this is one of the American dates which is quite respectable
for age.
For instance, when the Mississippi was first seen by a white
man, less than a quarter of a century had elapsed since Francis I.’s defeat at Pavia; the death of Raphael; the death of Bayard,
sans peur et sans reproche; the driving out of the
Knights-Hospitallers from Rhodes by the Turks; and the placarding
of the Ninety-Five Propositions,—the act which began the
Reformation. When De Soto took his glimpse of the river, Ignatius
Loyola was an obscure name; the order of the Jesuits was not yet
a year old; Michael Angelo’s paint was not yet dry on the Last
Judgment in the Sistine Chapel; Mary Queen of Scots was not yet
born, but would be before the year closed. Catherine de Medici
was a child; Elizabeth of England was not yet in her teens;
Calvin, Benvenuto Cellini, and the Emperor Charles V. were at the
top of their fame, and each was manufacturing history after his
own peculiar fashion; Margaret of Navarre was writing the
“Heptameron” and some religious books,—the first survives, the
others are forgotten, wit and indelicacy being sometimes better
literature preservers than holiness; lax court morals and the
absurd chivalry business were in full feather, and the joust and
the tournament were the frequent pastime of titled fine gentlemen
who could fight better than they could spell, while religion was
the passion of their ladies, and classifying their offspring into
children of full rank and children by brevet their pastime.
In fact, all around, religion was in a peculiarly blooming
condition: the Council of Trent was being called; the Spanish
Inquisition was roasting, and racking, and burning, with a free
hand; elsewhere on the continent the nations were being persuaded
to holy living by the sword and fire; in England, Henry VIII. had
suppressed the monasteries, burnt Fisher and another bishop or
two, and was getting his English reformation and his harem
effectively started. When De Soto stood on the banks of the
Mississippi, it was still two years before Luther’s death; eleven
years before the burning of Servetus; thirty years before the St.
Bartholomew slaughter; Rabelais was not yet published; “Don
Quixote” was not yet written; Shakespeare was not yet born; a
hundred long years must still elapse before Englishmen would hear
the name of Oliver Cromwell.
Unquestionably the discovery of the Mississippi is a datable
fact which considerably mellows and modifies the shiny newness of
our country, and gives her a most respectable outside-aspect of
rustiness and antiquity.
De Soto merely glimpsed the river, then died and was buried in
it by his priests and soldiers. One would expect the priests and
the soldiers to multiply the river’s dimensions by ten—the
Spanish custom of the day—and thus move other adventurers to go
at once and explore it. On the contrary, their narratives when
they reached home, did not excite that amount of curiosity. The
Mississippi was left unvisited by whites during a term of years
which seems incredible in our energetic days. One may “sense” the
interval to his mind, after a fashion, by dividing it up in this
way: After De Soto glimpsed the river, a fraction short of a
quarter of a century elapsed, and then Shakespeare was born;
lived a trifle more than half a century, then died; and when he
had been in his grave considerably more than half a century, the
second white man saw the Mississippi. In our day we don’t allow a
hundred and thirty years to elapse between glimpses of a marvel.
If somebody should discover a creek in the county next to the one
that the North Pole is in, Europe and America would start fifteen
costly expeditions thither: one to explore the creek, and the
other fourteen to hunt for each other.
For more than a hundred and fifty years there had been white
settlements on our Atlantic coasts. These people were in intimate
communication with the Indians: in the south the Spaniards were
robbing, slaughtering, enslaving and converting them; higher up,
the English were trading beads and blankets to them for a
consideration, and throwing in civilization and whiskey, “for
lagniappe;” and in Canada the French were schooling them in a
rudimentary way, missionarying among them, and drawing whole
populations of them at a time to Quebec, and later to Montreal,
to buy furs of them. Necessarily, then, these various clusters of
whites must have heard of the great river of the far west; and
indeed, they did hear of it vaguely,—so vaguely and
indefinitely, that its course, proportions, and locality were
hardly even guessable. The mere mysteriousness of the matter
ought to have fired curiosity and compelled exploration; but this
did not occur. Apparently nobody happened to want such a river,
nobody needed it, nobody was curious about it; so, for a century
and a half the Mississippi remained out of the market and
undisturbed. When De Soto found it, he was not hunting for a
river, and had no present occasion for one; consequently he did
not value it or even take any particular notice of it.
But at last La Salle the Frenchman conceived the idea of
seeking out that river and exploring it. It always happens that
when a man seizes upon a neglected and important idea, people
inflamed with the same notion crop up all around. It happened so
in this instance.
Naturally the question suggests itself, Why did these people
want the river now when nobody had wanted it in the five
preceding generations? Apparently it was because at this late day
they thought they had discovered a way to make it useful; for it
had come to be believed that the Mississippi emptied into the
Gulf of California, and therefore afforded a short cut from
Canada to China. Previously the supposition had been that it
emptied into the Atlantic, or Sea of Virginia.
Chapter 2
The River and Its Explorers
LA SALLE
himself sued for certain high privileges, and they
were graciously accorded him by Louis XIV of inflated memory.
Chief among them was the privilege to explore, far and wide, and
build forts, and stake out continents, and hand the same over to
the king, and pay the expenses himself; receiving, in return,
some little advantages of one sort or another; among them the
monopoly of buffalo hides. He spent several years and about all
of his money, in making perilous and painful trips between
Montreal and a fort which he had built on the Illinois, before he
at last succeeded in getting his expedition in such a shape that
he could strike for the Mississippi.
And meantime other parties had had better fortune. In 1673
Joliet the merchant, and Marquette the priest, crossed the
country and reached the banks of the Mississippi. They went by
way of the Great Lakes; and from Green Bay, in canoes, by way of
Fox River and the Wisconsin. Marquette had solemnly contracted,
on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, that if the Virgin
would permit him to discover the great river, he would name it
Conception, in her honor. He kept his word. In that day, all
explorers traveled with an outfit of priests. De Soto had
twenty-four with him. La Salle had several, also. The expeditions
were often out of meat, and scant of clothes, but they always had
the furniture and other requisites for the mass; they were always
prepared, as one of the quaint chroniclers of the time phrased
it, to “explain hell to the savages.”
On the 17th of June, 1673, the canoes of Joliet and Marquette
and their five subordinates reached the junction of the Wisconsin
with the Mississippi. Mr. Parkman says: “Before them a wide and
rapid current coursed athwart their way, by the foot of lofty
heights wrapped thick in forests.” He continues: “Turning
southward, they paddled down the stream, through a solitude
unrelieved by the faintest trace of man.”
A big cat-fish collided with Marquette’s canoe, and startled
him; and reasonably enough, for he had been warned by the Indians
that he was on a foolhardy journey, and even a fatal one, for the
river contained a demon “whose roar could be heard at a great
distance, and who would engulf them in the abyss where he dwelt.”
I have seen a Mississippi cat-fish that was more than six feet
long, and weighed two hundred and fifty pounds; and if
Marquette’s fish was the fellow to that one, he had a fair right
to think the river’s roaring demon was come.
“At length the buffalo began to appear, grazing in herds on
the great prairies which then bordered the river; and Marquette
describes the fierce and stupid look of the old bulls as they
stared at the intruders through the tangled mane which nearly
blinded them.”
The voyagers moved cautiously: “Landed at night and made a
fire to cook their evening meal; then extinguished it, embarked
again, paddled some way farther, and anchored in the stream,
keeping a man on the watch till morning.”
They did this day after day and night after night; and at the
end of two weeks they had not seen a human being. The river was
an awful solitude, then. And it is now, over most of its
stretch.
But at the close of the fortnight they one day came upon the
footprints of men in the mud of the western bank—a Robinson
Crusoe experience which carries an electric shiver with it yet,
when one stumbles on it in print. They had been warned that the
river Indians were as ferocious and pitiless as the river demon,
and destroyed all comers without waiting for provocation; but no
matter, Joliet and Marquette struck into the country to hunt up
the proprietors of the tracks. They found them, by and by, and
were hospitably received and well treated—if to be received by
an Indian chief who has taken off his last rag in order to appear
at his level best is to be received hospitably; and if to be
treated abundantly to fish, porridge, and other game, including
dog, and have these things forked into one’s mouth by the
ungloved fingers of Indians is to be well treated. In the morning
the chief and six hundred of his tribesmen escorted the Frenchmen
to the river and bade them a friendly farewell.
On the rocks above the present city of Alton they found some
rude and fantastic Indian paintings, which they describe. A short
distance below “a torrent of yellow mud rushed furiously athwart
the calm blue current of the Mississippi, boiling and surging and
sweeping in its course logs, branches, and uprooted trees.” This
was the mouth of the Missouri, “that savage river,” which
“descending from its mad career through a vast unknown of
barbarism, poured its turbid floods into the bosom of its gentle
sister.”
By and by they passed the mouth of the Ohio; they passed
cane-brakes; they fought mosquitoes; they floated along, day
after day, through the deep silence and loneliness of the river,
drowsing in the scant shade of makeshift awnings, and broiling
with the heat; they encountered and exchanged civilities with
another party of Indians; and at last they reached the mouth of
the Arkansas (about a month out from their starting-point), where
a tribe of war-whooping savages swarmed out to meet and murder
them; but they appealed to the Virgin for help; so in place of a
fight there was a feast, and plenty of pleasant palaver and
fol-de-rol.
They had proved to their satisfaction, that the Mississippi
did not empty into the Gulf of California, or into the Atlantic.
They believed it emptied into the Gulf of Mexico. They turned
back, now, and carried their great news to Canada.
But belief is not proof. It was reserved for La Salle to
furnish the proof. He was provokingly delayed, by one misfortune
after another, but at last got his expedition under way at the
end of the year 1681. In the dead of winter he and Henri de
Tonty, son of Lorenzo Tonty, who invented the tontine, his
lieutenant, started down the Illinois, with a following of
eighteen Indians brought from New England, and twenty-three
Frenchmen. They moved in procession down the surface of the
frozen river, on foot, and dragging their canoes after them on
sledges.
At Peoria Lake they struck open water, and paddled thence to
the Mississippi and turned their prows southward. They plowed
through the fields of floating ice, past the mouth of the
Missouri; past the mouth of the Ohio, by-and-by; “and, gliding by
the wastes of bordering swamp, landed on the 24th of February
near the Third Chickasaw Bluffs,” where they halted and built
Fort Prudhomme.
“Again,” says Mr. Parkman, “they embarked; and with every
stage of their adventurous progress, the mystery of this vast new
world was more and more unveiled. More and more they entered the
realms of spring. The hazy sunlight, the warm and drowsy air, the
tender foliage, the opening flowers, betokened the reviving life
of nature.”
Day by day they floated down the great bends, in the shadow of
the dense forests, and in time arrived at the mouth of the
Arkansas. First, they were greeted by the natives of this
locality as Marquette had before been greeted by them—with the
booming of the war drum and the flourish of arms. The Virgin
composed the difficulty in Marquette’s case; the pipe of peace
did the same office for La Salle. The white man and the red man
struck hands and entertained each other during three days. Then,
to the admiration of the savages, La Salle set up a cross with
the arms of France on it, and took possession of the whole
country for the king—the cool fashion of the time—while the
priest piously consecrated the robbery with a hymn. The priest
explained the mysteries of the faith “by signs,” for the saving
of the savages; thus compensating them with possible possessions
in Heaven for the certain ones on earth which they had just been
robbed of. And also, by signs, La Salle drew from these simple
children of the forest acknowledgments of fealty to Louis the
Putrid, over the water. Nobody smiled at these colossal
ironies.
These performances took place on the site of the future town
of Napoleon, Arkansas, and there the first confiscation-cross was
raised on the banks of the great river. Marquette’s and Joliet’s
voyage of discovery ended at the same spot—the site of the
future town of Napoleon. When De Soto took his fleeting glimpse
of the river, away back in the dim early days, he took it from
that same spot—the site of the future town of Napoleon,
Arkansas. Therefore, three out of the four memorable events
connected with the discovery and exploration of the mighty river,
occurred, by accident, in one and the same place. It is a most
curious distinction, when one comes to look at it and think about
it. France stole that vast country on that spot, the future
Napoleon; and by and by Napoleon himself was to give the country
back again!—make restitution, not to the owners, but to their
white American heirs.
The voyagers journeyed on, touching here and there; “passed
the sites, since become historic, of Vicksburg and Grand Gulf,”
and visited an imposing Indian monarch in the Teche country,
whose capital city was a substantial one of sun-baked bricks
mixed with straw—better houses than many that exist there now.
The chiefs house contained an audience room forty feet square;
and there he received Tonty in State, surrounded by sixty old men
clothed in white cloaks. There was a temple in the town, with a
mud wall about it ornamented with skulls of enemies sacrificed to
the sun.
The voyagers visited the Natchez Indians, near the site of the
present city of that name, where they found a “religious and
political despotism, a privileged class descended from the sun, a
temple and a sacred fire.” It must have been like getting home
again; it was home with an advantage, in fact, for it lacked
Louis XIV.
A few more days swept swiftly by, and La Salle stood in the
shadow of his confiscating cross, at the meeting of the waters
from Delaware, and from Itaska, and from the mountain ranges
close upon the Pacific, with the waters of the Gulf of Mexico,
his task finished, his prodigy achieved. Mr. Parkman, in closing
his fascinating narrative, thus sums up:
“On that day, the realm of France received on parchment a
stupendous accession. The fertile plains of Texas; the vast basin
of the Mississippi, from its frozen northern springs to the
sultry borders of the Gulf; from the woody ridges of the
Alleghanies to the bare peaks of the Rocky Mountains—a region of
savannas and forests, sun-cracked deserts and grassy prairies,
watered by a thousand rivers, ranged by a thousand warlike
tribes, passed beneath the scepter of the Sultan of Versailles;
and all by virtue of a feeble human voice, inaudible at half a
mile.”
Chapter 3
Frescoes from the Past
APPARENTLY
the river was ready for business, now. But no, the
distribution of a population along its banks was as calm and
deliberate and time-devouring a process as the discovery and
exploration had been.
Seventy years elapsed, after the exploration, before the
river’s borders had a white population worth considering; and
nearly fifty more before the river had a commerce. Between La
Salle’s opening of the river and the time when it may be said to
have become the vehicle of anything like a regular and active
commerce, seven sovereigns had occupied the throne of England,
America had become an independent nation, Louis XIV. and Louis
XV. had rotted and died, the French monarchy had gone down in the
red tempest of the revolution, and Napoleon was a name that was
beginning to be talked about. Truly, there were snails in those
days.
The river’s earliest commerce was in great barges—keelboats,
broadhorns. They floated and sailed from the upper rivers to New
Orleans, changed cargoes there, and were tediously warped and
poled back by hand. A voyage down and back sometimes occupied
nine months. In time this commerce increased until it gave
employment to hordes of rough and hardy men; rude, uneducated,
brave, suffering terrific hardships with sailor-like stoicism;
heavy drinkers, coarse frolickers in moral sties like the
Natchez-under-the-hill of that day, heavy fighters, reckless
fellows, every one, elephantinely jolly, foul-witted, profane;
prodigal of their money, bankrupt at the end of the trip, fond of
barbaric finery, prodigious braggarts; yet, in the main, honest,
trustworthy, faithful to promises and duty, and often
picturesquely magnanimous.
By and by the steamboat intruded. Then for fifteen or twenty
years, these men continued to run their keelboats down-stream,
and the steamers did all of the upstream business, the
keelboatmen selling their boats in New Orleans, and returning
home as deck passengers in the steamers.
But after a while the steamboats so increased in number and in
speed that they were able to absorb the entire commerce; and then
keelboating died a permanent death. The keelboatman became a deck
hand, or a mate, or a pilot on the steamer; and when
steamer-berths were not open to him, he took a berth on a
Pittsburgh coal-flat, or on a pine-raft constructed in the
forests up toward the sources of the Mississippi.
In the heyday of the steamboating prosperity, the river from
end to end was flaked with coal-fleets and timber rafts, all
managed by hand, and employing hosts of the rough characters whom
I have been trying to describe. I remember the annual processions
of mighty rafts that used to glide by Hannibal when I was a
boy,—an acre or so of white, sweet-smelling boards in each
raft, a crew of two dozen men or more, three or four wigwams
scattered about the raft’s vast level space for
storm-quarters,—and I remember the rude ways and the tremendous
talk
of their big crews, the ex-keelboatmen and their admiringly
patterning successors; for we used to swim out a quarter or third
of a mile and get on these rafts and have a ride.
By way of illustrating keelboat talk and manners, and that
now-departed and hardly-remembered raft-life, I will throw in, in
this place, a chapter from a book which I have been working at,
by fits and starts, during the past five or six years, and may
possibly finish in the course of five or six more. The book is a
story which details some passages in the life of an ignorant
village boy, Huck Finn, son of the town drunkard of my time out
west, there. He has run away from his persecuting father, and
from a persecuting good widow who wishes to make a nice,
truth-telling, respectable boy of him; and with him a slave of
the widow’s has also escaped. They have found a fragment of a
lumber raft (it is high water and dead summer time), and are
floating down the river by night, and hiding in the willows by
day,—bound for Cairo,—whence the negro will seek freedom in the
heart of the free States. But in a fog, they pass Cairo without
knowing it. By and by they begin to suspect the truth, and Huck
Finn is persuaded to end the dismal suspense by swimming down to
a huge raft which they have seen in the distance ahead of them,
creeping aboard under cover of the darkness, and gathering the
needed information by eavesdropping:—
But you know a young person can’t wait very well when he is
impatient to find a thing out. We talked it over, and by and by
Jim said it was such a black night, now, that it wouldn’t be no
risk to swim down to the big raft and crawl aboard and
listen—they would talk about Cairo, because they would be
calculating to go ashore there for a spree, maybe, or anyway they
would send boats ashore to buy whiskey or fresh meat or
something. Jim had a wonderful level head, for a nigger: he could
most always start a good plan when you wanted one.
I stood up and shook my rags off and jumped into the river,
and struck out for the raft’s light. By and by, when I got down
nearly to her, I eased up and went slow and cautious. But
everything was all right—nobody at the sweeps. So I swum down
along the raft till I was most abreast the camp fire in the
middle, then I crawled aboard and inched along and got in amongst
some bundles of shingles on the weather side of the fire. There
was thirteen men there—they was the watch on deck of course. And
a mighty rough-looking lot, too. They had a jug, and tin cups,
and they kept the jug moving. One man was singing—roaring, you
may say; and it wasn’t a nice song—for a parlor anyway. He
roared through his nose, and strung out the last word of every
line very long. When he was done they all fetched a kind of Injun
war-whoop, and then another was sung. It begun:—
“There was a woman in our towdn,
In our towdn did dwed’l (dwell,)
She loved her husband dear-i-lee,
But another man twyste as wed’l.
Singing too, riloo, riloo, riloo,
Ri-too, riloo, rilay—
She loved her husband dear-i-lee,
But another man twyste as wed’l.”
And so on—fourteen verses. It was kind of poor, and when he
was going to start on the next verse one of them said it was the
tune the old cow died on; and another one said, “Oh, give us a
rest.” And another one told him to take a walk. They made fun of
him till he got mad and jumped up and begun to cuss the crowd,
and said he could lame any thief in the lot.
They was all about to make a break for him, but the biggest
man there jumped up and says—
“Set whar you are, gentlemen. Leave him to me; he’s my
meat.”
Then he jumped up in the air three times and cracked his heels
together every time. He flung off a buckskin coat that was all
hung with fringes, and says, “You lay thar tell the chawin-up’s
done;” and flung his hat down, which was all over ribbons, and
says, “You lay thar tell his sufferin’s is over.”
Then he jumped up in the air and cracked his heels together
again and shouted out—
“Whoo-oop! I’m the old original iron-jawed, brass-mounted,
copper-bellied corpse-maker from the wilds of Arkansaw!—Look at
me! I’m the man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation!
Sired by a hurricane, dam’d by an earthquake, half-brother to the
cholera, nearly related to the small-pox on the mother’s side!
Look at me! I take nineteen alligators and a bar’l of whiskey for
breakfast when I’m in robust health, and a bushel of rattlesnakes
and a dead body when I’m ailing! I split the everlasting rocks
with my glance, and I squench the thunder when I speak! Whoo-oop!
Stand back and give me room according to my strength! Blood’s my
natural drink, and the wails of the dying is music to my ear!
Cast your eye on me, gentlemen!—and lay low and hold your
breath, for I’m bout to turn myself loose!”
All the time he was getting this off, he was shaking his head
and looking fierce, and kind of swelling around in a little
circle, tucking up his wrist-bands, and now and then
straightening up and beating his breast with his fist, saying,
“Look at me, gentlemen!” When he got through, he jumped up and
cracked his heels together three times, and let off a roaring
“Whoo-oop! I’m the bloodiest son of a wildcat that lives!”
Then the man that had started the row tilted his old slouch
hat down over his right eye; then he bent stooping forward, with
his back sagged and his south end sticking out far, and his fists
a-shoving out and drawing in in front of him, and so went around
in a little circle about three times, swelling himself up and
breathing hard. Then he straightened, and jumped up and cracked
his heels together three times, before he lit again (that made
them cheer), and he begun to shout like this—
“Whoo-oop! bow your neck and spread, for the kingdom of
sorrow’s a-coming! Hold me down to the earth, for I feel my
powers a-working! whoo-oop! I’m a child of sin, don’t let me get
a start! Smoked glass, here, for all! Don’t attempt to look at me
with the naked eye, gentlemen! When I’m playful I use the
meridians of longitude and parallels of latitude for a seine, and
drag the Atlantic Ocean for whales! I scratch my head with the
lightning, and purr myself to sleep with the thunder! When I’m
cold, I bile the Gulf of Mexico and bathe in it; when I’m hot I
fan myself with an equinoctial storm; when I’m thirsty I reach up
and suck a cloud dry like a sponge; when I range the earth
hungry, famine follows in my tracks! Whoo-oop! Bow your neck and
spread! I put my hand on the sun’s face and make it night in the
earth; I bite a piece out of the moon and hurry the seasons; I
shake myself and crumble the mountains! Contemplate me through
leather—don’t use the naked eye! I’m the man with a petrified
heart and biler-iron bowels! The massacre of isolated communities
is the pastime of my idle moments, the destruction of
nationalities the serious business of my life! The boundless
vastness of the great American desert is my enclosed property,
and I bury my dead on my own premises!” He jumped up and cracked
his heels together three times before he lit (they cheered him
again), and as he come down he shouted out: “Whoo-oop! bow your
neck and spread, for the pet child of calamity’s a-coming!”
Then the other one went to swelling around and blowing
again—the first one—the one they called Bob; next, the Child of
Calamity chipped in again, bigger than ever; then they both got
at it at the same time, swelling round and round each other and
punching their fists most into each other’s faces, and whooping
and jawing like Injuns; then Bob called the Child names, and the
Child called him names back again: next, Bob called him a heap
rougher names and the Child come back at him with the very worst
kind of language; next, Bob knocked the Child’s hat off, and the
Child picked it up and kicked Bob’s ribbony hat about six foot;
Bob went and got it and said never mind, this warn’t going to be
the last of this thing, because he was a man that never forgot
and never forgive, and so the Child better look out, for there
was a time a-coming, just as sure as he was a living man, that he
would have to answer to him with the best blood in his body. The
Child said no man was willinger than he was for that time to
come, and he would give Bob fair warning, now, never to cross his
path again, for he could never rest till he had waded in his
blood, for such was his nature, though he was sparing him now on
account of his family, if he had one.
Both of them was edging away in different directions, growling
and shaking their heads and going on about what they was going to
do; but a little black-whiskered chap skipped up and says—
“Come back here, you couple of chicken-livered cowards, and
I’ll thrash the two of ye!”
And he done it, too. He snatched them, he jerked them this way
and that, he booted them around, he knocked them sprawling faster
than they could get up. Why, it warn’t two minutes till they
begged like dogs—and how the other lot did yell and laugh and
clap their hands all the way through, and shout “Sail in,
Corpse-Maker!” “Hi! at him again, Child of Calamity!” “Bully for
you, little Davy!” Well, it was a perfect pow-wow for a while.
Bob and the Child had red noses and black eyes when they got
through. Little Davy made them own up that they were sneaks and
cowards and not fit to eat with a dog or drink with a nigger;
then Bob and the Child shook hands with each other, very solemn,
and said they had always respected each other and was willing to
let bygones be bygones. So then they washed their faces in the
river; and just then there was a loud order to stand by for a
crossing, and some of them went forward to man the sweeps there,
and the rest went aft to handle the after-sweeps.
I laid still and waited for fifteen minutes, and had a smoke
out of a pipe that one of them left in reach; then the crossing
was finished, and they stumped back and had a drink around and
went to talking and singing again. Next they got out an old
fiddle, and one played and another patted juba, and the rest
turned themselves loose on a regular old-fashioned keel-boat
break-down. They couldn’t keep that up very long without getting
winded, so by and by they settled around the jug again.
They sung “jolly, jolly raftman’s the life for me,” with a
musing chorus, and then they got to talking about differences
betwixt hogs, and their different kind of habits; and next about
women and their different ways: and next about the best ways to
put out houses that was afire; and next about what ought to be
done with the Injuns; and next about what a king had to do, and
how much he got; and next about how to make cats fight; and next
about what to do when a man has fits; and next about differences
betwixt clear-water rivers and muddy-water ones. The man they
called Ed said the muddy Mississippi water was wholesomer to
drink than the clear water of the Ohio; he said if you let a pint
of this yaller Mississippi water settle, you would have about a
half to three-quarters of an inch of mud in the bottom, according
to the stage of the river, and then it warn’t no better than Ohio
water—what you wanted to do was to keep it stirred up—and when
the river was low, keep mud on hand to put in and thicken the
water up the way it ought to be.
The Child of Calamity said that was so; he said there was
nutritiousness in the mud, and a man that drunk Mississippi water
could grow corn in his stomach if he wanted to. He says—
“You look at the graveyards; that tells the tale. Trees won’t
grow worth chucks in a Cincinnati graveyard, but in a Sent Louis
graveyard they grow upwards of eight hundred foot high. It’s all
on account of the water the people drunk before they laid up. A
Cincinnati corpse don’t richen a soil any.”
And they talked about how Ohio water didn’t like to mix with
Mississippi water. Ed said if you take the Mississippi on a rise
when the Ohio is low, you’ll find a wide band of clear water all
the way down the east side of the Mississippi for a hundred mile
or more, and the minute you get out a quarter of a mile from
shore and pass the line, it is all thick and yaller the rest of
the way across. Then they talked about how to keep tobacco from
getting moldy, and from that they went into ghosts and told about
a lot that other folks had seen; but Ed says—
“Why don’t you tell something that you’ve seen yourselves? Now
let me have a say. Five years ago I was on a raft as big as this,
and right along here it was a bright moonshiny night, and I was
on watch and boss of the stabboard oar forrard, and one of my
pards was a man named Dick Allbright, and he come along to where
I was sitting, forrard—gaping and stretching, he was—and
stooped down on the edge of the raft and washed his face in the
river, and come and set down by me and got out his pipe, and had
just got it filled, when he looks up and says—
“Why looky-here," he says, "ain’t that Buck Miller’s place,
over yander in the bend."
“Yes," says I, "it is—why." He laid his pipe down and leant
his head on his hand, and says—
“I thought we’d be furder down." I says—
“I thought it too, when I went off watch”—we was standing
six hours on and six off—“but the boys told me," I says, "that
the raft didn’t seem to hardly move, for the last hour," says I,
"though she’s a slipping along all right, now," says I. He give a
kind of a groan, and says—
“I’ve seed a raft act so before, along here," he says,
"’pears to me the current has most quit above the head of this
bend durin” the last two years," he says.
“Well, he raised up two or three times, and looked away off
and around on the water. That started me at it, too. A body is
always doing what he sees somebody else doing, though there
mayn’t be no sense in it. Pretty soon I see a black something
floating on the water away off to stabboard and quartering behind
us. I see he was looking at it, too. I says—
“What’s that?" He says, sort of pettish,—
“Tain’t nothing but an old empty bar’l."
“An empty bar’l!" says I, "why," says I, "a spy-glass is a
fool to your eyes. How can you tell it’s an empty bar’l?" He
says—
“I don’t know; I reckon it ain’t a bar’l, but I thought it
might be," says he.
“Yes," I says, "so it might be, and it might be anything
else, too; a body can’t tell nothing about it, such a distance as
that," I says.
“We hadn’t nothing else to do, so we kept on watching it. By
and by I says—
“Why looky-here, Dick Allbright, that thing’s a-gaining on
us, I believe."
“He never said nothing. The thing gained and gained, and I
judged it must be a dog that was about tired out. Well, we swung
down into the crossing, and the thing floated across the bright
streak of the moonshine, and, by George, it was bar’l. Says
I—
“Dick Allbright, what made you think that thing was a bar’l,
when it was a half a mile off," says I. Says he—
“I don’t know." Says I—
“You tell me, Dick Allbright." He says—
“Well, I knowed it was a bar’l; I’ve seen it before; lots has
seen it; they says it’s a haunted bar’l."
“I called the rest of the watch, and they come and stood
there, and I told them what Dick said. It floated right along
abreast, now, and didn’t gain any more. It was about twenty foot
off. Some was for having it aboard, but the rest didn’t want to.
Dick Allbright said rafts that had fooled with it had got bad
luck by it. The captain of the watch said he didn’t believe in
it. He said he reckoned the bar’l gained on us because it was in
a little better current than what we was. He said it would leave
by and by.
“So then we went to talking about other things, and we had a
song, and then a breakdown; and after that the captain of the
watch called for another song; but it was clouding up, now, and
the bar’l stuck right thar in the same place, and the song didn’t
seem to have much warm-up to it, somehow, and so they didn’t
finish it, and there warn’t any cheers, but it sort of dropped
flat, and nobody said anything for a minute. Then everybody tried
to talk at once, and one chap got off a joke, but it warn’t no
use, they didn’t laugh, and even the chap that made the joke
didn’t laugh at it, which ain’t usual. We all just settled down
glum, and watched the bar’l, and was oneasy and oncomfortable.
Well, sir, it shut down black and still, and then the wind begin
to moan around, and next the lightning begin to play and the
thunder to grumble. And pretty soon there was a regular storm,
and in the middle of it a man that was running aft stumbled and
fell and sprained his ankle so that he had to lay up. This made
the boys shake their heads. And every time the lightning come,
there was that bar’l with the blue lights winking around it. We
was always on the look-out for it. But by and by, towards dawn,
she was gone. When the day come we couldn’t see her anywhere, and
we warn’t sorry, neither.
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“But next night about half-past nine, when there was songs and
high jinks going on, here she comes again, and took her old roost
on the stabboard side. There warn’t no more high jinks. Everybody
got solemn; nobody talked; you couldn’t get anybody to do
anything but set around moody and look at the bar’l. It begun to
cloud up again. When the watch changed, the off watch stayed up,
“stead of turning in. The storm ripped and roared around all
night, and in the middle of it another man tripped and sprained
his ankle, and had to knock off. The bar’l left towards day, and
nobody see it go.
“Everybody was sober and down in the mouth all day. I don’t
mean the kind of sober that comes of leaving liquor alone—not
that. They was quiet, but they all drunk more than usual—not
together—but each man sidled off and took it private, by
himself.
“After dark the off watch didn’t turn in; nobody sung, nobody
talked; the boys didn’t scatter around, neither; they sort of
huddled together, forrard; and for two hours they set there,
perfectly still, looking steady in the one direction, and heaving
a sigh once in a while. And then, here comes the bar’l again. She
took up her old place. She staid there all night; nobody turned
in. The storm come on again, after midnight. It got awful dark;
the rain poured down; hail, too; the thunder boomed and roared
and bellowed; the wind blowed a hurricane; and the lightning
spread over everything in big sheets of glare, and showed the
whole raft as plain as day; and the river lashed up white as milk
as far as you could see for miles, and there was that bar’l
jiggering along, same as ever. The captain ordered the watch to
man the after sweeps for a crossing, and nobody would go—no more
sprained ankles for them, they said. They wouldn’t even walk aft.
Well then, just then the sky split wide open, with a crash, and
the lightning killed two men of the after watch, and crippled two
more. Crippled them how, says you? Why, sprained their
ankles!
“The bar’l left in the dark betwixt lightnings, towards dawn.
Well, not a body eat a bite at breakfast that morning. After that
the men loafed around, in twos and threes, and talked low
together. But none of them herded with Dick Allbright. They all
give him the cold shake. If he come around where any of the men
was, they split up and sidled away. They wouldn’t man the sweeps
with him. The captain had all the skiffs hauled up on the raft,
alongside of his wigwam, and wouldn’t let the dead men be took
ashore to be planted; he didn’t believe a man that got ashore
would come back; and he was right.
“After night come, you could see pretty plain that there was
going to be trouble if that bar’l come again; there was such a
muttering going on. A good many wanted to kill Dick Allbright,
because he’d seen the bar’l on other trips, and that had an ugly
look. Some wanted to put him ashore. Some said, let’s all go
ashore in a pile, if the bar’l comes again.
“This kind of whispers was still going on, the men being
bunched together forrard watching for the bar’l, when, lo and
behold you, here she comes again. Down she comes, slow and
steady, and settles into her old tracks. You could a heard a pin
drop. Then up comes the captain, and says:—
“Boys, don’t be a pack of children and fools; I don’t want
this bar’l to be dogging us all the way to Orleans, and you
don’t; well, then, how’s the best way to stop it? Burn it
up,—that’s the way. I’m going to fetch it aboard," he says. And
before anybody could say a word, in he went.
“He swum to it, and as he come pushing it to the raft, the men
spread to one side. But the old man got it aboard and busted in
the head, and there was a baby in it! Yes, sir, a stark naked
baby. It was Dick Allbright’s baby; he owned up and said so.
“Yes," he says, a-leaning over it, "yes, it is my own
lamented darling, my poor lost Charles William Allbright
deceased," says he,—for he could curl his tongue around the
bulliest words in the language when he was a mind to, and lay
them before you without a jint started, anywheres. Yes, he said
he used to live up at the head of this bend, and one night he
choked his child, which was crying, not intending to kill
it,—which was prob’ly a lie,—and then he was scared, and buried
it in a bar’l, before his wife got home, and off he went, and
struck the northern trail and went to rafting; and this was the
third year that the bar’l had chased him. He said the bad luck
always begun light, and lasted till four men was killed, and then
the bar’l didn’t come any more after that. He said if the men
would stand it one more night,—and was a-going on like
that,—but the men had got enough. They started to get out a boat
to take him ashore and lynch him, but he grabbed the little child
all of a sudden and jumped overboard with it hugged up to his
breast and shedding tears, and we never see him again in this
life, poor old suffering soul, nor Charles William neither.”
“Who was shedding tears?” says Bob; “was it Allbright or the
baby?”
“Why, Allbright, of course; didn’t I tell you the baby was
dead. Been dead three years—how could it cry?”
“Well, never mind how it could cry—how could it keep all that
time?” says Davy. “You answer me that.”
“I don’t know how it done it,” says Ed. “It done it
though—that’s all I know about it.”
“Say—what did they do with the bar’l?” says the Child of
Calamity.
“Why, they hove it overboard, and it sunk like a chunk of
lead.”
“Edward, did the child look like it was choked?” says one.
“Did it have its hair parted?” says another.
“What was the brand on that bar’l, Eddy?” says a fellow they
called Bill.
“Have you got the papers for them statistics, Edmund?” says
Jimmy.
“Say, Edwin, was you one of the men that was killed by the
lightning.” says Davy.
“Him? O, no, he was both of “em,” says Bob. Then they all
haw-hawed.
“Say, Edward, don’t you reckon you’d better take a pill? You
look bad—don’t you feel pale?” says the Child of Calamity.
“O, come, now, Eddy,” says Jimmy, “show up; you must a kept
part of that bar’l to prove the thing by. Show us the
bunghole—do—and we’ll all believe you.”
“Say, boys,” says Bill, “less divide it up. Thar’s thirteen of
us. I can swaller a thirteenth of the yarn, if you can worry down
the rest.”
Ed got up mad and said they could all go to some place which
he ripped out pretty savage, and then walked off aft cussing to
himself, and they yelling and jeering at him, and roaring and
laughing so you could hear them a mile.
“Boys, we’ll split a watermelon on that,” says the Child of
Calamity; and he come rummaging around in the dark amongst the
shingle bundles where I was, and put his hand on me. I was warm
and soft and naked; so he says “Ouch!” and jumped back.
“Fetch a lantern or a chunk of fire here, boys—there’s a
snake here as big as a cow!”
So they run there with a lantern and crowded up and looked in
on me.
“Come out of that, you beggar!” says one.
“Who are you?” says another.
“What are you after here? Speak up prompt, or overboard you
go.”
“Snake him out, boys. Snatch him out by the heels.”
I began to beg, and crept out amongst them trembling. They
looked me over, wondering, and the Child of Calamity says:—
“A cussed thief! Lend a hand and less heave him
overboard!”
“No,” says Big Bob, “less get out the paint-pot and paint him
a sky blue all over from head to heel, and then heave him over!”
“Good, that’s it. Go for the paint, Jimmy.”
When the paint come, and Bob took the brush and was just going
to begin, the others laughing and rubbing their hands, I begun to
cry, and that sort of worked on Davy, and he says—
“’Vast there! He’s nothing but a cub. I’ll paint the man
that tetches him!”
So I looked around on them, and some of them grumbled and
growled, and Bob put down the paint, and the others didn’t take
it up.
“Come here to the fire, and less see what you’re up to here,”
says Davy. “Now set down there and give an account of yourself.
How long have you been aboard here?”
“Not over a quarter of a minute, sir,” says I.
“How did you get dry so quick?”
“I don’t know, sir. I’m always that way, mostly.”
“Oh, you are, are you. What’s your name?”
I warn’t going to tell my name. I didn’t know what to say, so
I just says—
“Charles William Allbright, sir.”
Then they roared—the whole crowd; and I was mighty glad I
said that, because maybe laughing would get them in a better
humor.
When they got done laughing, Davy says—
“It won’t hardly do, Charles William. You couldn’t have growed
this much in five year, and you was a baby when you come out of
the bar’l, you know, and dead at that. Come, now, tell a straight
story, and nobody’ll hurt you, if you ain’t up to anything wrong.
What is your name?”
“Aleck Hopkins, sir. Aleck James Hopkins.”
“Well, Aleck, where did you come from, here?”
“From a trading scow. She lays up the bend yonder. I was born
on her. Pap has traded up and down here all his life; and he told
me to swim off here, because when you went by he said he would
like to get some of you to speak to a Mr. Jonas Turner, in Cairo,
and tell him—”
“Oh, come!”
“Yes, sir; it’s as true as the world; Pap he says—”
“Oh, your grandmother!”
They all laughed, and I tried again to talk, but they broke in
on me and stopped me.
“Now, looky-here,” says Davy; “you’re scared, and so you talk
wild. Honest, now, do you live in a scow, or is it a lie?”
“Yes, sir, in a trading scow. She lays up at the head of the
bend. But I warn’t born in her. It’s our first trip.”
“Now you’re talking! What did you come aboard here, for? To
steal?”
“No, sir, I didn’t.—It was only to get a ride on the raft.
All boys does that.”
“Well, I know that. But what did you hide for?”
“Sometimes they drive the boys off.”
“So they do. They might steal. Looky-here; if we let you off
this time, will you keep out of these kind of scrapes
hereafter?”
“’Deed I will, boss. You try me.”
“All right, then. You ain’t but little ways from shore.
Overboard with you, and don’t you make a fool of yourself another
time this way.—Blast it, boy, some raftsmen would rawhide you
till you were black and blue!”
I didn’t wait to kiss good-bye, but went overboard and broke
for shore. When Jim come along by and by, the big raft was away
out of sight around the point. I swum out and got aboard, and was
mighty glad to see home again.
The boy did not get the information he was after, but his
adventure has furnished the glimpse of the departed raftsman and
keelboatman which I desire to offer in this place.
I now come to a phase of the Mississippi River life of the
flush times of steamboating, which seems to me to warrant full
examination—the marvelous science of piloting, as displayed
there. I believe there has been nothing like it elsewhere in the
world.
Chapter 4
The Boys” Ambition
WHEN
I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among
my comrades in our
village
on
the west bank of the Mississippi River. That was, to be a
steamboatman. We had transient ambitions of other sorts, but they
were only transient. When a circus came and went, it left us all
burning to become clowns; the first negro minstrel show that came
to our section left us all suffering to try that kind of life;
now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God
would permit us to be pirates. These ambitions faded out, each in
its turn; but the ambition to be a steamboatman always
remained.
Once a day a cheap, gaudy packet arrived upward from St.
Louis, and another downward from Keokuk. Before these events, the
day was glorious with expectancy; after them, the day was a dead
and empty thing. Not only the boys, but the whole village, felt
this. After all these years I can picture that old time to myself
now, just as it was then: the white town drowsing in the sunshine
of a summer’s morning; the streets empty, or pretty nearly so;
one or two clerks sitting in front of the Water Street stores,
with their splint-bottomed chairs tilted back against the wall,
chins on breasts, hats slouched over their faces, asleep—with
shingle-shavings enough around to show what broke them down; a
sow and a litter of pigs loafing along the sidewalk, doing a good
business in watermelon rinds and seeds; two or three lonely
little freight piles scattered about the “levee;” a pile of
“skids” on the slope of the stone-paved wharf, and the fragrant
town drunkard asleep in the shadow of them; two or three wood
flats at the head of the wharf, but nobody to listen to the
peaceful lapping of the wavelets against them; the great
Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi, rolling
its mile-wide tide along, shining in the sun; the dense forest
away on the other side; the “point” above the town, and the
“point” below, bounding the river-glimpse and turning it into a
sort of sea, and withal a very still and brilliant and lonely
one. Presently a film of dark smoke appears above one of those
remote “points;” instantly a negro drayman, famous for his quick
eye and prodigious voice, lifts up the cry, “S-t-e-a-m-boat
a-comin’!” and the scene changes! The town drunkard stirs, the
clerks wake up, a furious clatter of drays follows, every house
and store pours out a human contribution, and all in a twinkling
the dead town is alive and moving.
Drays, carts, men, boys, all
go hurrying from many quarters to a common center, the wharf.
Assembled there, the people fasten their eyes upon the coming
boat as upon a wonder they are seeing for the first time. And the
boat is rather a handsome sight, too. She is long and sharp and
trim and pretty; she has two tall, fancy-topped chimneys, with a
gilded device of some kind swung between them; a fanciful
pilot-house, a glass and “gingerbread’, perched on top of the
“texas” deck behind them; the paddle-boxes are gorgeous with a
picture or with gilded rays above the boat’s name; the boiler
deck, the hurricane deck, and the texas deck are fenced and
ornamented with clean white railings; there is a flag gallantly
flying from the jack-staff; the furnace doors are open and the
fires glaring bravely; the upper decks are black with passengers;
the captain stands by the big bell, calm, imposing, the envy of
all; great volumes of the blackest smoke are rolling and tumbling
out of the chimneys—a husbanded grandeur created with a bit of
pitch pine just before arriving at a town; the crew are grouped
on the forecastle; the broad stage is run far out over the port
bow, and an envied deckhand stands picturesquely on the end of it
with a coil of rope in his hand; the pent steam is screaming
through the gauge-cocks, the captain lifts his hand, a bell
rings, the wheels stop; then they turn back, churning the water
to foam, and the steamer is at rest. Then such a scramble as
there is to get aboard, and to get ashore, and to take in freight
and to discharge freight, all at one and the same time; and such
a yelling and cursing as the mates facilitate it all with! Ten
minutes later the steamer is under way again, with no flag on the
jack-staff and no black smoke issuing from the chimneys. After
ten more minutes the town is dead again, and the town drunkard
asleep by the skids once more.
My father was a justice of the peace, and I supposed he
possessed the power of life and death over all men and could hang
anybody that offended him. This was distinction enough for me as
a general thing; but the desire to be a steamboatman kept
intruding, nevertheless. I first wanted to be a cabin-boy, so
that I could come out with a white apron on and shake a
tablecloth over the side, where all my old comrades could see me;
later I thought I would rather be the deckhand who stood on the
end of the stage-plank with the coil of rope in his hand, because
he was particularly conspicuous. But these were only
day-dreams,—they were too heavenly to be contemplated as real
possibilities. By and by one of our boys went away. He was not
heard of for a long time. At last he turned up as apprentice
engineer or “striker” on a steamboat. This thing shook the bottom
out of all my Sunday-school teachings. That boy had been
notoriously worldly, and I just the reverse; yet he was exalted
to this eminence, and I left in obscurity and misery. There was
nothing generous about this fellow in his greatness. He would
always manage to have a rusty bolt to scrub while his boat
tarried at our town, and he would sit on the inside guard and
scrub it, where we could all see him and envy him and loathe him.
And whenever his boat was laid up he would come home and swell
around the town in his blackest and greasiest clothes, so that
nobody could help remembering that he was a steamboatman; and he
used all sorts of steamboat technicalities in his talk, as if he
were so used to them that he forgot common people could not
understand them. He would speak of the “labboard” side of a horse
in an easy, natural way that would make one wish he was dead. And
he was always talking about “St. Looy” like an old citizen; he
would refer casually to occasions when he “was coming down Fourth
Street,” or when he was “passing by the Planter’s House,” or when
there was a fire and he took a turn on the brakes of “the old Big
Missouri;” and then he would go on and lie about how many towns
the size of ours were burned down there that day. Two or three of
the boys had long been persons of consideration among us because
they had been to St. Louis once and had a vague general knowledge
of its wonders, but the day of their glory was over now. They
lapsed into a humble silence, and learned to disappear when the
ruthless “cub’-engineer approached. This fellow had money, too,
and hair oil. Also an ignorant silver watch and a showy brass
watch chain. He wore a leather belt and used no suspenders. If
ever a youth was cordially admired and hated by his comrades,
this one was. No girl could withstand his charms. He “cut out”
every boy in the village. When his boat blew up at last, it
diffused a tranquil contentment among us such as we had not known
for months. But when he came home the next week, alive, renowned,
and appeared in church all battered up and bandaged, a shining
hero, stared at and wondered over by everybody, it seemed to us
that the partiality of Providence for an undeserving reptile had
reached a point where it was open to criticism.
This creature’s career could produce but one result, and it
speedily followed. Boy after boy managed to get on the river. The
minister’s son became an engineer. The doctor’s and the
post-master’s sons became “mud clerks;” the wholesale liquor
dealer’s son became a barkeeper on a boat; four sons of the chief
merchant, and two sons of the county judge, became pilots. Pilot
was the grandest position of all. The pilot, even in those days
of trivial wages, had a princely salary—from a hundred and fifty
to two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and no board to pay.
Two months of his wages would pay a preacher’s salary for a year.
Now some of us were left disconsolate. We could not get on the
river—at least our parents would not let us.
So by and by I ran away. I said I never would come home again
till I was a pilot and could come in glory. But somehow I could
not manage it. I went meekly aboard a few of the boats that lay
packed together like sardines at the long St. Louis wharf, and
very humbly inquired for the pilots, but got only a cold shoulder
and short words from mates and clerks. I had to make the best of
this sort of treatment for the time being, but I had comforting
daydreams of a future when I should be a great and honored pilot,
with plenty of money, and could kill some of these mates and
clerks and pay for them.
Chapter 5
I Want to be a Cub-pilot
MONTHS
afterward the hope within me struggled to a reluctant
death, and I found myself without an ambition. But I was ashamed
to go home. I was in Cincinnati, and I set to work to map out a
new career. I had been reading about the recent exploration of
the river Amazon by an expedition sent out by our government. It
was said that the expedition, owing to difficulties, had not
thoroughly explored a part of the country lying about the
head-waters, some four thousand miles from the mouth of the
river. It was only about fifteen hundred miles from Cincinnati to
New Orleans, where I could doubtless get a ship. I had thirty
dollars left; I would go and complete the exploration of the
Amazon. This was all the thought I gave to the subject. I never
was great in matters of detail. I packed my valise, and took
passage on an ancient tub called the “Paul Jones,” for New
Orleans. For the sum of sixteen dollars I had the scarred and
tarnished splendors of “her” main saloon principally to myself,
for she was not a creature to attract the eye of wiser
travelers.
When we presently got under way and went poking down the broad
Ohio, I became a new being, and the subject of my own admiration.
I was a traveler! A word never had tasted so good in my mouth
before. I had an exultant sense of being bound for mysterious
lands and distant climes which I never have felt in so uplifting
a degree since. I was in such a glorified condition that all
ignoble feelings departed out of me, and I was able to look down
and pity the untraveled with a compassion that had hardly a trace
of contempt in it. Still, when we stopped at villages and
wood-yards, I could not help lolling carelessly upon the railings
of the boiler deck to enjoy the envy of the country boys on the
bank. If they did not seem to discover me, I presently sneezed to
attract their attention, or moved to a position where they could
not help seeing me. And as soon as I knew they saw me I gaped and
stretched, and gave other signs of being mightily bored with
traveling.
I kept my hat off all the time, and stayed where the wind and
the sun could strike me, because I wanted to get the bronzed and
weather-beaten look of an old traveler. Before the second day was
half gone I experienced a joy which filled me with the purest
gratitude; for I saw that the skin had begun to blister and peel
off my face and neck. I wished that the boys and girls at home
could see me now.
We reached Louisville in time—at least the neighborhood of
it. We stuck hard and fast on the rocks in the middle of the
river, and lay there four days. I was now beginning to feel a
strong sense of being a part of the boat’s family, a sort of
infant son to the captain and younger brother to the officers.
There is no estimating the pride I took in this grandeur, or the
affection that began to swell and grow in me for those people. I
could not know how the lordly steamboatman scorns that sort of
presumption in a mere landsman. I particularly longed to acquire
the least trifle of notice from the big stormy mate, and I was on
the alert for an opportunity to do him a service to that end. It
came at last. The riotous powwow of setting a spar was going on
down on the forecastle, and I went down there and stood around in
the way—or mostly skipping out of it—till the mate suddenly
roared a general order for somebody to bring him a capstan bar. I
sprang to his side and said: “Tell me where it is—I’ll fetch
it!”
If a rag-picker had offered to do a diplomatic service for the
Emperor of Russia, the monarch could not have been more astounded
than the mate was. He even stopped swearing. He stood and stared
down at me. It took him ten seconds to scrape his disjointed
remains together again. Then he said impressively: “Well, if this
don’t beat hell!” and turned to his work with the air of a man
who had been confronted with a problem too abstruse for
solution.
I crept away, and courted solitude for the rest of the day. I
did not go to dinner; I stayed away from supper until everybody
else had finished. I did not feel so much like a member of the
boat’s family now as before. However, my spirits returned, in
installments, as we pursued our way down the river. I was sorry I
hated the mate so, because it was not in (young) human nature not
to admire him. He was huge and muscular, his face was bearded and
whiskered all over; he had a red woman and a blue woman tattooed
on his right arm,—one on each side of a blue anchor with a red
rope to it; and in the matter of profanity he was sublime. When
he was getting out cargo at a landing, I was always where I could
see and hear. He felt all the majesty of his great position, and
made the world feel it, too. When he gave even the simplest
order, he discharged it like a blast of lightning, and sent a
long, reverberating peal of profanity thundering after it. I
could not help contrasting the way in which the average landsman
would give an order, with the mate’s way of doing it. If the
landsman should wish the gang-plank moved a foot farther forward,
he would probably say: “James, or William, one of you push that
plank forward, please;” but put the mate in his place and he
would roar out: “Here, now, start that gang-plank for’ard!
Lively, now! what’re you about! Snatch it! snatch it! There!
there! Aft again! aft again! don’t you hear me. Dash it to dash!
are you going to sleep over it! “vast heaving. “Vast heaving, I
tell you! Going to heave it clear astern? WHERE’re you going with
that barrel! for’ard with it “fore I make you swallow it, you
dash-dash-dash-dashed split between a tired mud-turtle and a
crippled hearse-horse!”
I wished I could talk like that.
When the soreness of my adventure with the mate had somewhat
worn off, I began timidly to make up to the humblest official
connected with the boat—the night watchman. He snubbed my
advances at first, but I presently ventured to offer him a new
chalk pipe; and that softened him. So he allowed me to sit with
him by the big bell on the hurricane deck, and in time he melted
into conversation. He could not well have helped it, I hung with
such homage on his words and so plainly showed that I felt
honored by his notice. He told me the names of dim capes and
shadowy islands as we glided by them in the solemnity of the
night, under the winking stars, and by and by got to talking
about himself. He seemed over-sentimental for a man whose salary
was six dollars a week—or rather he might have seemed so to an
older person than I. But I drank in his words hungrily, and with
a faith that might have moved mountains if it had been applied
judiciously. What was it to me that he was soiled and seedy and
fragrant with gin? What was it to me that his grammar was bad,
his construction worse, and his profanity so void of art that it
was an element of weakness rather than strength in his
conversation? He was a wronged man, a man who had seen trouble,
and that was enough for me. As he mellowed into his plaintive
history his tears dripped upon the lantern in his lap, and I
cried, too, from sympathy.
He said he was the son of an English
nobleman—either an earl or an alderman, he could not remember
which, but believed was both; his father, the nobleman, loved
him, but his mother hated him from the cradle; and so while he
was still a little boy he was sent to “one of them old, ancient
colleges’—he couldn’t remember which; and by and by his father
died and his mother seized the property and “shook” him as he
phrased it. After his mother shook him, members of the nobility
with whom he was acquainted used their influence to get him the
position of “loblolly-boy in a ship;” and from that point my
watchman threw off all trammels of date and locality and branched
out into a narrative that bristled all along with incredible
adventures; a narrative that was so reeking with bloodshed and so
crammed with hair-breadth escapes and the most engaging and
unconscious personal villainies, that I sat speechless, enjoying,
shuddering, wondering, worshipping.
It was a sore blight to find out afterwards that he was a low,
vulgar, ignorant, sentimental, half-witted humbug, an untraveled
native of the wilds of Illinois, who had absorbed wildcat
literature and appropriated its marvels, until in time he had
woven odds and ends of the mess into this yarn, and then gone on
telling it to fledglings like me, until he had come to believe it
himself.
Chapter 6
A Cub-pilot’s Experience
WHAT
with lying on the rocks four days at Louisville, and some
other delays, the poor old “Paul Jones” fooled away about two
weeks in making the voyage from Cincinnati to New Orleans. This
gave me a chance to get acquainted with one of the pilots, and he
taught me how to steer the boat, and thus made the fascination of
river life more potent than ever for me.
It also gave me a chance to get acquainted with a youth who
had taken
deck passage — more’s the pity; for he easily borrowed
six dollars of me on a promise to return to the boat and pay it
back to me the day after we should arrive. But he probably died
or forgot, for he never came. It was doubtless the former, since
he had said his parents were wealthy, and he only traveled deck passage
because it was cooler.
I soon discovered two things. One was that a vessel would not
be likely to sail for the mouth of the Amazon under ten or twelve
years; and the other was that the nine or ten dollars still left
in my pocket would not suffice for so imposing an exploration as
I had planned, even if I could afford to wait for a ship.
Therefore it followed that I must contrive a new career. The
“Paul Jones” was now bound for St. Louis. I planned a siege
against my pilot, and at the end of three hard days he
surrendered. He agreed to teach me the Mississippi River from New
Orleans to St. Louis for five hundred dollars, payable out of the
first wages I should receive after graduating. I entered upon the
small enterprise of “learning” twelve or thirteen hundred miles
of the great Mississippi River with the easy confidence of my
time of life. If I had really known what I was about to require
of my faculties, I should not have had the courage to begin. I
supposed that all a pilot had to do was to keep his boat in the
river, and I did not consider that that could be much of a trick,
since it was so wide.
The boat backed out from New Orleans at four in the afternoon,
and it was “our watch” until eight. Mr. Bixby, my chief,
“straightened her up,” plowed her along past the sterns of the
other boats that lay at the Levee, and then said, “Here, take
her; shave those steamships as close as you’d peel an apple.” I
took the wheel, and my heart-beat fluttered up into the hundreds;
for it seemed to me that we were about to scrape the side off
every ship in the line, we were so close. I held my breath and
began to claw the boat away from the danger; and I had my own
opinion of the pilot who had known no better than to get us into
such peril, but I was too wise to express it. In half a minute I
had a wide margin of safety intervening between the “Paul Jones”
and the ships; and within ten seconds more I was set aside in
disgrace, and Mr. Bixby was going into danger again and flaying
me alive with abuse of my cowardice. I was stung, but I was
obliged to admire the easy confidence with which my chief loafed
from side to side of his wheel, and trimmed the ships so closely
that disaster seemed ceaselessly imminent. When he had cooled a
little he told me that the easy water was close ashore and the
current outside, and therefore we must hug the bank, up-stream,
to get the benefit of the former, and stay well out, down-stream,
to take advantage of the latter. In my own mind I resolved to be
a down-stream pilot and leave the up-streaming to people dead to
prudence.
Now and then Mr. Bixby called my attention to certain things.
Said he, “This is Six-Mile Point.” I assented. It was pleasant
enough information, but I could not see the bearing of it. I was
not conscious that it was a matter of any interest to me. Another
time he said, “This is Nine-Mile Point.” Later he said, “This is
Twelve-Mile Point.” They were all about level with the water’s
edge; they all looked about alike to me; they were monotonously
unpicturesque. I hoped Mr. Bixby would change the subject. But
no; he would crowd up around a point, hugging the shore with
affection, and then say: “The slack water ends here, abreast this
bunch of China-trees; now we cross over.” So he crossed over. He
gave me the wheel once or twice, but I had no luck. I either came
near chipping off the edge of a sugar plantation, or I yawed too
far from shore, and so dropped back into disgrace again and got
abused.
The watch was ended at last, and we took supper and went to
bed. At midnight the glare of a lantern shone in my eyes, and the
night watchman said—
“Come! turn out!”
And then he left. I could not understand this extraordinary
procedure; so I presently gave up trying to, and dozed off to
sleep. Pretty soon the watchman was back again, and this time he
was gruff. I was annoyed. I said:—
“What do you want to come bothering around here in the middle
of the night for. Now as like as not I’ll not get to sleep again
to-night.”
The watchman said—
“Well, if this an’t good, I’m blest.”
The “off-watch” was just turning in, and I heard some brutal
laughter from them, and such remarks as “Hello, watchman! an’t
the new cub turned out yet? He’s delicate, likely. Give him some
sugar in a rag and send for the chambermaid to sing
rock-a-by-baby to him.”
About this time Mr. Bixby appeared on the scene. Something
like a minute later I was climbing the pilot-house steps with
some of my clothes on and the rest in my arms. Mr. Bixby was
close behind, commenting. Here was something fresh—this thing of
getting up in the middle of the night to go to work. It was a
detail in piloting that had never occurred to me at all. I knew
that boats ran all night, but somehow I had never happened to
reflect that somebody had to get up out of a warm bed to run
them. I began to fear that piloting was not quite so romantic as
I had imagined it was; there was something very real and
work-like about this new phase of it.
It was a rather dingy night, although a fair number of stars
were out. The big mate was at the wheel, and he had the old tub
pointed at a star and was holding her straight up the middle of
the river. The shores on either hand were not much more than half
a mile apart, but they seemed wonderfully far away and ever so
vague and indistinct. The mate said:—
“We’ve got to land at Jones’s plantation, sir.”
The vengeful spirit in me exulted. I said to myself, I wish
you joy of your job, Mr. Bixby; you’ll have a good time finding
Mr. Jones’s plantation such a night as this; and I hope you never
will find it as long as you live.
Mr. Bixby said to the mate:—
“Upper end of the plantation, or the lower?”
“Upper.”
“I can’t do it. The stumps there are out of water at this
stage: It’s no great distance to the lower, and you’ll have to
get along with that.”
“All right, sir. If Jones don’t like it he’ll have to lump it,
I reckon.”
And then the mate left. My exultation began to cool and my
wonder to come up. Here was a man who not only proposed to find
this plantation on such a night, but to find either end of it you
preferred. I dreadfully wanted to ask a question, but I was
carrying about as many short answers as my cargo-room would admit
of, so I held my peace. All I desired to ask Mr. Bixby was the
simple question whether he was ass enough to really imagine he
was going to find that plantation on a night when all plantations
were exactly alike and all the same color. But I held in. I used
to have fine inspirations of prudence in those days.
Mr. Bixby made for the shore and soon was scraping it, just
the same as if it had been daylight. And not only that, but
singing—
“Father in heaven, the day is declining,” etc.
It seemed to me that I had put my life in the keeping of a
peculiarly reckless outcast. Presently he turned on me and
said:—
“What’s the name of the first point above New Orleans?”
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I
said I didn’t know.
“Don’t know?”
This manner jolted me. I was down at the foot again, in a
moment. But I had to say just what I had said before.
“Well, you’re a smart one,” said Mr. Bixby. “What’s the name
of the next point?”
Once more I didn’t know.
“Well, this beats anything. Tell me the name of any point or
place I told you.”
I studied a while and decided that I couldn’t.
“Look here! What do you start out from, above Twelve-Mile
Point, to cross over?”
“I—I—don’t know.”
“You—you—don’t know?” mimicking my drawling manner of
speech. “What do you know?”
“I—I—nothing, for certain.”
“By the great Caesar’s ghost, I believe you! You’re the
stupidest dunderhead I ever saw or ever heard of, so help me
Moses! The idea of you being a pilot—you! Why, you don’t know
enough to pilot a cow down a lane.”
Oh, but his wrath was up! He was a nervous man, and he
shuffled from one side of his wheel to the other as if the floor
was hot. He would boil a while to himself, and then overflow and
scald me again.
“Look here! What do you suppose I told you the names of those
points for?”
I tremblingly considered a moment, and then the devil of
temptation provoked me to say:—
“Well—to—to—be entertaining, I thought.”
This was a red rag to the bull. He raged and stormed so (he
was crossing the river at the time) that I judge it made him
blind, because he ran over the steering-oar of a trading-scow. Of
course the traders sent up a volley of red-hot profanity. Never
was a man so grateful as Mr. Bixby was: because he was brim full,
and here were subjects who would talk back. He threw open a
window, thrust his head out, and such an irruption followed as I
never had heard before. The fainter and farther away the
scowmen’s curses drifted, the higher Mr. Bixby lifted his voice
and the weightier his adjectives grew. When he closed the window
he was empty. You could have drawn a seine through his system and
not caught curses enough to disturb your mother with. Presently
he said to me in the gentlest way—
“My boy, you must get a little memorandum book, and every time
I tell you a thing, put it down right away. There’s only one way
to be a pilot, and that is to get this entire river by heart. You
have to know it just like A B C.”
That was a dismal revelation to me; for my memory was never
loaded with anything but blank cartridges. However, I did not
feel discouraged long. I judged that it was best to make some
allowances, for doubtless Mr. Bixby was “stretching.” Presently
he pulled a rope and struck a few strokes on the big bell. The
stars were all gone now, and the night was as black as ink. I
could hear the wheels churn along the bank, but I was not
entirely certain that I could see the shore. The voice of the
invisible watchman called up from the hurricane deck—
“What’s this, sir?”
“Jones’s plantation.”
I said to myself, I wish I might venture to offer a small bet
that it isn’t. But I did not chirp. I only waited to see. Mr.
Bixby handled the engine bells, and in due time the boat’s nose
came to the land, a torch glowed from the forecastle, a man
skipped ashore, a darky’s voice on the bank said, “Gimme de
k’yarpet-bag, Mars” Jones,” and the next moment we were standing
up the river again, all serene. I reflected deeply awhile, and
then said—but not aloud—’Well, the finding of that plantation
was the luckiest accident that ever happened; but it couldn’t
happen again in a hundred years.” And I fully believed it was an
accident, too.
By the time we had gone seven or eight hundred miles up the
river, I had learned to be a tolerably plucky up-stream
steersman, in daylight, and before we reached St. Louis I had
made a trifle of progress in night-work, but only a trifle. I
had a note-book that fairly bristled with the names of towns,
“points,” bars, islands, bends, reaches, etc.; but the
information was to be found only in the notebook—none of it was
in my head. It made my heart ache to think I had only got half of
the river set down; for as our watch was four hours off and four
hours on, day and night, there was a long four-hour gap in my
book for every time I had slept since the voyage began.
My chief was presently hired to go on a big New Orleans boat,
and I packed my satchel and went with him. She was a grand
affair. When I stood in her pilot-house I was so far above the
water that I seemed perched on a mountain; and her decks
stretched so far away, fore and aft, below me, that I wondered
how I could ever have considered the little “Paul Jones” a large
craft. There were other differences, too. The “Paul Jones’s”
pilot-house was a cheap, dingy, battered rattle-trap, cramped for
room: but here was a sumptuous glass temple; room enough to have
a dance in; showy red and gold window-curtains; an imposing sofa;
leather cushions and a back to the high bench where visiting
pilots sit, to spin yarns and “look at the river;” bright,
fanciful “cuspadores” instead of a broad wooden box filled with
sawdust; nice new oil-cloth on the floor; a hospitable big stove
for winter; a wheel as high as my head, costly with inlaid work;
a wire tiller-rope; bright brass knobs for the bells; and a tidy,
white-aproned, black “texas-tender,” to bring up tarts and ices
and coffee during mid-watch, day and night. Now this was
“something like,” and so I began to take heart once more to
believe that piloting was a romantic sort of occupation after
all. The moment we were under way I began to prowl about the
great steamer and fill myself with joy. She was as clean and as
dainty as a drawing-room; when I looked down her long, gilded
saloon, it was like gazing through a splendid tunnel; she had an
oil-picture, by some gifted sign-painter, on every stateroom
door; she glittered with no end of prism-fringed chandeliers; the
clerk’s office was elegant, the bar was marvelous, and the
bar-keeper had been barbered and upholstered at incredible cost.
The boiler deck (i.e. the second story of the boat, so to speak)
was as spacious as a church, it seemed to me; so with the
forecastle; and there was no pitiful handful of deckhands,
firemen, and roustabouts down there, but a whole battalion of
men. The fires were fiercely glaring from a long row of furnaces,
and over them were eight huge boilers! This was unutterable pomp.
The mighty engines—but enough of this. I had never felt so fine
before. And when I found that the regiment of natty servants
respectfully “sir’d” me, my satisfaction was complete.
Chapter 7
A Daring Deed
WHEN
I returned to the pilot-house St. Louis was gone and I
was lost. Here was a piece of river which was all down in my
book, but I could make neither head nor tail of it: you
understand, it was turned around. I had seen it when coming
up-stream, but I had never faced about to see how it looked when
it was behind me. My heart broke again, for it was plain that I
had got to learn this troublesome river both ways.
The pilot-house was full of pilots, going down to “look at the
river.” What is called the “upper river” (the two hundred miles
between St. Louis and Cairo, where the Ohio comes in) was low;
and the Mississippi changes its channel so constantly that the
pilots used to always find it necessary to run down to Cairo to
take a fresh look, when their boats were to lie in port a week;
that is, when the water was at a low stage. A deal of this
“looking at the river” was done by poor fellows who seldom had a
berth, and whose only hope of getting one lay in their being
always freshly posted and therefore ready to drop into the shoes
of some reputable pilot, for a single trip, on account of such
pilot’s sudden illness, or some other necessity. And a good many
of them constantly ran up and down inspecting the river, not
because they ever really hoped to get a berth, but because (they
being guests of the boat) it was cheaper to “look at the river”
than stay ashore and pay board. In time these fellows grew dainty
in their tastes, and only infested boats that had an established
reputation for setting good tables. All visiting pilots were
useful, for they were always ready and willing, winter or summer,
night or day, to go out in the yawl and help buoy the channel or
assist the boat’s pilots in any way they could. They were
likewise welcome because all pilots are tireless talkers, when
gathered together, and as they talk only about the river they are
always understood and are always interesting. Your true pilot
cares nothing about anything on earth but the river, and his
pride in his occupation surpasses the pride of kings.
We had a fine company of these river-inspectors along, this
trip. There were eight or ten; and there was abundance of room
for them in our great pilot-house. Two or three of them wore
polished silk hats, elaborate shirt-fronts, diamond breast-pins,
kid gloves, and patent-leather boots. They were choice in their
English, and bore themselves with a dignity proper to men of
solid means and prodigious reputation as pilots. The others were
more or less loosely clad, and wore upon their heads tall felt
cones that were suggestive of the days of the Commonwealth.
I was a cipher in this august company, and felt subdued, not
to say torpid. I was not even of sufficient consequence to assist
at the wheel when it was necessary to put the tiller hard down in
a hurry; the guest that stood nearest did that when occasion
required—and this was pretty much all the time, because of the
crookedness of the channel and the scant water. I stood in a
corner; and the talk I listened to took the hope all out of me.
One visitor said to another—
“Jim, how did you run Plum Point, coming up?”
“It was in the night, there, and I ran it the way one of the
boys on the "Diana" told me; started out about fifty yards above
the wood pile on the false point, and held on the cabin under
Plum Point till I raised the reef—quarter less twain—then
straightened up for the middle bar till I got well abreast the
old one-limbed cotton-wood in the bend, then got my stern on the
cotton-wood and head on the low place above the point, and came
through a-booming—nine and a half.”
“Pretty square crossing, an’t it?”
“Yes, but the upper bar “s working down fast.”
Another pilot spoke up and said—
“I had better water than that, and ran it lower down; started
out from the false point—mark twain—raised the second reef
abreast the big snag in the bend, and had quarter less
twain.”
One of the gorgeous ones remarked—
“I don’t want to find fault with your leadsmen, but that’s a
good deal of water for Plum Point, it seems to me.”
There was an approving nod all around as this quiet snub
dropped on the boaster and “settled” him. And so they went on
talk-talk-talking. Meantime, the thing that was running in my
mind was, “Now if my ears hear aright, I have not only to get the
names of all the towns and islands and bends, and so on, by
heart, but I must even get up a warm personal acquaintanceship
with every old snag and one-limbed cotton-wood and obscure wood
pile that ornaments the banks of this river for twelve hundred
miles; and more than that, I must actually know where these
things are in the dark, unless these guests are gifted with eyes
that can pierce through two miles of solid blackness; I wish the
piloting business was in Jericho and I had never thought of
it.”
At dusk Mr. Bixby tapped the big bell three times (the signal
to land), and the captain emerged from his drawing-room in the
forward end of the texas, and looked up inquiringly. Mr. Bixby
said—
“We will lay up here all night, captain.”
“Very well, sir.”
That was all. The boat came to shore and was tied up for the
night. It seemed to me a fine thing that the pilot could do as he
pleased, without asking so grand a captain’s permission. I took
my supper and went immediately to bed, discouraged by my day’s
observations and experiences. My late voyage’s note-booking was
but a confusion of meaningless names. It had tangled me all up in
a knot every time I had looked at it in the daytime. I now hoped
for respite in sleep; but no, it reveled all through my head till
sunrise again, a frantic and tireless nightmare.
Next morning I felt pretty rusty and low-spirited. We went
booming along, taking a good many chances, for we were anxious to
“get out of the river” (as getting out to Cairo was called)
before night should overtake us. But Mr. Bixby’s partner, the
other pilot, presently grounded the boat, and we lost so much
time in getting her off that it was plain that darkness would
overtake us a good long way above the mouth. This was a great
misfortune, especially to certain of our visiting pilots, whose
boats would have to wait for their return, no matter how long
that might be. It sobered the pilot-house talk a good deal.
Coming up-stream, pilots did not mind low water or any kind of
darkness; nothing stopped them but fog. But down-stream work was
different; a boat was too nearly helpless, with a stiff current
pushing behind her; so it was not customary to run down-stream at
night in low water.
There seemed to be one small hope, however: if we could get
through the intricate and dangerous Hat Island crossing before
night, we could venture the rest, for we would have plainer
sailing and better water. But it would be insanity to attempt Hat
Island at night. So there was a deal of looking at watches all
the rest of the day, and a constant ciphering upon the speed we
were making; Hat Island was the eternal subject; sometimes hope
was high and sometimes we were delayed in a bad crossing, and
down it went again. For hours all hands lay under the burden of
this suppressed excitement; it was even communicated to me, and I
got to feeling so solicitous about Hat Island, and under such an
awful pressure of responsibility, that I wished I might have five
minutes on shore to draw a good, full, relieving breath, and
start over again. We were standing no regular watches. Each of
our pilots ran such portions of the river as he had run when
coming up-stream, because of his greater familiarity with it; but
both remained in the pilot house constantly.
An hour before sunset, Mr. Bixby took the wheel and Mr.
W——stepped aside. For the next thirty minutes every man held
his watch in his hand and was restless, silent, and uneasy. At
last somebody said, with a doomful sigh—
“Well, yonder’s Hat Island—and we can’t make it.” All the
watches closed with a snap, everybody sighed and muttered
something about its being “too bad, too bad—ah, if we could only
have got here half an hour sooner!” and the place was thick with
the atmosphere of disappointment. Some started to go out, but
loitered, hearing no bell-tap to land. The sun dipped behind the
horizon, the boat went on. Inquiring looks passed from one guest
to another; and one who had his hand on the door-knob and had
turned it, waited, then presently took away his hand and let the
knob turn back again. We bore steadily down the bend. More looks
were exchanged, and nods of surprised admiration—but no words.
Insensibly the men drew together behind Mr. Bixby, as the sky
darkened and one or two dim stars came out. The dead silence and
sense of waiting became oppressive. Mr. Bixby pulled the cord,
and two deep, mellow notes from the big bell floated off on the
night. Then a pause, and one more note was struck. The watchman’s
voice followed, from the hurricane deck—
“Labboard lead, there! Stabboard lead!”
The cries of the leadsmen began to rise out of the distance,
and were gruffly repeated by the word-passers on the hurricane
deck.
“M-a-r-k three!... M-a-r-k three!... Quarter-less three!...
Half twain!... Quarter twain!... M-a-r-k twain!...
Quarter-less—”
Mr. Bixby pulled two bell-ropes, and was answered by faint
jinglings far below in the engine room, and our speed slackened.
The steam began to whistle through the gauge-cocks. The cries of
the leadsmen went on—and it is a weird sound, always, in the
night. Every pilot in the lot was watching now, with fixed eyes,
and talking under his breath. Nobody was calm and easy but Mr.
Bixby. He would put his wheel down and stand on a spoke, and as
the steamer swung into her (to me) utterly invisible marks—for
we seemed to be in the midst of a wide and gloomy sea—he would
meet and fasten her there. Out of the murmur of half-audible
talk, one caught a coherent sentence now and then—such as—
“There; she’s over the first reef all right!”
After a pause, another subdued voice—
“Her stern’s coming down just exactly right, by George!”
“Now she’s in the marks; over she goes!”
Somebody else muttered—
“Oh, it was done beautiful—beautiful!”
Now the engines were stopped altogether, and we drifted with
the current. Not that I could see the boat drift, for I could
not, the stars being all gone by this time. This drifting was the
dismalest work; it held one’s heart still. Presently I discovered
a blacker gloom than that which surrounded us. It was the head of
the island. We were closing right down upon it. We entered its
deeper shadow, and so imminent seemed the peril that I was likely
to suffocate; and I had the strongest impulse to do something,
anything, to save the vessel. But still Mr. Bixby stood by his
wheel, silent, intent as a cat, and all the pilots stood shoulder
to shoulder at his back.
“She’ll not make it!” somebody whispered.
The water grew shoaler and shoaler, by the leadsman’s cries,
till it was down to—
“Eight-and-a-half!.... E-i-g-h-t feet!.... E-i-g-h-t feet!....
Seven-and—”
Mr. Bixby said warningly through his speaking tube to the
engineer—
“Stand by, now!”
“Aye-aye, sir!”
“Seven-and-a-half! Seven feet! Six-and—”
We touched bottom! Instantly Mr. Bixby set a lot of bells
ringing, shouted through the tube, “Now, let her have it—every
ounce you’ve got!” then to his partner, “Put her hard down!
snatch her! snatch her!” The boat rasped and ground her way
through the sand, hung upon the apex of disaster a single
tremendous instant, and then over she went! And such a shout as
went up at Mr. Bixby’s back never loosened the roof of a
pilot-house before!
There was no more trouble after that. Mr. Bixby was a hero
that night; and it was some little time, too, before his exploit
ceased to be talked about by river men.
Fully to realize the marvelous precision required in laying
the great steamer in her marks in that murky waste of water, one
should know that not only must she pick her intricate way through
snags and blind reefs, and then shave the head of the island so
closely as to brush the overhanging foliage with her stern, but
at one place she must pass almost within arm’s reach of a sunken
and invisible wreck that would snatch the hull timbers from under
her if she should strike it, and destroy a quarter of a million
dollars” worth of steam-boat and cargo in five minutes, and maybe
a hundred and fifty human lives into the bargain.
The last remark I heard that night was a compliment to Mr.
Bixby, uttered in soliloquy and with unction by one of our
guests. He said—
“By the Shadow of Death, but he’s a lightning pilot!”
Chapter 8
Perplexing Lessons
AT
the end of what seemed a tedious while, I had managed to
pack my head full of islands, towns, bars, “points,” and bends;
and a curiously inanimate mass of lumber it was, too. However,
inasmuch as I could shut my eyes and reel off a good long string
of these names without leaving out more than ten miles of river
in every fifty, I began to feel that I could take a boat down to
New Orleans if I could make her skip those little gaps. But of
course my complacency could hardly get start enough to lift my
nose a trifle into the air, before Mr. Bixby would think of
something to fetch it down again. One day he turned on me
suddenly with this settler—
“What is the shape of Walnut Bend?”
He might as well have asked me my grandmother’s opinion of
protoplasm. I reflected respectfully, and then said I didn’t know
it had any particular shape. My gunpowdery chief went off with a
bang, of course, and then went on loading and firing until he was
out of adjectives.
I had learned long ago that he only carried just so many
rounds of ammunition, and was sure to subside into a very
placable and even remorseful old smooth-bore as soon as they were
all gone. That word “old” is merely affectionate; he was not more
than thirty-four. I waited. By and by he said—
“My boy, you’ve got to know the shape of the river perfectly.
It is all there is left to steer by on a very dark night.
Everything else is blotted out and gone. But mind you, it hasn’t
the same shape in the night that it has in the day-time.”
“How on earth am I ever going to learn it, then?”
“How do you follow a hall at home in the dark. Because you
know the shape of it. You can’t see it.”
“Do you mean to say that I’ve got to know all the million
trifling variations of shape in the banks of this interminable
river as well as I know the shape of the front hall at home?”
“On my honor, you’ve got to know them better than any man ever
did know the shapes of the halls in his own house.”
“I wish I was dead!”
“Now I don’t want to discourage you, but—”
“Well, pile it on me; I might as well have it now as another
time.”
“You see, this has got to be learned; there isn’t any getting
around it. A clear starlight night throws such heavy shadows that
if you didn’t know the shape of a shore perfectly you would claw
away from every bunch of timber, because you would take the black
shadow of it for a solid cape; and you see you would be getting
scared to death every fifteen minutes by the watch. You would be
fifty yards from shore all the time when you ought to be within
fifty feet of it. You can’t see a snag in one of those shadows,
but you know exactly where it is, and the shape of the river
tells you when you are coming to it. Then there’s your
pitch-dark night; the river is a very different shape on a
pitch-dark
night from what it is on a starlight night. All shores seem to be
straight lines, then, and mighty dim ones, too; and you’d run
them for straight lines only you know better. You boldly drive
your boat right into what seems to be a solid, straight wall (you
knowing very well that in reality there is a curve there), and
that wall falls back and makes way for you. Then there’s your
gray mist. You take a night when there’s one of these grisly,
drizzly, gray mists, and then there isn’t any particular shape to
a shore. A gray mist would tangle the head of the oldest man that
ever lived. Well, then, different kinds of moonlight change the
shape of the river in different ways. You see—”
“Oh, don’t say any more, please! Have I got to learn the shape
of the river according to all these five hundred thousand
different ways? If I tried to carry all that cargo in my head it
would make me stoop-shouldered.”
“No! you only learn the shape of the river, and you learn it
with such absolute certainty that you can always steer by the
shape that’s in your head, and never mind the one that’s before
your eyes.”
“Very well, I’ll try it; but after I have learned it can I
depend on it. Will it keep the same form and not go fooling
around?”
Before Mr. Bixby could answer, Mr. W—— came in to take the
watch, and he said—
“Bixby, you’ll have to look out for President’s Island and all
that country clear away up above the Old Hen and Chickens. The
banks are caving and the shape of the shores changing like
everything. Why, you wouldn’t know the point above 40. You can go
up
inside
the old sycamore-snag, now.
So that question was answered. Here were leagues of shore
changing shape. My spirits were down in the mud again. Two things
seemed pretty apparent to me. One was, that in order to be a
pilot a man had got to learn more than any one man ought to be
allowed to know; and the other was, that he must learn it all
over again in a different way every twenty-four hours.
That night we had the watch until twelve. Now it was an
ancient river custom for the two pilots to chat a bit when the
watch changed. While the relieving pilot put on his gloves and
lit his cigar, his partner, the retiring pilot, would say
something like this—
“I judge the upper bar is making down a little at Hale’s
Point; had quarter twain with the lower lead and
mark twain
with the other.”
“Yes, I thought it was making down a little, last trip. Meet
any boats?”
“Met one abreast the head of 21, but she was away over hugging
the bar, and I couldn’t make her out entirely. I took her for the
"Sunny South”—hadn’t any skylights forward of the
chimneys.”
And so on. And as the relieving pilot took the wheel his
partner
would mention that we were in such-and-such a bend, and
say we were abreast of such-and-such a man’s wood-yard or
plantation. This was courtesy; I supposed it was necessity. But
Mr. W—— came on watch full twelve minutes late on this
particular night,—a tremendous breach of etiquette; in fact, it
is the unpardonable sin among pilots. So Mr. Bixby gave him no
greeting whatever, but simply surrendered the wheel and marched
out of the pilot-house without a word. I was appalled; it was a
villainous night for blackness, we were in a particularly wide
and blind part of the river, where there was no shape or
substance to anything, and it seemed incredible that Mr. Bixby
should have left that poor fellow to kill the boat trying to find
out where he was. But I resolved that I would stand by him any
way. He should find that he was not wholly friendless. So I stood
around, and waited to be asked where we were. But
Mr. W—— plunged on serenely through the solid firmament of black
cats
that stood for an atmosphere, and never opened his mouth. Here is
a proud devil, thought I; here is a limb of Satan that would
rather send us all to destruction than put himself under
obligations to me, because I am not yet one of the salt of the
earth and privileged to snub captains and lord it over everything
dead and alive in a steamboat. I presently climbed up on the
bench; I did not think it was safe to go to sleep while this
lunatic was on watch.
However, I must have gone to sleep in the course of time,
because the next thing I was aware of was the fact that day was
breaking, Mr. W—— gone, and Mr. Bixby at the wheel again. So it
was four o’clock and all well—but me; I felt like a skinful of
dry bones and all of them trying to ache at once.
Mr. Bixby asked me what I had stayed up there for. I confessed
that it was to do Mr. W—— a benevolence,—tell him where he
was. It took five minutes for the entire preposterousness of the
thing to filter into Mr. Bixby’s system, and then I judge it
filled him nearly up to the chin; because he paid me a
compliment—and not much of a one either. He said,
“Well, taking you by-and-large, you do seem to be more
different kinds of an ass than any creature I ever saw before.
What did you suppose he wanted to know for?”
I said I thought it might be a convenience to him.
“Convenience D-nation! Didn’t I tell you that a man’s got to
know the river in the night the same as he’d know his own front
hall?”
“Well, I can follow the front hall in the dark if I know it IS
the front hall; but suppose you set me down in the middle of it
in the dark and not tell me which hall it is; how am I to
know?”
“Well you’ve got to, on the river!”
“All right. Then I’m glad I never said anything to Mr. W——
“
“I should say so. Why, he’d have slammed you through the
window and utterly ruined a hundred dollars” worth of window-sash
and stuff.”
I was glad this damage had been saved, for it would have made
me unpopular with the owners. They always hated anybody who had
the name of being careless, and injuring things.
I went to work now to learn the shape of the river; and of all
the eluding and ungraspable objects that ever I tried to get mind
or hands on, that was the chief. I would fasten my eyes upon a
sharp, wooded point that projected far into the river some miles
ahead of me, and go to laboriously photographing its shape upon
my brain; and just as I was beginning to succeed to my
satisfaction, we would draw up toward it and the exasperating
thing would begin to melt away and fold back into the bank! If
there had been a conspicuous dead tree standing upon the very
point of the cape, I would find that tree inconspicuously merged
into the general forest, and occupying the middle of a straight
shore, when I got abreast of it! No prominent hill would stick to
its shape long enough for me to make up my mind what its form
really was, but it was as dissolving and changeful as if it had
been a mountain of butter in the hottest corner of the tropics.
Nothing ever had the same shape when I was coming downstream that
it had borne when I went up. I mentioned these little
difficulties to Mr. Bixby. He said—
“That’s the very main virtue of the thing. If the shapes
didn’t change every three seconds they wouldn’t be of any use.
Take this place where we are now, for instance. As long as that
hill over yonder is only one hill, I can boom right along the way
I’m going; but the moment it splits at the top and forms a V, I
know I’ve got to scratch to starboard in a hurry, or I’ll bang
this boat’s brains out against a rock; and then the moment one of
the prongs of the V swings behind the other, I’ve got to waltz to
larboard again, or I’ll have a misunderstanding with a snag that
would snatch the keelson out of this steamboat as neatly as if it
were a sliver in your hand. If that hill didn’t change its shape
on bad nights there would be an awful steamboat grave-yard around
here inside of a year.”
It was plain that I had got to learn the shape of the river in
all the different ways that could be thought of,—upside down,
wrong end first, inside out, fore-and-aft, and “thortships,’—and
then know what to do on gray nights when it hadn’t any shape at
all. So I set about it. In the course of time I began to get the
best of this knotty lesson, and my self-complacency moved to the
front once more. Mr. Bixby was all fixed, and ready to start it
to the rear again. He opened on me after this fashion—
“How much water did we have in the middle crossing at
Hole-in-the-Wall, trip before last?”
I considered this an outrage. I said—
“Every trip, down and up, the leadsmen are singing through
that tangled place for three-quarters of an hour on a stretch.
How do you reckon I can remember such a mess as that?”
“My boy, you’ve got to remember it. You’ve got to remember the
exact spot and the exact marks the boat lay in when we had the
shoalest water, in everyone of the five hundred shoal places
between St. Louis and New Orleans; and you mustn’t get the shoal
soundings and marks of one trip mixed up with the shoal soundings
and marks of another, either, for they’re not often twice alike.
You must keep them separate.”
When I came to myself again, I said—
“When I get so that I can do that, I’ll be able to raise the
dead, and then I won’t have to pilot a steamboat to make a
living. I want to retire from this business. I want a
slush-bucket and a brush; I’m only fit for a roustabout. I
haven’t got brains enough to be a pilot; and if I had I wouldn’t
have strength enough to carry them around, unless I went on
crutches.”
“Now drop that! When I say I’ll
learn
a man the river, I mean it. And you
can depend on it, I’ll learn him or kill him.”
Chapter 9
Continued Perplexities
THERE
was no use in arguing with a person like this. I
promptly put such a strain on my memory that by and by even the
shoal water and the countless crossing-marks began to stay with
me. But the result was just the same. I never could more than get
one knotty thing learned before another presented itself. Now I
had often seen pilots gazing at the water and pretending to read
it as if it were a book; but it was a book that told me nothing.
A time came at last, however, when Mr. Bixby seemed to think me
far enough advanced to bear a lesson on water-reading. So he
began—
“Do you see that long slanting line on the face of the water?
Now, that’s a reef. Moreover, it’s a bluff reef. There is a solid
sand-bar under it that is nearly as straight up and down as the
side of a house. There is plenty of water close up to it, but
mighty little on top of it. If you were to hit it you would knock
the boat’s brains out. Do you see where the line fringes out at
the upper end and begins to fade away?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, that is a low place; that is the head of the reef. You
can climb over there, and not hurt anything. Cross over, now, and
follow along close under the reef—easy water there—not much
current.”
I followed the reef along till I approached the fringed end.
Then Mr. Bixby said—
“Now get ready. Wait till I give the word. She won’t want to
mount the reef; a boat hates shoal water. Stand
by—wait—wait—keep her well in hand. Now cramp her down! Snatch
her! snatch her!”
He seized the other side of the wheel and helped to spin it
around until it was hard down, and then we held it so. The boat
resisted, and refused to answer for a while, and next she came
surging to starboard, mounted the reef, and sent a long, angry
ridge of water foaming away from her bows.
“Now watch her; watch her like a cat, or she’ll get away from
you. When she fights strong and the tiller slips a little, in a
jerky, greasy sort of way, let up on her a trifle; it is the way
she tells you at night that the water is too shoal; but keep
edging her up, little by little, toward the point. You are well
up on the bar, now; there is a bar under every point, because the
water that comes down around it forms an eddy and allows the
sediment to sink. Do you see those fine lines on the face of the
water that branch out like the ribs of a fan. Well, those are
little reefs; you want to just miss the ends of them, but run
them pretty close. Now look out—look out! Don’t you crowd that
slick, greasy-looking place; there ain’t nine feet there; she
won’t stand it. She begins to smell it; look sharp, I tell you!
Oh blazes, there you go! Stop the starboard wheel! Quick! Ship up
to back! Set her back!
The engine bells jingled and the engines answered promptly,
shooting white columns of steam far aloft out of the “scape
pipes, but it was too late. The boat had “smelt” the bar in good
earnest; the foamy ridges that radiated from her bows suddenly
disappeared, a great dead swell came rolling forward and swept
ahead of her, she careened far over to larboard, and went tearing
away toward the other shore as if she were about scared to death.
We were a good mile from where we ought to have been, when we
finally got the upper hand of her again.
During the afternoon watch the next day, Mr. Bixby asked me if
I knew how to run the next few miles. I said—
“Go inside the first snag above the point, outside the next
one, start out from the lower end of Higgins’s wood-yard, make a
square crossing and—”
“That’s all right. I’ll be back before you close up on the
next point.”
But he wasn’t. He was still below when I rounded it and
entered upon a piece of river which I had some misgivings about.
I did not know that he was hiding behind a chimney to see how I
would perform. I went gaily along, getting prouder and prouder,
for he had never left the boat in my sole charge such a length of
time before. I even got to “setting” her and letting the wheel
go, entirely, while I vaingloriously turned my back and inspected
the stem marks and hummed a tune, a sort of easy indifference
which I had prodigiously admired in Bixby and other great pilots.
Once I inspected rather long, and when I faced to the front again
my heart flew into my mouth so suddenly that if I hadn’t clapped
my teeth together I should have lost it. One of those frightful
bluff reefs was stretching its deadly length right across our
bows! My head was gone in a moment; I did not know which end I
stood on; I gasped and could not get my breath; I spun the wheel
down with such rapidity that it wove itself together like a
spider’s web; the boat answered and turned square away from the
reef, but the reef followed her! I fled, and still it followed,
still it kept—right across my bows! I never looked to see where
I was going, I only fled. The awful crash was imminent—why
didn’t that villain come! If I committed the crime of ringing a
bell, I might get thrown overboard. But better that than kill the
boat. So in blind desperation I started such a rattling
“shivaree” down below as never had astounded an engineer in this
world before, I fancy. Amidst the frenzy of the bells the engines
began to back and fill in a furious way, and my reason forsook
its throne—we were about to crash into the woods on the other
side of the river. Just then Mr. Bixby stepped calmly into view
on the hurricane deck. My soul went out to him in gratitude. My
distress vanished; I would have felt safe on the brink of
Niagara, with Mr. Bixby on the hurricane deck. He blandly and
sweetly took his tooth-pick out of his mouth between his fingers,
as if it were a cigar—we were just in the act of climbing an
overhanging big tree, and the passengers were scudding astern
like rats—and lifted up these commands to me ever so
gently—
“Stop the starboard. Stop the larboard. Set her back on
both.”
The boat hesitated, halted, pressed her nose among the boughs
a critical instant, then reluctantly began to back away.
“Stop the larboard. Come ahead on it. Stop the starboard. Come
ahead on it. Point her for the bar.”
I sailed away as serenely as a summer’s morning Mr. Bixby came
in and said, with mock simplicity—
“When you have a hail, my boy, you ought to tap the big bell
three times before you land, so that the engineers can get
ready.”
I blushed under the sarcasm, and said I hadn’t had any
hail.
“Ah! Then it was for wood, I suppose. The officer of the watch
will tell you when he wants to wood up.”
I went on consuming and said I wasn’t after wood.
“Indeed? Why, what could you want over here in the bend, then?
Did you ever know of a boat following a bend up-stream at this
stage of the river?”
“No sir,—and I wasn’t trying to follow it. I was getting away
from a bluff reef.”
“No, it wasn’t a bluff reef; there isn’t one within three
miles of where you were.”
“But I saw it. It was as bluff as that one yonder.”
“Just about. Run over it!”
“Do you give it as an order?”
“Yes. Run over it.”
“If I don’t, I wish I may die.”
“All right; I am taking the responsibility.” I was just as
anxious to kill the boat, now, as I had been to save her before.
I impressed my orders upon my memory, to be used at the inquest,
and made a straight break for the reef. As it disappeared under
our bows I held my breath; but we slid over it like oil.
“Now don’t you see the difference? It wasn’t anything but a
wind reef. The wind does that.”
“So I see. But it is exactly like a bluff reef. How am I ever
going to tell them apart?”
“I can’t tell you. It is an instinct. By and by you will just
naturally know one from the other, but you never will be able to
explain why or how you know them apart”
It turned out to be true. The face of the water, in time,
became a wonderful book—a book that was a dead language to the
uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without
reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if
it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read
once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.
Throughout the long twelve hundred miles there was never a page
that was void of interest, never one that you could leave unread
without loss, never one that you would want to skip, thinking you
could find higher enjoyment in some other thing. There never was
so wonderful a book written by man; never one whose interest was
so absorbing, so unflagging, so sparkingly renewed with every
reperusal. The passenger who could not read it was charmed with a
peculiar sort of faint dimple on its surface (on the rare
occasions when he did not overlook it altogether); but to the
pilot that was an italicized passage; indeed, it was more than
that, it was a legend of the largest capitals, with a string of
shouting exclamation points at the end of it; for it meant that a
wreck or a rock was buried there that could tear the life out of
the strongest vessel that ever floated. It is the faintest and
simplest expression the water ever makes, and the most hideous to
a pilot’s eye. In truth, the passenger who could not read this
book saw nothing but all manner of pretty pictures in it painted
by the sun and shaded by the clouds, whereas to the trained eye
these were not pictures at all, but the grimmest and most
dead-earnest of reading-matter.
Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had
come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river
as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a
valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost
something which could never be restored to me while I lived. All
the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic
river! I still keep in mind a certain wonderful sunset which I
witnessed when steamboating was new to me. A broad expanse of the
river was turned to blood; in the middle distance the red hue
brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came floating,
black and conspicuous; in one place a long, slanting mark lay
sparkling upon the water; in another the surface was broken by
boiling, tumbling rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal;
where the ruddy flush was faintest, was a smooth spot that was
covered with graceful circles and radiating lines, ever so
delicately traced; the shore on our left was densely wooded, and
the somber shadow that fell from this forest was broken in one
place by a long, ruffled trail that shone like silver; and high
above the forest wall a clean-stemmed dead tree waved a single
leafy bough that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed splendor
that was flowing from the sun. There were graceful curves,
reflected images, woody heights, soft distances; and over the
whole scene, far and near, the dissolving lights drifted
steadily, enriching it, every passing moment, with new marvels of
coloring.
I stood like one bewitched. I drank it in, in a speechless
rapture. The world was new to me, and I had never seen anything
like this at home. But as I have said, a day came when I began to
cease from noting the glories and the charms which the moon and
the sun and the twilight wrought upon the river’s face; another
day came when I ceased altogether to note them. Then, if that
sunset scene had been repeated, I should have looked upon it
without rapture, and should have commented upon it, inwardly,
after this fashion: This sun means that we are going to have wind
to-morrow; that floating log means that the river is rising,
small thanks to it; that slanting mark on the water refers to a
bluff reef which is going to kill somebody’s steamboat one of
these nights, if it keeps on stretching out like that; those
tumbling “boils” show a dissolving bar and a changing channel
there; the lines and circles in the slick water over yonder are a
warning that that troublesome place is shoaling up dangerously;
that silver streak in the shadow of the forest is the “break”
from a new snag, and he has located himself in the very best
place he could have found to fish for steamboats; that tall dead
tree, with a single living branch, is not going to last long, and
then how is a body ever going to get through this blind place at
night without the friendly old landmark.
No, the romance and the beauty were all gone from the river.
All the value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of
usefulness it could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting
of a steamboat. Since those days, I have pitied doctors from my
heart. What does the lovely flush in a beauty’s cheek mean to a
doctor but a “break” that ripples above some deadly disease. Are
not all her visible charms sown thick with what are to him the
signs and symbols of hidden decay? Does he ever see her beauty at
all, or doesn’t he simply view her professionally, and comment
upon her unwholesome condition all to himself? And doesn’t he
sometimes wonder whether he has gained most or lost most by
learning his trade?
Chapter 10
Completing My Education
WHOSOEVER
has done me the courtesy to read my chapters which
have preceded this may possibly wonder that I deal so minutely
with piloting as a science. It was the prime purpose of those
chapters; and I am not quite done yet. I wish to show, in the
most patient and painstaking way, what a wonderful science it is.
Ship channels are buoyed and lighted, and therefore it is a
comparatively easy undertaking to learn to run them; clear-water
rivers, with gravel bottoms, change their channels very
gradually, and therefore one needs to learn them but once; but
piloting becomes another matter when you apply it to vast streams
like the Mississippi and the Missouri, whose alluvial banks cave
and change constantly, whose snags are always hunting up new
quarters, whose sandbars are never at rest, whose channels are
for ever dodging and shirking, and whose obstructions must be
confronted in all nights and all weathers without the aid of a
single light-house or a single buoy; for there is
neither light
nor buoy
to be found anywhere in all this three or four thousand
miles of villainous river.
I feel justified in enlarging upon
this great science for the reason that I feel sure no one has
ever yet written a paragraph about it who had piloted a steamboat
himself, and so had a practical knowledge of the subject. If the
theme were hackneyed, I should be obliged to deal gently with the
reader; but since it is wholly new, I have felt at liberty to
take up a considerable degree of room with it.
When I had learned the name and position of every visible
feature of the river; when I had so mastered its shape that I
could shut my eyes and trace it from St. Louis to New Orleans;
when I had learned to read the face of the water as one would
cull the news from the morning paper; and finally, when I had
trained my dull memory to treasure up an endless array of
soundings and crossing-marks, and keep fast hold of them, I
judged that my education was complete: so I got to tilting my cap
to the side of my head, and wearing a tooth-pick in my mouth at
the wheel. Mr. Bixby had his eye on these airs. One day he
said—
“What is the height of that bank yonder, at Burgess’s?”
“How can I tell, sir. It is three-quarters of a mile
away.”
“Very poor eye—very poor. Take the glass.”
I took the glass, and presently said—’I can’t tell. I suppose
that that bank is about a foot and a half high.”
“Foot and a half! That’s a six-foot bank. How high was the
bank along here last trip?”
“I don’t know; I never noticed.”
“You didn’t? Well, you must always do it hereafter.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ll have to know a good many things that it tells
you. For one thing, it tells you the stage of the river—tells
you whether there’s more water or less in the river along here
than there was last trip.”
“The leads tell me that.” I rather thought I had the advantage
of him there.
“Yes, but suppose the leads lie? The bank would tell you so,
and then you’d stir those leadsmen up a bit. There was a ten-foot
bank here last trip, and there is only a six-foot bank now. What
does that signify?”
“That the river is four feet higher than it was last
trip.”
“Very good. Is the river rising or falling?”
“Rising.”
“No it ain’t.”
“I guess I am right, sir. Yonder is some drift-wood floating
down the stream.”
“A rise starts the drift-wood, but then it keeps on floating a
while after the river is done rising. Now the bank will tell you
about this. Wait till you come to a place where it shelves a
little. Now here; do you see this narrow belt of fine sediment
That was deposited while the water was higher. You see the
driftwood begins to strand, too. The bank helps in other ways. Do
you see that stump on the false point?”
“Ay, ay, sir.”
“Well, the water is just up to the roots of it. You must make
a note of that.”
“Why?”
“Because that means that there’s seven feet in the chute of
103.”
“But 103 is a long way up the river yet.”
“That’s where the benefit of the bank comes in. There is water
enough in 103 now, yet there may not be by the time we get there;
but the bank will keep us posted all along. You don’t run close
chutes on a falling river, up-stream, and there are precious few
of them that you are allowed to run at all down-stream. There’s a
law of the United States against it. The river may be rising by
the time we get to 103, and in that case we’ll run it. We are
drawing—how much?”
“Six feet aft,—six and a half forward.”
“Well, you do seem to know something.”
“But what I particularly want to know is, if I have got to
keep up an everlasting measuring of the banks of this river,
twelve hundred miles, month in and month out?”
“Of course!”
My emotions were too deep for words for a while. Presently I
said—”
And how about these chutes. Are there many of them?”
“I should say so. I fancy we shan’t run any of the river this
trip as you’ve ever seen it run before—so to speak. If the river
begins to rise again, we’ll go up behind bars that you’ve always
seen standing out of the river, high and dry like the roof of a
house; we’ll cut across low places that you’ve never noticed at
all, right through the middle of bars that cover three hundred
acres of river; we’ll creep through cracks where you’ve always
thought was solid land; we’ll dart through the woods and leave
twenty-five miles of river off to one side; we’ll see the
hind-side of every island between New Orleans and Cairo.”
“Then I’ve got to go to work and learn just as much more river
as I already know.”
“Just about twice as much more, as near as you can come at
it.”
“Well, one lives to find out. I think I was a fool when I went
into this business.”
“Yes, that is true. And you are yet. But you’ll not be when
you’ve learned it.”
“Ah, I never can learn it.”
“I will see that you do.”
By and by I ventured again—
“Have I got to learn all this thing just as I know the rest of
the river—shapes and all—and so I can run it at night?”
“Yes. And you’ve got to have good fair marks from one end of
the river to the other, that will help the bank tell you when
there is water enough in each of these countless places—like
that stump, you know. When the river first begins to rise, you
can run half a dozen of the deepest of them; when it rises a foot
more you can run another dozen; the next foot will add a couple
of dozen, and so on: so you see you have to know your banks and
marks to a dead moral certainty, and never get them mixed; for
when you start through one of those cracks, there’s no backing
out again, as there is in the big river; you’ve got to go
through, or stay there six months if you get caught on a falling
river. There are about fifty of these cracks which you can’t run
at all except when the river is brim full and over the
banks.”
“This new lesson is a cheerful prospect.”
“Cheerful enough. And mind what I’ve just told you; when you
start into one of those places you’ve got to go through. They are
too narrow to turn around in, too crooked to back out of, and the
shoal water is always up at the head; never elsewhere. And the
head of them is always likely to be filling up, little by little,
so that the marks you reckon their depth by, this season, may not
answer for next.”
“Learn a new set, then, every year?”
“Exactly. Cramp her up to the bar! What are you standing up
through the middle of the river for?”
The next few months showed me strange things. On the same day
that we held the conversation above narrated, we met a great rise
coming down the river. The whole vast face of the stream was
black with drifting dead logs, broken boughs, and great trees
that had caved in and been washed away. It required the nicest
steering to pick one’s way through this rushing raft, even in the
day-time, when crossing from point to point; and at night the
difficulty was mightily increased; every now and then a huge log,
lying deep in the water, would suddenly appear right under our
bows, coming head-on; no use to try to avoid it then; we could
only stop the engines, and one wheel would walk over that log
from one end to the other, keeping up a thundering racket and
careening the boat in a way that was very uncomfortable to
passengers. Now and then we would hit one of these sunken logs a
rattling bang, dead in the center, with a full head of steam, and
it would stun the boat as if she had hit a continent. Sometimes
this log would lodge, and stay right across our nose, and back
the Mississippi up before it; we would have to do a little
craw-fishing, then, to get away from the obstruction. We often
hit white logs, in the dark, for we could not see them till we
were right on them; but a black log is a pretty distinct object
at night. A white snag is an ugly customer when the daylight is
gone.
Of course, on the great rise, down came a swarm of prodigious
timber-rafts from the head waters of the Mississippi, coal
barges from Pittsburgh, little trading scows from everywhere, and
broad-horns from “Posey County,” Indiana, freighted with “fruit
and furniture’—the usual term for describing it, though in plain
English the freight thus aggrandized was hoop-poles and pumpkins.
Pilots bore a mortal hatred to these craft; and it was returned
with usury. The law required all such helpless traders to keep a
light burning, but it was a law that was often broken. All of a
sudden, on a murky night, a light would hop up, right under our
bows, almost, and an agonized voice, with the backwoods “whang”
to it, would wail out—
“Whar’n the —— you goin’ to! Cain’t you see nothin’, you
dash-dashed aig-suckin’, sheep-stealin’, one-eyed son of a
stuffed monkey!”
Then for an instant, as we whistled by, the red glare from our
furnaces would reveal the scow and the form of the gesticulating
orator as if under a lightning-flash, and in that instant our
firemen and deck-hands would send and receive a tempest of
missiles and profanity, one of our wheels would walk off with the
crashing fragments of a steering-oar, and down the dead blackness
would shut again. And that flatboatman would be sure to go into
New Orleans and sue our boat, swearing stoutly that he had a
light burning all the time, when in truth his gang had the
lantern down below to sing and lie and drink and gamble by, and
no watch on deck.
Once, at night, in one of those forest-bordered
crevices (behind an island) which steamboatmen intensely describe
with the phrase “as dark as the inside of a cow,” we should have
eaten up a Posey County family, fruit, furniture, and all, but
that they happened to be fiddling down below, and we just caught
the sound of the music in time to sheer off, doing no serious
damage, unfortunately, but coming so near it that we had good
hopes for a moment. These people brought up their lantern, then,
of course; and as we backed and filled to get away, the precious
family stood in the light of it—both sexes and various ages—and
cursed us till everything turned blue. Once a coalboatman sent a
bullet through our pilot-house, when we borrowed a steering oar
of him in a very narrow place.
Chapter 11
The River Rises
DURING
this big rise these small-fry craft were an intolerable
nuisance. We were running chute after chute,—a new world to
me,—and if there was a particularly cramped place in a chute, we
would be pretty sure to meet a broad-horn there; and if he failed
to be there, we would find him in a still worse locality, namely,
the head of the chute, on the shoal water. And then there would
be no end of profane cordialities exchanged.
Sometimes, in the big river, when we would be feeling our way
cautiously along through a fog, the deep hush would suddenly be
broken by yells and a clamor of tin pans, and all in instant a
log raft would appear vaguely through the webby veil, close upon
us; and then we did not wait to swap knives, but snatched our
engine bells out by the roots and piled on all the steam we had,
to scramble out of the way! One doesn’t hit a rock or a solid log
craft with a steamboat when he can get excused.
You will hardly believe it, but many steamboat clerks always
carried a large assortment of religious tracts with them in those
old departed steamboating days. Indeed they did. Twenty times a
day we would be cramping up around a bar, while a string of these
small-fry rascals were drifting down into the head of the bend
away above and beyond us a couple of miles. Now a skiff would
dart away from one of them, and come fighting its laborious way
across the desert of water. It would “ease all,” in the shadow of
our forecastle, and the panting oarsmen would shout, “Gimme a
pa-a-per!” as the skiff drifted swiftly astern. The clerk would
throw over a file of New Orleans journals. If these were picked
up without comment, you might notice that now a dozen other
skiffs had been drifting down upon us without saying anything.
You understand, they had been waiting to see how No. 1 was going
to fare. No. 1 making no comment, all the rest would bend to
their oars and come on, now; and as fast as they came the clerk
would heave over neat bundles of religious tracts, tied to
shingles. The amount of hard swearing which twelve packages of
religious literature will command when impartially divided up
among twelve raftsmen’s crews, who have pulled a heavy skiff two
miles on a hot day to get them, is simply incredible.
As I have said, the big rise brought a new world under my
vision. By the time the river was over its banks we had forsaken
our old paths and were hourly climbing over bars that had stood
ten feet out of water before; we were shaving stumpy shores, like
that at the foot of Madrid Bend, which I had always seen avoided
before; we were clattering through chutes like that of 82, where
the opening at the foot was an unbroken wall of timber till our
nose was almost at the very spot. Some of these chutes were utter
solitudes. The dense, untouched forest overhung both banks of the
crooked little crack, and one could believe that human creatures
had never intruded there before. The swinging grape-vines, the
grassy nooks and vistas glimpsed as we swept by, the flowering
creepers waving their red blossoms from the tops of dead trunks,
and all the spendthrift richness of the forest foliage, were
wasted and thrown away there. The chutes were lovely places to
steer in; they were deep, except at the head; the current was
gentle; under the “points” the water was absolutely dead, and the
invisible banks so bluff that where the tender willow thickets
projected you could bury your boat’s broadside in them as you
tore along, and then you seemed fairly to fly.
Behind other islands we found wretched little farms, and
wretcheder little log-cabins; there were crazy rail fences
sticking a foot or two above the water, with one or two
jeans-clad, chills-racked, yellow-faced male miserables roosting
on the top-rail, elbows on knees, jaws in hands, grinding tobacco
and discharging the result at floating chips through crevices
left by lost teeth; while the rest of the family and the few
farm-animals were huddled together in an empty wood-flat riding
at her moorings close at hand. In this flat-boat the family would
have to cook and eat and sleep for a lesser or greater number of
days (or possibly weeks), until the river should fall two or
three feet and let them get back to their log-cabin and their
chills again—chills being a merciful provision of an all-wise
Providence to enable them to take exercise without exertion. And
this sort of watery camping out was a thing which these people
were rather liable to be treated to a couple of times a year: by
the December rise out of the Ohio, and the June rise out of the
Mississippi. And yet these were kindly dispensations, for they at
least enabled the poor things to rise from the dead now and then,
and look upon life when a steamboat went by. They appreciated the
blessing, too, for they spread their mouths and eyes wide open
and made the most of these occasions. Now what could these
banished creatures find to do to keep from dying of the blues
during the low-water season!
Once, in one of these lovely island chutes, we found our
course completely bridged by a great fallen tree. This will serve
to show how narrow some of the chutes were. The passengers had an
hour’s recreation in a virgin wilderness, while the boat-hands
chopped the bridge away; for there was no such thing as turning
back, you comprehend.
From Cairo to Baton Rouge, when the river is over its banks,
you have no particular trouble in the night, for the
thousand-mile wall of dense forest that guards the two banks all
the way is only gapped with a farm or wood-yard opening at
intervals, and so you can’t “get out of the river” much easier
than you could get out of a fenced lane; but from Baton Rouge to
New Orleans it is a different matter. The river is more than a
mile wide, and very deep—as much as two hundred feet, in places.
Both banks, for a good deal over a hundred miles, are shorn of
their timber and bordered by continuous sugar plantations, with
only here and there a scattering sapling or row of ornamental
China-trees. The timber is shorn off clear to the rear of the
plantations, from two to four miles. When the first frost
threatens to come, the planters snatch off their crops in a
hurry. When they have finished grinding the cane, they form the
refuse of the stalks (which they call bagasse) into great piles
and set fire to them, though in other sugar countries the bagasse
is used for fuel in the furnaces of the sugar mills. Now the
piles of damp bagasse burn slowly, and smoke like Satan’s own
kitchen.
An embankment ten or fifteen feet high guards both banks of
the Mississippi all the way down that lower end of the river, and
this embankment is set back from the edge of the shore from ten
to perhaps a hundred feet, according to circumstances; say thirty
or forty feet, as a general thing. Fill that whole region with an
impenetrable gloom of smoke from a hundred miles of burning
bagasse piles, when the river is over the banks, and turn a
steamboat loose along there at midnight and see how she will
feel. And see how you will feel, too! You find yourself away out
in the midst of a vague dim sea that is shoreless, that fades out
and loses itself in the murky distances; for you cannot discern
the thin rib of embankment, and you are always imagining you see
a straggling tree when you don’t. The plantations themselves are
transformed by the smoke, and look like a part of the sea. All
through your watch you are tortured with the exquisite misery of
uncertainty. You hope you are keeping in the river, but you do
not know. All that you are sure about is that you are likely to
be within six feet of the bank and destruction, when you think
you are a good half-mile from shore. And you are sure, also, that
if you chance suddenly to fetch up against the embankment and
topple your chimneys overboard, you will have the small comfort
of knowing that it is about what you were expecting to do. One of
the great Vicksburg packets darted out into a sugar plantation
one night, at such a time, and had to stay there a week. But
there was no novelty about it; it had often been done before.
I thought I had finished this chapter, but I wish to add a
curious thing, while it is in my mind. It is only relevant in
that it is connected with piloting. There used to be an excellent
pilot on the river, a Mr. X., who was a somnambulist. It was said
that if his mind was troubled about a bad piece of river, he was
pretty sure to get up and walk in his sleep and do strange
things. He was once fellow-pilot for a trip or two with George
Ealer, on a great New Orleans passenger packet. During a
considerable part of the first trip George was uneasy, but got
over it by and by, as X. seemed content to stay in his bed when
asleep. Late one night the boat was approaching Helena, Arkansas;
the water was low, and the crossing above the town in a very
blind and tangled condition. X. had seen the crossing since Ealer
had, and as the night was particularly drizzly, sullen, and dark,
Ealer was considering whether he had not better have X. called to
assist in running the place, when the door opened and X. walked
in. Now on very dark nights, light is a deadly enemy to piloting;
you are aware that if you stand in a lighted room, on such a
night, you cannot see things in the street to any purpose; but if
you put out the lights and stand in the gloom you can make out
objects in the street pretty well. So, on very dark nights,
pilots do not smoke; they allow no fire in the pilot-house stove
if there is a crack which can allow the least ray to escape; they
order the furnaces to be curtained with huge tarpaulins and the
sky-lights to be closely blinded. Then no light whatever issues
from the boat. The undefinable shape that now entered the
pilot-house had Mr. X.’s voice. This said—
“Let me take her, George; I’ve seen this place since you have,
and it is so crooked that I reckon I can run it myself easier
than I could tell you how to do it.”
“It is kind of you, and I swear _I_ am willing. I haven’t got
another drop of perspiration left in me. I have been spinning
around and around the wheel like a squirrel. It is so dark I
can’t tell which way she is swinging till she is coming around
like a whirligig.”
So Ealer took a seat on the bench, panting and breathless. The
black phantom assumed the wheel without saying anything, steadied
the waltzing steamer with a turn or two, and then stood at ease,
coaxing her a little to this side and then to that, as gently and
as sweetly as if the time had been noonday. When Ealer observed
this marvel of steering, he wished he had not confessed! He
stared, and wondered, and finally said—
“Well, I thought I knew how to steer a steamboat, but that was
another mistake of mine.”
X. said nothing, but went serenely on with his work. He rang
for the leads; he rang to slow down the steam; he worked the boat
carefully and neatly into invisible marks, then stood at the
center of the wheel and peered blandly out into the blackness,
fore and aft, to verify his position; as the leads shoaled more
and more, he stopped the engines entirely, and the dead silence
and suspense of “drifting” followed when the shoalest water was
struck, he cracked on the steam, carried her handsomely over, and
then began to work her warily into the next system of shoal
marks; the same patient, heedful use of leads and engines
followed, the boat slipped through without touching bottom, and
entered upon the third and last intricacy of the crossing;
imperceptibly she moved through the gloom, crept by inches into
her marks, drifted tediously till the shoalest water was cried,
and then, under a tremendous head of steam, went swinging over
the reef and away into deep water and safety!
Ealer let his long-pent breath pour out in a great, relieving
sigh, and said—
“That’s the sweetest piece of piloting that was ever done on
the Mississippi River! I wouldn’t believed it could be done, if I
hadn’t seen it.”
There was no reply, and he added—
“Just hold her five minutes longer, partner, and let me run
down and get a cup of coffee.”
A minute later Ealer was biting into a pie, down in the
“texas,” and comforting himself with coffee. Just then the night
watchman happened in, and was about to happen out again, when he
noticed Ealer and exclaimed—
“Who is at the wheel, sir?”
“X.”
“Dart for the pilot-house, quicker than lightning!”
The next moment both men were flying up the pilot-house
companion way, three steps at a jump! Nobody there! The great
steamer was whistling down the middle of the river at her own
sweet will! The watchman shot out of the place again; Ealer
seized the wheel, set an engine back with power, and held his
breath while the boat reluctantly swung away from a “towhead”
which she was about to knock into the middle of the Gulf of
Mexico!
By and by the watchman came back and said—
“Didn’t that lunatic tell you he was asleep, when he first
came up here?”
“No.”
“Well, he was. I found him walking along on top of the
railings just as unconcerned as another man would walk a
pavement; and I put him to bed; now just this minute there he was
again, away astern, going through that sort of tight-rope
deviltry the same as before.”
“Well, I think I’ll stay by, next time he has one of those
fits. But I hope he’ll have them often. You just ought to have
seen him take this boat through Helena crossing. I never saw
anything so gaudy before. And if he can do such gold-leaf,
kid-glove, diamond-breastpin piloting when he is sound asleep,
what couldn’t he do if he was dead!”
Chapter 12
Sounding
WHEN
the river is very low, and one’s steamboat is “drawing
all the water” there is in the channel,—or a few inches more, as
was often the case in the old times,—one must be painfully
circumspect in his piloting. We used to have to “sound” a number
of particularly bad places almost every trip when the river was
at a very low stage.
Sounding is done in this way. The boat ties up at the shore,
just above the shoal crossing; the pilot not on watch takes his
“cub” or steersman and a picked crew of men (sometimes an officer
also), and goes out in the yawl—provided the boat has not that
rare and sumptuous luxury, a regularly-devised
“sounding-boat’—and proceeds to hunt for the best water, the
pilot on duty watching his movements through a spy-glass,
meantime, and in some instances assisting by signals of the
boat’s whistle, signifying “try higher up” or “try lower down;”
for the surface of the water, like an oil-painting, is more
expressive and intelligible when inspected from a little distance
than very close at hand. The whistle signals are seldom
necessary, however; never, perhaps, except when the wind confuses
the significant ripples upon the water’s surface. When the yawl
has reached the shoal place, the speed is slackened, the pilot
begins to sound the depth with a pole ten or twelve feet long,
and the steersman at the tiller obeys the order to “hold her up
to starboard;” or, “let her fall off to
larboard;”
or
“steady—steady as you go.”
When the measurements indicate that the yawl is approaching
the shoalest part of the reef, the command is given to “ease
all!” Then the men stop rowing and the yawl drifts with the
current. The next order is, “Stand by with the buoy!” The moment
the shallowest point is reached, the pilot delivers the order,
“Let go the buoy!” and over she goes. If the pilot is not
satisfied, he sounds the place again; if he finds better water
higher up or lower down, he removes the buoy to that place. Being
finally satisfied, he gives the order, and all the men stand
their oars straight up in the air, in line; a blast from the
boat’s whistle indicates that the signal has been seen; then the
men “give way” on their oars and lay the yawl alongside the buoy;
the steamer comes creeping carefully down, is pointed straight at
the buoy, husbands her power for the coming struggle, and
presently, at the critical moment, turns on all her steam and
goes grinding and wallowing over the buoy and the sand, and gains
the deep water beyond. Or maybe she doesn’t; maybe she “strikes
and swings.” Then she has to while away several hours (or days)
sparring herself off.
Sometimes a buoy is not laid at all, but the yawl goes ahead,
hunting the best water, and the steamer follows along in its
wake. Often there is a deal of fun and excitement about sounding,
especially if it is a glorious summer day, or a blustering night.
But in winter the cold and the peril take most of the fun out of
it.
A buoy is nothing but a board four or five feet long, with one
end turned up; it is a reversed school-house bench, with one of
the supports left and the other removed. It is anchored on the
shoalest part of the reef by a rope with a heavy stone made fast
to the end of it. But for the resistance of the turned-up end of
the reversed bench, the current would pull the buoy under water.
At night, a paper lantern with a candle in it is fastened on top
of the buoy, and this can be seen a mile or more, a little
glimmering spark in the waste of blackness.
Nothing delights a cub so much as an opportunity to go out
sounding. There is such an air of adventure about it; often there
is danger; it is so gaudy and man-of-war-like to sit up in the
stern-sheets and steer a swift yawl; there is something fine
about the exultant spring of the boat when an experienced old
sailor crew throw their souls into the oars; it is lovely to see
the white foam stream away from the bows; there is music in the
rush of the water; it is deliciously exhilarating, in summer, to
go speeding over the breezy expanses of the river when the world
of wavelets is dancing in the sun. It is such grandeur, too, to
the cub, to get a chance to give an order; for often the pilot
will simply say, “Let her go about!” and leave the rest to the
cub, who instantly cries, in his sternest tone of command, “Ease
starboard! Strong on the larboard! Starboard give way! With a
will, men!” The cub enjoys sounding for the further reason that
the eyes of the passengers are watching all the yawl’s movements
with absorbing interest if the time be daylight; and if it be
night he knows that those same wondering eyes are fastened upon
the yawl’s lantern as it glides out into the gloom and dims away
in the remote distance.
One trip a pretty girl of sixteen spent her time in our
pilot-house with her uncle and aunt, every day and all day long.
I fell in love with her. So did Mr. Thornburg’s cub, Tom G——.
Tom and I had been bosom friends until this time; but now a
coolness began to arise. I told the girl a good many of my river
adventures, and made myself out a good deal of a hero; Tom tried
to make himself appear to be a hero, too, and succeeded to some
extent, but then he always had a way of embroidering. However,
virtue is its own reward, so I was a barely perceptible trifle
ahead in the contest. About this time something happened which
promised handsomely for me: the pilots decided to sound the
crossing at the head of 21. This would occur about nine or ten
o’clock at night, when the passengers would be still up; it would
be Mr. Thornburg’s watch, therefore my chief would have to do the
sounding. We had a perfect love of a sounding-boat—long, trim,
graceful, and as fleet as a greyhound; her thwarts were
cushioned; she carried twelve oarsmen; one of the mates was
always sent in her to transmit orders to her crew, for ours was a
steamer where no end of “style” was put on.
We tied up at the shore above 21, and got ready. It was a foul
night, and the river was so wide, there, that a landsman’s
uneducated eyes could discern no opposite shore through such a
gloom. The passengers were alert and interested; everything was
satisfactory. As I hurried through the engine-room, picturesquely
gotten up in storm toggery, I met Tom, and could not forbear
delivering myself of a mean speech—
“Ain’t you glad you don’t have to go out sounding?”
Tom was passing on, but he quickly turned, and said—
“Now just for that, you can go and get the sounding-pole
yourself. I was going after it, but I’d see you in Halifax, now,
before I’d do it.”
“Who wants you to get it? I don’t. It’s in the
sounding-boat.”
“It ain’t, either. It’s been new-painted; and it’s been up on
the ladies” cabin guards two days, drying.”
I flew back, and shortly arrived among the crowd of watching
and wondering ladies just in time to hear the command:
“Give way, men!”
I looked over, and there was the gallant sounding-boat booming
away, the unprincipled Tom presiding at the tiller, and my chief
sitting by him with the sounding-pole which I had been sent on a
fool’s errand to fetch. Then that young girl said to me—
“Oh, how awful to have to go out in that little boat on such a
night! Do you think there is any danger?”
I would rather have been stabbed. I went off, full of venom,
to help in the pilot-house. By and by the boat’s lantern
disappeared, and after an interval a wee spark glimmered upon the
face of the water a mile away. Mr. Thornburg blew the whistle, in
acknowledgment, backed the steamer out, and made for it. We flew
along for a while, then slackened steam and went cautiously
gliding toward the spark. Presently Mr. Thornburg exclaimed—
“Hello, the buoy-lantern’s out!”
He stopped the engines. A moment or two later he said—
“Why, there it is again!”
So he came ahead on the engines once more, and rang for the
leads. Gradually the water shoaled up, and then began to deepen
again! Mr. Thornburg muttered—
“Well, I don’t understand this. I believe that buoy has
drifted off the reef. Seems to be a little too far to the left.
No matter, it is safest to run over it anyhow.”
So, in that solid world of darkness we went creeping down on
the light. Just as our bows were in the act of plowing over it,
Mr. Thornburg seized the bell-ropes, rang a startling peal, and
exclaimed—
“My soul, it’s the sounding-boat!”
A sudden chorus of wild alarms burst out far below—a
pause—and then the sound of grinding and crashing followed. Mr.
Thornburg exclaimed—
“There! the paddle-wheel has ground the sounding-boat to
lucifer matches! Run! See who is killed!”
I was on the main deck in the twinkling of an eye. My chief
and the third mate and nearly all the men were safe. They had
discovered their danger when it was too late to pull out of the
way; then, when the great guards overshadowed them a moment
later, they were prepared and knew what to do; at my chiefs order
they sprang at the right instant, seized the guard, and were
hauled aboard. The next moment the sounding-yawl swept aft to the
wheel and was struck and splintered to atoms. Two of the men and
the cub Tom, were missing—a fact which spread like wildfire over
the boat. The passengers came flocking to the forward gangway,
ladies and all, anxious-eyed, white-faced, and talked in awed
voices of the dreadful thing. And often and again I heard them
say, “Poor fellows! poor boy, poor boy!”
By this time the boat’s yawl was manned and away, to search
for the missing. Now a faint call was heard, off to the left. The
yawl had disappeared in the other direction. Half the people
rushed to one side to encourage the swimmer with their shouts;
the other half rushed the other way to shriek to the yawl to turn
about. By the callings, the swimmer was approaching, but some
said the sound showed failing strength. The crowd massed
themselves against the boiler-deck railings, leaning over and
staring into the gloom; and every faint and fainter cry wrung
from them such words as, “Ah, poor fellow, poor fellow! is there
no way to save him?”
But still the cries held out, and drew nearer, and presently
the voice said pluckily—
“I can make it! Stand by with a rope!”
What a rousing cheer they gave him! The chief mate took his
stand in the glare of a torch-basket, a coil of rope in his hand,
and his men grouped about him. The next moment the swimmer’s face
appeared in the circle of light, and in another one the owner of
it was hauled aboard, limp and drenched, while cheer on cheer
went up. It was that devil Tom.
The yawl crew searched everywhere, but found no sign of the
two men. They probably failed to catch the guard, tumbled back,
and were struck by the wheel and killed. Tom had never jumped for
the guard at all, but had plunged head-first into the river and
dived under the wheel. It was nothing; I could have done it easy
enough, and I said so; but everybody went on just the same,
making a wonderful to do over that ass, as if he had done
something great. That girl couldn’t seem to have enough of that
pitiful “hero” the rest of the trip; but little I cared; I
loathed her, any way.
The way we came to mistake the sounding-boat’s lantern for the
buoy-light was this. My chief said that after laying the buoy he
fell away and watched it till it seemed to be secure; then he
took up a position a hundred yards below it and a little to one
side of the steamer’s course, headed the sounding-boat up-stream,
and waited. Having to wait some time, he and the officer got to
talking; he looked up when he judged that the steamer was about
on the reef; saw that the buoy was gone, but supposed that the
steamer had already run over it; he went on with his talk; he
noticed that the steamer was getting very close on him, but that
was the correct thing; it was her business to shave him closely,
for convenience in taking him aboard; he was expecting her to
sheer off, until the last moment; then it flashed upon him that
she was trying to run him down, mistaking his lantern for the
buoy-light; so he sang out, “Stand by to spring for the guard,
men!” and the next instant the jump was made.
Chapter 13
A Pilot’s Needs
BUT
I am wandering from what I was intending to do, that is,
make plainer than perhaps appears in the previous chapters, some
of the peculiar requirements of the science of piloting. First of
all, there is one faculty which a pilot must incessantly
cultivate until he has brought it to absolute perfection. Nothing
short of perfection will do. That faculty is memory. He cannot
stop with merely thinking a thing is so and so; he must know it;
for this is eminently one of the “exact” sciences. With what
scorn a pilot was looked upon, in the old times, if he ever
ventured to deal in that feeble phrase “I think,” instead of the
vigorous one “I know!” One cannot easily realize what a
tremendous thing it is to know every trivial detail of twelve
hundred miles of river and know it with absolute exactness. If
you will take the longest street in New York, and travel up and
down it, conning its features patiently until you know every
house and window and door and lamp-post and big and little sign
by heart, and know them so accurately that you can instantly name
the one you are abreast of when you are set down at random in
that street in the middle of an inky black night, you will then
have a tolerable notion of the amount and the exactness of a
pilot’s knowledge who carries the Mississippi River in his head.
And then if you will go on until you know every street crossing,
the character, size, and position of the crossing-stones, and the
varying depth of mud in each of those numberless places, you will
have some idea of what the pilot must know in order to keep a
Mississippi steamer out of trouble. Next, if you will take half
of the signs in that long street, and change their places once a
month, and still manage to know their new positions accurately on
dark nights, and keep up with these repeated changes without
making any mistakes, you will understand what is required of a
pilot’s peerless memory by the fickle Mississippi.
I think a pilot’s memory is about the most wonderful thing in
the world. To know the Old and New Testaments by heart, and be
able to recite them glibly, forward or backward, or begin at
random anywhere in the book and recite both ways and never trip
or make a mistake, is no extravagant mass of knowledge, and no
marvelous facility, compared to a pilot’s massed knowledge of the
Mississippi and his marvelous facility in the handling of it. I
make this comparison deliberately, and believe I am not expanding
the truth when I do it. Many will think my figure too strong, but
pilots will not.
And how easily and comfortably the pilot’s memory does its
work; how placidly effortless is its way; how unconsciously it
lays up its vast stores, hour by hour, day by day, and never
loses or mislays a single valuable package of them all! Take an
instance. Let a leadsman cry, “Half twain! half twain! half
twain! half twain! half twain!” until it become as monotonous as
the ticking of a clock; let conversation be going on all the
time, and the pilot be doing his share of the talking, and no
longer consciously listening to the leadsman; and in the midst of
this endless string of half twains let a single “quarter twain!”
be interjected, without emphasis, and then the half twain cry go
on again, just as before: two or three weeks later that pilot can
describe with precision the boat’s position in the river when
that quarter twain was uttered, and give you such a lot of
head-marks, stern-marks, and side-marks to guide you, that you
ought to be able to take the boat there and put her in that same
spot again yourself! The cry of “quarter twain” did not really
take his mind from his talk, but his trained faculties instantly
photographed the bearings, noted the change of depth, and laid up
the important details for future reference without requiring any
assistance from him in the matter. If you were walking and
talking with a friend, and another friend at your side kept up a
monotonous repetition of the vowel sound A, for a couple of
blocks, and then in the midst interjected an R, thus, A, A, A, A,
A, R, A, A, A, etc., and gave the R no emphasis, you would not be
able to state, two or three weeks afterward, that the R had been
put in, nor be able to tell what objects you were passing at the
moment it was done. But you could if your memory had been
patiently and laboriously trained to do that sort of thing
mechanically.
Give a man a tolerably fair memory to start with, and piloting
will develop it into a very colossus of capability. But only in
the matters it is daily drilled in . A time would come when the
man’s faculties could not help noticing landmarks and soundings,
and his memory could not help holding on to them with the grip of
a vise; but if you asked that same man at noon what he had had
for breakfast, it would be ten chances to one that he could not
tell you. Astonishing things can be done with the human memory if
you will devote it faithfully to one particular line of
business.
At the time that wages soared so high on the Missouri River,
my chief, Mr. Bixby, went up there and learned more than a
thousand miles of that stream with an ease and rapidity that were
astonishing. When he had seen each division once in the daytime
and once at night, his education was so nearly complete that he
took out a “daylight” license; a few trips later he took out a
full license, and went to piloting day and night—and he ranked
A 1, too.
Mr. Bixby placed me as steersman for a while under a pilot
whose feats of memory were a constant marvel to me. However, his
memory was born in him, I think, not built. For instance,
somebody would mention a name. Instantly Mr. Brown would break
in—
“Oh, I knew him . Sallow-faced, red-headed fellow, with a
little scar on the side of his throat, like a splinter under the
flesh. He was only in the Southern trade six months. That was
thirteen years ago. I made a trip with him. There was five feet
in the upper river then; the "Henry Blake" grounded at the foot
of Tower Island drawing four and a half; the "George Elliott"
unshipped her rudder on the wreck of the "Sunflower”—”
“Why, the "Sunflower" didn’t sink until—”
“I know when she sunk; it was three years before that, on the
2nd of December; Asa Hardy was captain of her, and his brother
John was first clerk; and it was his first trip in her, too; Tom
Jones told me these things a week afterward in New Orleans; he
was first mate of the "Sunflower." Captain Hardy stuck a nail in
his foot the 6th of July of the next year, and died of the
lockjaw on the 15th. His brother died two years after 3rd of
March,—erysipelas. I never saw either of the Hardys,—they were
Alleghany River men,—but people who knew them told me all these
things. And they said Captain Hardy wore yarn socks winter and
summer just the same, and his first wife’s name was Jane
Shook—she was from New England—and his second one died in a
lunatic asylum. It was in the blood. She was from Lexington,
Kentucky. Name was Horton before she was married.”
And so on, by the hour, the man’s tongue would go. He could
not forget any thing. It was simply impossible. The most trivial
details remained as distinct and luminous in his head, after they
had lain there for years, as the most memorable events. His was
not simply a pilot’s memory; its grasp was universal. If he were
talking about a trifling letter he had received seven years
before, he was pretty sure to deliver you the entire screed from
memory. And then without observing that he was departing from the
true line of his talk, he was more than likely to hurl in a
long-drawn parenthetical biography of the writer of that letter;
and you were lucky indeed if he did not take up that writer’s
relatives, one by one, and give you their biographies, too.
Such a memory as that is a great misfortune. To it, all
occurrences are of the same size. Its possessor cannot
distinguish an interesting circumstance from an uninteresting
one. As a talker, he is bound to clog his narrative with tiresome
details and make himself an insufferable bore. Moreover, he
cannot stick to his subject. He picks up every little grain of
memory he discerns in his way, and so is led aside. Mr. Brown
would start out with the honest intention of telling you a vastly
funny anecdote about a dog. He would be “so full of laugh” that
he could hardly begin; then his memory would start with the dog’s
breed and personal appearance; drift into a history of his owner;
of his owner’s family, with descriptions of weddings and burials
that had occurred in it, together with recitals of congratulatory
verses and obituary poetry provoked by the same: then this memory
would recollect that one of these events occurred during the
celebrated “hard winter” of such and such a year, and a minute
description of that winter would follow, along with the names of
people who were frozen to death, and statistics showing the high
figures which pork and hay went up to. Pork and hay would suggest
corn and fodder; corn and fodder would suggest cows and horses;
cows and horses would suggest the circus and certain celebrated
bare-back riders; the transition from the circus to the menagerie
was easy and natural; from the elephant to equatorial Africa was
but a step; then of course the heathen savages would suggest
religion; and at the end of three or four hours” tedious jaw, the
watch would change, and Brown would go out of the pilot-house
muttering extracts from sermons he had heard years before about
the efficacy of prayer as a means of grace. And the original
first mention would be all you had learned about that dog, after
all this waiting and hungering.
A pilot must have a memory; but there are two higher qualities
which he must also have. He must have good and quick judgment and
decision, and a cool, calm courage that no peril can shake. Give
a man the merest trifle of pluck to start with, and by the time
he has become a pilot he cannot be unmanned by any danger a
steamboat can get into; but one cannot quite say the same for
judgment. Judgment is a matter of brains, and a man must start
with a good stock of that article or he will never succeed as a
pilot.
The growth of courage in the pilot-house is steady all the
time, but it does not reach a high and satisfactory condition
until some time after the young pilot has been “standing his own
watch,” alone and under the staggering weight of all the
responsibilities connected with the position. When an apprentice
has become pretty thoroughly acquainted with the river, he goes
clattering along so fearlessly with his steamboat, night or day,
that he presently begins to imagine that it is his courage that
animates him; but the first time the pilot steps out and leaves
him to his own devices he finds out it was the other man’s. He
discovers that the article has been left out of his own cargo
altogether. The whole river is bristling with exigencies in a
moment; he is not prepared for them; he does not know how to meet
them; all his knowledge forsakes him; and within fifteen minutes
he is as white as a sheet and scared almost to death. Therefore
pilots wisely train these cubs by various strategic tricks to
look danger in the face a little more calmly. A favorite way of
theirs is to play a friendly swindle upon the candidate.
Mr. Bixby served me in this fashion once, and for years
afterward I used to blush even in my sleep when I thought of it.
I had become a good steersman; so good, indeed, that I had all
the work to do on our watch, night and day; Mr. Bixby seldom made
a suggestion to me; all he ever did was to take the wheel on
particularly bad nights or in particularly bad crossings, land
the boat when she needed to be landed, play gentleman of leisure
nine-tenths of the watch, and collect the wages. The lower river
was about bank-full, and if anybody had questioned my ability to
run any crossing between Cairo and New Orleans without help or
instruction, I should have felt irreparably hurt. The idea of
being afraid of any crossing in the lot, in the day-time , was a
thing too preposterous for contemplation. Well, one matchless
summer’s day I was bowling down the bend above island 66, brimful
of self-conceit and carrying my nose as high as a giraffe’s, when
Mr. Bixby said—
“I am going below a while. I suppose you know the next
crossing?”
This was almost an affront. It was about the plainest and
simplest crossing in the whole river. One couldn’t come to any
harm, whether he ran it right or not; and as for depth, there
never had been any bottom there. I knew all this, perfectly
well.
“Know how to run it? Why, I can run it with my eyes shut.”
“How much water is there in it?”
“Well, that is an odd question. I couldn’t get bottom there
with a church steeple.”
“You think so, do you?”
The very tone of the question shook my confidence. That was
what Mr. Bixby was expecting. He left, without saying anything
more. I began to imagine all sorts of things. Mr. Bixby, unknown
to me, of course, sent somebody down to the forecastle with some
mysterious instructions to the leadsmen, another messenger was
sent to whisper among the officers, and then Mr. Bixby went into
hiding behind a smoke-stack where he could observe results.
Presently the captain stepped out on the hurricane deck; next the
chief mate appeared; then a clerk. Every moment or two a
straggler was added to my audience; and before I got to the head
of the island I had fifteen or twenty people assembled down there
under my nose. I began to wonder what the trouble was. As I
started across, the captain glanced aloft at me and said, with a
sham uneasiness in his voice—
“Where is Mr. Bixby?”
“Gone below, sir.”
But that did the business for me. My imagination began to
construct dangers out of nothing, and they multiplied faster than
I could keep the run of them. All at once I imagined I saw shoal
water ahead! The wave of coward agony that surged through me then
came near dislocating every joint in me. All my confidence in
that crossing vanished. I seized the bell-rope; dropped it,
ashamed; seized it again; dropped it once more; clutched it
tremblingly one again, and pulled it so feebly that I could
hardly hear the stroke myself. Captain and mate sang out
instantly, and both together—
“Starboard lead there! and quick about it!”
This was another shock. I began to climb the wheel like a
squirrel; but I would hardly get the boat started to port before
I would see new dangers on that side, and away I would spin to
the other; only to find perils accumulating to starboard, and be
crazy to get to port again. Then came the leadsman’s sepulchral
cry—
“D-e-e-p four!”
Deep four in a bottomless crossing! The terror of it took my
breath away.
“M-a-r-k three!... M-a-r-k three... Quarter less three!...
Half twain!”
This was frightful! I seized the bell-ropes and stopped the
engines.
“Quarter twain! Quarter twain! Mark twain!”
I was helpless. I did not know what in the world to do. I was
quaking from head to foot, and I could have hung my hat on my
eyes, they stuck out so far.
“Quarter less twain! Nine and a half !”
We were drawing nine! My hands were in a nerveless flutter. I
could not ring a bell intelligibly with them. I flew to the
speaking-tube and shouted to the engineer—
“Oh, Ben, if you love me, back her! Quick, Ben! Oh, back the
immortal soul out of her!”
I heard the door close gently. I looked around, and there
stood Mr. Bixby, smiling a bland, sweet smile. Then the audience
on the hurricane deck sent up a thundergust of humiliating
laughter. I saw it all, now, and I felt meaner than the meanest
man in human history. I laid in the lead, set the boat in her
marks, came ahead on the engines, and said—
“It was a fine trick to play on an orphan, wasn’t it? I
suppose I’ll never hear the last of how I was ass enough to heave
the lead at the head of 66.”
“Well, no, you won’t, maybe. In fact I hope you won’t; for I
want you to learn something by that experience. Didn’t you know
there was no bottom in that crossing?”
“Yes, sir, I did.”
“Very well, then. You shouldn’t have allowed me or anybody
else to shake your confidence in that knowledge. Try to remember
that. And another thing: when you get into a dangerous place,
don’t turn coward. That isn’t going to help matters any.”
It was a good enough lesson, but pretty hardly learned. Yet
about the hardest part of it was that for months I so often had
to hear a phrase which I had conceived a particular distaste for.
It was, “Oh, Ben, if you love me, back her!”
Chapter 14
Rank and Dignity of Piloting
IN
my preceding chapters I have tried, by going into the
minutiae of the science of piloting, to carry the reader step by
step to a comprehension of what the science consists of; and at
the same time I have tried to show him that it is a very curious
and wonderful science, too, and very worthy of his attention. If
I have seemed to love my subject, it is no surprising thing, for
I loved the profession far better than any I have followed since,
and I took a measureless pride in it. The reason is plain: a
pilot, in those days, was the only unfettered and entirely
independent human being that lived in the earth. Kings are but
the hampered servants of parliament and people; parliaments sit
in chains forged by their constituency; the editor of a newspaper
cannot be independent, but must work with one hand tied behind
him by party and patrons, and be content to utter only half or
two-thirds of his mind; no clergyman is a free man and may speak
the whole truth, regardless of his parish’s opinions; writers of
all kinds are manacled servants of the public. We write frankly
and fearlessly, but then we “modify” before we print. In truth,
every man and woman and child has a master, and worries and frets
in servitude; but in the day I write of, the Mississippi pilot
had none. The captain could stand upon the hurricane deck, in the
pomp of a very brief authority, and give him five or six orders
while the vessel backed into the stream, and then that skipper’s
reign was over.
The moment that the boat was under way in the
river, she was under the sole and unquestioned control of the
pilot. He could do with her exactly as he pleased, run her when
and whither he chose, and tie her up to the bank whenever his
judgment said that that course was best. His movements were
entirely free; he consulted no one, he received commands from
nobody, he promptly resented even the merest suggestions. Indeed,
the law of the United States forbade him to listen to commands or
suggestions, rightly considering that the pilot necessarily knew
better how to handle the boat than anybody could tell him. So
here was the novelty of a king without a keeper, an absolute
monarch who was absolute in sober truth and not by a fiction of
words. I have seen a boy of eighteen taking a great steamer
serenely into what seemed almost certain destruction, and the
aged captain standing mutely by, filled with apprehension but
powerless to interfere. His interference, in that particular
instance, might have been an excellent thing, but to permit it
would have been to establish a most pernicious precedent. It will
easily be guessed, considering the pilot’s boundless authority,
that he was a great personage in the old steamboating days. He
was treated with marked courtesy by the captain and with marked
deference by all the officers and servants; and this deferential
spirit was quickly communicated to the passengers, too. I think
pilots were about the only people I ever knew who failed to show,
in some degree, embarrassment in the presence of traveling
foreign princes. But then, people in one’s own grade of life are
not usually embarrassing objects.
By long habit, pilots came to put all their wishes in the form
of commands. It “gravels” me, to this day, to put my will in the
weak shape of a request, instead of launching it in the crisp
language of an order. In those old days, to load a steamboat at
St. Louis, take her to New Orleans and back, and discharge cargo,
consumed about twenty-five days, on an average. Seven or eight of
these days the boat spent at the wharves of St. Louis and New
Orleans, and every soul on board was hard at work, except the two
pilots; they did nothing but play gentleman up town, and receive
the same wages for it as if they had been on duty. The moment the
boat touched the wharf at either city, they were ashore; and they
were not likely to be seen again till the last bell was ringing
and everything in readiness for another voyage.
When a captain got hold of a pilot of particularly high
reputation, he took pains to keep him. When wages were four
hundred dollars a month on the Upper Mississippi, I have known a
captain to keep such a pilot in idleness, under full pay, three
months at a time, while the river was frozen up. And one must
remember that in those cheap times four hundred dollars was a
salary of almost inconceivable splendor. Few men on shore got
such pay as that, and when they did they were mightily looked up
to. When pilots from either end of the river wandered into our
small Missouri village, they were sought by the best and the
fairest, and treated with exalted respect. Lying in port under
wages was a thing which many pilots greatly enjoyed and
appreciated; especially if they belonged in the Missouri River in
the heyday of that trade (Kansas times), and got nine hundred
dollars a trip, which was equivalent to about eighteen hundred
dollars a month. Here is a conversation of that day. A chap out
of the Illinois River, with a little stern-wheel tub, accosts a
couple of ornate and gilded Missouri River pilots—
“Gentlemen, I’ve got a pretty good trip for the upcountry, and
shall want you about a month. How much will it be?”
“Eighteen hundred dollars apiece.”
“Heavens and earth! You take my boat, let me have your wages,
and I’ll divide!”
I will remark, in passing, that Mississippi steamboatmen were
important in landsmen’s eyes (and in their own, too, in a degree)
according to the dignity of the boat they were on. For instance,
it was a proud thing to be of the crew of such stately craft as
the “Aleck Scott” or the “Grand Turk.” Negro firemen, deck hands,
and barbers belonging to those boats were distinguished
personages in their grade of life, and they were well aware of
that fact too. A stalwart darkey once gave offense at a negro
ball in New Orleans by putting on a good many airs. Finally one
of the managers bustled up to him and said—
“Who is you, any way? Who is you? dat’s what I wants to
know!”
The offender was not disconcerted in the least, but swelled
himself up and threw that into his voice which showed that he
knew he was not putting on all those airs on a stinted
capital.
“Who is I? Who is I? I let you know mighty quick who I is! I
want you niggers to understan” dat I fires de middle
do’
on de ‘Aleck Scott!’”
That was sufficient.
The barber of the “Grand Turk” was a spruce young negro, who
aired his importance with balmy complacency, and was greatly
courted by the circle in which he moved. The young colored
population of New Orleans were much given to flirting, at
twilight, on the banquettes of the back streets. Somebody saw and
heard something like the following, one evening, in one of those
localities. A middle-aged negro woman projected her head through
a broken pane and shouted (very willing that the neighbors should
hear and envy), “You Mary Ann, come in de house dis minute!
Stannin” out dah foolin” “long wid dat low trash, an” heah’s de
barber offn de "Gran” Turk" wants to conwerse wid you!”
My reference, a moment ago, to the fact that a pilot’s
peculiar official position placed him out of the reach of
criticism or command, brings Stephen W—— naturally to my mind.
He was a gifted pilot, a good fellow, a tireless talker, and had
both wit and humor in him. He had a most irreverent independence,
too, and was deliciously easy-going and comfortable in the
presence of age, official dignity, and even the most august
wealth. He always had work, he never saved a penny, he was a most
persuasive borrower, he was in debt to every pilot on the river,
and to the majority of the captains. He could throw a sort of
splendor around a bit of harum-scarum, devil-may-care piloting,
that made it almost fascinating—but not to everybody. He made a
trip with good old Captain Y——once, and was “relieved” from
duty when the boat got to New Orleans. Somebody expressed
surprise at the discharge. Captain Y—— shuddered at the mere
mention of Stephen. Then his poor, thin old voice piped out
something like this:—
“Why, bless me! I wouldn’t have such a wild creature on my
boat for the world—not for the whole world! He swears, he sings,
he whistles, he yells—I never saw such an Injun to yell. All
times of the night—it never made any difference to him. He would
just yell that way, not for anything in particular, but merely on
account of a kind of devilish comfort he got out of it. I never
could get into a sound sleep but he would fetch me out of bed,
all in a cold sweat, with one of those dreadful war-whoops. A
queer being—very queer being; no respect for anything or
anybody. Sometimes he called me "Johnny." And he kept a fiddle,
and a cat. He played execrably. This seemed to distress the cat,
and so the cat would howl. Nobody could sleep where that man—and
his family—was. And reckless. There never was anything like it.
Now you may believe it or not, but as sure as I am sitting here,
he brought my boat a-tilting down through those awful snags at
Chicot under a rattling head of steam, and the wind a-blowing
like the very nation, at that! My officers will tell you so. They
saw it. And, sir, while he was a-tearing right down through those
snags, and I a-shaking in my shoes and praying, I wish I may
never speak again if he didn’t pucker up his mouth and go to
whistling ! Yes, sir; whistling "Buffalo gals, can’t you come out
tonight, can’t you come out to-night, can’t you come out
to-night;" and doing it as calmly as if we were attending a
funeral and weren’t related to the corpse. And when I
remonstrated with him about it, he smiled down on me as if I was
his child, and told me to run in the house and try to be good,
and not be meddling with my superiors!”
Once a pretty mean captain caught Stephen in New Orleans out
of work and as usual out of money. He laid steady siege to
Stephen, who was in a very “close place,” and finally persuaded
him to hire with him at one hundred and twenty-five dollars per
month, just half wages, the captain agreeing not to divulge the
secret and so bring down the contempt of all the guild upon the
poor fellow. But the boat was not more than a day out of New
Orleans before Stephen discovered that the captain was boasting
of his exploit, and that all the officers had been told. Stephen
winced, but said nothing. About the middle of the afternoon the
captain stepped out on the hurricane deck, cast his eye around,
and looked a good deal surprised. He glanced inquiringly aloft at
Stephen, but Stephen was whistling placidly, and attending to
business. The captain stood around a while in evident discomfort,
and once or twice seemed about to make a suggestion; but the
etiquette of the river taught him to avoid that sort of rashness,
and so he managed to hold his peace. He chafed and puzzled a few
minutes longer, then retired to his apartments. But soon he was
out again, and apparently more perplexed than ever. Presently he
ventured to remark, with deference—
“Pretty good stage of the river now, ain’t it, sir?”
“Well, I should say so! Bank-full is a pretty liberal
stage.”
“Seems to be a good deal of current here.”
“Good deal don’t describe it! It’s worse than a
mill-race.”
“Isn’t it easier in toward shore than it is out here in the
middle?”
“Yes, I reckon it is; but a body can’t be too careful with a
steamboat. It’s pretty safe out here; can’t strike any bottom
here, you can depend on that.”
The captain departed, looking rueful enough. At this rate, he
would probably die of old age before his boat got to St. Louis.
Next day he appeared on deck and again found Stephen faithfully
standing up the middle of the river, fighting the whole vast
force of the Mississippi, and whistling the same placid tune.
This thing was becoming serious. In by the shore was a slower
boat clipping along in the easy water and gaining steadily; she
began to make for an island chute; Stephen stuck to the middle of
the river. Speech was wrung from the captain. He said—
“Mr. W——, don’t that chute cut off a good deal of
distance?”
“I think it does, but I don’t know.”
“Don’t know! Well, isn’t there water enough in it now to go
through?”
“I expect there is, but I am not certain.”
“Upon my word this is odd! Why, those pilots on that boat
yonder are going to try it. Do you mean to say that you don’t
know as much as they do?”
“ They ! Why, they are two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar pilots! But
don’t you be uneasy; I know as much as any man can afford to know
for a hundred and twenty-five!”
The captain surrendered.
Five minutes later Stephen was bowling through the chute and
showing the rival boat a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar pair of
heels.
Chapter 15
The Pilots’ Monopoly
ONE
day, on board the “Aleck Scott,” my chief, Mr. Bixby, was
crawling carefully through a close place at Cat Island, both
leads going, and everybody holding his breath. The captain, a
nervous, apprehensive man, kept still as long as he could, but
finally broke down and shouted from the hurricane deck—
“For gracious’ sake, give her steam, Mr. Bixby! give her
steam! She’ll never raise the reef on this headway!”
For all the effect that was produced upon Mr. Bixby, one would
have supposed that no remark had been made. But five minutes
later, when the danger was past and the leads laid in, he burst
instantly into a consuming fury, and gave the captain the most
admirable cursing I ever listened to. No bloodshed ensued; but
that was because the captain’s cause was weak; for ordinarily he
was not a man to take correction quietly.
Having now set forth in detail the nature of the science of
piloting, and likewise described the rank which the pilot held
among the fraternity of steamboatmen, this seems a fitting place
to say a few words about an organization which the pilots once
formed for the protection of their guild. It was curious and
noteworthy in this, that it was perhaps the compactest, the
completest, and the strongest commercial organization ever formed
among men.
For a long time wages had been two hundred and fifty dollars a
month; but curiously enough, as steamboats multiplied and
business increased, the wages began to fall little by little. It
was easy to discover the reason of this. Too many pilots were
being “made.” It was nice to have a “cub,” a steersman, to do all
the hard work for a couple of years, gratis, while his master sat
on a high bench and smoked; all pilots and captains had sons or
nephews who wanted to be pilots. By and by it came to pass that
nearly every pilot on the river had a steersman. When a steersman
had made an amount of progress that was satisfactory to any two
pilots in the trade, they could get a pilot’s license for him by
signing an application directed to the United States Inspector.
Nothing further was needed; usually no questions were asked, no
proofs of capacity required.
Very well, this growing swarm of new pilots presently began to
undermine the wages, in order to get berths. Too
late—apparently—the knights of the tiller perceived their
mistake. Plainly, something had to be done, and quickly; but what
was to be the needful thing. A close organization. Nothing else
would answer. To compass this seemed an impossibility; so it was
talked, and talked, and then dropped. It was too likely to ruin
whoever ventured to move in the matter. But at last about a dozen
of the boldest—and some of them the best—pilots on the river
launched themselves into the enterprise and took all the chances.
They got a special charter from the legislature, with large
powers, under the name of the Pilots’ Benevolent Association;
elected their officers, completed their organization, contributed
capital, put “association” wages up to two hundred and fifty
dollars at once—and then retired to their homes, for they were
promptly discharged from employment. But there were two or three
unnoticed trifles in their by-laws which had the seeds of
propagation in them. For instance, all idle members of the
association, in good standing, were entitled to a pension of
twenty-five dollars per month. This began to bring in one
straggler after another from the ranks of the new-fledged pilots,
in the dull (summer) season. Better have twenty-five dollars than
starve; the initiation fee was only twelve dollars, and no dues
required from the unemployed.
Also, the widows of deceased members in good standing could
draw twenty-five dollars per month, and a certain sum for each
of their children. Also, the said deceased would be buried at the
association’s expense. These things resurrected all the
superannuated and forgotten pilots in the Mississippi Valley.
They came from farms, they came from interior villages, they came
from everywhere. They came on crutches, on drays, in
ambulances,—any way, so they got there. They paid in their
twelve dollars, and straightway began to draw out twenty-five
dollars a month, and calculate their burial bills.
By and by, all the useless, helpless pilots, and a dozen
first-class ones, were in the association, and nine-tenths of the
best pilots out of it and laughing at it. It was the
laughing-stock of the whole river. Everybody joked about the
by-law requiring members to pay ten per cent. of their wages,
every month, into the treasury for the support of the
association, whereas all the members were outcast and tabooed,
and no one would employ them. Everybody was derisively grateful
to the association for taking all the worthless pilots out of the
way and leaving the whole field to the excellent and the
deserving; and everybody was not only jocularly grateful for
that, but for a result which naturally followed, namely, the
gradual advance of wages as the busy season approached. Wages had
gone up from the low figure of one hundred dollars a month to one
hundred and twenty-five, and in some cases to one hundred and
fifty; and it was great fun to enlarge upon the fact that this
charming thing had been accomplished by a body of men not one of
whom received a particle of benefit from it. Some of the jokers
used to call at the association rooms and have a good time
chaffing the members and offering them the charity of taking them
as steersmen for a trip, so that they could see what the
forgotten river looked like. However, the association was
content; or at least it gave no sign to the contrary. Now and
then it captured a pilot who was “out of luck,” and added him to
its list; and these later additions were very valuable, for they
were good pilots; the incompetent ones had all been absorbed
before. As business freshened, wages climbed gradually up to two
hundred and fifty dollars—the association figure—and became
firmly fixed there; and still without benefiting a member of that
body, for no member was hired. The hilarity at the association’s
expense burst all bounds, now. There was no end to the fun which
that poor martyr had to put up with.
However, it is a long lane that has no turning. Winter
approached, business doubled and trebled, and an avalanche of
Missouri, Illinois and Upper Mississippi River boats came pouring
down to take a chance in the New Orleans trade. All of a sudden
pilots were in great demand, and were correspondingly scarce. The
time for revenge was come. It was a bitter pill to have to accept
association pilots at last, yet captains and owners agreed that
there was no other way. But none of these outcasts offered! So
there was a still bitterer pill to be swallowed: they must be
sought out and asked for their services. Captain —— was the
first man who found it necessary to take the dose, and he had
been the loudest derider of the organization. He hunted up one of
the best of the association pilots and said—
“Well, you boys have rather got the best of us for a little
while, so I’ll give in with as good a grace as I can. I’ve come
to hire you; get your trunk aboard right away. I want to leave at
twelve o’clock.”
“I don’t know about that. Who is your other pilot?”
“I’ve got I. S——. Why?”
“I can’t go with him. He don’t belong to the association.”
“What!”
“It’s so.”
“Do you mean to tell me that you won’t turn a wheel with one
of the very best and oldest pilots on the river because he don’t
belong to your association?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, if this isn’t putting on airs! I supposed I was doing
you a benevolence; but I begin to think that I am the party that
wants a favor done. Are you acting under a law of the
concern?”
“Yes.”
“Show it to me.”
So they stepped into the association rooms, and the secretary
soon satisfied the captain, who said—
“Well, what am I to do? I have hired Mr. S—— for the entire
season.”
“I will provide for you,” said the secretary. “I will detail a
pilot to go with you, and he shall be on board at twelve
o’clock.”
“But if I discharge S——, he will come on me for the whole
season’s wages.”
“Of course that is a matter between you and Mr. S——,
captain. We cannot meddle in your private affairs.”
The captain stormed, but to no purpose. In the end he had to
discharge S——, pay him about a thousand dollars, and take an
association pilot in his place. The laugh was beginning to turn
the other way now. Every day, thenceforward, a new victim fell;
every day some outraged captain discharged a non-association pet,
with tears and profanity, and installed a hated association man
in his berth. In a very little while, idle non-associationists
began to be pretty plenty, brisk as business was, and much as
their services were desired. The laugh was shifting to the other
side of their mouths most palpably. These victims, together with
the captains and owners, presently ceased to laugh altogether,
and began to rage about the revenge they would take when the
passing business “spurt” was over.
Soon all the laughers that were left were the owners and crews
of boats that had two non-association pilots. But their triumph
was not very long-lived. For this reason: It was a rigid rule of
the association that its members should never, under any
circumstances whatever, give information about the channel to any
“outsider.” By this time about half the boats had none but
association pilots, and the other half had none but outsiders. At
the first glance one would suppose that when it came to
forbidding information about the river these two parties could
play equally at that game; but this was not so. At every
good-sized town from one end of the river to the other, there was
a “wharf-boat” to land at, instead of a wharf or a pier. Freight
was stored in it for transportation; waiting passengers slept in
its cabins. Upon each of these wharf-boats the association’s
officers placed a strong box fastened with a peculiar lock which
was used in no other service but one—the United States mail
service. It was the letter-bag lock, a sacred governmental thing.
By dint of much beseeching the government had been persuaded to
allow the association to use this lock. Every association man
carried a key which would open these boxes. That key, or rather a
peculiar way of holding it in the hand when its owner was asked
for river information by a stranger—for the success of the St.
Louis and New Orleans association had now bred tolerably thriving
branches in a dozen neighboring steamboat trades—was the
association man’s sign and diploma of membership; and if the
stranger did not respond by producing a similar key and holding
it in a certain manner duly prescribed, his question was politely
ignored.
From the association’s secretary each member received a
package of more or less gorgeous blanks, printed like a billhead,
on handsome paper, properly ruled in columns; a bill-head worded
something like this—
These blanks were filled up, day by day, as the voyage
progressed, and deposited in the several wharf-boat boxes. For
instance, as soon as the first crossing, out from St. Louis, was
completed, the items would be entered upon the blank, under the
appropriate headings, thus—
“St. Louis. Nine and a half (feet). Stern on court-house, head
on dead cottonwood above wood-yard, until you raise the first
reef, then pull up square.” Then under head of Remarks: “Go just
outside the wrecks; this is important. New snag just where you
straighten down; go above it.”
The pilot who deposited that blank in the Cairo box (after
adding to it the details of every crossing all the way down from
St. Louis) took out and read half a dozen fresh reports (from
upward-bound steamers) concerning the river between Cairo and
Memphis, posted himself thoroughly, returned them to the box, and
went back aboard his boat again so armed against accident that he
could not possibly get his boat into trouble without bringing the
most ingenious carelessness to his aid.
Imagine the benefits of so admirable a system in a piece of
river twelve or thirteen hundred miles long, whose channel was
shifting every day! The pilot who had formerly been obliged to
put up with seeing a shoal place once or possibly twice a month,
had a hundred sharp eyes to watch it for him, now, and bushels of
intelligent brains to tell him how to run it. His information
about it was seldom twenty-four hours old. If the reports in the
last box chanced to leave any misgivings on his mind concerning a
treacherous crossing, he had his remedy; he blew his
steam-whistle in a peculiar way as soon as he saw a boat
approaching;
the signal was answered in a peculiar way if that boat’s pilots
were association men; and then the two steamers ranged alongside
and all uncertainties were swept away by fresh information
furnished to the inquirer by word of mouth and in minute
detail.
The first thing a pilot did when he reached New Orleans or St.
Louis was to take his final and elaborate report to the
association parlors and hang it up there,—after which he was
free to visit his family. In these parlors a crowd was always
gathered together, discussing changes in the channel, and the
moment there was a fresh arrival, everybody stopped talking till
this witness had told the newest news and settled the latest
uncertainty. Other craftsmen can “sink the shop,” sometimes, and
interest themselves in other matters. Not so with a pilot; he
must devote himself wholly to his profession and talk of nothing
else; for it would be small gain to be perfect one day and
imperfect the next. He has no time or words to waste if he would
keep “posted.”
But the outsiders had a hard time of it. No particular place
to meet and exchange information, no wharf-boat reports, none but
chance and unsatisfactory ways of getting news. The consequence
was that a man sometimes had to run five hundred miles of river
on information that was a week or ten days old. At a fair stage
of the river that might have answered; but when the dead low
water came it was destructive.
Now came another perfectly logical result. The outsiders began
to ground steamboats, sink them, and get into all sorts of
trouble, whereas accidents seemed to keep entirely away from the
association men. Wherefore even the owners and captains of boats
furnished exclusively with outsiders, and previously considered
to be wholly independent of the association and free to comfort
themselves with brag and laughter, began to feel pretty
uncomfortable. Still, they made a show of keeping up the brag,
until one black day when every captain of the lot was formally
ordered to immediately discharge his outsiders and take
association pilots in their stead. And who was it that had the
dashing presumption to do that? Alas, it came from a power behind
the throne that was greater than the throne itself. It was the
underwriters!
It was no time to “swap knives.” Every outsider had to take
his trunk ashore at once. Of course it was supposed that there
was collusion between the association and the underwriters, but
this was not so. The latter had come to comprehend the excellence
of the “report” system of the association and the safety it
secured, and so they had made their decision among themselves and
upon plain business principles.
There was weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth in the
camp of the outsiders now. But no matter, there was but one
course for them to pursue, and they pursued it. They came forward
in couples and groups, and proffered their twelve dollars and
asked for membership. They were surprised to learn that several
new by-laws had been long ago added. For instance, the initiation
fee had been raised to fifty dollars; that sum must be tendered,
and also ten per cent. of the wages which the applicant had
received each and every month since the founding of the
association. In many cases this amounted to three or four hundred
dollars. Still, the association would not entertain the
application until the money was present. Even then a single
adverse vote killed the application. Every member had to vote
“Yes” or “No” in person and before witnesses; so it took weeks to
decide a candidacy, because many pilots were so long absent on
voyages. However, the repentant sinners scraped their savings
together, and one by one, by our tedious voting process, they
were added to the fold. A time came, at last, when only about ten
remained outside. They said they would starve before they would
apply. They remained idle a long while, because of course nobody
could venture to employ them.
By and by the association published the fact that upon a
certain date the wages would be raised to five hundred dollars
per month. All the branch associations had grown strong, now, and
the Red River one had advanced wages to seven hundred dollars a
month. Reluctantly the ten outsiders yielded, in view of these
things, and made application. There was another new by-law, by
this time, which required them to pay dues not only on all the
wages they had received since the association was born, but also
on what they would have received if they had continued at work up
to the time of their application, instead of going off to pout in
idleness. It turned out to be a difficult matter to elect them,
but it was accomplished at last. The most virulent sinner of this
batch had stayed out and allowed “dues” to accumulate against him
so long that he had to send in six hundred and twenty-five
dollars with his application.
The association had a good bank account now, and was very
strong. There was no longer an outsider. A by-law was added
forbidding the reception of any more cubs or apprentices for five
years; after which time a limited number would be taken, not by
individuals, but by the association, upon these terms: the
applicant must not be less than eighteen years old, and of
respectable family and good character; he must pass an
examination as to education, pay a thousand dollars in advance
for the privilege of becoming an apprentice, and must remain
under the commands of the association until a great part of the
membership (more than half, I think) should be willing to sign
his application for a pilot’s license.
All previously-articled apprentices were now taken away from
their masters and adopted by the association. The president and
secretary detailed them for service on one boat or another, as
they chose, and changed them from boat to boat according to
certain rules. If a pilot could show that he was in infirm health
and needed assistance, one of the cubs would be ordered to go
with him.
The widow and orphan list grew, but so did the association’s
financial resources. The association attended its own funerals in
state, and paid for them. When occasion demanded, it sent members
down the river upon searches for the bodies of brethren lost by
steamboat accidents; a search of this kind sometimes cost a
thousand dollars.
The association procured a charter and went into the insurance
business, also. It not only insured the lives of its members, but
took risks on steamboats.
The organization seemed indestructible. It was the tightest
monopoly in the world. By the United States law, no man could
become a pilot unless two duly licensed pilots signed his
application; and now there was nobody outside of the association
competent to sign. Consequently the making of pilots was at an
end. Every year some would die and others become incapacitated by
age and infirmity; there would be no new ones to take their
places. In time, the association could put wages up to any figure
it chose; and as long as it should be wise enough not to carry
the thing too far and provoke the national government into
amending the licensing system, steamboat owners would have to
submit, since there would be no help for it.
The owners and captains were the only obstruction that lay
between the association and absolute power; and at last this one
was removed. Incredible as it may seem, the owners and captains
deliberately did it themselves. When the pilots” association
announced, months beforehand, that on the first day of September,
1861, wages would be advanced to five hundred dollars per month,
the owners and captains instantly put freights up a few cents,
and explained to the farmers along the river the necessity of it,
by calling their attention to the burdensome rate of wages about
to be established. It was a rather slender argument, but the
farmers did not seem to detect it. It looked reasonable to them
that to add five cents freight on a bushel of corn was
justifiable under the circumstances, overlooking the fact that
this advance on a cargo of forty thousand sacks was a good deal
more than necessary to cover the new wages.
So, straightway the captains and owners got up an association
of their own, and proposed to put captains” wages up to five
hundred dollars, too, and move for another advance in freights.
It was a novel idea, but of course an effect which had been
produced once could be produced again. The new association
decreed (for this was before all the outsiders had been taken
into the pilots” association) that if any captain employed a
non-association pilot, he should be forced to discharge him, and
also pay a fine of five hundred dollars. Several of these heavy
fines were paid before the captains” organization grew strong
enough to exercise full authority over its membership; but that
all ceased, presently. The captains tried to get the pilots to
decree that no member of their corporation should serve under a
non-association captain; but this proposition was declined. The
pilots saw that they would be backed up by the captains and the
underwriters anyhow, and so they wisely refrained from entering
into entangling alliances.
As I have remarked, the pilots” association was now the
compactest monopoly in the world, perhaps, and seemed simply
indestructible. And yet the days of its glory were numbered.
First, the new railroad stretching up through Mississippi,
Tennessee, and Kentucky, to Northern railway centers, began to
divert the passenger travel from the steamers; next the war came
and almost entirely annihilated the steamboating industry during
several years, leaving most of the pilots idle, and the cost of
living advancing all the time; then the treasurer of the St.
Louis association put his hand into the till and walked off with
every dollar of the ample fund; and finally, the railroads
intruding everywhere, there was little for steamers to do, when
the war was over, but carry freights; so straightway some genius
from the Atlantic coast introduced the plan of towing a dozen
steamer cargoes down to New Orleans at the tail of a vulgar
little tug-boat; and behold, in the twinkling of an eye, as it
were, the association and the noble science of piloting were
things of the dead and pathetic past!
Chapter 16
Racing Days
IT
was always the custom for the boats to leave New Orleans
between four and five o’clock in the afternoon. From three
o’clock onward they would be burning rosin and pitch pine (the
sign of preparation), and so one had the picturesque spectacle of
a rank, some two or three miles long, of tall, ascending columns
of coal-black smoke; a colonnade which supported a sable roof of
the same smoke blended together and spreading abroad over the
city. Every outward-bound boat had its flag flying at the
jack-staff, and sometimes a duplicate on the verge staff astern.
Two or three miles of mates were commanding and swearing with
more than usual emphasis; countless processions of freight
barrels and boxes were spinning athwart the levee and flying
aboard the stage-planks, belated passengers were dodging and
skipping among these frantic things, hoping to reach the
forecastle companion way alive, but having their doubts about it;
women with reticules and bandboxes were trying to keep up with
husbands freighted with carpet-sacks and crying babies, and
making a failure of it by losing their heads in the whirl and
roar and general distraction; drays and baggage-vans were
clattering hither and thither in a wild hurry, every now and then
getting blocked and jammed together, and then during ten seconds
one could not see them for the profanity, except vaguely and
dimly; every windlass connected with every forehatch, from one
end of that long array of steamboats to the other, was keeping up
a deafening whiz and whir, lowering freight into the hold, and
the half-naked crews of perspiring negroes that worked them were
roaring such songs as “De Las” Sack! De Las” Sack!’—inspired to
unimaginable exaltation by the chaos of turmoil and racket that
was driving everybody else mad.
By this time the hurricane and
boiler decks of the steamers would be packed and black with
passengers. The “last bells” would begin to clang, all down the
line, and then the powwow seemed to double; in a moment or two
the final warning came,—a simultaneous din of Chinese gongs,
with the cry, “All dat ain’t goin’, please to git asho’!’—and
behold, the powwow quadrupled! People came swarming ashore,
overturning excited stragglers that were trying to swarm aboard.
One more moment later a long array of stage-planks was being
hauled in, each with its customary latest passenger clinging to
the end of it with teeth, nails, and everything else, and the
customary latest procrastinator making a wild spring shoreward
over his head.
Now a number of the boats slide backward into the stream,
leaving wide gaps in the serried rank of steamers. Citizens crowd
the decks of boats that are not to go, in order to see the sight.
Steamer after steamer straightens herself up, gathers all her
strength, and presently comes swinging by, under a tremendous
head of steam, with flag flying, black smoke rolling, and her
entire crew of firemen and deck-hands (usually swarthy negroes)
massed together on the forecastle, the best “voice” in the lot
towering from the midst (being mounted on the capstan), waving
his hat or a flag, and all roaring a mighty chorus, while the
parting cannons boom and the multitudinous spectators swing their
hats and huzza! Steamer after steamer falls into line, and the
stately procession goes winging its flight up the river.
In the old times, whenever two fast boats started out on a
race, with a big crowd of people looking on, it was inspiring to
hear the crews sing, especially if the time were night-fall, and
the forecastle lit up with the red glare of the torch-baskets.
Racing was royal fun. The public always had an idea that racing
was dangerous; whereas the opposite was the case—that is, after
the laws were passed which restricted each boat to just so many
pounds of steam to the square inch. No engineer was ever sleepy
or careless when his heart was in a race. He was constantly on
the alert, trying gauge-cocks and watching things. The dangerous
place was on slow, plodding boats, where the engineers drowsed
around and allowed chips to get into the “doctor” and shut off
the water supply from the boilers.
In the “flush times” of steamboating, a race between two
notoriously fleet steamers was an event of vast importance. The
date was set for it several weeks in advance, and from that time
forward, the whole Mississippi Valley was in a state of consuming
excitement. Politics and the weather were dropped, and people
talked only of the coming race. As the time approached, the two
steamers “stripped” and got ready. Every encumbrance that added
weight, or exposed a resisting surface to wind or water, was
removed, if the boat could possibly do without it. The “spars,”
and sometimes even their supporting derricks, were sent ashore,
and no means left to set the boat afloat in case she got aground.
When the “Eclipse” and the “A. L. Shotwell” ran their great race
many years ago, it was said that pains were taken to scrape the
gilding off the fanciful device which hung between the
“Eclipse’s” chimneys, and that for that one trip the captain left
off his kid gloves and had his head shaved. But I always doubted
these things.
If the boat was known to make her best speed when drawing five
and a half feet forward and five feet aft, she was carefully
loaded to that exact figure—she wouldn’t enter a dose of
homoeopathic pills on her manifest after that. Hardly any
passengers were taken, because they not only add weight but they
never will “trim boat.” They always run to the side when there is
anything to see, whereas a conscientious and experienced
steamboatman would stick to the center of the boat and part his
hair in the middle with a spirit level.
No way-freights and no way-passengers were allowed, for the
racers would stop only at the largest towns, and then it would be
only “touch and go.” Coal flats and wood flats were contracted
for beforehand, and these were kept ready to hitch on to the
flying steamers at a moment’s warning. Double crews were carried,
so that all work could be quickly done.
The chosen date being come, and all things in readiness, the
two great steamers back into the stream, and lie there jockeying
a moment, and apparently watching each other’s slightest
movement, like sentient creatures; flags drooping, the pent steam
shrieking through safety-valves, the black smoke rolling and
tumbling from the chimneys and darkening all the air. People,
people everywhere; the shores, the house-tops, the steamboats,
the ships, are packed with them, and you know that the borders of
the broad Mississippi are going to be fringed with humanity
thence northward twelve hundred miles, to welcome these
racers.
Presently tall columns of steam burst from the “scape-pipes of
both steamers, two guns boom a good-bye, two red-shirted heroes
mounted on capstans wave their small flags above the massed crews
on the forecastles, two plaintive solos linger on the air a few
waiting seconds, two mighty choruses burst forth—and here they
come! Brass bands bray Hail Columbia, huzza after huzza thunders
from the shores, and the stately creatures go whistling by like
the wind.
Those boats will never halt a moment between New Orleans and
St. Louis, except for a second or two at large towns, or to hitch
thirty-cord wood-boats alongside. You should be on board when
they take a couple of those wood-boats in tow and turn a swarm of
men into each; by the time you have wiped your glasses and put
them on, you will be wondering what has become of that wood.
Two nicely matched steamers will stay in sight of each other
day after day. They might even stay side by side, but for the
fact that pilots are not all alike, and the smartest pilots will
win the race. If one of the boats has a “lightning” pilot, whose
“partner” is a trifle his inferior, you can tell which one is on
watch by noting whether that boat has gained ground or lost some
during each four-hour stretch. The shrewdest pilot can delay a
boat if he has not a fine genius for steering. Steering is a very
high art. One must not keep a rudder dragging across a boat’s
stem if he wants to get up the river fast.
There is a great difference in boats, of course. For a long
time I was on a boat that was so slow we used to forget what year
it was we left port in. But of course this was at rare intervals.
Ferryboats used to lose valuable trips because their passengers
grew old and died, waiting for us to get by. This was at still
rarer intervals. I had the documents for these occurrences, but
through carelessness they have been mislaid. This boat, the “John
J. Roe,” was so slow that when she finally sunk in Madrid Bend,
it was five years before the owners heard of it. That was always
a confusing fact to me, but it is according to the record, any
way. She was dismally slow; still, we often had pretty exciting
times racing with islands, and rafts, and such things. One trip,
however, we did rather well. We went to St. Louis in sixteen
days. But even at this rattling gait I think we changed watches
three times in Fort Adams reach, which is five miles long. A
“reach” is a piece of straight river, and of course the current
drives through such a place in a pretty lively way.
That trip we went to Grand Gulf, from New Orleans, in four
days (three hundred and forty miles); the “Eclipse” and
“Shotwell” did it in one. We were nine days out, in the chute of
63 (seven hundred miles); the “Eclipse” and “Shotwell” went there
in two days. Something over a generation ago, a boat called the
“J. M. White” went from New Orleans to Cairo in three days, six
hours, and forty-four minutes. In 1853 the “Eclipse” made the
same trip in
three days, three hours, and twenty
minutes.
In 1870 the “R. E. Lee” did it in three
days and one hour. This last is called the fastest trip on
record. I will try to show that it was not. For this reason: the
distance between New Orleans and Cairo, when the “J. M. White”
ran it, was about eleven hundred and six miles; consequently her
average speed was a trifle over fourteen miles per hour. In the
“Eclipse’s” day the distance between the two ports had become
reduced to one thousand and eighty miles; consequently her
average speed was a shade under fourteen and three-eighths miles
per hour. In the “R. E. Lee’s” time the distance had diminished
to about one thousand and thirty miles; consequently her average
was about fourteen and one-eighth miles per hour. Therefore the
“Eclipse’s” was conspicuously the fastest time that has ever been
made.
Chapter 17
Cut-offs and Stephen
THESE
dry details are of importance in one particular. They
give me an opportunity of introducing one of the Mississippi’s
oddest peculiarities,—that of shortening its length from time to
time. If you will throw a long, pliant apple-paring over your
shoulder, it will pretty fairly shape itself into an average
section of the Mississippi River; that is, the nine or ten
hundred miles stretching from Cairo, Illinois, southward to New
Orleans, the same being wonderfully crooked, with a brief
straight bit here and there at wide intervals. The two
hundred-mile stretch from Cairo northward to St. Louis is by no
means so crooked, that being a rocky country which the river
cannot cut much.
The water cuts the alluvial banks of the “lower” river into
deep horseshoe curves; so deep, indeed, that in some places if
you were to get ashore at one extremity of the horseshoe and walk
across the neck, half or three quarters of a mile, you could sit
down and rest a couple of hours while your steamer was coming
around the long elbow, at a speed of ten miles an hour, to take
you aboard again. When the river is rising fast, some scoundrel
whose plantation is back in the country, and therefore of
inferior value, has only to watch his chance, cut a little gutter
across the narrow neck of land some dark night, and turn the
water into it, and in a wonderfully short time a miracle has
happened: to wit, the whole Mississippi has taken possession of
that little ditch, and placed the countryman’s plantation on its
bank (quadrupling its value), and that other party’s formerly
valuable plantation finds itself away out yonder on a big island;
the old watercourse around it will soon shoal up, boats cannot
approach within ten miles of it, and down goes its value to a
fourth of its former worth. Watches are kept on those narrow
necks, at needful times, and if a man happens to be caught
cutting a ditch across them, the chances are all against his ever
having another opportunity to cut a ditch.
Pray observe some of the effects of this ditching business.
Once there was a neck opposite Port Hudson, Louisiana, which was
only half a mile across, in its narrowest place. You could walk
across there in fifteen minutes; but if you made the journey
around the cape on a raft, you traveled thirty-five miles to
accomplish the same thing. In 1722 the river darted through that
neck, deserted its old bed, and thus shortened itself thirty-five
miles. In the same way it shortened itself twenty-five miles at
Black Hawk Point in 1699. Below Red River Landing, Raccourci
cut-off was made (forty or fifty years ago, I think). This
shortened the river twenty-eight miles. In our day, if you travel
by river from the southernmost of these three cut-offs to the
northernmost, you go only seventy miles. To do the same thing a
hundred and seventy-six years ago, one had to go a hundred and
fifty-eight miles!—shortening of eighty-eight miles in that
trifling distance. At some forgotten time in the past, cut-offs
were made above Vidalia, Louisiana; at island 92; at island 84;
and at Hale’s Point. These shortened the river, in the aggregate,
seventy-seven miles.
Since my own day on the Mississippi, cut-offs have been made
at Hurricane Island; at island 100; at Napoleon, Arkansas; at
Walnut Bend; and at Council Bend. These shortened the river, in
the aggregate, sixty-seven miles. In my own time a cut-off was
made at American Bend, which shortened the river ten miles or
more.
Therefore, the Mississippi between Cairo and New Orleans was
twelve hundred and fifteen miles long one hundred and seventy-six
years ago. It was eleven hundred and eighty after the cut-off of
1722. It was one thousand and forty after the American Bend
cut-off. It has lost sixty-seven miles since. Consequently its
length is only nine hundred and seventy-three miles at
present.
Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific
people, and “let on” to prove what had occurred in the remote
past by what had occurred in a given time in the recent past, or
what will occur in the far future by what has occurred in late
years, what an opportunity is here! Geology never had such a
chance, nor such exact data to argue from! Nor “development of
species,” either! Glacial epochs are great things, but they are
vague—vague. Please observe:—
In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower
Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles.
That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per
year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic,
can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period,” just a million
years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards
of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out
over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token
any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from
now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters
long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets
together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor
and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating
about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out
of such a trifling investment of fact.
When the water begins to flow through one of those ditches I
have been speaking of, it is time for the people thereabouts to
move. The water cleaves the banks away like a knife. By the time
the ditch has become twelve or fifteen feet wide, the calamity is
as good as accomplished, for no power on earth can stop it now.
When the width has reached a hundred yards, the banks begin to
peel off in slices half an acre wide. The current flowing around
the bend traveled formerly only five miles an hour; now it is
tremendously increased by the shortening of the distance. I was
on board the first boat that tried to go through the cut-off at
American Bend, but we did not get through. It was toward
midnight, and a wild night it was—thunder, lightning, and
torrents of rain. It was estimated that the current in the
cut-off was making about fifteen or twenty miles an hour; twelve
or thirteen was the best our boat could do, even in tolerably
slack water, therefore perhaps we were foolish to try the
cut-off. However, Mr. Brown was ambitious, and he kept on trying.
The eddy running up the bank, under the “point,” was about as
swift as the current out in the middle; so we would go flying up
the shore like a lightning express train, get on a big head of
steam, and “stand by for a surge” when we struck the current that
was whirling by the point. But all our preparations were useless.
The instant the current hit us it spun us around like a top, the
water deluged the forecastle, and the boat careened so far over
that one could hardly keep his feet. The next instant we were
away down the river, clawing with might and main to keep out of
the woods. We tried the experiment four times. I stood on the
forecastle companion way to see. It was astonishing to observe
how suddenly the boat would spin around and turn tail the moment
she emerged from the eddy and the current struck her nose. The
sounding concussion and the quivering would have been about the
same if she had come full speed against a sand-bank. Under the
lightning flashes one could see the plantation cabins and the
goodly acres tumble into the river; and the crash they made was
not a bad effort at thunder. Once, when we spun around, we only
missed a house about twenty feet, that had a light burning in the
window; and in the same instant that house went overboard. Nobody
could stay on our forecastle; the water swept across it in a
torrent every time we plunged athwart the current. At the end of
our fourth effort we brought up in the woods two miles below the
cut-off; all the country there was overflowed, of course. A day
or two later the cut-off was three-quarters of a mile wide, and
boats passed up through it without much difficulty, and so saved
ten miles.
The old Raccourci cut-off reduced the river’s length
twenty-eight miles. There used to be a tradition connected with
it. It was said that a boat came along there in the night and
went around the enormous elbow the usual way, the pilots not
knowing that the cut-off had been made. It was a grisly, hideous
night, and all shapes were vague and distorted. The old bend had
already begun to fill up, and the boat got to running away from
mysterious reefs, and occasionally hitting one. The perplexed
pilots fell to swearing, and finally uttered the entirely
unnecessary wish that they might never get out of that place. As
always happens in such cases, that particular prayer was
answered, and the others neglected. So to this day that phantom
steamer is still butting around in that deserted river, trying to
find her way out. More than one grave watchman has sworn to me
that on drizzly, dismal nights, he has glanced fearfully down
that forgotten river as he passed the head of the island, and
seen the faint glow of the specter steamer’s lights drifting
through the distant gloom, and heard the muffled cough of her
“scape-pipes and the plaintive cry of her leadsmen.
In the absence of further statistics, I beg to close this
chapter with one more reminiscence of “Stephen.”
Most of the captains and pilots held Stephen’s note for
borrowed sums, ranging from two hundred and fifty dollars upward.
Stephen never paid one of these notes, but he was very prompt and
very zealous about renewing them every twelve months.
Of course there came a time, at last, when Stephen could no
longer borrow of his ancient creditors; so he was obliged to lie
in wait for new men who did not know him. Such a victim was
good-hearted, simple natured young Yates (I use a fictitious
name, but the real name began, as this one does, with a Y). Young
Yates graduated as a pilot, got a berth, and when the month was
ended and he stepped up to the clerk’s office and received his
two hundred and fifty dollars in crisp new bills, Stephen was
there! His silvery tongue began to wag, and in a very little
while Yates’s two hundred and fifty dollars had changed hands.
The fact was soon known at pilot headquarters, and the amusement
and satisfaction of the old creditors were large and generous.
But innocent Yates never suspected that Stephen’s promise to pay
promptly at the end of the week was a worthless one. Yates called
for his money at the stipulated time; Stephen sweetened him up
and put him off a week. He called then, according to agreement,
and came away sugar-coated again, but suffering under another
postponement. So the thing went on. Yates haunted Stephen week
after week, to no purpose, and at last gave it up. And then
straightway Stephen began to haunt Yates! Wherever Yates
appeared, there was the inevitable Stephen. And not only there,
but beaming with affection and gushing with apologies for not
being able to pay. By and by, whenever poor Yates saw him coming,
he would turn and fly, and drag his company with him, if he had
company; but it was of no use; his debtor would run him down and
corner him. Panting and red-faced, Stephen would come, with
outstretched hands and eager eyes, invade the conversation, shake
both of Yates’s arms loose in their sockets, and begin—
“My, what a race I’ve had! I saw you didn’t see me, and so I
clapped on all steam for fear I’d miss you entirely. And here you
are! there, just stand so, and let me look at you! just the same
old noble countenance.” [To Yates’s friend:] “Just look at him!
Look at him! Ain’t it just good to look at him! Ain’t it now?
Ain’t he just a picture! Some call him a picture; I call him a
panorama! That’s what he is—an entire panorama. And now I’m
reminded! How I do wish I could have seen you an hour earlier!
For twenty-four hours I’ve been saving up that two hundred and
fifty dollars for you; been looking for you everywhere. I waited
at the Planter’s from six yesterday evening till two o’clock this
morning, without rest or food; my wife says, "Where have you been
all night?" I said, "This debt lies heavy on my mind." She says,
"In all my days I never saw a man take a debt to heart the way
you do." I said, "It’s my nature; how can I change it?" She says,
"Well, do go to bed and get some rest." I said, "Not till that
poor, noble young man has got his money." So I set up all night,
and this morning out I shot, and the first man I struck told me
you had shipped on the "Grand Turk" and gone to New Orleans.
Well, sir, I had to lean up against a building and cry. So help
me goodness, I couldn’t help it. The man that owned the place
come out cleaning up with a rag, and said he didn’t like to have
people cry against his building, and then it seemed to me that
the whole world had turned against me, and it wasn’t any use to
live any more; and coming along an hour ago, suffering no man
knows what agony, I met Jim Wilson and paid him the two hundred
and fifty dollars on account; and to think that here you are,
now, and I haven’t got a cent! But as sure as I am standing here
on this ground on this particular brick,—there, I’ve scratched a
mark on the brick to remember it by,—I’ll borrow that money and
pay it over to you at twelve o’clock sharp, tomorrow! Now, stand
so; let me look at you just once more.”
And so on. Yates’s life became a burden to him. He could not
escape his debtor and his debtor’s awful sufferings on account of
not being able to pay. He dreaded to show himself in the street,
lest he should find Stephen lying in wait for him at the
corner.
Bogart’s billiard saloon was a great resort for pilots in
those days. They met there about as much to exchange river news
as to play. One morning Yates was there; Stephen was there, too,
but kept out of sight. But by and by, when about all the pilots
had arrived who were in town, Stephen suddenly appeared in the
midst, and rushed for Yates as for a long-lost brother.
“ Oh , I am so glad to see you! Oh my soul, the sight of you is
such a comfort to my eyes! Gentlemen, I owe all of you money;
among you I owe probably forty thousand dollars. I want to pay
it; I intend to pay it every last cent of it. You all know,
without my telling you, what sorrow it has cost me to remain so
long under such deep obligations to such patient and generous
friends; but the sharpest pang I suffer—by far the sharpest—is
from the debt I owe to this noble young man here; and I have come
to this place this morning especially to make the announcement
that I have at last found a method whereby I can pay off all my
debts! And most especially I wanted him to be here when I
announced it. Yes, my faithful friend,—my benefactor, I’ve found
the method! I’ve found the method to pay off all my debts, and
you’ll get your money!” Hope dawned in Yates’s eye; then Stephen,
beaming benignantly, and placing his hand upon Yates’s head,
added, “I am going to pay them off in alphabetical order!”
Then he turned and disappeared. The full significance of
Stephen’s “method” did not dawn upon the perplexed and musing
crowd for some two minutes; and then Yates murmured with a
sigh—
“Well, the Y’s stand a gaudy chance. He won’t get any further
than the C’s in this world, and I reckon that after a good deal
of eternity has wasted away in the next one, I’ll still be
referred to up there as "that poor, ragged pilot that came here
from St. Louis in the early days!"
Chapter 18
I Take a Few Extra Lessons
DURING
the two or two and a half years of my apprenticeship, I
served under many pilots, and had experience of many kinds of
steamboatmen and many varieties of steamboats; for it was not
always convenient for Mr. Bixby to have me with him, and in such
cases he sent me with somebody else. I am to this day profiting
somewhat by that experience; for in that brief, sharp schooling,
I got personally and familiarly acquainted with about all the
different types of human nature that are to be found in fiction,
biography, or history. The fact is daily borne in upon me, that
the average shore-employment requires as much as forty years to
equip a man with this sort of an education. When I say I am still
profiting by this thing, I do not mean that it has constituted me
a judge of men—no, it has not done that; for judges of men are
born, not made. My profit is various in kind and degree; but the
feature of it which I value most is the zest which that early
experience has given to my later reading. When I find a
well-drawn character in fiction or biography, I generally take a
warm personal interest in him, for the reason that I have known
him before—met him on the river.
The figure that comes before me oftenest, out of the shadows
of that vanished time, is that of Brown, of the steamer
“Pennsylvania’—the man referred to in a former chapter, whose
memory was so good and tiresome. He was a middle-aged, long,
slim, bony, smooth-shaven, horse-faced, ignorant, stingy,
malicious, snarling, fault hunting, mote-magnifying tyrant. I
early got the habit of coming on watch with dread at my heart. No
matter how good a time I might have been having with the
off-watch below, and no matter how high my spirits might be when
I started aloft, my soul became lead in my body the moment I
approached the pilot-house.
I still remember the first time I ever entered the presence of
that man. The boat had backed out from St. Louis and was
“straightening down;” I ascended to the pilot-house in high
feather, and very proud to be semi-officially a member of the
executive family of so fast and famous a boat. Brown was at the
wheel. I paused in the middle of the room, all fixed to make my
bow, but Brown did not look around. I thought he took a furtive
glance at me out of the corner of his eye, but as not even this
notice was repeated, I judged I had been mistaken. By this time
he was picking his way among some dangerous “breaks” abreast the
woodyards; therefore it would not be proper to interrupt him; so
I stepped softly to the high bench and took a seat.
There was silence for ten minutes; then my new boss turned and
inspected me deliberately and painstakingly from head to heel for
about—as it seemed to me—a quarter of an hour. After which he
removed his countenance and I saw it no more for some seconds;
then it came around once more, and this question greeted me—
“Are you Horace Bigsby’s cub?”
“Yes, sir.”
After this there was a pause and another inspection.
Then—
“What’s your name?”
I told him. He repeated it after me. It was probably the only
thing he ever forgot; for although I was with him many months he
never addressed himself to me in any other way than “Here!” and
then his command followed.
“Where was you born?”
“In Florida, Missouri.”
A pause. Then—
“Dern sight better staid there!”
By means of a dozen or so of pretty direct questions, he
pumped my family history out of me.
The leads were going now, in the first crossing. This
interrupted the inquest. When the leads had been laid in, he
resumed—
“How long you been on the river?”
I told him. After a pause—
“Where’d you get them shoes?”
I gave him the information.
“Hold up your foot!”
I did so. He stepped back, examined the shoe minutely and
contemptuously, scratching his head thoughtfully, tilting his
high sugar-loaf hat well forward to facilitate the operation,
then ejaculated, “Well, I’ll be dod derned!” and returned to his
wheel.
What occasion there was to be dod derned about it is a thing
which is still as much of a mystery to me now as it was then. It
must have been all of fifteen minutes—fifteen minutes of dull,
homesick silence—before that long horse-face swung round upon
me again—and then, what a change! It was as red as fire, and
every muscle in it was working. Now came this shriek—
“Here!—You going to set there all day?”
I lit in the middle of the floor, shot there by the electric
suddenness of the surprise. As soon as I could get my voice I
said, apologetically:—’I have had no orders, sir.”
“You’ve had no orders! My, what a fine bird we are! We must
have orders! Our father was a gentleman—owned slaves—and we’ve
been to school. Yes, we are a gentleman, too, and got to have
orders! Orders, is it? Orders is what you want! Dod dern my skin,
I’LL learn you to swell yourself up and blow around here about
your dod-derned orders! G’way from the wheel!” (I had approached
it without knowing it.)
I moved back a step or two, and stood as in a dream, all my
senses stupefied by this frantic assault.
“What you standing there for? Take that ice-pitcher down to
the texas-tender-come, move along, and don’t you be all day
about it!”
The moment I got back to the pilot-house, Brown said—
“Here! What was you doing down there all this time?”
“I couldn’t find the texas-tender; I had to go all the way to
the pantry.”
“Derned likely story! Fill up the stove.”
I proceeded to do so. He watched me like a cat. Presently he
shouted—
“Put down that shovel! Deadest numskull I ever saw—ain’t even
got sense enough to load up a stove.”
All through the watch this sort of thing went on. Yes, and the
subsequent watches were much like it, during a stretch of months.
As I have said, I soon got the habit of coming on duty with
dread. The moment I was in the presence, even in the darkest
night, I could feel those yellow eyes upon me, and knew their
owner was watching for a pretext to spit out some venom on me.
Preliminarily he would say—
“Here! Take the wheel.”
Two minutes later—
“Where in the nation you going to? Pull her down! pull her
down!”
After another moment—
“Say! You going to hold her all day? Let her go—meet her!
meet her!”
Then he would jump from the bench, snatch the wheel from me,
and meet her himself, pouring out wrath upon me all the time.
George Ritchie was the other pilot’s cub. He was having good
times now; for his boss, George Ealer, was as kindhearted as
Brown wasn’t. Ritchie had steeled for Brown the season before;
consequently he knew exactly how to entertain himself and plague
me, all by the one operation. Whenever I took the wheel for a
moment on Ealer’s watch, Ritchie would sit back on the bench and
play Brown, with continual ejaculations of “Snatch her! snatch
her! Derndest mud-cat I ever saw!” “Here! Where you going now?
Going to run over that snag?” “Pull her down! Don’t you hear me?
Pull her down!” “There she goes! Just as I expected! I told you
not to cramp that reef. G’way from the wheel!”
So I always had a rough time of it, no matter whose watch it
was; and sometimes it seemed to me that Ritchie’s good-natured
badgering was pretty nearly as aggravating as Brown’s
dead-earnest nagging.
I often wanted to kill Brown, but this would not answer. A cub
had to take everything his boss gave, in the way of vigorous
comment and criticism; and we all believed that there was a
United States law making it a penitentiary offense to strike or
threaten a pilot who was on duty. However, I could imagine myself
killing Brown; there was no law against that; and that was the
thing I used always to do the moment I was abed. Instead of going
over my river in my mind as was my duty, I threw business aside
for pleasure, and killed Brown. I killed Brown every night for
months; not in old, stale, commonplace ways, but in new and
picturesque ones;—ways that were sometimes surprising for
freshness of design and ghastliness of situation and
environment.
Brown was always watching for a pretext to find fault; and if
he could find no plausible pretext, he would invent one. He would
scold you for shaving a shore, and for not shaving it; for
hugging a bar, and for not hugging it; for “pulling down” when
not invited, and for not pulling down when not invited; for
firing up without orders, and for waiting for orders. In a word,
it was his invariable rule to find fault with everything you did;
and another invariable rule of his was to throw all his remarks
(to you) into the form of an insult.
One day we were approaching New Madrid, bound down and heavily
laden. Brown was at one side of the wheel, steering; I was at the
other, standing by to “pull down” or “shove up.” He cast a
furtive glance at me every now and then. I had long ago learned
what that meant; viz., he was trying to invent a trap for me. I
wondered what shape it was going to take. By and by he stepped
back from the wheel and said in his usual snarly way—
“Here!—See if you’ve got gumption enough to round her
to.”
This was simply bound to be a success; nothing could prevent
it; for he had never allowed me to round the boat to before;
consequently, no matter how I might do the thing, he could find
free fault with it. He stood back there with his greedy eye on
me, and the result was what might have been foreseen: I lost my
head in a quarter of a minute, and didn’t know what I was about;
I started too early to bring the boat around, but detected a
green gleam of joy in Brown’s eye, and corrected my mistake; I
started around once more while too high up, but corrected myself
again in time; I made other false moves, and still managed to
save myself; but at last I grew so confused and anxious that I
tumbled into the very worst blunder of all—I got too far down
before beginning to fetch the boat around. Brown’s chance was
come.
His face turned red with passion; he made one bound, hurled me
across the house with a sweep of his arm, spun the wheel down,
and began to pour out a stream of vituperation upon me which
lasted till he was out of breath. In the course of this speech he
called me all the different kinds of hard names he could think
of, and once or twice I thought he was even going to swear—but
he didn’t this time. “Dod dern” was the nearest he ventured to
the luxury of swearing, for he had been brought up with a
wholesome respect for future fire and brimstone.
That was an uncomfortable hour; for there was a big audience
on the hurricane deck. When I went to bed that night, I killed
Brown in seventeen different ways—all of them new.
Chapter 19
Brown and I Exchange Compliments
TWO
trips later, I got into serious trouble. Brown was
steering; I was “pulling down.” My younger brother appeared on
the hurricane deck, and shouted to Brown to stop at some landing
or other a mile or so below. Brown gave no intimation that he had
heard anything. But that was his way: he never condescended to
take notice of an under clerk. The wind was blowing; Brown was
deaf (although he always pretended he wasn’t), and I very much
doubted if he had heard the order. If I had two heads, I would
have spoken; but as I had only one, it seemed judicious to take
care of it; so I kept still.
Presently, sure enough, we went sailing by that plantation.
Captain Klinefelter appeared on the deck, and said—
“Let her come around, sir, let her come around. Didn’t Henry
tell you to land here?”
“No, sir!”
“I sent him up to do, it.”
“He did come up; and that’s all the good it done, the
dod-derned fool. He never said anything.”
“Didn’t you hear him?” asked the captain of me.
Of course I didn’t want to be mixed up in this business, but
there was no way to avoid it; so I said—
“Yes, sir.”
I knew what Brown’s next remark would be, before he uttered
it; it was—
“Shut your mouth! you never heard anything of the kind.”
I closed my mouth according to instructions. An hour later,
Henry entered the pilot-house, unaware of what had been going on.
He was a thoroughly inoffensive boy, and I was sorry to see him
come, for I knew Brown would have no pity on him. Brown began,
straightway—
“Here! why didn’t you tell me we’d got to land at that
plantation?”
“I did tell you, Mr. Brown.”
“It’s a lie!”
I said—
“You lie, yourself. He did tell you.”
Brown glared at me in unaffected surprise; and for as much as
a moment he was entirely speechless; then he shouted to me—
“I’ll attend to your case in half a minute!” then to Henry,
“And you leave the pilot-house; out with you!”
It was pilot law, and must be obeyed. The boy started out, and
even had his foot on the upper step outside the door, when Brown,
with a sudden access of fury, picked up a ten-pound lump of coal
and sprang after him; but I was between, with a heavy stool, and
I hit Brown a good honest blow which stretched-him out.
I had committed the crime of crimes—I had lifted my hand
against a pilot on duty! I supposed I was booked for the
penitentiary sure, and couldn’t be booked any surer if I went on
and squared my long account with this person while I had the
chance; consequently I stuck to him and pounded him with my fists
a considerable time—I do not know how long, the pleasure of it
probably made it seem longer than it really was;—but in the end
he struggled free and jumped up and sprang to the wheel: a very
natural solicitude, for, all this time, here was this steamboat
tearing down the river at the rate of fifteen miles an hour and
nobody at the helm! However, Eagle Bend was two miles wide at
this bank-full stage, and correspondingly long and deep; and the
boat was steering herself straight down the middle and taking no
chances. Still, that was only luck—a body might have found her
charging into the woods.
Perceiving, at a glance, that the “Pennsylvania” was in no
danger, Brown gathered up the big spy-glass, war-club fashion,
and ordered me out of the pilot-house with more than Comanche
bluster. But I was not afraid of him now; so, instead of going, I
tarried, and criticized his grammar; I reformed his ferocious
speeches for him, and put them into good English, calling his
attention to the advantage of pure English over the bastard
dialect of the Pennsylvanian collieries whence he was extracted.
He could have done his part to admiration in a cross-fire of mere
vituperation, of course; but he was not equipped for this species
of controversy; so he presently laid aside his glass and took the
wheel, muttering and shaking his head; and I retired to the
bench. The racket had brought everybody to the hurricane deck,
and I trembled when I saw the old captain looking up from the
midst of the crowd. I said to myself, “Now I am done for!’—For
although, as a rule, he was so fatherly and indulgent toward the
boat’s family, and so patient of minor shortcomings, he could be
stern enough when the fault was worth it.
I tried to imagine what he would do to a cub pilot who had
been guilty of such a crime as mine, committed on a boat
guard-deep with costly freight and alive with passengers. Our
watch was nearly ended. I thought I would go and hide somewhere
till I got a chance to slide ashore. So I slipped out of the
pilot-house, and down the steps, and around to the texas
door—and was in the act of gliding within, when the captain
confronted me! I dropped my head, and he stood over me in silence
a moment or two, then said impressively—
“Follow me.”
I dropped into his wake; he led the way to his parlor in the
forward end of the texas. We were alone, now. He closed the after
door; then moved slowly to the forward one and closed that. He
sat down; I stood before him. He looked at me some little time,
then said—
“So you have been fighting Mr. Brown?”
I answered meekly—
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you know that that is a very serious matter?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you aware that this boat was plowing down the river fully
five minutes with no one at the wheel?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you strike him first?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What with?”
“A stool, sir.”
“Hard?”
“Middling, sir.”
“Did it knock him down?”
“He—he fell, sir.”
“Did you follow it up? Did you do anything further?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What did you do?”
“Pounded him, sir.”
“Pounded him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you pound him much?—that is, severely?”
“One might call it that, sir, maybe.”
“I’m deuced glad of it! Hark ye, never mention that I said
that. You have been guilty of a great crime; and don’t you ever
be guilty of it again, on this boat. But—lay for him ashore!
Give him a good sound thrashing, do you hear? I’ll pay the
expenses. Now go—and mind you, not a word of this to anybody.
Clear out with you!—you’ve been guilty of a great crime, you
whelp!”
I slid out, happy with the sense of a close shave and a mighty
deliverance; and I heard him laughing to himself and slapping his
fat thighs after I had closed his door.
When Brown came off watch he went straight to the captain, who
was talking with some passengers on the boiler deck, and demanded
that I be put ashore in New Orleans—and added—
“I’ll never turn a wheel on this boat again while that cub
stays.”
The captain said—
“But he needn’t come round when you are on watch, Mr.
Brown.
“I won’t even stay on the same boat with him. One of us has
got to go ashore.”
“Very well,” said the captain, “let it be yourself;” and
resumed his talk with the passengers.
During the brief remainder of the trip, I knew how an
emancipated slave feels; for I was an emancipated slave myself.
While we lay at landings, I listened to George Ealer’s flute; or
to his readings from his two bibles, that is to say, Goldsmith
and Shakespeare; or I played chess with him—and would have
beaten him sometimes, only he always took back his last move and
ran the game out differently.
Chapter 20
A Catastrophe
WE
lay three days in New Orleans, but the captain did not
succeed in finding another pilot; so he proposed that I should
stand a daylight watch, and leave the night watches to George
Ealer. But I was afraid; I had never stood a watch of any sort by
myself, and I believed I should be sure to get into trouble in
the head of some chute, or ground the boat in a near cut through
some bar or other. Brown remained in his place; but he would not
travel with me. So the captain gave me an order on the captain of
the “A. T. Lacey,” for a passage to St. Louis, and said he would
find a new pilot there and my steersman’s berth could then be
resumed. The “Lacey” was to leave a couple of days after the
“Pennsylvania.”
The night before the “Pennsylvania” left, Henry and I sat
chatting on a freight pile on the levee till midnight. The
subject of the chat, mainly, was one which I think we had not
exploited before—steamboat disasters. One was then on its way to
us, little as we suspected it; the water which was to make the
steam which should cause it, was washing past some point fifteen
hundred miles up the river while we talked;—but it would arrive
at the right time and the right place. We doubted if persons not
clothed with authority were of much use in cases of disaster and
attendant panic; still, they might be of some use; so we decided
that if a disaster ever fell within our experience we would at
least stick to the boat, and give such minor service as chance
might throw in the way. Henry remembered this, afterward, when
the disaster came, and acted accordingly.
The “Lacey” started up the river two days behind the
“Pennsylvania.” We touched at Greenville, Mississippi, a couple
of days out, and somebody shouted—
“The "Pennsylvania" is blown up at Ship Island, and a hundred
and fifty lives lost!”
At Napoleon, Arkansas, the same evening, we got an extra,
issued by a Memphis paper, which gave some particulars. It
mentioned my brother, and said he was not hurt.
Further up the river we got a later extra. My brother was
again mentioned; but this time as being hurt beyond help. We did
not get full details of the catastrophe until we reached Memphis.
This is the sorrowful story—
It was six o’clock on a hot summer morning. The “Pennsylvania”
was creeping along, north of Ship Island, about sixty miles below
Memphis on a half-head of steam, towing a wood-flat which was
fast being emptied. George Ealer was in the pilot-house-alone, I
think; the second engineer and a striker had the watch in the
engine room; the second mate had the watch on deck; George Black,
Mr. Wood, and my brother, clerks, were asleep, as were also Brown
and the head engineer, the carpenter, the chief mate, and one
striker; Captain Klinefelter was in the barber’s chair, and the
barber was preparing to shave him. There were a good many cabin
passengers aboard, and three or four hundred deck passengers—so
it was said at the time—and not very many of them were astir.
The wood being nearly all out of the flat now, Ealer rang to
“come ahead” full steam, and the next moment four of the eight
boilers exploded with a thunderous crash, and the whole forward
third of the boat was hoisted toward the sky! The main part of
the mass, with the chimneys, dropped upon the boat again, a
mountain of riddled and chaotic rubbish—and then, after a
little, fire broke out.
Many people were flung to considerable distances, and fell in
the river; among these were Mr. Wood and my brother, and the
carpenter. The carpenter was still stretched upon his mattress
when he struck the water seventy-five feet from the boat. Brown,
the pilot, and George Black, chief clerk, were never seen or
heard of after the explosion. The barber’s chair, with Captain
Klinefelter in it and unhurt, was left with its back overhanging
vacancy—everything forward of it, floor and all, had
disappeared; and the stupefied barber, who was also unhurt, stood
with one toe projecting over space, still stirring his lather
unconsciously, and saying, not a word.
When George Ealer saw the chimneys plunging aloft in front of
him, he knew what the matter was; so he muffled his face in the
lapels of his coat, and pressed both hands there tightly to keep
this protection in its place so that no steam could get to his
nose or mouth. He had ample time to attend to these details while
he was going up and returning. He presently landed on top of the
unexploded boilers, forty feet below the former pilot-house,
accompanied by his wheel and a rain of other stuff, and enveloped
in a cloud of scalding steam. All of the many who breathed that
steam, died; none escaped. But Ealer breathed none of it. He made
his way to the free air as quickly as he could; and when the
steam cleared away he returned and climbed up on the boilers
again, and patiently hunted out each and every one of his
chessmen and the several joints of his flute.
By this time the fire was beginning to threaten. Shrieks and
groans filled the air. A great many persons had been scalded, a
great many crippled; the explosion had driven an iron crowbar
through one man’s body—I think they said he was a priest. He did
not die at once, and his sufferings were very dreadful. A young
French naval cadet, of fifteen, son of a French admiral, was
fearfully scalded, but bore his tortures manfully. Both mates
were badly scalded, but they stood to their posts, nevertheless.
They drew the wood-boat aft, and they and the captain fought back
the frantic herd of frightened immigrants till the wounded could
be brought there and placed in safety first.
When Mr. Wood and Henry fell in the water, they struck out for
shore, which was only a few hundred yards away; but Henry
presently said he believed he was not hurt (what an unaccountable
error!), and therefore would swim back to the boat and help save
the wounded. So they parted, and Henry returned.
By this time the fire was making fierce headway, and several
persons who were imprisoned under the ruins were begging
piteously for help. All efforts to conquer the fire proved
fruitless; so the buckets were presently thrown aside and the
officers fell-to with axes and tried to cut the prisoners out. A
striker was one of the captives; he said he was not injured, but
could not free himself; and when he saw that the fire was likely
to drive away the workers, he begged that some one would shoot
him, and thus save him from the more dreadful death. The fire did
drive the axmen away, and they had to listen, helpless, to this
poor fellow’s supplications till the flames ended his
miseries.
The fire drove all into the wood-flat that could be
accommodated there; it was cut adrift, then, and it and the
burning steamer floated down the river toward Ship Island. They
moored the flat at the head of the island, and there, unsheltered
from the blazing sun, the half-naked occupants had to remain,
without food or stimulants, or help for their hurts, during the
rest of the day. A steamer came along, finally, and carried the
unfortunates to Memphis, and there the most lavish assistance was
at once forthcoming. By this time Henry was insensible. The
physicians examined his injuries and saw that they were fatal,
and naturally turned their main attention to patients who could
be saved.
Forty of the wounded were placed upon pallets on the floor of
a great public hall, and among these was Henry. There the ladies
of Memphis came every day, with flowers, fruits, and dainties and
delicacies of all kinds, and there they remained and nursed the
wounded. All the physicians stood watches there, and all the
medical students; and the rest of the town furnished money, or
whatever else was wanted. And Memphis knew how to do all these
things well; for many a disaster like the “Pennsylvania’s” had
happened near her doors, and she was experienced, above all other
cities on the river, in the gracious office of the Good
Samaritan.”
The sight I saw when I entered that large hall was new and
strange to me. Two long rows of prostrate forms—more than forty,
in all—and every face and head a shapeless wad of loose raw
cotton. It was a gruesome spectacle. I watched there six days and
nights, and a very melancholy experience it was. There was one
daily incident which was peculiarly depressing: this was the
removal of the doomed to a chamber apart. It was done in order
that the morale of the other patients might not be injuriously
affected by seeing one of their number in the death-agony. The
fated one was always carried out with as little stir as possible,
and the stretcher was always hidden from sight by a wall of
assistants; but no matter: everybody knew what that cluster of
bent forms, with its muffled step and its slow movement meant;
and all eyes watched it wistfully, and a shudder went abreast of
it like a wave.
I saw many poor fellows removed to the “death-room,” and saw
them no more afterward. But I saw our chief mate carried thither
more than once. His hurts were frightful, especially his scalds.
He was clothed in linseed oil and raw cotton to his waist, and
resembled nothing human. He was often out of his mind; and then
his pains would make him rave and shout and sometimes shriek.
Then, after a period of dumb exhaustion, his disordered
imagination would suddenly transform the great apartment into a
forecastle, and the hurrying throng of nurses into the crew; and
he would come to a sitting posture and shout, “Hump yourselves,
hump yourselves, you petrifactions, snail-bellies, pall-bearers!
going to be all day getting that hatful of freight out?” and
supplement this explosion with a firmament-obliterating irruption
or profanity which nothing could stay or stop till his crater was
empty. And now and then while these frenzies possessed him, he
would tear off handfuls of the cotton and expose his cooked flesh
to view. It was horrible. It was bad for the others, of
course—this noise and these exhibitions; so the doctors tried to
give him morphine to quiet him. But, in his mind or out of it, he
would not take it. He said his wife had been killed by that
treacherous drug, and he would die before he would take it. He
suspected that the doctors were concealing it in his ordinary
medicines and in his water—so he ceased from putting either to
his lips. Once, when he had been without water during two
sweltering days, he took the dipper in his hand, and the sight of
the limpid fluid, and the misery of his thirst, tempted him
almost beyond his strength; but he mastered himself and threw it
away, and after that he allowed no more to be brought near him.
Three times I saw him carried to the death-room, insensible and
supposed to be dying; but each time he revived, cursed his
attendants, and demanded to be taken back. He lived to be mate of
a steamboat again.
But he was the only one who went to the death-room and
returned alive. Dr. Peyton, a principal physician, and rich in
all the attributes that go to constitute high and flawless
character, did all that educated judgment and trained skill could
do for Henry; but, as the newspapers had said in the beginning,
his hurts were past help. On the evening of the sixth day his
wandering mind busied itself with matters far away, and his
nerveless fingers “picked at his coverlet.” His hour had struck;
we bore him to the death-room, poor boy.
Chapter 21
A Section in My Biography
IN
due course I got my license. I was a pilot now, full
fledged. I dropped into casual employments; no misfortunes
resulting, intermittent work gave place to steady and protracted
engagements. Time drifted smoothly and prosperously on, and I
supposed—and hoped—that I was going to follow the river the
rest of my days, and die at the wheel when my mission was ended.
But by and by the war came, commerce was suspended, my occupation
was gone.
I had to seek another livelihood. So I became a silver miner
in Nevada; next, a newspaper reporter; next, a gold miner, in
California; next, a reporter in San Francisco; next, a special
correspondent in the Sandwich Islands; next, a roving
correspondent in Europe and the East; next, an instructional
torch-bearer on the lecture platform; and, finally, I became a
scribbler of books, and an immovable fixture among the other
rocks of New England.
In so few words have I disposed of the twenty-one
slow-drifting years that have come and gone since I last looked
from the windows of a pilot-house.
Let us resume, now.
Chapter 22
I Return to My Muttons
AFTER
twenty-one years” absence, I felt a very strong desire
to see the river again, and the steamboats, and such of the boys
as might be left; so I resolved to go out there. I enlisted a
poet for company, and a stenographer to “take him down,” and
started westward about the middle of April.
As I proposed to make notes, with a view to printing, I took
some thought as to methods of procedure. I reflected that if I
were recognized, on the river, I should not be as free to go and
come, talk, inquire, and spy around, as I should be if unknown; I
remembered that it was the custom of steamboatmen in the old
times to load up the confiding stranger with the most picturesque
and admirable lies, and put the sophisticated friend off with
dull and ineffectual facts: so I concluded, that, from a business
point of view, it would be an advantage to disguise our party
with fictitious names. The idea was certainly good, but it bred
infinite bother; for although Smith, Jones, and Johnson are easy
names to remember when there is no occasion to remember them, it
is next to impossible to recollect them when they are wanted. How
do criminals manage to keep a brand-new alias in mind? This is a
great mystery. I was innocent; and yet was seldom able to lay my
hand on my new name when it was needed; and it seemed to me that
if I had had a crime on my conscience to further confuse me, I
could never have kept the name by me at all.
We left per Pennsylvania Railroad, at 8 A.M. April 18.
“Evening. Speaking of dress. Grace and picturesqueness drop
gradually out of it as one travels away from New York.”
I find that among my notes. It makes no difference which
direction you take, the fact remains the same. Whether you move
north, south, east, or west, no matter: you can get up in the
morning and guess how far you have come, by noting what degree of
grace and picturesqueness is by that time lacking in the costumes
of the new passengers,—I do not mean of the women alone, but of
both sexes. It may be that carriage is at the bottom of this
thing; and I think it is; for there are plenty of ladies and
gentlemen in the provincial cities whose garments are all made by
the best tailors and dressmakers of New York; yet this has no
perceptible effect upon the grand fact: the educated eye never
mistakes those people for New-Yorkers. No, there is a godless
grace, and snap, and style about a born and bred New-Yorker which
mere clothing cannot effect.
“April 19. This morning, struck into the region of full
goatees—sometimes accompanied by a mustache, but only
occasionally.”
It was odd to come upon this thick crop of an obsolete and
uncomely fashion; it was like running suddenly across a forgotten
acquaintance whom you had supposed dead for a generation. The
goatee extends over a wide extent of country; and is accompanied
by an iron-clad belief in Adam and the biblical history of
creation, which has not suffered from the assaults of the
scientists.
“Afternoon. At the railway stations the loafers carry both
hands in their breeches pockets; it was observable, heretofore,
that one hand was sometimes out of doors,—here, never. This is
an important fact in geography.”
If the loafers determined the character of a country, it would
be still more important, of course.
“Heretofore, all along, the station-loafer has been often
observed to scratch one shin with the other foot; here, these
remains of activity are wanting. This has an ominous look.”
By and by, we entered the tobacco-chewing region. Fifty years
ago, the tobacco-chewing region covered the Union. It is greatly
restricted now.
Next, boots began to appear. Not in strong force, however.
Later—away down the Mississippi—they became the rule. They
disappeared from other sections of the Union with the mud; no
doubt they will disappear from the river villages, also, when
proper pavements come in.
We reached St. Louis at ten o’clock at night. At the counter
of the hotel I tendered a hurriedly-invented fictitious name,
with a miserable attempt at careless ease. The clerk paused, and
inspected me in the compassionate way in which one inspects a
respectable person who is found in doubtful circumstances; then
he said—
“It’s all right; I know what sort of a room you want. Used to
clerk at the St. James, in New York.”
An unpromising beginning for a fraudulent career. We started
to the supper room, and met two other men whom I had known
elsewhere. How odd and unfair it is: wicked impostors go around
lecturing under my nom de guerre and nobody suspects them; but
when an honest man attempts an imposture, he is exposed at
once.
One thing seemed plain: we must start down the river the next
day, if people who could not be deceived were going to crop up at
this rate: an unpalatable disappointment, for we had hoped to
have a week in St. Louis. The Southern was a good hotel, and we
could have had a comfortable time there. It is large, and well
conducted, and its decorations do not make one cry, as do those
of the vast Palmer House, in Chicago. True, the billiard-tables
were of the Old Silurian Period, and the cues and balls of the
Post-Pliocene; but there was refreshment in this, not discomfort;
for there is rest and healing in the contemplation of
antiquities.
The most notable absence observable in the billiard-room, was
the absence of the river man. If he was there he had taken in his
sign, he was in disguise. I saw there none of the swell airs and
graces, and ostentatious displays of money, and pompous
squanderings of it, which used to distinguish the steamboat crowd
from the dry-land crowd in the bygone days, in the thronged
billiard-rooms of St. Louis. In those times, the principal
saloons were always populous with river men; given fifty players
present, thirty or thirty-five were likely to be from the river.
But I suspected that the ranks were thin now, and the
steamboatmen no longer an aristocracy. Why, in my time they used
to call the “barkeep” Bill, or Joe, or Tom, and slap him on the
shoulder; I watched for that. But none of these people did it.
Manifestly a glory that once was had dissolved and vanished away
in these twenty-one years.
When I went up to my room, I found there the young man called
Rogers, crying. Rogers was not his name; neither was Jones,
Brown, Dexter, Ferguson, Bascom, nor Thompson; but he answered to
either of these that a body found handy in an emergency; or to
any other name, in fact, if he perceived that you meant him. He
said—
“What is a person to do here when he wants a drink of
water?—drink this slush?”
“Can’t you drink it?”
“I could if I had some other water to wash it with.”
Here was a thing which had not changed; a score of years had
not affected this water’s mulatto complexion in the least; a
score of centuries would succeed no better, perhaps. It comes out
of the turbulent, bank-caving Missouri, and every tumblerful of
it holds nearly an acre of land in solution. I got this fact from
the bishop of the diocese. If you will let your glass stand half
an hour, you can separate the land from the water as easy as
Genesis; and then you will find them both good: the one good to
eat, the other good to drink. The land is very nourishing, the
water is thoroughly wholesome. The one appeases hunger; the
other, thirst. But the natives do not take them separately, but
together, as nature mixed them. When they find an inch of mud in
the bottom of a glass, they stir it up, and then take the draught
as they would gruel. It is difficult for a stranger to get used
to this batter, but once used to it he will prefer it to water.
This is really the case. It is good for steamboating, and good to
drink; but it is worthless for all other purposes, except
baptizing.
Next morning, we drove around town in the rain. The city
seemed but little changed. It was greatly changed, but it did not
seem so; because in St. Louis, as in London and Pittsburgh, you
can’t persuade a new thing to look new; the coal smoke turns it
into an antiquity the moment you take your hand off it. The place
had just about doubled its size, since I was a resident of it,
and was now become a city of 400,000 inhabitants; still, in the
solid business parts, it looked about as it had looked formerly.
Yet I am sure there is not as much smoke in St. Louis now as
there used to be. The smoke used to bank itself in a dense
billowy black canopy over the town, and hide the sky from view.
This shelter is very much thinner now; still, there is a
sufficiency of smoke there, I think. I heard no complaint.
However, on the outskirts changes were apparent enough;
notably in dwelling-house architecture. The fine new homes are
noble and beautiful and modern. They stand by themselves, too,
with green lawns around them; whereas the dwellings of a former
day are packed together in blocks, and are all of one pattern,
with windows all alike, set in an arched frame-work of twisted
stone; a sort of house which was handsome enough when it was
rarer.
There was another change—the Forest Park. This was new to me.
It is beautiful and very extensive, and has the excellent merit
of having been made mainly by nature. There are other parks, and
fine ones, notably Tower Grove and the Botanical Gardens; for St.
Louis interested herself in such improvements at an earlier day
than did the most of our cities.
The first time I ever saw St. Louis, I could have bought it
for six million dollars, and it was the mistake of my life that I
did not do it. It was bitter now to look abroad over this domed
and steepled metropolis, this solid expanse of bricks and mortar
stretching away on every hand into dim, measure-defying
distances, and remember that I had allowed that opportunity to go
by. Why I should have allowed it to go by seems, of course,
foolish and inexplicable to-day, at a first glance; yet there
were reasons at the time to justify this course.
A Scotchman, Hon. Charles Augustus Murray, writing some
forty-five or fifty years ago, said—’The streets are narrow, ill
paved and ill lighted.” Those streets are narrow still, of
course; many of them are ill paved yet; but the reproach of ill
lighting cannot be repeated, now. The “Catholic New Church” was
the only notable building then, and Mr. Murray was confidently
called upon to admire it, with its “species of Grecian portico,
surmounted by a kind of steeple, much too diminutive in its
proportions, and surmounted by sundry ornaments” which the
unimaginative Scotchman found himself “quite unable to describe;”
and therefore was grateful when a German tourist helped him out
with the exclamation — “By —, they look exactly like bed-posts!”
St. Louis is well equipped with stately and noble public
buildings now, and the little church, which the people used to be
so proud of, lost its importance a long time ago. Still, this
would not surprise Mr. Murray, if he could come back; for he
prophesied the coming greatness of St. Louis with strong
confidence.
The further we drove in our inspection-tour, the more sensibly
I realized how the city had grown since I had seen it last;
changes in detail became steadily more apparent and frequent than
at first, too: changes uniformly evidencing progress, energy,
prosperity.
But the change of changes was on the “levee.” This time, a
departure from the rule. Half a dozen sound-asleep steamboats
where I used to see a solid mile of wide-awake ones! This was
melancholy, this was woeful. The absence of the pervading and
jocund steamboatman from the billiard-saloon was explained. He
was absent because he is no more. His occupation is gone, his
power has passed away, he is absorbed into the common herd, he
grinds at the mill, a shorn Samson and inconspicuous. Half a
dozen lifeless steamboats, a mile of empty wharves, a negro
fatigued with whiskey stretched asleep, in a wide and soundless
vacancy, where the serried hosts of commerce used to
contend!
Here was desolation, indeed.
“The old, old sea, as one in tears,
Comes murmuring, with foamy lips,
And knocking at the vacant piers,
Calls for his long-lost multitude of ships.”
The towboat and the railroad had done their work, and done it
well and completely. The mighty bridge, stretching along over our
heads, had done its share in the slaughter and spoliation.
Remains of former steamboatmen told me, with wan satisfaction,
that the bridge doesn’t pay. Still, it can be no sufficient
compensation to a corpse, to know that the dynamite that laid him
out was not of as good quality as it had been supposed to be.
The pavements along the river front were bad: the sidewalks
were rather out of repair; there was a rich abundance of mud. All
this was familiar and satisfying; but the ancient armies of
drays, and struggling throngs of men, and mountains of freight,
were gone; and Sabbath reigned in their stead. The immemorial
mile of cheap foul doggeries remained, but business was dull with
them; the multitudes of poison-swilling Irishmen had departed,
and in their places were a few scattering handfuls of ragged
negroes, some drinking, some drunk, some nodding, others asleep.
St. Louis is a great and prosperous and advancing city; but the
river-edge of it seems dead past resurrection.
Mississippi steamboating was born about 1812; at the end of
thirty years, it had grown to mighty proportions; and in less
than thirty more, it was dead! A strangely short life for so
majestic a creature. Of course it is not absolutely dead, neither
is a crippled octogenarian who could once jump twenty-two feet on
level ground; but as contrasted with what it was in its prime
vigor, Mississippi steamboating may be called dead.
It killed the old-fashioned keel-boating, by reducing the
freight-trip to New Orleans to less than a week. The railroads
have killed the steamboat passenger traffic by doing in two or
three days what the steamboats consumed a week in doing; and the
towing-fleets have killed the through-freight traffic by dragging
six or seven steamer-loads of stuff down the river at a time, at
an expense so trivial that steamboat competition was out of the
question.
Freight and passenger way-traffic remains to the steamers.
This is in the hands—along the two thousand miles of river
between St. Paul and New Orleans—-of two or three close
corporations well fortified with capital; and by able and
thoroughly business-like management and system, these make a
sufficiency of money out of what is left of the once prodigious
steamboating industry. I suppose that St. Louis and New Orleans
have not suffered materially by the change, but alas for the
wood-yard man!
He used to fringe the river all the way; his close-ranked
merchandise stretched from the one city to the other, along the
banks, and he sold uncountable cords of it every year for cash on
the nail; but all the scattering boats that are left burn coal
now, and the seldomest spectacle on the Mississippi to-day is a
wood-pile. Where now is the once wood-yard man?
Chapter 23
Traveling Incognito
MY
idea was, to tarry a while in every town between St. Louis
and New Orleans. To do this, it would be necessary to go from
place to place by the short packet lines. It was an easy plan to
make, and would have been an easy one to follow, twenty years
ago—but not now. There are wide intervals between boats, these
days.
I wanted to begin with the interesting old French settlements
of St. Genevieve and Kaskaskia, sixty miles below St. Louis.
There was only one boat advertised for that section—a Grand
Tower packet. Still, one boat was enough; so we went down to look
at her. She was a venerable rack-heap, and a fraud to boot; for
she was playing herself for personal property, whereas the good
honest dirt was so thickly caked all over her that she was
righteously taxable as real estate. There are places in New
England where her hurricane deck would be worth a hundred and
fifty dollars an acre. The soil on her forecastle was quite
good—the new crop of wheat was already springing from the cracks
in protected places. The companionway was of a dry sandy
character, and would have been well suited for grapes, with a
southern exposure and a little subsoiling. The soil of the boiler
deck was thin and rocky, but good enough for grazing purposes. A
colored boy was on watch here—nobody else visible. We gathered
from him that this calm craft would go, as advertised, “if she
got her trip;” if she didn’t get it, she would wait for it.
“Has she got any of her trip?”
“Bless you, no, boss. She ain’t unloadened, yit. She only come
in dis mawnin’.”
He was uncertain as to when she might get her trip, but
thought it might be to-morrow or maybe next day. This would not
answer at all; so we had to give up the novelty of sailing down
the river on a farm. We had one more arrow in our quiver: a
Vicksburg packet, the “Gold Dust,” was to leave at 5 P.M. We took
passage in her for Memphis, and gave up the idea of stopping off
here and there, as being impracticable. She was neat, clean, and
comfortable. We camped on the boiler deck, and bought some cheap
literature to kill time with. The vender was a venerable Irishman
with a benevolent face and a tongue that worked easily in the
socket, and from him we learned that he had lived in St. Louis
thirty-four years and had never been across the river during that
period. Then he wandered into a very flowing lecture, filled with
classic names and allusions, which was quite wonderful for
fluency until the fact became rather apparent that this was not
the first time, nor perhaps the fiftieth, that the speech had
been delivered. He was a good deal of a character, and much
better company than the sappy literature he was selling. A random
remark, connecting Irishmen and beer, brought this nugget of
information out of him—
They don’t drink it, sir. They can’t drink it, sir. Give an
Irishman lager for a month, and he’s a dead man. An Irishman is
lined with copper, and the beer corrodes it. But whiskey polishes
the copper and is the saving of him, sir.”
At eight o’clock, promptly, we backed out and crossed the
river. As we crept toward the shore, in the thick darkness, a
blinding glory of white electric light burst suddenly from our
forecastle, and lit up the water and the warehouses as with a
noon-day glare. Another big change, this—no more flickering,
smoky, pitch-dripping, ineffectual torch-baskets, now: their day
is past. Next, instead of calling out a score of hands to man the
stage, a couple of men and a hatful of steam lowered it from the
derrick where it was suspended, launched it, deposited it in just
the right spot, and the whole thing was over and done with before
a mate in the olden time could have got his profanity-mill
adjusted to begin the preparatory services. Why this new and
simple method of handling the stages was not thought of when the
first steamboat was built, is a mystery which helps one to
realize what a dull-witted slug the average human being is.
We finally got away at two in the morning, and when I turned
out at six, we were rounding to at a rocky point where there was
an old stone warehouse—at any rate, the ruins of it; two or
three decayed dwelling-houses were near by, in the shelter of
the leafy hills; but there were no evidences of human or other
animal life to be seen. I wondered if I had forgotten the river;
for I had no recollection whatever of this place; the shape of
the river, too, was unfamiliar; there was nothing in sight,
anywhere, that I could remember ever having seen before. I was
surprised, disappointed, and annoyed.
We put ashore a well-dressed lady and gentleman, and two
well-dressed, lady-like young girls, together with sundry
Russia-leather bags. A strange place for such folk! No carriage
was waiting. The party moved off as if they had not expected any,
and struck down a winding country road afoot.
But the mystery was explained when we got under way again; for
these people were evidently bound for a large town which lay shut
in behind a tow-head (i.e., new island) a couple of miles below
this landing. I couldn’t remember that town; I couldn’t place it,
couldn’t call its name. So I lost part of my temper. I suspected
that it might be St. Genevieve—and so it proved to be. Observe
what this eccentric river had been about: it had built up this
huge useless tow-head directly in front of this town, cut off its
river communications, fenced it away completely, and made a
“country” town of it. It is a fine old place, too, and deserved a
better fate. It was settled by the French, and is a relic of a
time when one could travel from the mouths of the Mississippi to
Quebec and be on French territory and under French rule all the
way.
Presently I ascended to the hurricane deck and cast a longing
glance toward the pilot-house.
Chapter 24
My Incognito is Exploded
AFTER
a close study of the face of the pilot on watch, I was
satisfied that I had never seen him before; so I went up there.
The pilot inspected me; I re-inspected the pilot. These customary
preliminaries over, I sat down on the high bench, and he faced
about and went on with his work. Every detail of the pilot-house
was familiar to me, with one exception,—a large-mouthed tube
under the breast-board. I puzzled over that thing a considerable
time; then gave up and asked what it was for.
“To hear the engine-bells through.”
It was another good contrivance which ought to have been
invented half a century sooner. So I was thinking, when the pilot
asked—
“Do you know what this rope is for?”
I managed to get around this question, without committing
myself.
“Is this the first time you were ever in a pilot-house?”
I crept under that one.
“Where are you from?”
“New England.”
“First time you have ever been West?”
I climbed over this one.
“If you take an interest in such things, I can tell you what
all these things are for.”
I said I should like it.
“This,” putting his hand on a backing-bell rope, “is to sound
the fire-alarm; this,” putting his hand on a go-ahead bell, “is
to call the texas-tender; this one,” indicating the
whistle-lever, “is to call the captain’—and so he went on,
touching one object after another, and reeling off his tranquil
spool of lies.
I had never felt so like a passenger before. I thanked him,
with emotion, for each new fact, and wrote it down in my
note-book. The pilot warmed to his opportunity, and proceeded to
load me up in the good old-fashioned way. At times I was afraid
he was going to rupture his invention; but it always stood the
strain, and he pulled through all right. He drifted, by easy
stages, into revealments of the river’s marvelous eccentricities
of one sort and another, and backed them up with some pretty
gigantic illustrations. For instance—
“Do you see that little boulder sticking out of the water
yonder? well, when I first came on the river, that was a solid
ridge of rock, over sixty feet high and two miles long. All
washed away but that.” [This with a sigh.]
I had a mighty impulse to destroy him, but it seemed to me
that killing, in any ordinary way, would be too good for him.
Once, when an odd-looking craft, with a vast coal-scuttle
slanting aloft on the end of a beam, was steaming by in the
distance, he indifferently drew attention to it, as one might to
an object grown wearisome through familiarity, and observed that
it was an “alligator boat.”
“An alligator boat? What’s it for?”
“To dredge out alligators with.”
“Are they so thick as to be troublesome?”
“Well, not now, because the Government keeps them down. But
they used to be. Not everywhere; but in favorite places, here and
there, where the river is wide and shoal-like Plum Point, and
Stack Island, and so on—places they call alligator beds.”
“Did they actually impede navigation?”
“Years ago, yes, in very low water; there was hardly a trip,
then, that we didn’t get aground on alligators.”
It seemed to me that I should certainly have to get out my
tomahawk. However, I restrained myself and said—
“It must have been dreadful.”
“Yes, it was one of the main difficulties about piloting. It
was so hard to tell anything about the water; the damned things
shift around so—never lie still five minutes at a time. You can
tell a wind-reef, straight off, by the look of it; you can tell a
break; you can tell a sand-reef—that’s all easy; but an
alligator reef doesn’t show up, worth anything. Nine times in ten
you can’t tell where the water is; and when you do see where it
is, like as not it ain’t there when you get there, the devils
have swapped around so, meantime. Of course there were some few
pilots that could judge of alligator water nearly as well as they
could of any other kind, but they had to have natural talent for
it; it wasn’t a thing a body could learn, you had to be born with
it. Let me see: there was Ben Thornburg, and Beck Jolly, and
Squire Bell, and Horace Bixby, and Major Downing, and John
Stevenson, and Billy Gordon, and Jim Brady, and George Ealer, and
Billy Youngblood—all A 1 alligator pilots. They could tell
alligator water as far as another Christian could tell whiskey.
Read it?—Ah, couldn’t they, though! I only wish I had as many
dollars as they could read alligator water a mile and a half off.
Yes, and it paid them to do it, too. A good alligator pilot could
always get fifteen hundred dollars a month. Nights, other people
had to lay up for alligators, but those fellows never laid up for
alligators; they never laid up for anything but fog. They could
smell the best alligator water it was said; I don’t know whether
it was so or not, and I think a body’s got his hands full enough
if he sticks to just what he knows himself, without going around
backing up other people’s say-so’s, though there’s a plenty that
ain’t backward about doing it, as long as they can roust out
something wonderful to tell. Which is not the style of Robert
Styles, by as much as three fathom—maybe quarter-less.”
[My! Was this Rob Styles?—This mustached and stately
figure?-A slim enough cub, in my time. How he has improved in
comeliness in five-and-twenty year and in the noble art of
inflating his facts.] After these musings, I said aloud—
“I should think that dredging out the alligators wouldn’t have
done much good, because they could come back again right
away.”
“If you had had as much experience of alligators as I have,
you wouldn’t talk like that. You dredge an alligator once and
he’s convinced. It’s the last you hear of him. He wouldn’t come
back for pie. If there’s one thing that an alligator is more down
on than another, it’s being dredged. Besides, they were not
simply shoved out of the way; the most of the scoopful were
scooped aboard; they emptied them into the hold; and when they
had got a trip, they took them to Orleans to the Government
works.”
“What for?”
“Why, to make soldier-shoes out of their hides. All the
Government shoes are made of alligator hide. It makes the best
shoes in the world. They last five years, and they won’t absorb
water. The alligator fishery is a Government monopoly. All the
alligators are Government property—just like the live-oaks. You
cut down a live-oak, and Government fines you fifty dollars; you
kill an alligator, and up you go for misprision of treason—lucky
duck if they don’t hang you, too. And they will, if you’re a
Democrat. The buzzard is the sacred bird of the South, and you
can’t touch him; the alligator is the sacred bird of the
Government, and you’ve got to let him alone.”
“Do you ever get aground on the alligators now?”
“Oh, no! it hasn’t happened for years.”
“Well, then, why do they still keep the alligator boats in
service?”
“Just for police duty—nothing more. They merely go up and
down now and then. The present generation of alligators know them
as easy as a burglar knows a roundsman; when they see one coming,
they break camp and go for the woods.”
After rounding-out and finishing-up and polishing-off the
alligator business, he dropped easily and comfortably into the
historical vein, and told of some tremendous feats of
half-a-dozen old-time steamboats of his acquaintance, dwelling at
special length upon a certain extraordinary performance of his
chief favorite among this distinguished fleet—and then
adding—
“That boat was the "Cyclone,”—last trip she ever made—she
sunk, that very trip—captain was Tom Ballou, the most immortal
liar that ever I struck. He couldn’t ever seem to tell the truth,
in any kind of weather. Why, he would make you fairly shudder. He
was the most scandalous liar! I left him, finally; I couldn’t
stand it. The proverb says, "like master, like man;" and if you
stay with that kind of a man, you’ll come under suspicion by and
by, just as sure as you live. He paid first-class wages; but said
I, What’s wages when your reputation’s in danger? So I let the
wages go, and froze to my reputation. And I’ve never regretted
it. Reputation’s worth everything, ain’t it? That’s the way I
look at it. He had more selfish organs than any seven men in the
world—all packed in the stern-sheets of his skull, of course,
where they belonged. They weighed down the back of his head so
that it made his nose tilt up in the air. People thought it was
vanity, but it wasn’t, it was malice. If you only saw his foot,
you’d take him to be nineteen feet high, but he wasn’t; it was
because his foot was out of drawing. He was intended to be
nineteen feet high, no doubt, if his foot was made first, but he
didn’t get there; he was only five feet ten. That’s what he was,
and that’s what he is. You take the lies out of him, and he’ll
shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice out of him,
and he’ll disappear. That "Cyclone" was a rattler to go, and the
sweetest thing to steer that ever walked the waters. Set her
amidships, in a big river, and just let her go; it was all you
had to do. She would hold herself on a star all night, if you let
her alone. You couldn’t ever feel her rudder. It wasn’t any more
labor to steer her than it is to count the Republican vote in a
South Carolina election. One morning, just at daybreak, the last
trip she ever made, they took her rudder aboard to mend it; I
didn’t know anything about it; I backed her out from the
wood-yard and went a-weaving down the river all serene. When I
had gone about twenty-three miles, and made four horribly crooked
crossings—”
“Without any rudder?”
“Yes—old Capt. Tom appeared on the roof and began to find
fault with me for running such a dark night—”
“Such a dark night ?—Why, you said—”
“Never mind what I said,—’twas as dark as Egypt now, though
pretty soon the moon began to rise, and—”
“You mean the sun—because you started out just at break
of—look here! Was this before you quitted the captain on account
of his lying, or—”
“It was before—oh, a long time before. And as I was saying,
he—”
“But was this the trip she sunk, or was—”
“Oh, no!—months afterward. And so the old man, he—”
“Then she made two last trips, because you said—”
He stepped back from the wheel, swabbing away his
perspiration, and said—
“Here!” (calling me by name), “you take her and lie a
while—you’re handier at it than I am. Trying to play yourself
for a stranger and an innocent!—why, I knew you before you had
spoken seven words; and I made up my mind to find out what was
your little game. It was to draw me out. Well, I let you, didn’t
I? Now take the wheel and finish the watch; and next time play
fair, and you won’t have to work your passage.”
Thus ended the fictitious-name business. And not six hours out
from St. Louis! but I had gained a privilege, any way, for I had
been itching to get my hands on the wheel, from the beginning. I
seemed to have forgotten the river, but I hadn’t forgotten how to
steer a steamboat, nor how to enjoy it, either.
Chapter 25
From Cairo to Hickman
THE
scenery, from St. Louis to Cairo—two hundred miles—is
varied and beautiful. The hills were clothed in the fresh foliage
of spring now, and were a gracious and worthy setting for the
broad river flowing between. Our trip began auspiciously, with a
perfect day, as to breeze and sunshine, and our boat threw the
miles out behind her with satisfactory despatch.
We found a railway intruding at Chester, Illinois; Chester has
also a penitentiary now, and is otherwise marching on. At Grand
Tower, too, there was a railway; and another at Cape Girardeau.
The former town gets its name from a huge, squat pillar of rock,
which stands up out of the water on the Missouri side of the
river—a piece of nature’s fanciful handiwork—and is one of the
most picturesque features of the scenery of that region. For
nearer or remoter neighbors, the Tower has the Devil’s Bake
Oven—so called, perhaps, because it does not powerfully resemble
anybody else’s bake oven; and the Devil’s Tea Table—this latter
a great smooth-surfaced mass of rock, with diminishing wine-glass
stem, perched some fifty or sixty feet above the river, beside a
beflowered and garlanded precipice, and sufficiently like a
tea-table to answer for anybody, Devil or Christian. Away down
the river we have the Devil’s Elbow and the Devil’s Race-course,
and lots of other property of his which I cannot now call to
mind.
The Town of Grand Tower was evidently a busier place than it
had been in old times, but it seemed to need some repairs here
and there, and a new coat of whitewash all over. Still, it was
pleasant to me to see the old coat once more. “Uncle” Mumford,
our second officer, said the place had been suffering from high
water, and consequently was not looking its best now. But he said
it was not strange that it didn’t waste white-wash on itself,
for more lime was made there, and of a better quality, than
anywhere in the West; and added—’On a dairy farm you never can
get any milk for your coffee, nor any sugar for it on a sugar
plantation; and it is against sense to go to a lime town to hunt
for white-wash.” In my own experience I knew the first two items
to be true; and also that people who sell candy don’t care for
candy; therefore there was plausibility in Uncle Mumford’s final
observation that “people who make lime run more to religion than
whitewash.” Uncle Mumford said, further, that Grand Tower was a
great coaling center and a prospering place.
Cape Girardeau is situated on a hillside, and makes a handsome
appearance. There is a great Jesuit school for boys at the foot
of the town by the river. Uncle Mumford said it had as high a
reputation for thoroughness as any similar institution in
Missouri! There was another college higher up on an airy
summit—a bright new edifice, picturesquely and peculiarly
towered and pinnacled—a sort of gigantic casters, with the
cruets all complete. Uncle Mumford said that Cape Girardeau was
the Athens of Missouri, and contained several colleges besides
those already mentioned; and all of them on a religious basis of
one kind or another. He directed my attention to what he called
the “strong and pervasive religious look of the town,” but I
could not see that it looked more religious than the other hill
towns with the same slope and built of the same kind of bricks.
Partialities often make people see more than really exists.
Uncle Mumford has been thirty years a mate on the river. He is
a man of practical sense and a level head; has observed; has had
much experience of one sort and another; has opinions; has, also,
just a perceptible dash of poetry in his composition, an easy
gift of speech, a thick growl in his voice, and an oath or two
where he can get at them when the exigencies of his office
require a spiritual lift. He is a mate of the blessed old-time
kind; and goes gravely damning around, when there is work to the
fore, in a way to mellow the ex-steamboatman’s heart with sweet
soft longings for the vanished days that shall come no more. “Git
up there you! Going to be all day? Why d’n’t you say you was
petrified in your hind legs, before you shipped!”
He is a steady man with his crew; kind and just, but firm; so
they like him, and stay with him. He is still in the slouchy garb
of the old generation of mates; but next trip the Anchor Line
will have him in uniform—a natty blue naval uniform, with brass
buttons, along with all the officers of the line—and then he
will be a totally different style of scenery from what he is
now.
Uniforms on the Mississippi! It beats all the other changes
put together, for surprise. Still, there is another
surprise—that it was not made fifty years ago. It is so
manifestly sensible, that it might have been thought of earlier,
one would suppose. During fifty years, out there, the innocent
passenger in need of help and information, has been mistaking the
mate for the cook, and the captain for the barber—and being
roughly entertained for it, too. But his troubles are ended now.
And the greatly improved aspect of the boat’s staff is another
advantage achieved by the dress-reform period.
Steered down the bend below Cape Girardeau. They used to call
it “Steersman’s Bend;” plain sailing and plenty of water in it,
always; about the only place in the Upper River that a new cub
was allowed to take a boat through, in low water.
Thebes, at the head of the Grand Chain, and Commerce at the
foot of it, were towns easily rememberable, as they had not
undergone conspicuous alteration. Nor the Chain, either—in the
nature of things; for it is a chain of sunken rocks admirably
arranged to capture and kill steamboats on bad nights. A good
many steamboat corpses lie buried there, out of sight; among the
rest my first friend the “Paul Jones;” she knocked her bottom
out, and went down like a pot, so the historian told me—Uncle
Mumford. He said she had a gray mare aboard, and a preacher. To
me, this sufficiently accounted for the disaster; as it did, of
course, to Mumford, who added—
“But there are many ignorant people who would scoff at such a
matter, and call it superstition. But you will always notice that
they are people who have never traveled with a gray mare and a
preacher. I went down the river once in such company. We grounded
at Bloody Island; we grounded at Hanging Dog; we grounded just
below this same Commerce; we jolted Beaver Dam Rock; we hit one
of the worst breaks in the “Graveyard” behind Goose Island; we
had a roustabout killed in a fight; we burnt a boiler; broke a
shaft; collapsed a flue; and went into Cairo with nine feet of
water in the hold—may have been more, may have been less. I
remember it as if it were yesterday. The men lost their heads
with terror. They painted the mare blue, in sight of town, and
threw the preacher overboard, or we should not have arrived at
all. The preacher was fished out and saved. He acknowledged,
himself, that he had been to blame. I remember it all, as if it
were yesterday.”
That this combination—of preacher and gray mare—should breed
calamity, seems strange, and at first glance unbelievable; but
the fact is fortified by so much unassailable proof that to doubt
is to dishonor reason. I myself remember a case where a captain
was warned by numerous friends against taking a gray mare and a
preacher with him, but persisted in his purpose in spite of all
that could be said; and the same day—it may have been the next,
and some say it was, though I think it was the same day—he got
drunk and fell down the hatchway, and was borne to his home a
corpse. This is literally true.
No vestige of Hat Island is left now; every shred of it is
washed away. I do not even remember what part of the river it
used to be in, except that it was between St. Louis and Cairo
somewhere. It was a bad region—all around and about Hat Island,
in early days. A farmer who lived on the Illinois shore there,
said that twenty-nine steamboats had left their bones strung
along within sight from his house. Between St. Louis and Cairo
the steamboat wrecks average one to the mile;—two hundred
wrecks, altogether.
I could recognize big changes from Commerce down. Beaver Dam
Rock was out in the middle of the river now, and throwing a
prodigious “break;” it used to be close to the shore, and boats
went down outside of it. A big island that used to be away out in
mid-river, has retired to the Missouri shore, and boats do not go
near it any more. The island called Jacket Pattern is whittled
down to a wedge now, and is booked for early destruction. Goose
Island is all gone but a little dab the size of a steamboat. The
perilous “Graveyard,” among whose numberless wrecks we used to
pick our way so slowly and gingerly, is far away from the channel
now, and a terror to nobody. One of the islands formerly called
the Two Sisters is gone entirely; the other, which used to lie
close to the Illinois shore, is now on the Missouri side, a mile
away; it is joined solidly to the shore, and it takes a sharp eye
to see where the seam is—but it is Illinois ground yet, and the
people who live on it have to ferry themselves over and work the
Illinois roads and pay Illinois taxes: singular state of
things!
Near the mouth of the river several islands were
missing—washed away. Cairo was still there—easily visible
across the long, flat point upon whose further verge it stands;
but we had to steam a long way around to get to it. Night fell as
we were going out of the “Upper River” and meeting the floods of
the Ohio. We dashed along without anxiety; for the hidden rock
which used to lie right in the way has moved up stream a long
distance out of the channel; or rather, about one county has gone
into the river from the Missouri point, and the Cairo point has
“made down” and added to its long tongue of territory
correspondingly. The Mississippi is a just and equitable river;
it never tumbles one man’s farm overboard without building a new
farm just like it for that man’s neighbor. This keeps down hard
feelings.
Going into Cairo, we came near killing a steamboat which paid
no attention to our whistle and then tried to cross our bows. By
doing some strong backing, we saved him; which was a great loss,
for he would have made good literature.
Cairo is a brisk town now; and is substantially built, and has
a city look about it which is in noticeable contrast to its
former estate, as per Mr. Dickens’s portrait of it. However, it
was already building with bricks when I had seen it last—which
was when Colonel (now General) Grant was drilling his first
command there. Uncle Mumford says the libraries and
Sunday-schools have done a good work in Cairo, as well as the
brick masons. Cairo has a heavy railroad and river trade, and her
situation at the junction of the two great rivers is so
advantageous that she cannot well help prospering.
When I turned out, in the morning, we had passed Columbus,
Kentucky, and were approaching Hickman, a pretty town, perched on
a handsome hill. Hickman is in a rich tobacco region, and
formerly enjoyed a great and lucrative trade in that staple,
collecting it there in her warehouses from a large area of
country and shipping it by boat; but Uncle Mumford says she built
a railway to facilitate this commerce a little more, and he
thinks it facilitated it the wrong way—took the bulk of the
trade out of her hands by “collaring it along the line without
gathering it at her doors.”
Chapter 26
Under Fire
TALK
began to run upon the war now, for we were getting down
into the upper edge of the former battle-stretch by this time.
Columbus was just behind us, so there was a good deal said about
the famous battle of Belmont. Several of the boat’s officers had
seen active service in the Mississippi war-fleet. I gathered that
they found themselves sadly out of their element in that kind of
business at first, but afterward got accustomed to it, reconciled
to it, and more or less at home in it. One of our pilots had his
first war experience in the Belmont fight, as a pilot on a boat
in the Confederate service. I had often had a curiosity to know
how a green hand might feel, in his maiden battle, perched all
solitary and alone on high in a pilot house, a target for Tom,
Dick and Harry, and nobody at his elbow to shame him from showing
the white feather when matters grew hot and perilous around him;
so, to me his story was valuable—it filled a gap for me which
all histories had left till that time empty.
THE PILOT’S FIRST BATTLE
He said—
It was the 7th of November. The fight began at seven in the
morning. I was on the “R. H. W. Hill.” Took over a load of troops
from Columbus. Came back, and took over a battery of artillery.
My partner said he was going to see the fight; wanted me to go
along. I said, no, I wasn’t anxious, I would look at it from the
pilot-house. He said I was a coward, and left.
That fight was an awful sight. General Cheatham made his men
strip their coats off and throw them in a pile, and said, “Now
follow me to hell or victory!” I heard him say that from the
pilot-house; and then he galloped in, at the head of his troops.
Old General Pillow, with his white hair, mounted on a white
horse, sailed in, too, leading his troops as lively as a boy. By
and by the Federals chased the rebels back, and here they came!
tearing along, everybody for himself and Devil take the hindmost!
and down under the bank they scrambled, and took shelter. I was
sitting with my legs hanging out of the pilot-house window. All
at once I noticed a whizzing sound passing my ear. Judged it was
a bullet. I didn’t stop to think about anything, I just tilted
over backwards and landed on the floor, and staid there. The
balls came booming around. Three cannon-balls went through the
chimney; one ball took off the corner of the pilot-house; shells
were screaming and bursting all around. Mighty warm times—I
wished I hadn’t come.
I lay there on the pilot-house floor, while
the shots came faster and faster. I crept in behind the big
stove, in the middle of the pilot-house. Presently a minie-ball
came through the stove, and just grazed my head, and cut my hat.
I judged it was time to go away from there. The captain was on
the roof with a red-headed major from Memphis—a fine-looking
man. I heard him say he wanted to leave here, but “that pilot is
killed.” I crept over to the starboard side to pull the bell to
set her back; raised up and took a look, and I saw about fifteen
shot holes through the window panes; had come so lively I hadn’t
noticed them. I glanced out on the water, and the spattering shot
were like a hailstorm. I thought best to get out of that place. I
went down the pilot-house guy, head first—not feet first but
head first—slid down—before I struck the deck, the captain said
we must leave there. So I climbed up the guy and got on the floor
again. About that time, they collared my partner and were
bringing him up to the pilot-house between two soldiers. Somebody
had said I was killed. He put his head in and saw me on the floor
reaching for the backing bells. He said, “Oh, hell, he ain’t
shot,” and jerked away from the men who had him by the collar,
and ran below. We were there until three o’clock in the
afternoon, and then got away all right.
The next time I saw my partner, I said, “Now, come out, be
honest, and tell me the truth. Where did you go when you went to
see that battle?” He says, “I went down in the hold.”
All through that fight I was scared nearly to death. I hardly
knew anything, I was so frightened; but you see, nobody knew that
but me. Next day General Polk sent for me, and praised me for my
bravery and gallant conduct. I never said anything, I let it go
at that. I judged it wasn’t so, but it was not for me to
contradict a general officer.
Pretty soon after that I was sick, and used up, and had to go
off to the Hot Springs. When there, I got a good many letters
from commanders saying they wanted me to come back. I declined,
because I wasn’t well enough or strong enough; but I kept still,
and kept the reputation I had made.
A plain story, straightforwardly told; but Mumford told me
that that pilot had “gilded that scare of his, in spots;” that
his subsequent career in the war was proof of it.
We struck down through the chute of Island No. 8, and I went
below and fell into conversation with a passenger, a handsome
man, with easy carriage and an intelligent face. We were
approaching Island No. 10, a place so celebrated during the war.
This gentleman’s home was on the main shore in its neighborhood.
I had some talk with him about the war times; but presently the
discourse fell upon “feuds,” for in no part of the South has the
vendetta flourished more briskly, or held out longer between
warring families, than in this particular region. This gentleman
said—
“There’s been more than one feud around here, in old times,
but I reckon the worst one was between the Darnells and the
Watsons. Nobody don’t know now what the first quarrel was about,
it’s so long ago; the Darnells and the Watsons don’t know, if
there’s any of them living, which I don’t think there is. Some
says it was about a horse or a cow—anyway, it was a little
matter; the money in it wasn’t of no consequence—none in the
world—both families was rich. The thing could have been fixed
up, easy enough; but no, that wouldn’t do. Rough words had been
passed; and so, nothing but blood could fix it up after that.
That horse or cow, whichever it was, cost sixty years of killing
and crippling! Every year or so somebody was shot, on one side or
the other; and as fast as one generation was laid out, their sons
took up the feud and kept it a-going. And it’s just as I say;
they went on shooting each other, year in and year out—making a
kind of a religion of it, you see—till they’d done forgot, long
ago, what it was all about. Wherever a Darnell caught a Watson,
or a Watson caught a Darnell, one of “em was going to get
hurt—only question was, which of them got the drop on the other.
They’d shoot one another down, right in the presence of the
family. They didn’t hunt for each other, but when they happened
to meet, they puffed and begun. Men would shoot boys, boys would
shoot men. A man shot a boy twelve years old—happened on him in
the woods, and didn’t give him no chance. If he had “a” given him
a chance, the boy’d “a” shot him. Both families belonged to the
same church (everybody around here is religious); through all
this fifty or sixty years” fuss, both tribes was there every
Sunday, to worship. They lived each side of the line, and the
church was at a landing called Compromise. Half the church and
half the aisle was in Kentucky, the other half in Tennessee.
Sundays you’d see the families drive up, all in their Sunday
clothes, men, women, and children, and file up the aisle, and set
down, quiet and orderly, one lot on the Tennessee side of the
church and the other on the Kentucky side; and the men and boys
would lean their guns up against the wall, handy, and then all
hands would join in with the prayer and praise; though they say
the man next the aisle didn’t kneel down, along with the rest of
the family; kind of stood guard. I don’t know; never was at that
church in my life; but I remember that that’s what used to be
said.
“Twenty or twenty-five years ago, one of the feud families
caught a young man of nineteen out and killed him. Don’t remember
whether it was the Darnells and Watsons, or one of the other
feuds; but anyway, this young man rode up—steamboat laying there
at the time—and the first thing he saw was a whole gang of the
enemy. He jumped down behind a wood-pile, but they rode around
and begun on him, he firing back, and they galloping and
cavorting and yelling and banging away with all their might.
Think he wounded a couple of them; but they closed in on him and
chased him into the river; and as he swum along down stream, they
followed along the bank and kept on shooting at him; and when he
struck shore he was dead. Windy Marshall told me about it. He saw
it. He was captain of the boat.
“Years ago, the Darnells was so thinned out that the old man
and his two sons concluded they’d leave the country. They started
to take steamboat just above No. 10; but the Watsons got wind of
it; and they arrived just as the two young Darnells was walking
up the companion-way with their wives on their arms. The fight
begun then, and they never got no further—both of them killed.
After that, old Darnell got into trouble with the man that run
the ferry, and the ferry-man got the worst of it—and died. But
his friends shot old Darnell through and through—filled him full
of bullets, and ended him.”
The country gentleman who told me these things had been reared
in ease and comfort, was a man of good parts, and was college
bred. His loose grammar was the fruit of careless habit, not
ignorance. This habit among educated men in the West is not
universal, but it is prevalent—prevalent in the towns,
certainly, if not in the cities; and to a degree which one cannot
help noticing, and marveling at. I heard a Westerner who would be
accounted a highly educated man in any country, say “never mind,
it don’t make no difference, anyway.” A life-long resident who
was present heard it, but it made no impression upon her. She was
able to recall the fact afterward, when reminded of it; but she
confessed that the words had not grated upon her ear at the
time—a confession which suggests that if educated people can
hear such blasphemous grammar, from such a source, and be
unconscious of the deed, the crime must be tolerably common—so
common that the general ear has become dulled by familiarity with
it, and is no longer alert, no longer sensitive to such
affronts.
No one in the world speaks blemishless grammar; no one has
ever written it—no one, either in the world or out of it (taking
the Scriptures for evidence on the latter point); therefore it
would not be fair to exact grammatical perfection from the
peoples of the Valley; but they and all other peoples may justly
be required to refrain from knowingly and purposely debauching
their grammar.
I found the river greatly changed at Island No. 10. The island
which I remembered was some three miles long and a quarter of a
mile wide, heavily timbered, and lay near the Kentucky
shore—within two hundred yards of it, I should say. Now,
however, one had to hunt for it with a spy-glass. Nothing was
left of it but an insignificant little tuft, and this was no
longer near the Kentucky shore; it was clear over against the
opposite shore, a mile away. In war times the island had been an
important place, for it commanded the situation; and, being
heavily fortified, there was no getting by it. It lay between the
upper and lower divisions of the Union forces, and kept them
separate, until a junction was finally effected across the
Missouri neck of land; but the island being itself joined to that
neck now, the wide river is without obstruction.
In this region the river passes from Kentucky into Tennessee,
back into Missouri, then back into Kentucky, and thence into
Tennessee again. So a mile or two of Missouri sticks over into
Tennessee.
The town of New Madrid was looking very unwell; but otherwise
unchanged from its former condition and aspect. Its blocks of
frame-houses were still grouped in the same old flat plain, and
environed by the same old forests. It was as tranquil as
formerly, and apparently had neither grown nor diminished in
size. It was said that the recent high water had invaded it and
damaged its looks. This was surprising news; for in low water the
river bank is very high there (fifty feet), and in my day an
overflow had always been considered an impossibility. This
present flood of 1882 Will doubtless be celebrated in the river’s
history for several generations before a deluge of like magnitude
shall be seen. It put all the unprotected low lands under water,
from Cairo to the mouth; it broke down the levees in a great many
places, on both sides of the river; and in some regions south,
when the flood was at its highest, the Mississippi was seventy
miles wide! a number of lives were lost, and the destruction of
property was fearful. The crops were destroyed, houses washed
away, and shelterless men and cattle forced to take refuge on
scattering elevations here and there in field and forest, and
wait in peril and suffering until the boats put in commission by
the national and local governments and by newspaper enterprise
could come and rescue them. The properties of multitudes of
people were
under water for months,
and the poorer ones must have
starved by the hundred if succor had not been promptly
afforded.
The water had been
falling during a considerable time now, yet as a rule we found
the banks still under water.
Chapter 27
Some Imported Articles
WE
met two steamboats at New Madrid. Two steamboats in sight
at once! an infrequent spectacle now in the lonesome Mississippi.
The loneliness of this solemn, stupendous flood is
impressive—and depressing. League after league, and still league
after league, it pours its chocolate tide along, between its
solid forest walls, its almost untenanted shores, with seldom a
sail or a moving object of any kind to disturb the surface and
break the monotony of the blank, watery solitude; and so the day
goes, the night comes, and again the day—and still the same,
night after night and day after day—majestic, unchanging
sameness of serenity, repose, tranquillity, lethargy,
vacancy—symbol of eternity, realization of the heaven pictured
by priest and prophet, and longed for by the good and
thoughtless!
Immediately after the war of 1812, tourists began to come to
America, from England; scattering ones at first, then a sort of
procession of them—a procession which kept up its plodding,
patient march through the land during many, many years. Each
tourist took notes, and went home and published a book—a book
which was usually calm, truthful, reasonable, kind; but which
seemed just the reverse to our tender-footed progenitors. A
glance at these tourist-books shows us that in certain of its
aspects the Mississippi has undergone no change since those
strangers visited it, but remains to-day about as it was then.
The emotions produced in those foreign breasts by these aspects
were not all formed on one pattern, of course; they had to be
various, along at first, because the earlier tourists were
obliged to originate their emotions, whereas in older countries
one can always borrow emotions from one’s predecessors. And, mind
you, emotions are among the toughest things in the world to
manufacture out of whole cloth; it is easier to manufacture seven
facts than one emotion. Captain Basil Hall. R.N., writing
fifty-five years ago, says—
“Here I caught the first glimpse of the object I had so long
wished to behold, and felt myself amply repaid at that moment for
all the trouble I had experienced in coming so far; and stood
looking at the river flowing past till it was too dark to
distinguish anything. But it was not till I had visited the same
spot a dozen times, that I came to a right comprehension of the
grandeur of the scene.”
Following are Mrs. Trollope’s emotions. She is writing a few
months later in the same year, 1827, and is coming in at the
mouth of the Mississippi—
“The first indication of our approach to land was the
appearance of this mighty river pouring forth its muddy mass of
waters, and mingling with the deep blue of the Mexican Gulf. I
never beheld a scene so utterly desolate as this entrance of the
Mississippi. Had Dante seen it, he might have drawn images of
another Borgia from its horrors. One only object rears itself
above the eddying waters; this is the mast of a vessel long since
wrecked in attempting to cross the bar, and it still stands, a
dismal witness of the destruction that has been, and a boding
prophet of that which is to come.”
Emotions of Hon. Charles Augustus Murray (near St. Louis),
seven years later—
“It is only when you ascend the mighty current for fifty or a
hundred miles, and use the eye of imagination as well as that of
nature, that you begin to understand all his might and majesty.
You see him fertilizing a boundless valley, bearing along in his
course the trophies of his thousand victories over the shattered
forest—here carrying away large masses of soil with all their
growth, and there forming islands, destined at some future period
to be the residence of man; and while indulging in this prospect,
it is then time for reflection to suggest that the current before
you has flowed through two or three thousand miles, and has yet
to travel one thousand three hundred more before reaching its
ocean destination.”
Receive, now, the emotions of Captain Marryat, R.N. author of
the sea tales, writing in 1837, three years after Mr.
Murray—
“Never, perhaps, in the records of nations, was there an
instance of a century of such unvarying and unmitigated crime as
is to be collected from the history of the turbulent and
blood-stained Mississippi. The stream itself appears as if
appropriate for the deeds which have been committed. It is not
like most rivers, beautiful to the sight, bestowing fertility in
its course; not one that the eye loves to dwell upon as it sweeps
along, nor can you wander upon its banks, or trust yourself
without danger to its stream. It is a furious, rapid, desolating
torrent, loaded with alluvial soil; and
few of those who are
received into its waters ever rise again,
or can support
themselves long upon its surface without assistance from some
friendly log. It contains the coarsest and most uneatable of
fish, such as the cat-fish and such genus, and as you descend,
its banks are occupied with the fetid alligator, while the
panther basks at its edge in the cane-brakes, almost impervious
to man. Pouring its impetuous waters through wild tracks covered
with trees of little value except for firewood, it sweeps down
whole forests in its course, which disappear in tumultuous
confusion, whirled away by the stream now loaded with the masses
of soil which nourished their roots, often blocking up and
changing for a time the channel of the river, which, as if in
anger at its being opposed, inundates and devastates the whole
country round; and as soon as it forces its way through its
former channel, plants in every direction the uprooted monarchs
of the forest (upon whose branches the bird will never again
perch, or the raccoon, the opossum, or the squirrel climb) as
traps to the adventurous navigators of its waters by steam, who,
borne down upon these concealed dangers which pierce through the
planks, very often have not time to steer for and gain the shore
before they sink to the bottom. There are no pleasing
associations connected with the great common sewer of the Western
America, which pours out its mud into the Mexican Gulf, polluting
the clear blue sea for many miles beyond its mouth. It is a river
of desolation; and instead of reminding you, like other beautiful
rivers, of an angel which has descended for the benefit of man,
you imagine it a devil, whose energies have been only overcome by
the wonderful power of steam.”
It is pretty crude literature for a man accustomed to handling
a pen; still, as a panorama of the emotions sent weltering
through this noted visitor’s breast by the aspect and traditions
of the “great common sewer,” it has a value. A value, though
marred in the matter of statistics by inaccuracies; for the
catfish is a plenty good enough fish for anybody, and there are
no panthers that are “impervious to man.”
Later still comes Alexander Mackay, of the Middle Temple,
Barrister at Law, with a better digestion, and no catfish dinner
aboard, and feels as follows—
“The Mississippi! It was with indescribable emotions that I
first felt myself afloat upon its waters. How often in my
schoolboy dreams, and in my waking visions afterwards, had my
imagination pictured to itself the lordly stream, rolling with
tumultuous current through the boundless region to which it has
given its name, and gathering into itself, in its course to the
ocean, the tributary waters of almost every latitude in the
temperate zone! Here it was then in its reality, and I, at
length, steaming against its tide. I looked upon it with that
reverence with which everyone must regard a great feature of
external nature.”
So much for the emotions. The tourists, one and all, remark
upon the deep, brooding loneliness and desolation of the vast
river. Captain Basil Hall, who saw it at flood-stage, says—
“Sometimes we passed along distances of twenty or thirty miles
without seeing a single habitation. An artist, in search of hints
for a painting of the deluge, would here have found them in
abundance.”
The first shall be last, etc. just two hundred years ago, the
old original first and gallantest of all the foreign tourists,
pioneer, head of the procession, ended his weary and tedious
discovery-voyage down the solemn stretches of the great river—La
Salle, whose name will last as long as the river itself shall
last. We quote from Mr. Parkman—
“And now they neared their journey’s end. On the sixth of
April, the river divided itself into three broad channels. La
Salle followed that of the west, and D’Autray that of the east;
while Tonty took the middle passage. As he drifted down the
turbid current, between the low and marshy shores, the brackish
water changed to brine, and the breeze grew fresh with the salt
breath of the sea. Then the broad bosom of the great Gulf opened
on his sight, tossing its restless billows, limitless, voiceless,
lonely as when born of chaos, without a sail, without a sign of
life.”
Then, on a spot of solid ground, La Salle reared a column
“bearing the arms of France; the Frenchmen were mustered under
arms; and while the New England Indians and their squaws looked
on in wondering silence, they chanted the Te Deum, the Exaudiat,
and the Domine salvum fac regem.”
Then, whilst the musketry volleyed and rejoicing shouts burst
forth, the victorious discoverer planted the column, and made
proclamation in a loud voice, taking formal possession of the
river and the vast countries watered by it, in the name of the
King. The column bore this inscription—
LOUIS LE GRAND, ROY DE FRANCE ET DE NAVARRE, REGNE; LE
NEUVIEME AVRIL, 1682.
New Orleans intended to fittingly celebrate, this present
year, the bicentennial anniversary of this illustrious event; but
when the time came, all her energies and surplus money were
required in other directions, for the flood was upon the land
then, making havoc and devastation everywhere.
Chapter 28
Uncle Mumford Unloads
ALL
day we swung along down the river, and had the stream
almost wholly to ourselves. Formerly, at such a stage of the
water, we should have passed acres of lumber rafts, and dozens of
big coal barges; also occasional little trading-scows, peddling
along from farm to farm, with the peddler’s family on board;
possibly, a random scow, bearing a humble Hamlet and Co. on an
itinerant dramatic trip. But these were all absent. Far along in
the day, we saw one steamboat; just one, and no more. She was
lying at rest in the shade, within the wooded mouth of the Obion
River. The spy-glass revealed the fact that she was named for
me—or he was named for me, whichever you prefer. As this was the
first time I had ever encountered this species of honor, it seems
excusable to mention it, and at the same time call the attention
of the authorities to the tardiness of my recognition of it.
Noted a big change in the river, at Island 21. It was a very
large island, and used to be out toward mid-stream; but it is
joined fast to the main shore now, and has retired from business
as an island.
As we approached famous and formidable Plum Point, darkness
fell, but that was nothing to shudder about—in these modern
times. For now the national government has turned the Mississippi
into a sort of two-thousand-mile torchlight procession. In the
head of every crossing, and in the foot of every crossing, the
government has set up a clear-burning lamp. You are never
entirely in the dark, now; there is always a beacon in sight,
either before you, or behind you, or abreast. One might almost
say that lamps have been squandered there. Dozens of crossings
are lighted which were not shoal when they were created, and have
never been shoal since; crossings so plain, too, and also so
straight, that a steamboat can take herself through them without
any help, after she has been through once. Lamps in such places
are of course not wasted; it is much more convenient and
comfortable for a pilot to hold on them than on a spread of
formless blackness that won’t stay still; and money is saved to
the boat, at the same time, for she can of course make more miles
with her rudder amidships than she can with it squared across her
stern and holding her back.
But this thing has knocked the romance out of piloting, to a
large extent. It, and some other things together, have knocked
all the romance out of it. For instance, the peril from snags is
not now what it once was. The government’s snag-boats go
patrolling up and down, in these matter-of-fact days, pulling the
river’s teeth; they have rooted out all the old clusters which
made many localities so formidable; and they allow no new ones to
collect. Formerly, if your boat got away from you, on a black
night, and broke for the woods, it was an anxious time with you;
so was it also, when you were groping your way through solidified
darkness in a narrow chute; but all that is changed now—you
flash out your electric light, transform night into day in the
twinkling of an eye, and your perils and anxieties are at an end.
Horace Bixby and George Ritchie have charted the crossings and
laid out the courses by compass; they have invented a lamp to go
with the chart, and have patented the whole. With these helps,
one may run in the fog now, with considerable security, and with
a confidence unknown in the old days.
With these abundant beacons, the banishment of snags, plenty
of daylight in a box and ready to be turned on whenever needed,
and a chart and compass to fight the fog with, piloting, at a
good stage of water, is now nearly as safe and simple as driving
stage, and is hardly more than three times as romantic.
And now in these new days, these days of infinite change, the
Anchor Line have raised the captain above the pilot by giving him
the bigger wages of the two. This was going far, but they have
not stopped there. They have decreed that the pilot shall remain
at his post, and stand his watch clear through, whether the boat
be under way or tied up to the shore. We, that were once the
aristocrats of the river, can’t go to bed now, as we used to do,
and sleep while a hundred tons of freight are lugged aboard; no,
we must sit in the pilot-house; and keep awake, too. Verily we
are being treated like a parcel of mates and engineers. The
Government has taken away the romance of our calling; the Company
has taken away its state and dignity.
Plum Point looked as it had always looked by night, with the
exception that now there were beacons to mark the crossings, and
also a lot of other lights on the Point and along its shore;
these latter glinting from the fleet of the United States River
Commission, and from a village which the officials have built on
the land for offices and for the employees of the service. The
military engineers of the Commission have taken upon their
shoulders the job of making the Mississippi over again—a job
transcended in size by only the original job of creating it. They
are building wing-dams here and there, to deflect the current;
and dikes to confine it in narrower bounds; and other dikes to
make it stay there; and for unnumbered miles along the
Mississippi, they are felling the timber-front for fifty yards
back, with the purpose of shaving the bank down to low-water mark
with the slant of a house roof, and ballasting it with stones;
and in many places they have protected the wasting shores with
rows of piles. One who knows the Mississippi will promptly
aver—not aloud, but to himself—that ten thousand River
Commissions,
with the mines of the world at their back, cannot tame that
lawless stream, cannot curb it or confine it, cannot say to it,
Go here, or Go there, and make it obey; cannot save a shore which
it has sentenced; cannot bar its path with an obstruction which
it will not tear down, dance over, and laugh at. But a discreet
man will not put these things into spoken words; for the West
Point engineers have not their superiors anywhere; they know all
that can be known of their abstruse science; and so, since they
conceive that they can fetter and handcuff that river and boss
him, it is but wisdom for the unscientific man to keep still, lie
low, and wait till they do it. Captain Eads, with his jetties,
has done a work at the mouth of the Mississippi which seemed
clearly impossible; so we do not feel full confidence now to
prophesy against like impossibilities. Otherwise one would pipe
out and say the Commission might as well bully the comets in
their courses and undertake to make them behave, as try to bully
the Mississippi into right and reasonable conduct.
I consulted Uncle Mumford concerning this and cognate matters;
and I give here the result, stenographically reported, and
therefore to be relied on as being full and correct; except that
I have here and there left out remarks which were addressed to
the men, such as “where in blazes are you going with that barrel
now?” and which seemed to me to break the flow of the written
statement, without compensating by adding to its information or
its clearness. Not that I have ventured to strike out all such
interjections; I have removed only those which were obviously
irrelevant; wherever one occurred which I felt any question
about, I have judged it safest to let it remain.
UNCLE MUMFORD’S IMPRESSIONS
Uncle Mumford said—
“As long as I have been mate of a steamboat—thirty years—I
have watched this river and studied it. Maybe I could have learnt
more about it at West Point, but if I believe it I wish I may be
WHAT are you sucking your fingers there for ?—Collar that kag of
nails! Four years at West Point, and plenty of books and
schooling, will learn a man a good deal, I reckon, but it won’t
learn him the river. You turn one of those little European rivers
over to this Commission, with its hard bottom and clear water,
and it would just be a holiday job for them to wall it, and pile
it, and dike it, and tame it down, and boss it around, and make
it go wherever they wanted it to, and stay where they put it, and
do just as they said, every time. But this ain’t that kind of a
river. They have started in here with big confidence, and the
best intentions in the world; but they are going to get left.
What does Ecclesiastes vii. 13 say? Says enough to knock their
little game galley-west, don’t it? Now you look at their methods
once. There at Devil’s Island, in the Upper River, they wanted
the water to go one way, the water wanted to go another. So they
put up a stone wall. But what does the river care for a stone
wall? When it got ready, it just bulged through it. Maybe they
can build another that will stay; that is, up there—but not down
here they can’t. Down here in the Lower River, they drive some
pegs to turn the water away from the shore and stop it from
slicing off the bank; very well, don’t it go straight over and
cut somebody else’s bank? Certainly. Are they going to peg all
the banks? Why, they could buy ground and build a new Mississippi
cheaper. They are pegging Bulletin Tow-head now. It won’t do any
good. If the river has got a mortgage on that island, it will
foreclose, sure, pegs or no pegs. Away down yonder, they have
driven two rows of piles straight through the middle of a dry bar
half a mile long, which is forty foot out of the water when the
river is low. What do you reckon that is for? If I know, I wish I
may land in-HUMP yourself, you son of an undertaker!—out with
that coal-oil, now, lively, LIVELY! And just look at what they
are trying to do down there at Milliken’s Bend. There’s been a
cut-off in that section, and Vicksburg is left out in the cold.
It’s a country town now. The river strikes in below it; and a
boat can’t go up to the town except in high water. Well, they are
going to build wing-dams in the bend opposite the foot of 103,
and throw the water over and cut off the foot of the island and
plow down into an old ditch where the river used to be in ancient
times; and they think they can persuade the water around that
way, and get it to strike in above Vicksburg, as it used to do,
and fetch the town back into the world again. That is, they are
going to take this whole Mississippi, and twist it around and
make it run several miles up stream. Well you’ve got to admire
men that deal in ideas of that size and can tote them around
without crutches; but you haven’t got to believe they can do such
miracles, have you! And yet you ain’t absolutely obliged to
believe they can’t. I reckon the safe way, where a man can afford
it, is to copper the operation, and at the same time buy enough
property in Vicksburg to square you up in case they win.
Government is doing a deal for the Mississippi, now—spending
loads of money on her. When there used to be four thousand
steamboats and ten thousand acres of coal-barges, and rafts and
trading scows, there wasn’t a lantern from St. Paul to New
Orleans, and the snags were thicker than bristles on a hog’s
back; and now when there’s three dozen steamboats and nary barge
or raft, Government has snatched out all the snags, and lit up
the shores like Broadway, and a boat’s as safe on the river as
she’d be in heaven. And I reckon that by the time there ain’t any
boats left at all, the Commission will have the old thing all
reorganized, and dredged out, and fenced in, and tidied up, to a
degree that will make navigation just simply perfect, and
absolutely safe and profitable; and all the days will be Sundays,
and all the mates will be Sunday-school
su-WHAT-in-the-nation-you-fooling-around-there-for, you sons of
unrighteousness, heirs of perdition! Going to be a year getting
that hogshead ashore?”
During our trip to New Orleans and back, we had many
conversations with river men, planters, journalists, and officers
of the River Commission—with conflicting and confusing results.
To wit:—
1. Some believed in the Commission’s scheme to arbitrarily and
permanently confine (and thus deepen) the channel, preserve
threatened shores, etc.
2. Some believed that the Commission’s money ought to be spent
only on building and repairing the great system of levees.
3. Some believed that the higher you build your levee, the
higher the river’s bottom will rise; and that consequently the
levee system is a mistake.
4. Some believed in the scheme to relieve the river, in
flood-time, by turning its surplus waters off into Lake Borgne,
etc.
5. Some believed in the scheme of northern lake-reservoirs to
replenish the Mississippi in low-water seasons.
Wherever you find a man down there who believes in one of
these theories you may turn to the next man and frame your talk
upon the hypothesis that he does not believe in that theory; and
after you have had experience, you do not take this course
doubtfully, or hesitatingly, but with the confidence of a dying
murderer—converted one, I mean. For you will have come to know,
with a deep and restful certainty, that you are not going to meet
two people sick of the same theory, one right after the other.
No, there will always be one or two with the other diseases along
between. And as you proceed, you will find out one or two other
things. You will find out that there is no distemper of the lot
but is contagious; and you cannot go where it is without catching
it. You may vaccinate yourself with deterrent facts as much as
you please—it will do no good; it will seem to “take,” but it
doesn’t; the moment you rub against any one of those theorists,
make up your mind that it is time to hang out your yellow
flag.
Yes, you are his sure victim: yet his work is not all to your
hurt—only part of it; for he is like your family physician, who
comes and cures the mumps, and leaves the scarlet-fever behind.
If your man is a Lake-Borgne-relief theorist, for instance, he
will exhale a cloud of deadly facts and statistics which will lay
you out with that disease, sure; but at the same time he will
cure you of any other of the five theories that may have
previously got into your system.
I have had all the five; and had them “bad;” but ask me not,
in mournful numbers, which one racked me hardest, or which one
numbered the biggest sick list, for I do not know. In truth, no
one can answer the latter question. Mississippi Improvement is a
mighty topic, down yonder. Every man on the river banks, south of
Cairo, talks about it every day, during such moments as he is
able to spare from talking about the war; and each of the several
chief theories has its host of zealous partisans; but, as I have
said, it is not possible to determine which cause numbers the
most recruits.
All were agreed upon one point, however: if Congress would
make a sufficient appropriation, a colossal benefit would result.
Very well; since then the appropriation has been made—possibly a
sufficient one, certainly not too large a one. Let us hope that
the prophecy will be amply fulfilled.
One thing will be easily granted by the reader; that an
opinion from Mr. Edward Atkinson, upon any vast national
commercial matter, comes as near ranking as authority, as can the
opinion of any individual in the Union. What he has to say about
Mississippi River Improvement will be found in the
Appendix.
Sometimes, half a dozen figures will reveal, as with a
lightning-flash, the importance of a subject which ten thousand
labored words, with the same purpose in view, had left at last
but dim and uncertain. Here is a case of the sort—paragraph from
the “Cincinnati Commercial’—
“The towboat "Jos. B. Williams" is on her way to New Orleans
with a tow of thirty-two barges, containing six hundred thousand
bushels (seventy-six pounds to the bushel) of coal exclusive of
her own fuel, being the largest tow ever taken to New Orleans or
anywhere else in the world. Her freight bill, at 3 cents a
bushel, amounts to $18,000. It would take eighteen hundred cars,
of three hundred and thirty-three bushels to the car, to
transport this amount of coal. At $10 per ton, or $100 per car,
which would be a fair price for the distance by rail, the freight
bill would amount to $180,000, or $162,000 more by rail than by
river. The tow will be taken from Pittsburg to New Orleans in
fourteen or fifteen days. It would take one hundred trains of
eighteen cars to the train to transport this one tow of six
hundred thousand bushels of coal, and even if it made the usual
speed of fast freight lines, it would take one whole summer to
put it through by rail.”
When a river in good condition can enable one to save $162,000
and a whole summer’s time, on a single cargo, the wisdom of
taking measures to keep the river in good condition is made plain
to even the uncommercial mind.
Chapter 29
A Few Specimen Bricks
WE
passed through the Plum Point region, turned Craighead’s
Point, and glided unchallenged by what was once the formidable
Fort Pillow, memorable because of the massacre perpetrated there
during the war. Massacres are sprinkled with some frequency
through the histories of several Christian nations, but this is
almost the only one that can be found in American history;
perhaps it is the only one which rises to a size correspondent to
that huge and somber title. We have the “Boston Massacre,” where
two or three people were killed; but we must bunch Anglo-Saxon
history together to find the fellow to the Fort Pillow tragedy;
and doubtless even then we must travel back to the days and the
performances of Coeur de Lion, that fine “hero,” before we
accomplish it.
More of the river’s freaks. In times past, the channel used to
strike above Island 37, by Brandywine Bar, and down towards
Island 39. Afterward, changed its course and went from Brandywine
down through Vogelman’s chute in the Devil’s Elbow, to Island
39—part of this course reversing the old order; the river
running up four or five miles, instead of down, and cutting off,
throughout, some fifteen miles of distance. This in 1876. All
that region is now called Centennial Island.
There is a tradition that Island 37 was one of the principal
abiding places of the once celebrated “Murel’s Gang.” This was a
colossal combination of robbers, horse-thieves, negro-stealers,
and counterfeiters, engaged in business along the river some
fifty or sixty years ago. While our journey across the country
towards St. Louis was in progress we had had no end of Jesse
James and his stirring history; for he had just been assassinated
by an agent of the Governor of Missouri, and was in consequence
occupying a good deal of space in the newspapers. Cheap histories
of him were for sale by train boys. According to these, he was
the most marvelous creature of his kind that had ever existed. It
was a mistake. Murel was his equal in boldness; in pluck; in
rapacity; in cruelty, brutality, heartlessness, treachery, and in
general and comprehensive vileness and shamelessness; and very
much his superior in some larger aspects. James was a retail
rascal; Murel, wholesale. James’s modest genius dreamed of no
loftier flight than the planning of raids upon cars, coaches, and
country banks; Murel projected negro insurrections and the
capture of New Orleans; and furthermore, on occasion, this Murel
could go into a pulpit and edify the congregation. What are James
and his half-dozen vulgar rascals compared with this stately
old-time criminal, with his sermons, his meditated insurrections
and city-captures, and his majestic following of ten hundred men,
sworn to do his evil will!
Here is a paragraph or two concerning this big operator, from
a now forgotten book which was published half a century ago—
He appears to have been a most dexterous as well as consummate
villain. When he traveled, his usual disguise was that of an
itinerant preacher; and it is said that his discourses were very
“soul-moving’—interesting the hearers so much that they forgot
to look after their horses, which were carried away by his
confederates while he was preaching. But the stealing of horses
in one State, and selling them in another, was but a small
portion of their business; the most lucrative was the enticing
slaves to run away from their masters, that they might sell them
in another quarter. This was arranged as follows; they would tell
a negro that if he would run away from his master, and allow them
to sell him, he should receive a portion of the money paid for
him, and that upon his return to them a second time they would
send him to a free State, where he would be safe.
The poor
wretches complied with this request, hoping to obtain money and
freedom; they would be sold to another master, and run away
again, to their employers; sometimes they would be sold in this
manner three or four times, until they had realized three or four
thousand dollars by them; but as, after this, there was fear of
detection, the usual custom was to get rid of the only witness
that could be produced against them, which was the negro himself,
by murdering him, and throwing his body into the Mississippi.
Even if it was established that they had stolen a negro, before
he was murdered, they were always prepared to evade punishment;
for they concealed the negro who had run away, until he was
advertised, and a reward offered to any man who would catch him.
An advertisement of this kind warrants the person to take the
property, if found. And then the negro becomes a property in
trust, when, therefore, they sold the negro, it only became a
breach of trust, not stealing; and for a breach of trust, the
owner of the property can only have redress by a civil action,
which was useless, as the damages were never paid. It may be
inquired, how it was that Murel escaped Lynch law under such
circumstances This will be easily understood when it is stated
that he had more than a thousand sworn confederates, all ready at
a moment’s notice to support any of the gang who might be in
trouble. The names of all the principal confederates of Murel
were obtained from himself, in a manner which I shall presently
explain. The gang was composed of two classes: the Heads or
Council, as they were called, who planned and concerted, but
seldom acted; they amounted to about four hundred. The other
class were the active agents, and were termed strikers, and
amounted to about six hundred and fifty. These were the tools in
the hands of the others; they ran all the risk, and received but
a small portion of the money; they were in the power of the
leaders of the gang, who would sacrifice them at any time by
handing them over to justice, or sinking their bodies in the
Mississippi. The general rendezvous of this gang of miscreants
was on the Arkansas side of the river, where they concealed their
negroes in the morasses and cane-brakes.
The depredations of this extensive combination were severely
felt; but so well were their plans arranged, that although Murel,
who was always active, was everywhere suspected, there was no
proof to be obtained. It so happened, however, that a young man
of the name of Stewart, who was looking after two slaves which
Murel had decoyed away, fell in with him and obtained his
confidence, took the oath, and was admitted into the gang as one
of the General Council. By this means all was discovered; for
Stewart turned traitor, although he had taken the oath, and
having obtained every information, exposed the whole concern, the
names of all the parties, and finally succeeded in bringing home
sufficient evidence against Murel, to procure his conviction and
sentence to the Penitentiary (Murel was sentenced to fourteen
years” imprisonment); so many people who were supposed to be
honest, and bore a respectable name in the different States, were
found to be among the list of the Grand Council as published by
Stewart, that every attempt was made to throw discredit upon his
assertions—his character was vilified, and more than one attempt
was made to assassinate him. He was obliged to quit the Southern
States in consequence. It is, however, now well ascertained to
have been all true; and although some blame Mr. Stewart for
having violated his oath, they no longer attempt to deny that his
revelations were correct. I will quote one or two portions of
Murel’s confessions to Mr. Stewart, made to him when they were
journeying together. I ought to have observed, that the ultimate
intentions of Murel and his associates were, by his own account,
on a very extended scale; having no less an object in view than
raising the blacks against the whites, taking possession of, and
plundering New Orleans, and making themselves possessors of the
territory. The following are a few extracts:—
“I collected all my friends about New Orleans at one of our
friends” houses in that place, and we sat in council three days
before we got all our plans to our notion; we then determined to
undertake the rebellion at every hazard, and make as many friends
as we could for that purpose. Every man’s business being assigned
him, I started to Natchez on foot, having sold my horse in New
Orleans,—with the intention of stealing another after I started.
I walked four days, and no opportunity offered for me to get a
horse. The fifth day, about twelve, I had become tired, and
stopped at a creek to get some water and rest a little. While I
was sitting on a log, looking down the road the way that I had
come, a man came in sight riding on a good-looking horse. The
very moment I saw him, I was determined to have his horse, if he
was in the garb of a traveler. He rode up, and I saw from his
equipage that he was a traveler. I arose and drew an elegant
rifle pistol on him and ordered him to dismount. He did so, and I
took his horse by the bridle and pointed down the creek, and
ordered him to walk before me. He went a few hundred yards and
stopped. I hitched his horse, and then made him undress himself,
all to his shirt and drawers, and ordered him to turn his back to
me. He said, “If you are determined to kill me, let me have time
to pray before I die,” I told him I had no time to hear him pray.
He turned around and dropped on his knees, and I shot him through
the back of the head.
I ripped open his belly and took out his
entrails, and sunk him in the creek. I then searched his pockets,
and found four hundred dollars and thirty-seven cents, and a
number of papers that I did not take time to examine. I sunk the
pocket-book and papers and his hat, in the creek. His boots were
brand-new, and fitted me genteelly; and I put them on and sunk my
old shoes in the creek, to atone for them. I rolled up his
clothes and put them into his portmanteau, as they were brand-new
cloth of the best quality. I mounted as fine a horse as ever I
straddled, and directed my course for Natchez in much better
style than I had been for the last five days.
“Myself and a fellow by the name of Crenshaw gathered four
good horses and started for Georgia. We got in company with a
young South Carolinian just before we got to Cumberland Mountain,
and Crenshaw soon knew all about his business. He had been to
Tennessee to buy a drove of hogs, but when he got there pork was
dearer than he calculated, and he declined purchasing. We
concluded he was a prize. Crenshaw winked at me; I understood his
idea. Crenshaw had traveled the road before, but I never had; we
had traveled several miles on the mountain, when he passed near a
great precipice; just before we passed it Crenshaw asked me for
my whip, which had a pound of lead in the butt; I handed it to
him, and he rode up by the side of the South Carolinian, and gave
him a blow on the side of the head and tumbled him from his
horse; we lit from our horses and fingered his pockets; we got
twelve hundred and sixty-two dollars. Crenshaw said he knew a
place to hide him, and he gathered him under his arms, and I by
his feet, and conveyed him to a deep crevice in the brow of the
precipice, and tumbled him into it, and he went out of sight; we
then tumbled in his saddle, and took his horse with us, which was
worth two hundred dollars.
“We were detained a few days, and during that time our friend
went to a little village in the neighborhood and saw the negro
advertised (a negro in our possession), and a description of the
two men of whom he had been purchased, and giving his suspicions
of the men. It was rather squally times, but any port in a storm:
we took the negro that night on the bank of a creek which runs by
the farm of our friend, and Crenshaw shot him through the head.
We took out his entrails and sunk him in the creek.
“He had sold the other negro the third time on Arkansaw River
for upwards of five hundred dollars; and then stole him and
delivered him into the hand of his friend, who conducted him to a
swamp, and veiled the tragic scene, and got the last gleanings
and sacred pledge of secrecy; as a game of that kind will not do
unless it ends in a mystery to all but the fraternity. He sold
the negro, first and last, for nearly two thousand dollars, and
then put him for ever out of the reach of all pursuers; and they
can never graze him unless they can find the negro; and that they
cannot do, for his carcass has fed many a tortoise and catfish
before this time, and the frogs have sung this many a long day to
the silent repose of his skeleton.”
We were approaching Memphis, in front of which city, and
witnessed by its people, was fought the most famous of the river
battles of the Civil War. Two men whom I had served under, in my
river days, took part in that fight: Mr. Bixby, head pilot of the
Union fleet, and Montgomery, Commodore of the Confederate fleet.
Both saw a great deal of active service during the war, and
achieved high reputations for pluck and capacity.
As we neared Memphis, we began to cast about for an excuse to
stay with the “Gold Dust” to the end of her course—Vicksburg. We
were so pleasantly situated, that we did not wish to make a
change. I had an errand of considerable importance to do at
Napoleon, Arkansas, but perhaps I could manage it without
quitting the “Gold Dust.” I said as much; so we decided to stick
to present quarters.
The boat was to tarry at Memphis till ten the next morning. It
is a beautiful city, nobly situated on a commanding bluff
overlooking the river. The streets are straight and spacious,
though not paved in a way to incite distempered admiration. No,
the admiration must be reserved for the town’s sewerage system,
which is called perfect; a recent reform, however, for it was
just the other way, up to a few years ago—a reform resulting
from the lesson taught by a desolating visitation of the
yellow-fever. In those awful days the people were swept off by
hundreds, by thousands; and so great was the reduction caused by
flight and by death together, that the population was diminished
three-fourths, and so remained for a time. Business stood nearly
still, and the streets bore an empty Sunday aspect.
Here is a picture of Memphis, at that disastrous time, drawn
by a German tourist who seems to have been an eye-witness of the
scenes which he describes. It is from Chapter VII, of his book,
just published, in Leipzig, “Mississippi-Fahrten, von Ernst von
Hesse-Wartegg.’—
“In August the yellow-fever had reached its extremest height.
Daily, hundreds fell a sacrifice to the terrible epidemic. The
city was become a mighty graveyard, two-thirds of the population
had deserted the place, and only the poor, the aged and the sick,
remained behind, a sure prey for the insidious enemy. The houses
were closed: little lamps burned in front of many—a sign that
here death had entered. Often, several lay dead in a single
house; from the windows hung black crape. The stores were shut
up, for their owners were gone away or dead.
“Fearful evil! In the briefest space it struck down and swept
away even the most vigorous victim. A slight indisposition, then
an hour of fever, then the hideous delirium, then—the Yellow
Death! On the street corners, and in the squares, lay sick men,
suddenly overtaken by the disease; and even corpses, distorted
and rigid. Food failed. Meat spoiled in a few hours in the fetid
and pestiferous air, and turned black.
“Fearful clamors issue from many houses; then after a season
they cease, and all is still: noble, self-sacrificing men come
with the coffin, nail it up, and carry it away, to the graveyard.
In the night stillness reigns. Only the physicians and the
hearses hurry through the streets; and out of the distance, at
intervals, comes the muffled thunder of the railway train, which
with the speed of the wind, and as if hunted by furies, flies by
the pest-ridden city without halting.”
But there is life enough there now. The population exceeds
forty thousand and is augmenting, and trade is in a flourishing
condition. We drove about the city; visited the park and the
sociable horde of squirrels there; saw the fine residences,
rose-clad and in other ways enticing to the eye; and got a good
breakfast at the hotel.
A thriving place is the Good Samaritan City of the
Mississippi: has a great wholesale jobbing trade; foundries,
machine shops; and manufactories of wagons, carriages, and
cotton-seed oil; and is shortly to have cotton mills and
elevators.
Her cotton receipts reached five hundred thousand bales last
year—an increase of sixty thousand over the year before. Out
from her healthy commercial heart issue five trunk lines of
railway; and a sixth is being added.
This is a very different Memphis from the one which the
vanished and unremembered procession of foreign tourists used to
put into their books long time ago. In the days of the now
forgotten but once renowned and vigorously hated Mrs. Trollope,
Memphis seems to have consisted mainly of one long street of
log-houses, with some outlying cabins sprinkled around rearward
toward the woods; and now and then a pig, and no end of mud. That
was fifty-five years ago. She stopped at the hotel. Plainly it
was not the one which gave us our breakfast. She says—
“The table was laid for fifty persons, and was nearly full.
They ate in perfect silence, and with such astonishing rapidity
that their dinner was over literally before ours was begun; the
only sounds heard were those produced by the knives and forks,
with the unceasing chorus of coughing, etc.”
“Coughing, etc.” The “etc.” stands for an unpleasant word
there, a word which she does not always charitably cover up, but
sometimes prints. You will find it in the following description
of a steamboat dinner which she ate in company with a lot of
aristocratic planters; wealthy, well-born, ignorant swells they
were, tinselled with the usual harmless military and judicial
titles of that old day of cheap shams and windy pretense—
“The total want of all the usual courtesies of the table; the
voracious rapidity with which the viands were seized and
devoured; the strange uncouth phrases and pronunciation; the
loathsome spitting, from the contamination of which it was
absolutely impossible to protect our dresses; the frightful
manner of feeding with their knives, till the whole blade seemed
to enter into the mouth; and the still more frightful manner of
cleaning the teeth afterward with a pocket knife, soon forced us
to feel that we were not surrounded by the generals, colonels,
and majors of the old world; and that the dinner hour was to be
anything rather than an hour of enjoyment.”
Chapter 30
Sketches by the Way
IT
was a big river, below Memphis; banks brimming full,
everywhere, and very frequently more than full, the waters
pouring out over the land, flooding the woods and fields for
miles into the interior; and in places, to a depth of fifteen
feet; signs, all about, of men’s hard work gone to ruin, and all
to be done over again, with straitened means and a weakened
courage. A melancholy picture, and a continuous one;—hundreds of
miles of it. Sometimes the beacon lights stood in water three
feet deep, in the edge of dense forests which extended for miles
without farm, wood-yard, clearing, or break of any kind; which
meant that the keeper of the light must come in a skiff a great
distance to discharge his trust,—and often in desperate weather.
Yet I was told that the work is faithfully performed, in all
weathers; and not always by men, sometimes by women, if the man
is sick or absent. The Government furnishes oil, and pays ten or
fifteen dollars a month for the lighting and tending. A
Government boat distributes oil and pays wages once a month.
The Ship Island region was as woodsy and tenantless as ever.
The island has ceased to be an island; has joined itself
compactly to the main shore, and wagons travel, now, where the
steamboats used to navigate. No signs left of the wreck of the
“Pennsylvania.” Some farmer will turn up her bones with his plow
one day, no doubt, and be surprised.
We were getting down now into the migrating negro region.
These poor people could never travel when they were slaves; so
they make up for the privation now. They stay on a plantation
till the desire to travel seizes them; then they pack up, hail a
steamboat, and clear out. Not for any particular place; no,
nearly any place will answer; they only want to be moving. The
amount of money on hand will answer the rest of the conundrum for
them. If it will take them fifty miles, very well; let it be
fifty. If not, a shorter flight will do.
During a couple of days, we frequently answered these hails.
Sometimes there was a group of high-water-stained, tumble-down
cabins, populous with colored folk, and no whites visible; with
grassless patches of dry ground here and there; a few felled
trees, with skeleton cattle, mules, and horses, eating the leaves
and gnawing the bark—no other food for them in the flood-wasted
land. Sometimes there was a single lonely landing-cabin; near it
the colored family that had hailed us; little and big, old and
young, roosting on the scant pile of household goods; these
consisting of a rusty gun, some bed-ticks, chests, tinware,
stools, a crippled looking-glass, a venerable arm-chair, and six
or eight base-born and spiritless yellow curs, attached to the
family by strings. They must have their dogs; can’t go without
their dogs. Yet the dogs are never willing; they always object;
so, one after another, in ridiculous procession, they are dragged
aboard; all four feet braced and sliding along the stage, head
likely to be pulled off; but the tugger marching determinedly
forward, bending to his work, with the rope over his shoulder for
better purchase. Sometimes a child is forgotten and left on the
bank; but never a dog.
The usual river-gossip going on in the pilot-house. Island No.
63—an island with a lovely “chute,” or passage, behind it in the
former times. They said Jesse Jamieson, in the “Skylark,” had a
visiting pilot with him one trip—a poor old broken-down,
superannuated fellow—left him at the wheel, at the foot of 63,
to run off the watch. The ancient mariner went up through the
chute, and down the river outside; and up the chute and down the
river again; and yet again and again; and handed the boat over to
the relieving pilot, at the end of three hours of honest
endeavor, at the same old foot of the island where he had
originally taken the wheel! A darkey on shore who had observed
the boat go by, about thirteen times, said, “clar to gracious, I
wouldn’t be s’prised if dey’s a whole line o” dem Sk’ylarks!”
Anecdote illustrative of influence of reputation in the
changing of opinion. The “Eclipse” was renowned for her
swiftness. One day she passed along; an old darkey on shore,
absorbed in his own matters, did not notice what steamer it was.
Presently someone asked—
“Any boat gone up?”
“Yes, sah.”
“Was she going fast?”
“Oh, so-so—loafin” along.”
“Now, do you know what boat that was?”
“No, sah.”
“Why, uncle, that was the "Eclipse."”
“No! Is dat so? Well, I bet it was—cause she jes” went by
here a-sparklin’!”
Piece of history illustrative of the violent style of some of
the people down along here, During the early weeks of high water,
A’s fence rails washed down on B’s ground, and B’s rails washed
up in the eddy and landed on A’s ground. A said, “Let the thing
remain so; I will use your rails, and you use mine.” But B
objected—wouldn’t have it so. One day, A came down on B’s ground
to get his rails. B said, “I’ll kill you!” and proceeded for him
with his revolver. A said, “I’m not armed.” So B, who wished to
do only what was right, threw down his revolver; then pulled a
knife, and cut A’s throat all around, but gave his principal
attention to the front, and so failed to sever the jugular.
Struggling around, A managed to get his hands on the discarded
revolver, and shot B dead with it—and recovered from his own
injuries.
Further gossip;—after which, everybody went below to get
afternoon coffee, and left me at the wheel, alone, Something
presently reminded me of our last hour in St. Louis, part of
which I spent on this boat’s hurricane deck, aft. I was joined
there by a stranger, who dropped into conversation with me—a
brisk young fellow, who said he was born in a town in the
interior of Wisconsin, and had never seen a steamboat until a
week before. Also said that on the way down from La Crosse he had
inspected and examined his boat so diligently and with such
passionate interest that he had mastered the whole thing from
stem to rudder-blade. Asked me where I was from. I answered, New
England. “Oh, a Yank!” said he; and went chatting straight along,
without waiting for assent or denial. He immediately proposed to
take me all over the boat and tell me the names of her different
parts, and teach me their uses. Before I could enter protest or
excuse, he was already rattling glibly away at his benevolent
work; and when I perceived that he was misnaming the things, and
inhospitably amusing himself at the expense of an innocent
stranger from a far country, I held my peace, and let him have
his way. He gave me a world of misinformation; and the further he
went, the wider his imagination expanded, and the more he enjoyed
his cruel work of deceit. Sometimes, after palming off a
particularly fantastic and outrageous lie upon me, he was so
“full of laugh” that he had to step aside for a minute, upon one
pretext or another, to keep me from suspecting. I staid
faithfully by him until his comedy was finished. Then he remarked
that he had undertaken to “learn” me all about a steamboat, and
had done it; but that if he had overlooked anything, just ask him
and he would supply the lack. “Anything about this boat that you
don’t know the name of or the purpose of, you come to me and I’ll
tell you.” I said I would, and took my departure; disappeared,
and approached him from another quarter, whence he could not see
me. There he sat, all alone, doubling himself up and writhing
this way and that, in the throes of unappeasable laughter. He
must have made himself sick; for he was not publicly visible
afterward for several days. Meantime, the episode dropped out of
my mind.
The thing that reminded me of it now, when I was alone at the
wheel, was the spectacle of this young fellow standing in the
pilot-house door, with the knob in his hand, silently and
severely inspecting me. I don’t know when I have seen anybody
look so injured as he did. He did not say anything—simply stood
there and looked; reproachfully looked and pondered. Finally he
shut the door, and started away; halted on the texas a minute;
came slowly back and stood in the door again, with that grieved
look in his face; gazed upon me awhile in meek rebuke, then
said—
“You let me learn you all about a steamboat, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” I confessed.
“Yes, you did—didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You are the feller that—that—”
Language failed. Pause—impotent struggle for further
words—then he gave it up, choked out a deep, strong oath, and
departed for good. Afterward I saw him several times below during
the trip; but he was cold—would not look at me. Idiot, if he had
not been in such a sweat to play his witless practical joke upon
me, in the beginning, I would have persuaded his thoughts into
some other direction, and saved him from committing that wanton
and silly impoliteness.
I had myself called with the four o’clock watch, mornings, for
one cannot see too many summer sunrises on the Mississippi. They
are enchanting. First, there is the eloquence of silence; for a
deep hush broods everywhere. Next, there is the haunting sense of
loneliness, isolation, remoteness from the worry and bustle of
the world. The dawn creeps in stealthily; the solid walls of
black forest soften to gray, and vast stretches of the river open
up and reveal themselves; the water is glass-smooth, gives off
spectral little wreaths of white mist, there is not the faintest
breath of wind, nor stir of leaf; the tranquillity is profound
and infinitely satisfying. Then a bird pipes up, another follows,
and soon the pipings develop into a jubilant riot of music. You
see none of the birds; you simply move through an atmosphere of
song which seems to sing itself. When the light has become a
little stronger, you have one of the fairest and softest pictures
imaginable. You have the intense green of the massed and crowded
foliage near by; you see it paling shade by shade in front of
you; upon the next projecting cape, a mile off or more, the tint
has lightened to the tender young green of spring; the cape
beyond that one has almost lost color, and the furthest one,
miles away under the horizon, sleeps upon the water a mere dim
vapor, and hardly separable from the sky above it and about it.
And all this stretch of river is a mirror, and you have the
shadowy reflections of the leafage and the curving shores and the
receding capes pictured in it. Well, that is all beautiful; soft
and rich and beautiful; and when the sun gets well up, and
distributes a pink flush here and a powder of gold yonder and a
purple haze where it will yield the best effect, you grant that
you have seen something that is worth remembering.
We had the Kentucky Bend country in the early morning—scene
of a strange and tragic accident in the old times, Captain Poe
had a small stern-wheel boat, for years the home of himself and
his wife. One night the boat struck a snag in the head of
Kentucky Bend, and sank with astonishing suddenness; water
already well above the cabin floor when the captain got aft. So
he cut into his wife’s state-room from above with an ax; she was
asleep in the upper berth, the roof a flimsier one than was
supposed; the first blow crashed down through the rotten boards
and clove her skull.
This bend is all filled up now—result of a cut-off; and the
same agent has taken the great and once much-frequented Walnut
Bend, and set it away back in a solitude far from the accustomed
track of passing steamers.
Helena we visited, and also a town I had not heard of before,
it being of recent birth—Arkansas City. It was born of a
railway; the Little Rock, Mississippi River and Texas Railroad
touches the river there. We asked a passenger who belonged there
what sort of a place it was. “Well,” said he, after considering,
and with the air of one who wishes to take time and be accurate,
“It’s a hell of a place.” A description which was photographic
for exactness. There were several rows and clusters of shabby
frame-houses, and a supply of mud sufficient to insure the town
against a famine in that article for a hundred years; for the
overflow had but lately subsided. There were stagnant ponds in
the streets, here and there, and a dozen rude scows were
scattered about, lying aground wherever they happened to have
been when the waters drained off and people could do their
visiting and shopping on foot once more. Still, it is a thriving
place, with a rich country behind it, an elevator in front of it,
and also a fine big mill for the manufacture of cotton-seed oil.
I had never seen this kind of a mill before.
Cotton-seed was comparatively valueless in my time; but it is
worth $12 or $13 a ton now, and none of it is thrown away. The
oil made from it is colorless, tasteless, and almost if not
entirely odorless. It is claimed that it can, by proper
manipulation, be made to resemble and perform the office of any
and all oils, and be produced at a cheaper rate than the cheapest
of the originals. Sagacious people shipped it to Italy, doctored
it, labeled it, and brought it back as olive oil. This trade grew
to be so formidable that Italy was obliged to put a prohibitory
impost upon it to keep it from working serious injury to her oil
industry.
Helena occupies one of the prettiest situations on the
Mississippi. Her perch is the last, the southernmost group of
hills which one sees on that side of the river. In its normal
condition it is a pretty town; but the flood (or possibly the
seepage) had lately been ravaging it; whole streets of houses had
been invaded by the muddy water, and the outsides of the
buildings were still belted with a broad stain extending upwards
from the foundations. Stranded and discarded scows lay all about;
plank sidewalks on stilts four feet high were still standing; the
board sidewalks on the ground level were loose and ruinous,—a
couple of men trotting along them could make a blind man think a
cavalry charge was coming; everywhere the mud was black and deep,
and in many places malarious pools of stagnant water were
standing. A Mississippi inundation is the next most wasting and
desolating infliction to a fire.
We had an enjoyable time here, on this sunny Sunday: two full
hours” liberty ashore while the boat discharged freight. In the
back streets but few white people were visible, but there were
plenty of colored folk—mainly women and girls; and almost
without exception upholstered in bright new clothes of swell and
elaborate style and cut—a glaring and hilarious contrast to the
mournful mud and the pensive puddles.
Helena is the second town in Arkansas, in point of
population—which is placed at five thousand. The country about
it is exceptionally productive. Helena has a good cotton trade;
handles from forty to sixty thousand bales annually; she has a
large lumber and grain commerce; has a foundry, oil mills,
machine shops and wagon factories—in brief has $1,000,000
invested in manufacturing industries. She has two railways, and
is the commercial center of a broad and prosperous region. Her
gross receipts of money, annually, from all sources, are placed
by the New Orleans “Times-Democrat” at $4,000,000.
Chapter 31
A Thumb-print and What Came of It
WE
were approaching Napoleon, Arkansas. So I began to think
about my errand there. Time, noonday; and bright and sunny. This
was bad—not best, anyway; for mine was not (preferably) a
noonday kind of errand. The more I thought, the more that fact
pushed itself upon me—now in one form, now in another. Finally,
it took the form of a distinct question: is it good common sense
to do the errand in daytime, when, by a little sacrifice of
comfort and inclination, you can have night for it, and no
inquisitive eyes around. This settled it. Plain question and
plain answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities.
I got my friends into my stateroom, and said I was sorry to
create annoyance and disappointment, but that upon reflection it
really seemed best that we put our luggage ashore and stop over
at Napoleon. Their disapproval was prompt and loud; their
language mutinous. Their main argument was one which has always
been the first to come to the surface, in such cases, since the
beginning of time: “But you decided and agreed to stick to this
boat, etc.; as if, having determined to do an unwise thing, one
is thereby bound to go ahead and make two unwise things of it, by
carrying out that determination.
I tried various mollifying tactics upon them, with reasonably
good success: under which encouragement, I increased my efforts;
and, to show them that I had not created this annoying errand,
and was in no way to blame for it, I presently drifted into its
history—substantially as follows:
Toward the end of last year, I spent a few months in Munich,
Bavaria. In November I was living in Fraulein Dahlweiner’s
pension, 1a, Karlstrasse; but my working quarters were a mile
from there, in the house of a widow who supported herself by
taking lodgers. She and her two young children used to drop in
every morning and talk German to me—by request. One day, during
a ramble about the city, I visited one of the two establishments
where the Government keeps and watches corpses until the doctors
decide that they are permanently dead, and not in a trance state.
It was a grisly place, that spacious room. There were thirty-six
corpses of adults in sight, stretched on their backs on slightly
slanted boards, in three long rows—all of them with wax-white,
rigid faces, and all of them wrapped in white shrouds. Along the
sides of the room were deep alcoves, like bay windows; and in
each of these lay several marble-visaged babes, utterly hidden
and buried under banks of fresh flowers, all but their faces and
crossed hands. Around a finger of each of these fifty still
forms, both great and small, was a ring; and from the ring a wire
led to the ceiling, and thence to a bell in a watch-room yonder,
where, day and night, a watchman sits always alert and ready to
spring to the aid of any of that pallid company who, waking out
of death, shall make a movement—for any, even the slightest,
movement will twitch the wire and ring that fearful bell. I
imagined myself a death-sentinel drowsing there alone, far in the
dragging watches of some wailing, gusty night, and having in a
twinkling all my body stricken to quivering jelly by the sudden
clamor of that awful summons! So I inquired about this thing;
asked what resulted usually? if the watchman died, and the
restored corpse came and did what it could to make his last
moments easy. But I was rebuked for trying to feed an idle and
frivolous curiosity in so solemn and so mournful a place; and
went my way with a humbled crest.
Next morning I was telling the widow my adventure, when she
exclaimed—
“Come with me! I have a lodger who shall tell you all you want
to know. He has been a night-watchman there.”
He was a living man, but he did not look it. He was abed, and
had his head propped high on pillows; his face was wasted and
colorless, his deep-sunken eyes were shut; his hand, lying on his
breast, was talon-like, it was so bony and long-fingered. The
widow began her introduction of me. The man’s eyes opened slowly,
and glittered wickedly out from the twilight of their caverns; he
frowned a black frown; he lifted his lean hand and waved us
peremptorily away. But the widow kept straight on, till she had
got out the fact that I was a stranger and an American. The man’s
face changed at once; brightened, became even eager—and the next
moment he and I were alone together.
I opened up in cast-iron German; he responded in quite
flexible English; thereafter we gave the German language a
permanent rest.
This consumptive and I became good friends. I visited him
every day, and we talked about everything. At least, about
everything but wives and children. Let anybody’s wife or
anybody’s child be mentioned, and three things always followed:
the most gracious and loving and tender light glimmered in the
man’s eyes for a moment; faded out the next, and in its place
came that deadly look which had flamed there the first time I
ever saw his lids unclose; thirdly, he ceased from speech, there
and then for that day; lay silent, abstracted, and absorbed;
apparently heard nothing that I said; took no notice of my
good-byes, and plainly did not know, by either sight or hearing,
when I left the room.
When I had been this Karl Ritter’s daily and sole intimate
during two months, he one day said, abruptly—
“I will tell you my story.”
A DYING MAN S CONFESSION
Then he went on as follows:—
I have never given up, until now. But now I have given up. I
am going to die. I made up my mind last night that it must be,
and very soon, too. You say you are going to revisit your river,
by-and-bye, when you find opportunity. Very well; that, together
with a certain strange experience which fell to my lot last
night, determines me to tell you my history—for you will see
Napoleon, Arkansas; and for my sake you will stop there, and do a
certain thing for me—a thing which you will willingly undertake
after you shall have heard my narrative.
Let us shorten the story wherever we can, for it will need it,
being long. You already know how I came to go to America, and how
I came to settle in that lonely region in the South. But you do
not know that I had a wife. My wife was young, beautiful, loving,
and oh, so divinely good and blameless and gentle! And our little
girl was her mother in miniature. It was the happiest of happy
households.
One night—it was toward the close of the war—I woke up out
of a sodden lethargy, and found myself bound and gagged, and the
air tainted with chloroform! I saw two men in the room, and one
was saying to the other, in a hoarse whisper, “I told her I
would, if she made a noise, and as for the child—”
The other man interrupted in a low, half-crying voice—
“You said we’d only gag them and rob them, not hurt them; or I
wouldn’t have come.”
“Shut up your whining; had to change the plan when they waked
up; you done all you could to protect them, now let that satisfy
you; come, help rummage.”
Both men were masked, and wore coarse, ragged “nigger”
clothes; they had a bull’s-eye lantern, and by its light I
noticed that the gentler robber had no thumb on his right hand.
They rummaged around my poor cabin for a moment; the head bandit
then said, in his stage whisper—
“It’s a waste of time—he shall tell where it’s hid. Undo his
gag, and revive him up.”
The other said—
“All right—provided no clubbing.”
“No clubbing it is, then—provided he keeps still.”
They approached me; just then there was a sound outside; a
sound of voices and trampling hoofs; the robbers held their
breath and listened; the sounds came slowly nearer and nearer;
then came a shout—
“Hello, the house! Show a light, we want water.”
“The captain’s voice, by G—!” said the stage-whispering
ruffian, and both robbers fled by the way of the back door,
shutting off their bull’s-eye as they ran.
The strangers shouted several times more, then rode by—there
seemed to be a dozen of the horses—and I heard nothing more.
I struggled, but could not free myself from my bonds. I tried
to speak, but the gag was effective; I could not make a sound. I
listened for my wife’s voice and my child’s—listened long and
intently, but no sound came from the other end of the room where
their bed was. This silence became more and more awful, more and
more ominous, every moment. Could you have endured an hour of it,
do you think? Pity me, then, who had to endure three. Three
hours—? it was three ages! Whenever the clock struck, it seemed
as if years had gone by since I had heard it last. All this time
I was struggling in my bonds; and at last, about dawn, I got
myself free, and rose up and stretched my stiff limbs. I was able
to distinguish details pretty well. The floor was littered with
things thrown there by the robbers during their search for my
savings. The first object that caught my particular attention was
a document of mine which I had seen the rougher of the two
ruffians glance at and then cast away. It had blood on it! I
staggered to the other end of the room. Oh, poor unoffending,
helpless ones, there they lay, their troubles ended, mine
begun!
Did I appeal to the law—I? Does it quench the pauper’s thirst
if the King drink for him? Oh, no, no, no—I wanted no
impertinent interference of the law. Laws and the gallows could
not pay the debt that was owing to me! Let the laws leave the
matter in my hands, and have no fears: I would find the debtor
and collect the debt. How accomplish this, do you say? How
accomplish it, and feel so sure about it, when I had neither seen
the robbers” faces, nor heard their natural voices, nor had any
idea who they might be? Nevertheless, I was sure—quite sure,
quite confident. I had a clue—a clue which you would not have
valued—a clue which would not have greatly helped even a
detective, since he would lack the secret of how to apply it. I
shall come to that, presently—you shall see. Let us go on, now,
taking things in their due order. There was one circumstance
which gave me a slant in a definite direction to begin with:
Those two robbers were manifestly soldiers in tramp disguise; and
not new to military service, but old in it—regulars, perhaps;
they did not acquire their soldierly attitude, gestures,
carriage, in a day, nor a month, nor yet in a year. So I thought,
but said nothing. And one of them had said, “the captain’s voice,
by G—!’—the one whose life I would have. Two miles away,
several regiments were in camp, and two companies of U.S.
cavalry. When I learned that Captain Blakely, of Company C had
passed our way, that night, with an escort, I said nothing, but
in that company I resolved to seek my man. In conversation I
studiously and persistently described the robbers as tramps, camp
followers; and among this class the people made useless search,
none suspecting the soldiers but me.
Working patiently, by night, in my desolated home, I made a
disguise for myself out of various odds and ends of clothing; in
the nearest village I bought a pair of blue goggles. By-and-bye,
when the military camp broke up, and Company C was ordered a
hundred miles north, to Napoleon, I secreted my small hoard of
money in my belt, and took my departure in the night. When
Company C arrived in Napoleon, I was already there. Yes, I was
there, with a new trade—fortune-teller. Not to seem partial, I
made friends and told fortunes among all the companies garrisoned
there; but I gave Company C the great bulk of my attentions. I
made myself limitlessly obliging to these particular men; they
could ask me no favor, put upon me no risk, which I would
decline. I became the willing butt of their jokes; this perfected
my popularity; I became a favorite.
I early found a private who lacked a thumb—what joy it was to
me! And when I found that he alone, of all the company, had lost
a thumb, my last misgiving vanished; I was sure I was on the
right track. This man’s name was Kruger, a German. There were
nine Germans in the company. I watched, to see who might be his
intimates; but he seemed to have no especial intimates. But I was
his intimate; and I took care to make the intimacy grow.
Sometimes I so hungered for my revenge that I could hardly
restrain myself from going on my knees and begging him to point
out the man who had murdered my wife and child; but I managed to
bridle my tongue. I bided my time, and went on telling fortunes,
as opportunity offered.
My apparatus was simple: a little red paint and a bit of white
paper. I painted the ball of the client’s thumb, took a print of
it on the paper, studied it that night, and revealed his fortune
to him next day. What was my idea in this nonsense? It was this:
When I was a youth, I knew an old Frenchman who had been a
prison-keeper for thirty years, and he told me that there was one
thing about a person which never changed, from the cradle to the
grave—the lines in the ball of the thumb; and he said that these
lines were never exactly alike in the thumbs of any two human
beings. In these days, we photograph the new criminal, and hang
his picture in the Rogues” Gallery for future reference; but that
Frenchman, in his day, used to take a print of the ball of a new
prisoner’s thumb and put that away for future reference. He
always said that pictures were no good—future disguises could
make them useless; “The thumb’s the only sure thing,” said he;
“you can’t disguise that.” And he used to prove his theory, too,
on my friends and acquaintances; it always succeeded.
I went on telling fortunes. Every night I shut myself in, all
alone, and studied the day’s thumb-prints with a
magnifying-glass. Imagine the devouring eagerness with which I
pored over those mazy red spirals, with that document by my side
which bore the right-hand thumb-and-finger-marks of that unknown
murderer, printed with the dearest blood—to me—that was ever
shed on this earth! And many and many a time I had to repeat the
same old disappointed remark, “will they never correspond!”
But my reward came at last. It was the print of the thumb of
the forty-third man of Company C whom I had experimented
on—Private Franz Adler. An hour before, I did not know the
murderer’s name, or voice, or figure, or face, or nationality;
but now I knew all these things! I believed I might feel sure;
the Frenchman’s repeated demonstrations being so good a warranty.
Still, there was a way to make sure. I had an impression of
Kruger’s left thumb. In the morning I took him aside when he was
off duty; and when we were out of sight and hearing of witnesses,
I said, impressively—
“A part of your fortune is so grave, that I thought it would
be better for you if I did not tell it in public. You and another
man, whose fortune I was studying last night,—Private
Adler,—have been murdering a woman and a child! You are being
dogged: within five days both of you will be assassinated.”
He dropped on his knees, frightened out of his wits; and for
five minutes he kept pouring out the same set of words, like a
demented person, and in the same half-crying way which was one of
my memories of that murderous night in my cabin—
“I didn’t do it; upon my soul I didn’t do it; and I tried to
keep him from doing it; I did, as God is my witness. He did it
alone.”
This was all I wanted. And I tried to get rid of the fool; but
no, he clung to me, imploring me to save him from the assassin.
He said—
“I have money—ten thousand dollars—hid away, the fruit of
loot and thievery; save me—tell me what to do, and you shall
have it, every penny. Two-thirds of it is my cousin Adler’s; but
you can take it all. We hid it when we first came here. But I hid
it in a new place yesterday, and have not told him—shall not
tell him. I was going to desert, and get away with it all. It is
gold, and too heavy to carry when one is running and dodging; but
a woman who has been gone over the river two days to prepare my
way for me is going to follow me with it; and if I got no chance
to describe the hiding-place to her I was going to slip my silver
watch into her hand, or send it to her, and she would understand.
There’s a piece of paper in the back of the case, which tells it
all. Here, take the watch—tell me what to do!”
He was trying to press his watch upon me, and was exposing the
paper and explaining it to me, when Adler appeared on the scene,
about a dozen yards away. I said to poor Kruger—
“Put up your watch, I don’t want it. You shan’t come to any
harm. Go, now; I must tell Adler his fortune. Presently I will
tell you how to escape the assassin; meantime I shall have to
examine your thumbmark again. Say nothing to Adler about this
thing—say nothing to anybody.”
He went away filled with fright and gratitude, poor devil. I
told Adler a long fortune—purposely so long that I could not
finish it; promised to come to him on guard, that night, and tell
him the really important part of it—the tragical part of it, I
said—so must be out of reach of eavesdroppers. They always kept
a picket-watch outside the town—mere discipline and ceremony—no
occasion for it, no enemy around.
Toward midnight I set out, equipped with the countersign, and
picked my way toward the lonely region where Adler was to keep
his watch. It was so dark that I stumbled right on a dim figure
almost before I could get out a protecting word. The sentinel
hailed and I answered, both at the same moment. I added, “It’s
only me—the fortune-teller.” Then I slipped to the poor devil’s
side, and without a word I drove my dirk into his heart! Ja wohl,
laughed I, it was the tragedy part of his fortune, indeed! As he
fell from his horse, he clutched at me, and my blue goggles
remained in his hand; and away plunged the beast dragging him,
with his foot in the stirrup.
I fled through the woods, and made good my escape, leaving the
accusing goggles behind me in that dead man’s hand.
This was fifteen or sixteen years ago. Since then I have
wandered aimlessly about the earth, sometimes at work, sometimes
idle; sometimes with money, sometimes with none; but always tired
of life, and wishing it was done, for my mission here was
finished, with the act of that night; and the only pleasure,
solace, satisfaction I had, in all those tedious years, was in
the daily reflection, “I have killed him!”
Four years ago, my health began to fail. I had wandered into
Munich, in my purposeless way. Being out of money, I sought work,
and got it; did my duty faithfully about a year, and was then
given the berth of night watchman yonder in that dead-house which
you visited lately. The place suited my mood. I liked it. I liked
being with the dead—liked being alone with them. I used to
wander among those rigid corpses, and peer into their austere
faces, by the hour. The later the time, the more impressive it
was; I preferred the late time. Sometimes I turned the lights
low: this gave perspective, you see; and the imagination could
play; always, the dim receding ranks of the dead inspired one
with weird and fascinating fancies. Two years ago—I had been
there a year then—I was sitting all alone in the watch-room, one
gusty winter’s night, chilled, numb, comfortless; drowsing
gradually into unconsciousness; the sobbing of the wind and the
slamming of distant shutters falling fainter and fainter upon my
dulling ear each moment, when sharp and suddenly that dead-bell
rang out a blood-curdling alarum over my head! The shock of it
nearly paralyzed me; for it was the first time I had ever heard
it.
I gathered myself together and flew to the corpse-room. About
midway down the outside rank, a shrouded figure was sitting
upright, wagging its head slowly from one side to the other—a
grisly spectacle! Its side was toward me. I hurried to it and
peered into its face. Heavens, it was Adler!
Can you divine what my first thought was? Put into words, it
was this: “It seems, then, you escaped me once: there will be a
different result this time!”
Evidently this creature was suffering unimaginable terrors.
Think what it must have been to wake up in the midst of that
voiceless hush, and, look out over that grim congregation of the
dead! What gratitude shone in his skinny white face when he saw a
living form before him! And how the fervency of this mute
gratitude was augmented when his eyes fell upon the life-giving
cordials which I carried in my hands! Then imagine the horror
which came into this pinched face when I put the cordials behind
me, and said mockingly—
“Speak up, Franz Adler—call upon these dead. Doubtless they
will listen and have pity; but here there is none else that
will.”
He tried to speak, but that part of the shroud which bound his
jaws, held firm and would not let him. He tried to lift imploring
hands, but they were crossed upon his breast and tied. I
said—
“Shout, Franz Adler; make the sleepers in the distant streets
hear you and bring help. Shout—and lose no time, for there is
little to lose. What, you cannot? That is a pity; but it is no
matter—it does not always bring help. When you and your cousin
murdered a helpless woman and child in a cabin in Arkansas—my
wife, it was, and my child!—they shrieked for help, you
remember; but it did no good; you remember that it did no good,
is it not so? Your teeth chatter—then why cannot you shout?
Loosen the bandages with your hands—then you can. Ah, I
see—your hands are tied, they cannot aid you. How strangely things
repeat themselves, after long years; for my hands were tied, that
night, you remember? Yes, tied much as yours are now—how odd
that is. I could not pull free. It did not occur to you to untie
me; it does not occur to me to untie you. Sh—! there’s a late
footstep. It is coming this way. Hark, how near it is! One can
count the footfalls—one—two—three. There—it is just outside.
Now is the time! Shout, man, shout!—it is the one sole chance
between you and eternity! Ah, you see you have delayed too
long—it is gone by. There—it is dying out. It is gone! Think of
it—reflect upon it—you have heard a human footstep for the last
time. How curious it must be, to listen to so common a sound as
that, and know that one will never hear the fellow to it
again.”
Oh, my friend, the agony in that shrouded face was ecstasy to
see! I thought of a new torture, and applied it—assisting myself
with a trifle of lying invention—
“That poor Kruger tried to save my wife and child, and I did
him a grateful good turn for it when the time came. I persuaded
him to rob you; and I and a woman helped him to desert, and got
him away in safety.” A look as of surprise and triumph shone out
dimly through the anguish in my victim’s face. I was disturbed,
disquieted. I said—
“What, then—didn’t he escape?”
A negative shake of the head.
“No? What happened, then?”
The satisfaction in the shrouded face was still plainer. The
man tried to mumble out some words—could not succeed; tried to
express something with his obstructed hands—failed; paused a
moment, then feebly tilted his head, in a meaning way, toward the
corpse that lay nearest him.
“Dead?” I asked. “Failed to escape?—caught in the act and
shot?”
Negative shake of the head.
“How, then?”
Again the man tried to do something with his hands. I watched
closely, but could not guess the intent. I bent over and watched
still more intently. He had twisted a thumb around and was weakly
punching at his breast with it. “Ah—stabbed, do you mean?”
Affirmative nod, accompanied by a spectral smile of such
peculiar devilishness, that it struck an awakening light through
my dull brain, and I cried—
“Did I stab him, mistaking him for you?—for that stroke was
meant for none but you.”
The affirmative nod of the re-dying rascal was as joyous as
his failing strength was able to put into its expression.
“O, miserable, miserable me, to slaughter the pitying soul
that, stood a friend to my darlings when they were helpless, and
would have saved them if he could! miserable, oh, miserable,
miserable me!”
I fancied I heard the muffled gurgle of a mocking laugh. I
took my face out of my hands, and saw my enemy sinking back upon
his inclined board.
He was a satisfactory long time dying. He had a wonderful
vitality, an astonishing constitution. Yes, he was a pleasant
long time at it. I got a chair and a newspaper, and sat down by
him and read. Occasionally I took a sip of brandy. This was
necessary, on account of the cold. But I did it partly because I
saw, that along at first, whenever I reached for the bottle, he
thought I was going to give him some. I read aloud: mainly
imaginary accounts of people snatched from the grave’s threshold
and restored to life and vigor by a few spoonsful of liquor and a
warm bath. Yes, he had a long, hard death of it—three hours and
six minutes, from the time he rang his bell.
It is believed that in all these eighteen years that have
elapsed since the institution of the corpse-watch, no shrouded
occupant of the Bavarian dead-houses has ever rung its bell.
Well, it is a harmless belief. Let it stand at that.
The chill of that death-room had penetrated my bones. It
revived and fastened upon me the disease which had been
afflicting me, but which, up to that night, had been steadily
disappearing. That man murdered my wife and my child; and in
three days hence he will have added me to his list. No
matter—God! how delicious the memory of it!—I caught him
escaping from his grave, and thrust him back into it.
After that night, I was confined to my bed for a week; but as
soon as I could get about, I went to the dead-house books and got
the number of the house which Adler had died in. A wretched
lodging-house, it was. It was my idea that he would naturally
have gotten hold of Kruger’s effects, being his cousin; and I
wanted to get Kruger’s watch, if I could. But while I was sick,
Adler’s things had been sold and scattered, all except a few old
letters, and some odds and ends of no value. However, through
those letters, I traced out a son of Kruger’s, the only relative
left. He is a man of thirty now, a shoemaker by trade, and living
at No. 14 Konigstrasse, Mannheim—widower, with several small
children. Without explaining to him why, I have furnished
two-thirds of his support, ever since.
Now, as to that watch—see how strangely things happen! I
traced it around and about Germany for more than a year, at
considerable cost in money and vexation; and at last I got it.
Got it, and was unspeakably glad; opened it, and found nothing in
it! Why, I might have known that that bit of paper was not going
to stay there all this time. Of course I gave up that ten
thousand dollars then; gave it up, and dropped it out of my mind:
and most sorrowfully, for I had wanted it for Kruger’s son.
Last night, when I consented at last that I must die, I began
to make ready. I proceeded to burn all useless papers; and sure
enough, from a batch of Adler’s, not previously examined with
thoroughness, out dropped that long-desired scrap! I recognized
it in a moment. Here it is—I will translate it:
“Brick livery stable, stone foundation, middle of town, corner
of Orleans and Market. Corner toward Court-house. Third stone,
fourth row. Stick notice there, saying how many are to come.”
There—take it, and preserve it. Kruger explained that that
stone was removable; and that it was in the north wall of the
foundation, fourth row from the top, and third stone from the
west. The money is secreted behind it. He said the closing
sentence was a blind, to mislead in case the paper should fall
into wrong hands. It probably performed that office for
Adler.
Now I want to beg that when you make your intended journey
down the river, you will hunt out that hidden money, and send it
to Adam Kruger, care of the Mannheim address which I have
mentioned. It will make a rich man of him, and I shall sleep the
sounder in my grave for knowing that I have done what I could for
the son of the man who tried to save my wife and child—albeit my
hand ignorantly struck him down, whereas the impulse of my heart
would have been to shield and serve him.
Chapter 32
The Disposal of a Bonanza
“SUCH
was Ritter’s narrative,” said I to my two friends. There
was a profound and impressive silence, which lasted a
considerable time; then both men broke into a fusillade of
exciting and admiring ejaculations over the strange incidents of
the tale; and this, along with a rattling fire of questions, was
kept up until all hands were about out of breath. Then my friends
began to cool down, and draw off, under shelter of occasional
volleys, into silence and abysmal reverie. For ten minutes now,
there was stillness. Then Rogers said dreamily—
“Ten thousand dollars.”
Adding, after a considerable pause—
“Ten thousand. It is a heap of money.”
Presently the poet inquired—
“Are you going to send it to him right away?”
“Yes,” I said. “It is a queer question.”
No reply. After a little, Rogers asked, hesitatingly:
“All of it?—That is—I mean—”
“Certainly, all of it.”
I was going to say more, but stopped—was stopped by a train
of thought which started up in me. Thompson spoke, but my mind
was absent, and I did not catch what he said. But I heard Rogers
answer—
“Yes, it seems so to me. It ought to be quite sufficient; for
I don’t see that he has done anything.”
Presently the poet said—
“When you come to look at it, it is more than sufficient. Just
look at it—five thousand dollars! Why, he couldn’t spend it in a
lifetime! And it would injure him, too; perhaps ruin him—you
want to look at that. In a little while he would throw his last
away, shut up his shop, maybe take to drinking, maltreat his
motherless children, drift into other evil courses, go steadily
from bad to worse—”
“Yes, that’s it,” interrupted Rogers, fervently, “I’ve seen it
a hundred times—yes, more than a hundred. You put money into the
hands of a man like that, if you want to destroy him, that’s all;
just put money into his hands, it’s all you’ve got to do; and if
it don’t pull him down, and take all the usefulness out of him,
and all the self-respect and everything, then I don’t know human
nature—ain’t that so, Thompson? And even if we were to give him
a third of it; why, in less than six months—”
“Less than six weeks, you’d better say!” said I, warming up
and breaking in. “Unless he had that three thousand dollars in
safe hands where he couldn’t touch it, he would no more last you
six weeks than—”
“Of course he wouldn’t,” said Thompson; “I’ve edited books for
that kind of people; and the moment they get their hands on the
royalty—maybe it’s three thousand, maybe it’s two
thousand—”
“What business has that shoemaker with two thousand dollars, I
should like to know?” broke in Rogers, earnestly. “A man perhaps
perfectly contented now, there in Mannheim, surrounded by his own
class, eating his bread with the appetite which laborious
industry alone can give, enjoying his humble life, honest,
upright, pure in heart; and blest!—yes, I say blest! blest
above all the myriads that go in silk attire and walk the empty
artificial round of social folly—but just you put that
temptation before him once! just you lay fifteen hundred dollars
before a man like that, and say—”
“Fifteen hundred devils!” cried I, “Five hundred would rot his
principles, paralyze his industry, drag him to the rumshop,
thence to the gutter, thence to the almshouse, thence to
——”
“Why put upon ourselves this crime, gentlemen?” interrupted
the poet earnestly and appealingly. “He is happy where he is, and
as he is. Every sentiment of honor, every sentiment of charity,
every sentiment of high and sacred benevolence warns us,
beseeches us, commands us to leave him undisturbed. That is real
friendship, that is true friendship. We could follow other
courses that would be more showy; but none that would be so truly
kind and wise, depend upon it.”
After some further talk, it became evident that each of us,
down in his heart, felt some misgivings over this settlement of
the matter. It was manifest that we all felt that we ought to
send the poor shoemaker something. There was long and thoughtful
discussion of this point; and we finally decided to send him a
chromo.
Well, now that everything seemed to be arranged satisfactorily
to everybody concerned, a new trouble broke out: it transpired
that these two men were expecting to share equally in the money
with me. That was not my idea. I said that if they got half of it
between them they might consider themselves lucky. Rogers
said—
“Who would have had any if it hadn’t been for me? I flung out
the first hint—but for that it would all have gone to the
shoemaker.”
Thompson said that he was thinking of the thing himself at the
very moment that Rogers had originally spoken.
I retorted that the idea would have occurred to me plenty soon
enough, and without anybody’s help. I was slow about thinking,
maybe, but I was sure.
This matter warmed up into a quarrel; then into a fight; and
each man got pretty badly battered. As soon as I had got myself
mended up after a fashion, I ascended to the hurricane deck in a
pretty sour humor. I found Captain McCord there, and said, as
pleasantly as my humor would permit—
“I have come to say good-bye, captain. I wish to go ashore at
Napoleon.”
“Go ashore where?”
“Napoleon.”
The captain laughed; but seeing that I was not in a jovial
mood, stopped that and said—
“But are you serious?”
“Serious? I certainly am.”
The captain glanced up at the pilot-house and said—
“He wants to get off at Napoleon!”
“Napoleon?”
“That’s what he says.”
“Great Caesar’s ghost!”
Uncle Mumford approached along the deck. The captain
said—
“Uncle, here’s a friend of yours wants to get off at
Napoleon!”
“Well, by —?”
I said—
“Come, what is all this about? Can’t a man go ashore at
Napoleon if he wants to?”
“Why, hang it, don’t you know? There isn’t any Napoleon any
more. Hasn’t been for years and years. The Arkansas River burst
through it, tore it all to rags, and emptied it into the
Mississippi!”
“Carried the whole town away?-banks, churches, jails,
newspaper-offices, court-house, theater, fire department, livery
stable everything ?”
“Everything. just a fifteen-minute job.” or such a matter.
Didn’t leave hide nor hair, shred nor shingle of it, except the
fag-end of a shanty and one brick chimney. This boat is paddling
along right now, where the dead-center of that town used to be;
yonder is the brick chimney-all that’s left of Napoleon. These
dense woods on the right used to be a mile back of the town. Take
a look behind you—up-stream—now you begin to recognize this
country, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do recognize it now. It is the most wonderful thing I
ever heard of; by a long shot the most wonderful—and
unexpected.”
Mr. Thompson and Mr. Rogers had arrived, meantime, with
satchels and umbrellas, and had silently listened to the
captain’s news. Thompson put a half-dollar in my hand and said
softly—
“For my share of the chromo.”
Rogers followed suit.
Yes, it was an astonishing thing to see the Mississippi
rolling between unpeopled shores and straight over the spot where
I used to see a good big self-complacent town twenty years ago.
Town that was county-seat of a great and important county; town
with a big United States marine hospital; town of innumerable
fights—an inquest every day; town where I had used to know the
prettiest girl, and the most accomplished in the whole
Mississippi Valley; town where we were handed the first printed
news of the “Pennsylvania’s” mournful disaster a quarter of a
century ago; a town no more—swallowed up, vanished, gone to feed
the fishes; nothing left but a fragment of a shanty and a
crumbling brick chimney!
Chapter 33
Refreshments and Ethics
IN
regard to Island 74, which is situated not far from the
former Napoleon, a freak of the river here has sorely perplexed
the laws of men and made them a vanity and a jest. When the State
of Arkansas was chartered, she controlled “to the center of the
river’—a most unstable line. The State of Mississippi claimed
“to the channel’—another shifty and unstable line. No. 74
belonged to Arkansas. By and by a cut-off threw this big island
out of Arkansas, and yet not within Mississippi. “Middle of the
river” on one side of it, “channel” on the other. That is as I
understand the problem. Whether I have got the details right or
wrong, this fact remains: that here is this big and exceedingly
valuable island of four thousand acres, thrust out in the cold,
and belonging to neither the one State nor the other; paying
taxes to neither, owing allegiance to neither. One man owns the
whole island, and of right is “the man without a country.”
Island 92 belongs to Arkansas. The river moved it over and
joined it to Mississippi. A chap established a whiskey shop
there, without a Mississippi license, and enriched himself upon
Mississippi custom under Arkansas protection (where no license
was in those days required).
We glided steadily down the river in the usual
privacy—steamboat or other moving thing seldom seen. Scenery as
always: stretch upon stretch of almost unbroken forest, on both
sides of the river; soundless solitude. Here and there a cabin or
two, standing in small openings on the gray and grassless
banks—cabins which had formerly stood a quarter or half-mile
farther to the front, and gradually been pulled farther and
farther back as the shores caved in. As at Pilcher’s Point, for
instance, where the cabins had been moved back three hundred
yards in three months, so we were told; but the caving banks had
already caught up with them, and they were being conveyed
rearward once more.
Napoleon had but small opinion of Greenville, Mississippi, in
the old times; but behold, Napoleon is gone to the cat-fishes,
and here is Greenville full of life and activity, and making a
considerable flourish in the Valley; having three thousand
inhabitants, it is said, and doing a gross trade of $2,500,000
annually. A growing town.
There was much talk on the boat about the Calhoun Land
Company, an enterprise which is expected to work wholesome
results. Colonel Calhoun, a grandson of the statesman, went to
Boston and formed a syndicate which purchased a large tract of
land on the river, in Chicot County, Arkansas—some ten thousand
acres—for cotton-growing. The purpose is to work on a cash
basis: buy at first hands, and handle their own product; supply
their negro laborers with provisions and necessaries at a
trifling profit, say 8 or 10 per cent.; furnish them comfortable
quarters, etc., and encourage them to save money and remain on
the place. If this proves a financial success, as seems quite
certain, they propose to establish a banking-house in Greenville,
and lend money at an unburdensome rate of interest—6 per cent.
is spoken of.
The trouble heretofore has been—I am quoting remarks of
planters and steamboatmen—that the planters, although owning the
land, were without cash capital; had to hypothecate both land and
crop to carry on the business. Consequently, the commission
dealer who furnishes the money takes some risk and demands big
interest—usually 10 per cent., and 2{half} per cent. for
negotiating the loan. The planter has also to buy his supplies
through the same dealer, paying commissions and profits. Then
when he ships his crop, the dealer adds his commissions,
insurance, etc. So, taking it by and large, and first and last,
the dealer’s share of that crop is about
25 per cent.
A cotton-planter’s estimate of the average margin of profit on
planting, in his section: One man and mule will raise ten acres
of cotton, giving ten bales cotton, worth, say, $500; cost of
producing, say $350; net profit, $150, or $15 per acre. There is
also a profit now from the cotton-seed, which formerly had little
value—none where much transportation was necessary. In sixteen
hundred pounds crude cotton four hundred are lint, worth, say,
ten cents a pound; and twelve hundred pounds of seed, worth $12
or $13 per ton. Maybe in future even the stems will not be thrown
away. Mr. Edward Atkinson says that for each bale of cotton there
are fifteen hundred pounds of stems, and that these are very rich
in phosphate of lime and potash; that when ground and mixed with
ensilage or cotton-seed meal (which is too rich for use as fodder
in large quantities), the stem mixture makes a superior food,
rich in all the elements needed for the production of milk, meat,
and bone. Heretofore the stems have been considered a
nuisance.
Complaint is made that the planter remains grouty toward the
former slave, since the war; will have nothing but a chill
business relation with him, no sentiment permitted to intrude,
will not keep a “store” himself, and supply the negro’s wants and
thus protect the negro’s pocket and make him able and willing to
stay on the place and an advantage to him to do it, but lets that
privilege to some thrifty Israelite, who encourages the
thoughtless negro and wife to buy all sorts of things which they
could do without—buy on credit, at big prices, month after
month, credit based on the negro’s share of the growing crop; and
at the end of the season, the negro’s share belongs to the
Israelite,” the negro is in debt besides, is discouraged,
dissatisfied, restless, and both he and the planter are injured;
for he will take steamboat and migrate, and the planter must get
a stranger in his place who does not know him, does not care for
him, will fatten the Israelite a season, and follow his
predecessor per steamboat.
It is hoped that the Calhoun Company will show, by its humane
and protective treatment of its laborers, that its method is the
most profitable for both planter and negro; and it is believed
that a general adoption of that method will then follow.
And where so many are saying their say, shall not the
barkeeper testify? He is thoughtful, observant, never drinks;
endeavors to earn his salary, and would earn it if there were
custom enough. He says the people along here in Mississippi and
Louisiana will send up the river to buy vegetables rather than
raise them, and they will come aboard at the landings and buy
fruits of the barkeeper. Thinks they “don’t know anything but
cotton;” believes they don’t know how to raise vegetables and
fruit—’at least the most of them.” Says “a nigger will go to H
for a watermelon” (’H” is all I find in the stenographer’s
report—means Halifax probably, though that seems a good way to
go for a watermelon). Barkeeper buys watermelons for five cents
up the river, brings them down and sells them for fifty. “Why
does he mix such elaborate and picturesque drinks for the nigger
hands on the boat?” Because they won’t have any other. “They want
a big drink; don’t make any difference what you make it of, they
want the worth of their money. You give a nigger a plain gill of
half-a-dollar brandy for five cents—will he touch it? No. Ain’t
size enough to it. But you put up a pint of all kinds of
worthless rubbish, and heave in some red stuff to make it
beautiful—red’s the main thing—and he wouldn’t put down that
glass to go to a circus.”
All the bars on this Anchor Line are
rented and owned by one firm. They furnish the liquors from their
own establishment, and hire the barkeepers “on salary.” Good
liquors? Yes, on some of the boats, where there are the kind of
passengers that want it and can pay for it. On the other boats?
No. Nobody but the deck hands and firemen to drink it. “Brandy?
Yes, I’ve got brandy, plenty of it; but you don’t want any of it
unless you’ve made your will.” It isn’t as it used to be in the
old times. Then everybody traveled by steamboat, everybody drank,
and everybody treated everybody else. “Now most everybody goes by
railroad, and the rest don’t drink.” In the old times the
barkeeper owned the bar himself, “and was gay and smarty and
talky and all jeweled up, and was the toniest aristocrat on the
boat; used to make $2,000 on a trip. A father who left his son a
steamboat bar, left him a fortune. Now he leaves him board and
lodging; yes, and washing, if a shirt a trip will do. Yes,
indeedy, times are changed. Why, do you know, on the principal
line of boats on the Upper Mississippi, they don’t have any bar
at all! Sounds like poetry, but it’s the petrified truth.”
Chapter 34
Tough Yarns
STACK ISLAND.
I remembered Stack Island; also Lake Providence,
Louisiana—which is the first distinctly Southern-looking town
you come to, downward-bound; lies level and low, shade-trees hung
with venerable gray beards of Spanish moss; “restful, pensive,
Sunday aspect about the place,” comments Uncle Mumford, with
feeling—also with truth.
A Mr. H. furnished some minor details of fact concerning this
region which I would have hesitated to believe if I had not known
him to be a steamboat mate. He was a passenger of ours, a
resident of Arkansas City, and bound to Vicksburg to join his
boat, a little Sunflower packet. He was an austere man, and had
the reputation of being singularly unworldly, for a river man.
Among other things, he said that Arkansas had been injured and
kept back by generations of exaggerations concerning the
mosquitoes here. One may smile, said he, and turn the matter off
as being a small thing; but when you come to look at the effects
produced, in the way of discouragement of immigration, and
diminished values of property, it was quite the opposite of a
small thing, or thing in any wise to be coughed down or sneered
at. These mosquitoes had been persistently represented as being
formidable and lawless; whereas “the truth is, they are feeble,
insignificant in size, diffident to a fault, sensitive’—and so
on, and so on; you would have supposed he was talking about his
family. But if he was soft on the Arkansas mosquitoes, he was
hard enough on the mosquitoes of Lake Providence to make up for
it—’those Lake Providence colossi,” as he finely called them. He
said that two of them could whip a dog, and that four of them
could hold a man down; and except help come, they would kill
him—’butcher him,” as he expressed it. Referred in a sort of
casual way—and yet significant way—to “the fact that the life
policy in its simplest form is unknown in Lake Providence—they
take out a mosquito policy besides.” He told many remarkable
things about those lawless insects. Among others, said he had
seen them try to vote. Noticing that this statement seemed to be
a good deal of a strain on us, he modified it a little: said he
might have been mistaken, as to that particular, but knew he had
seen them around the polls “canvassing.”
There was another passenger—friend of H.’s—who backed up the
harsh evidence against those mosquitoes, and detailed some
stirring adventures which he had had with them. The stories were
pretty sizable, merely pretty sizable; yet Mr. H. was continually
interrupting with a cold, inexorable “Wait—knock off twenty-five
per cent. of that; now go on;” or, “Wait—you are getting that
too strong; cut it down, cut it down—you get a leetle too much
costumery on to your statements: always dress a fact in tights,
never in an ulster;” or, “Pardon, once more: if you are going to
load anything more on to that statement, you want to get a couple
of lighters and tow the rest, because it’s drawing all the water
there is in the river already; stick to facts—just stick to the
cold facts; what these gentlemen want for a book is the frozen
truth—ain’t that so, gentlemen?” He explained privately that it
was necessary to watch this man all the time, and keep him within
bounds; it would not do to neglect this precaution, as he, Mr.
H., “knew to his sorrow.” Said he, “I will not deceive you; he
told me such a monstrous lie once, that it swelled my left ear
up, and spread it so that I was actually not able to see out
around it; it remained so for months, and people came miles to
see me fan myself with it.”
Chapter 35
Vicksburg During the Trouble
WE
used to plow past the lofty hill-city, Vicksburg,
down-stream; but we cannot do that now. A cut-off has made a
country town of it, like Osceola, St. Genevieve, and several
others. There is currentless water—also a big island—in front
of Vicksburg now. You come down the river the other side of the
island, then turn and come up to the town; that is, in high
water: in low water you can’t come up, but must land some
distance below it.
Signs and scars still remain, as reminders of Vicksburg’s
tremendous war experiences; earthworks, trees crippled by the
cannon balls, cave-refuges in the clay precipices, etc. The
caves did good service during the six weeks” bombardment of the
city—May 8 to July 4, 1863. They were used by the
non-combatants—mainly by the women and children; not to live in
constantly, but to fly to for safety on occasion. They were mere
holes, tunnels, driven into the perpendicular clay bank, then
branched Y shape, within the hill. Life in Vicksburg, during the
six weeks was perhaps—but wait; here are some materials out of
which to reproduce it:—
Population, twenty-seven thousand soldiers and three thousand
non-combatants; the city utterly cut off from the world—walled
solidly in, the frontage by gunboats, the rear by soldiers and
batteries; hence, no buying and selling with the outside; no
passing to and fro; no God-speeding a parting guest, no
welcoming a coming one; no printed acres of world-wide news to be
read at breakfast, mornings—a tedious dull absence of such
matter, instead; hence, also, no running to see steamboats
smoking into view in the distance up or down, and plowing toward
the town—for none came, the river lay vacant and undisturbed; no
rush and turmoil around the railway station, no struggling over
bewildered swarms of passengers by noisy mobs of hackmen—all
quiet there; flour two hundred dollars a barrel, sugar thirty,
corn ten dollars a bushel, bacon five dollars a pound, rum a
hundred dollars a gallon; other things in proportion:
consequently, no roar and racket of drays and carriages tearing
along the streets; nothing for them to do, among that handful of
non-combatants of exhausted means; at three o’clock in the
morning, silence; silence so dead that the measured tramp of a
sentinel can be heard a seemingly impossible distance; out of
hearing of this lonely sound, perhaps the stillness is absolute:
all in a moment come ground-shaking thunder-crashes of artillery,
the sky is cobwebbed with the crisscrossing red lines streaming
from soaring bomb-shells, and a rain of iron fragments descends
upon the city; descends upon the empty streets: streets which are
not empty a moment later, but mottled with dim figures of frantic
women and children scurrying from home and bed toward the cave
dungeons—encouraged by the humorous grim soldiery, who shout
“Rats, to your holes!” and laugh.
The cannon-thunder rages, shells scream and crash overhead,
the iron rain pours down, one hour, two hours, three, possibly
six, then stops; silence follows, but the streets are still
empty; the silence continues; by-and-bye a head projects from a
cave here and there and yonder, and reconnoitres, cautiously; the
silence still continuing, bodies follow heads, and jaded, half
smothered creatures group themselves about, stretch their cramped
limbs, draw in deep draughts of the grateful fresh air, gossip
with the neighbors from the next cave; maybe straggle off home
presently, or take a lounge through the town, if the stillness
continues; and will scurry to the holes again, by-and-bye, when
the war-tempest breaks forth once more.
There being but three thousand of these cave-dwellers—merely
the population of a village—would they not come to know each
other, after a week or two, and familiarly; insomuch that the
fortunate or unfortunate experiences of one would be of interest
to all?
Those are the materials furnished by history. From them might
not almost anybody reproduce for himself the life of that time in
Vicksburg? Could you, who did not experience it, come nearer to
reproducing it to the imagination of another non-participant than
could a Vicksburger who did experience it? It seems impossible;
and yet there are reasons why it might not really be. When one
makes his first voyage in a ship, it is an experience which
multitudinously bristles with striking novelties; novelties which
are in such sharp contrast with all this person’s former
experiences that they take a seemingly deathless grip upon his
imagination and memory. By tongue or pen he can make a landsman
live that strange and stirring voyage over with him; make him see
it all and feel it all. But if he wait? If he make ten voyages in
succession—what then? Why, the thing has lost color, snap,
surprise; and has become commonplace. The man would have nothing
to tell that would quicken a landsman’s pulse.
Years ago, I talked with a couple of the Vicksburg
non-combatants—a man and his wife. Left to tell their story in
their own way, those people told it without fire, almost without
interest.
A week of their wonderful life there would have made their
tongues eloquent for ever perhaps; but they had six weeks of it,
and that wore the novelty all out; they got used to being
bomb-shelled out of home and into the ground; the matter became
commonplace. After that, the possibility of their ever being
startlingly interesting in their talks about it was gone. What
the man said was to this effect:—
“It got to be Sunday all the time. Seven Sundays in the
week—to us, anyway. We hadn’t anything to do, and time hung
heavy. Seven Sundays, and all of them broken up at one time or
another, in the day or in the night, by a few hours of the awful
storm of fire and thunder and iron. At first we used to shin for
the holes a good deal faster than we did afterwards. The first
time, I forgot the children, and Maria fetched them both along.
When she was all safe in the cave she fainted. Two or three weeks
afterwards, when she was running for the holes, one morning,
through a shell-shower, a big shell burst near her, and covered
her all over with dirt, and a piece of the iron carried away her
game-bag of false hair from the back of her head. Well, she
stopped to get that game-bag before she shoved along again! Was
getting used to things already, you see. We all got so that we
could tell a good deal about shells; and after that we didn’t
always go under shelter if it was a light shower. Us men would
loaf around and talk; and a man would say, “There she goes!” and
name the kind of shell it was from the sound of it, and go on
talking—if there wasn’t any danger from it. If a shell was
bursting close over us, we stopped talking and stood
still;—uncomfortable, yes, but it wasn’t safe to move. When it let
go,
we went on talking again, if nobody hurt—maybe saying, “That was
a ripper!” or some such commonplace comment before we resumed;
or, maybe, we would see a shell poising itself away high in the
air overhead. In that case, every fellow just whipped out a
sudden, “See you again, gents!” and shoved. Often and often I saw
gangs of ladies promenading the streets, looking as cheerful as
you please, and keeping an eye canted up watching the shells; and
I’ve seen them stop still when they were uncertain about what a
shell was going to do, and wait and make certain; and after that
they sa’ntered along again, or lit out for shelter, according to
the verdict. Streets in some towns have a litter of pieces of
paper, and odds and ends of one sort or another lying around.
Ours hadn’t; they had iron litter. Sometimes a man would gather
up all the iron fragments and unbursted shells in his
neighborhood, and pile them into a kind of monument in his front
yard—a ton of it, sometimes. No glass left; glass couldn’t stand
such a bombardment; it was all shivered out. Windows of the
houses vacant—looked like eye-holes in a skull. Whole panes were
as scarce as news.
“We had church Sundays. Not many there, along at first; but
by-and-bye pretty good turnouts. I’ve seen service stop a minute,
and everybody sit quiet—no voice heard, pretty funeral-like
then—and all the more so on account of the awful boom and crash
going on outside and overhead; and pretty soon, when a body could
be heard, service would go on again. Organs and church-music
mixed up with a bombardment is a powerful queer
combination—along at first. Coming out of church, one morning,
we had an accident—the only one that happened around me on a
Sunday. I was just having a hearty handshake with a friend I
hadn’t seen for a while, and saying, “Drop into our cave
to-night, after bombardment; we’ve got hold of a pint of prime
wh—.” Whiskey, I was going to say, you know, but a shell
interrupted. A chunk of it cut the man’s arm off, and left it
dangling in my hand. And do you know the thing that is going to
stick the longest in my memory, and outlast everything else,
little and big, I reckon, is the mean thought I had then? It was
“the whiskey is saved.” And yet, don’t you know, it was kind of
excusable; because it was as scarce as diamonds, and we had only
just that little; never had another taste during the siege.
“Sometimes the caves were desperately crowded, and always hot
and close. Sometimes a cave had twenty or twenty-five people
packed into it; no turning-room for anybody; air so foul,
sometimes, you couldn’t have made a candle burn in it. A child
was born in one of those caves one night, Think of that; why, it
was like having it born in a trunk.
“Twice we had sixteen people in our cave; and a number of
times we had a dozen. Pretty suffocating in there. We always had
eight; eight belonged there. Hunger and misery and sickness and
fright and sorrow, and I don’t know what all, got so loaded into
them that none of them were ever rightly their old selves after
the siege. They all died but three of us within a couple of
years. One night a shell burst in front of the hole and caved it
in and stopped it up. It was lively times, for a while, digging
out. Some of us came near smothering. After that we made two
openings—ought to have thought of it at first.
“Mule meat. No, we only got down to that the last day or two.
Of course it was good; anything is good when you are
starving.
This man had kept a diary during—six weeks? No, only the
first six days. The first day, eight close pages; the second,
five; the third, one—loosely written; the fourth, three or four
lines; a line or two the fifth and sixth days; seventh day, diary
abandoned; life in terrific Vicksburg having now become
commonplace and matter of course.
The war history of Vicksburg has more about it to interest the
general reader than that of any other of the river-towns. It is
full of variety, full of incident, full of the picturesque.
Vicksburg held out longer than any other important river-town,
and saw warfare in all its phases, both land and water—the
siege, the mine, the assault, the repulse, the bombardment,
sickness, captivity, famine.
The most beautiful of all the national cemeteries is here.
Over the great gateway is this inscription:—
"HERE REST IN PEACE 16,600 WHO DIED FOR THEIR COUNTRY IN THE
YEARS 1861 TO 1865."
The grounds are nobly situated; being very high and commanding
a wide prospect of land and river. They are tastefully laid out
in broad terraces, with winding roads and paths; and there is
profuse adornment in the way of semi-tropical shrubs and
flowers,” and in one part is a piece of native wild-wood, left
just as it grew, and, therefore, perfect in its charm. Everything
about this cemetery suggests the hand of the national Government.
The Government’s work is always conspicuous for excellence,
solidity, thoroughness, neatness. The Government does its work
well in the first place, and then takes care of it.
By winding-roads—which were often cut to so great a depth
between perpendicular walls that they were mere roofless
tunnels—we drove out a mile or two and visited the monument
which stands upon the scene of the surrender of Vicksburg to
General Grant by General Pemberton. Its metal will preserve it
from the hackings and chippings which so defaced its predecessor,
which was of marble; but the brick foundations are crumbling, and
it will tumble down by-and-bye. It overlooks a picturesque region
of wooded hills and ravines; and is not unpicturesque itself,
being well smothered in flowering weeds. The battered remnant of
the marble monument has been removed to the National
Cemetery.
On the road, a quarter of a mile townward, an aged colored man
showed us, with pride, an unexploded bomb-shell which has lain in
his yard since the day it fell there during the siege.
“I was a-stannin” heah, an” de dog was a-stannin” heah; de dog
he went for de shell, gwine to pick a fuss wid it; but I didn’t;
I says, "Jes” make you’seff at home heah; lay still whah you is,
or bust up de place, jes” as you’s a mind to, but I’s got
business out in de woods, I has!"”
Vicksburg is a town of substantial business streets and
pleasant residences; it commands the commerce of the Yazoo and
Sunflower Rivers; is pushing railways in several directions,
through rich agricultural regions, and has a promising future of
prosperity and importance.
Apparently, nearly all the river towns, big and little, have
made up their minds that they must look mainly to railroads for
wealth and upbuilding, henceforth. They are acting upon this
idea. The signs are, that the next twenty years will bring about
some noteworthy changes in the Valley, in the direction of
increased population and wealth, and in the intellectual
advancement and the liberalizing of opinion which go naturally
with these. And yet, if one may judge by the past, the river
towns will manage to find and use a chance, here and there, to
cripple and retard their progress. They kept themselves back in
the days of steamboating supremacy, by a system of wharfage-dues
so stupidly graded as to prohibit what may be called small retail
traffic in freights and passengers. Boats were charged such heavy
wharfage that they could not afford to land for one or two
passengers or a light lot of freight. Instead of encouraging the
bringing of trade to their doors, the towns diligently and
effectively discouraged it. They could have had many boats and
low rates; but their policy rendered few boats and high rates
compulsory. It was a policy which extended—and extends—from New
Orleans to St. Paul.
We had a strong desire to make a trip up the Yazoo and the
Sunflower—an interesting region at any time, but additionally
interesting at this time, because up there the great inundation
was still to be seen in force—but we were nearly sure to have to
wait a day or more for a New Orleans boat on our return; so we
were obliged to give up the project.
Here is a story which I picked up on board the boat that
night. I insert it in this place merely because it is a good
story, not because it belongs here—for it doesn’t. It was told
by a passenger—a college professor—and was called to the
surface in the course of a general conversation which began with
talk about horses, drifted into talk about astronomy, then into
talk about the lynching of the gamblers in Vicksburg half a
century ago, then into talk about dreams and superstitions; and
ended, after midnight, in a dispute over free trade and
protection.
Chapter 36
The Professor’s Yarn
IT
was in the early days. I was not a college professor then.
I was a humble-minded young land-surveyor, with the world before
me—to survey, in case anybody wanted it done. I had a contract
to survey a route for a great mining-ditch in California, and I
was on my way thither, by sea—a three or four weeks” voyage.
There were a good many passengers, but I had very little to say
to them; reading and dreaming were my passions, and I avoided
conversation in order to indulge these appetites. There were
three professional gamblers on board—rough, repulsive fellows. I
never had any talk with them, yet I could not help seeing them
with some frequency, for they gambled in an upper-deck stateroom
every day and night, and in my promenades I often had glimpses of
them through their door, which stood a little ajar to let out the
surplus tobacco smoke and profanity. They were an evil and
hateful presence, but I had to put up with it, of course,
There was one other passenger who fell under my eye a good
deal, for he seemed determined to be friendly with me, and I
could not have gotten rid of him without running some chance of
hurting his feelings, and I was far from wishing to do that.
Besides, there was something engaging in his countrified
simplicity and his beaming good-nature. The first time I saw this
Mr. John Backus, I guessed, from his clothes and his looks, that
he was a grazier or farmer from the backwoods of some western
State—doubtless Ohio—and afterward when he dropped into his
personal history and I discovered that he was a cattle-raiser
from interior Ohio, I was so pleased with my own penetration that
I warmed toward him for verifying my instinct.
He got to dropping alongside me every day, after breakfast, to
help me make my promenade; and so, in the course of time, his
easy-working jaw had told me everything about his business, his
prospects, his family, his relatives, his politics—in fact
everything that concerned a Backus, living or dead. And meantime
I think he had managed to get out of me everything I knew about
my trade, my tribe, my purposes, my prospects, and myself. He was
a gentle and persuasive genius, and this thing showed it; for I
was not given to talking about my matters. I said something about
triangulation, once; the stately word pleased his ear; he
inquired what it meant; I explained; after that he quietly and
inoffensively ignored my name, and always called me Triangle.
What an enthusiast he was in cattle! At the bare name of a
bull or a cow, his eye would light and his eloquent tongue would
turn itself loose. As long as I would walk and listen, he would
walk and talk; he knew all breeds, he loved all breeds, he
caressed them all with his affectionate tongue. I tramped along
in voiceless misery whilst the cattle question was up; when I
could endure it no longer, I used to deftly insert a scientific
topic into the conversation; then my eye fired and his faded; my
tongue fluttered, his stopped; life was a joy to me, and a
sadness to him.
One day he said, a little hesitatingly, and with somewhat of
diffidence—
“Triangle, would you mind coming down to my stateroom a
minute, and have a little talk on a certain matter?”
I went with him at once. Arrived there, he put his head out,
glanced up and down the saloon warily, then closed the door and
locked it. He sat down on the sofa, and he said—
“I’m a-going to make a little proposition to you, and if it
strikes you favorable, it’ll be a middling good thing for both of
us. You ain’t a-going out to Californy for fun, nuther am I—it’s
business, ain’t that so? Well, you can do me a good turn, and so
can I you, if we see fit. I’ve raked and scraped and saved, a
considerable many years, and I’ve got it all here.” He unlocked
an old hair trunk, tumbled a chaos of shabby clothes aside, and
drew a short stout bag into view for a moment, then buried it
again and relocked the trunk. Dropping his voice to a cautious
low tone, he continued, “She’s all there—a round ten thousand
dollars in yellow-boys; now this is my little idea: What I don’t
know about raising cattle, ain’t worth knowing. There’s mints of
money in it, in Californy. Well, I know, and you know, that all
along a line that “s being surveyed, there “s little dabs of land
that they call "gores," that fall to the surveyor free gratis for
nothing. All you’ve got to do, on your side, is to survey in such
a way that the "gores" will fall on good fat land, then you turn
“em over to me, I stock “em with cattle, in rolls the cash, I
plank out your share of the dollars regular, right along,
and—”
I was sorry to wither his blooming enthusiasm, but it could
not be helped. I interrupted, and said severely—
“I am not that kind of a surveyor. Let us change the subject,
Mr. Backus.”
It was pitiful to see his confusion and hear his awkward and
shamefaced apologies. I was as much distressed as he
was—especially as he seemed so far from having suspected that
there was anything improper in his proposition. So I hastened to
console him and lead him on to forget his mishap in a
conversational orgy about cattle and butchery. We were lying at
Acapulco; and, as we went on deck, it happened luckily that the
crew were just beginning to hoist some beeves aboard in slings.
Backus’s melancholy vanished instantly, and with it the memory of
his late mistake.
“Now only look at that!” cried he; “My goodness, Triangle,
what would they say to it in Ohio. Wouldn’t their eyes bug out,
to see “em handled like that?—wouldn’t they, though?”
All the passengers were on deck to look—even the
gamblers—and Backus knew them all, and had afflicted them all
with his pet topic. As I moved away, I saw one of the gamblers
approach and accost him; then another of them; then the third. I
halted; waited; watched; the conversation continued between the
four men; it grew earnest; Backus drew gradually away; the
gamblers followed, and kept at his elbow. I was uncomfortable.
However, as they passed me presently, I heard Backus say, with a
tone of persecuted annoyance—
“But it ain’t any use, gentlemen; I tell you again, as I’ve
told you a half a dozen times before, I warn’t raised to it, and
I ain’t a-going to resk it.”
I felt relieved. “His level head will be his sufficient
protection,” I said to myself.
During the fortnight’s run from Acapulco to San Francisco I
several times saw the gamblers talking earnestly with Backus, and
once I threw out a gentle warning to him. He chuckled comfortably
and said—
“Oh, yes! they tag around after me considerable—want me to
play a little, just for amusement, they say—but laws-a-me, if my
folks have told me once to look out for that sort of live-stock,
they’ve told me a thousand times, I reckon.”
By-and-bye, in due course, we were approaching San Francisco.
It was an ugly black night, with a strong wind blowing, but there
was not much sea. I was on deck, alone. Toward ten I started
below. A figure issued from the gamblers” den, and disappeared in
the darkness. I experienced a shock, for I was sure it was
Backus. I flew down the companion-way, looked about for him,
could not find him, then returned to the deck just in time to
catch a glimpse of him as he re-entered that confounded nest of
rascality. Had he yielded at last? I feared it. What had he gone
below for?—His bag of coin? Possibly. I drew near the door, full
of bodings. It was a-crack, and I glanced in and saw a sight that
made me bitterly wish I had given my attention to saving my poor
cattle-friend, instead of reading and dreaming my foolish time
away. He was gambling. Worse still, he was being plied with
champagne, and was already showing some effect from it. He
praised the “cider,” as he called it, and said now that he had
got a taste of it he almost believed he would drink it if it was
spirits, it was so good and so ahead of anything he had ever run
across before. Surreptitious smiles, at this, passed from one
rascal to another, and they filled all the glasses, and whilst
Backus honestly drained his to the bottom they pretended to do
the same, but threw the wine over their shoulders.
I could not bear the scene, so I wandered forward and tried to
interest myself in the sea and the voices of the wind. But no, my
uneasy spirit kept dragging me back at quarter-hour intervals;
and always I saw Backus drinking his wine—fairly and squarely,
and the others throwing theirs away. It was the painfullest night
I ever spent.
The only hope I had was that we might reach our anchorage with
speed—that would break up the game. I helped the ship along all
I could with my prayers. At last we went booming through the
Golden Gate, and my pulses leaped for joy. I hurried back to that
door and glanced in. Alas, there was small room for
hope—Backus’s eyes were heavy and bloodshot, his sweaty face was
crimson, his speech maudlin and thick, his body sawed drunkenly
about with the weaving motion of the ship. He drained another
glass to the dregs, whilst the cards were being dealt.
He took his hand, glanced at it, and his dull eyes lit up for
a moment. The gamblers observed it, and showed their
gratification by hardly perceptible signs.
“How many cards?”
“None!” said Backus.
One villain—named Hank Wiley—discarded one card, the others
three each. The betting began. Heretofore the bets had been
trifling—a dollar or two; but Backus started off with an eagle
now, Wiley hesitated a moment, then “saw it” and “went ten
dollars better.” The other two threw up their hands.
Backus went twenty better. Wiley said—
“I see that, and go you a hundred better!” then smiled and
reached for the money.
“Let it alone,” said Backus, with drunken gravity.
“What! you mean to say you’re going to cover it?”
“Cover it? Well, I reckon I am—and lay another hundred on top
of it, too.”
He reached down inside his overcoat and produced the required
sum.
“Oh, that’s your little game, is it? I see your raise, and
raise it five hundred!” said Wiley.
“Five hundred better.” said the foolish bull-driver, and
pulled out the amount and showered it on the pile. The three
conspirators hardly tried to conceal their exultation.
All diplomacy and pretense were dropped now, and the sharp
exclamations came thick and fast, and the yellow pyramid grew
higher and higher. At last ten thousand dollars lay in view.
Wiley cast a bag of coin on the table, and said with mocking
gentleness—
“Five thousand dollars better, my friend from the rural
districts—what do you say now?”
“I call you!” said Backus, heaving his golden shot-bag on the
pile. “What have you got?”
“Four kings, you d—d fool!” and Wiley threw down his cards
and surrounded the stakes with his arms.
“Four ACES, you ass!” thundered Backus, covering his man with
a cocked revolver. “I’m a professional gambler myself, and I’ve
been laying for you duffers all this voyage!”
Down went the anchor, rumbledy-dum-dum! and the long trip was
ended.
Well—well, it is a sad world. One of the three gamblers was
Backus’s “pal.” It was he that dealt the fateful hands. According
to an understanding with the two victims, he was to have given
Backus four queens, but alas, he didn’t.
A week later, I stumbled upon Backus—arrayed in the height of
fashion—in Montgomery Street. He said, cheerily, as we were
parting—
“Ah, by-the-way, you needn’t mind about those gores. I don’t
really know anything about cattle, except what I was able to pick
up in a week’s apprenticeship over in Jersey just before we
sailed. My cattle-culture and cattle-enthusiasm have served
their turn—I shan’t need them any more.”
Next day we reluctantly parted from the “Gold Dust” and her
officers, hoping to see that boat and all those officers again,
some day. A thing which the fates were to render tragically
impossible!
Chapter 37
The End of the “Gold Dust”
FOR,
three months later, August 8, while I was writing one of
these foregoing chapters, the New York papers brought this
telegram—
A TERRIBLE DISASTER.
SEVENTEEN PERSONS KILLED BY AN EXPLOSION ON THE STEAMER “GOLD
DUST.”
“NASHVILLE, Aug. 7.—A despatch from Hickman, Ky., says—
“The steamer "Gold Dust" exploded her boilers at three o’clock
to-day, just after leaving Hickman. Forty-seven persons were
scalded and seventeen are missing. The boat was landed in the
eddy just above the town, and through the exertions of the
citizens the cabin passengers, officers, and part of the crew and
deck passengers were taken ashore and removed to the hotels and
residences. Twenty-four of the injured were lying in Holcomb’s
dry-goods store at one time, where they received every attention
before being removed to more comfortable places.”
A list of the names followed, whereby it appeared that of the
seventeen dead, one was the barkeeper; and among the forty-seven
wounded, were the captain, chief mate, second mate, and second
and third clerks; also Mr. Lem S. Gray, pilot, and several
members of the crew.
In answer to a private telegram, we learned that none of these
was severely hurt, except Mr. Gray. Letters received afterward
confirmed this news, and said that Mr. Gray was improving and
would get well. Later letters spoke less hopefully of his case;
and finally came one announcing his death. A good man, a most
companionable and manly man, and worthy of a kindlier fate.
Chapter 38
The House Beautiful
WE
took passage in a Cincinnati boat for New Orleans; or on a
Cincinnati boat—either is correct; the former is the eastern
form of putting it, the latter the western.
Mr. Dickens declined to agree that the Mississippi steamboats
were “magnificent,” or that they were “floating palaces,’—terms
which had always been applied to them; terms which did not
over-express the admiration with which the people viewed
them.
Mr. Dickens’s position was unassailable, possibly; the
people’s position was certainly unassailable. If Mr. Dickens was
comparing these boats with the crown jewels; or with the Taj, or
with the Matterhorn; or with some other priceless or wonderful
thing which he had seen, they were not magnificent—he was right.
The people compared them with what they had seen; and, thus
measured, thus judged, the boats were magnificent—the term was
the correct one, it was not at all too strong. The people were as
right as was Mr. Dickens. The steamboats were finer than anything
on shore. Compared with superior dwelling-houses and first-class
hotels in the Valley, they were indubitably magnificent, they
were “palaces.” To a few people living in New Orleans and St.
Louis, they were not magnificent, perhaps; not palaces; but to
the great majority of those populations, and to the entire
populations spread over both banks between Baton Rouge and St.
Louis, they were palaces; they tallied with the citizen’s dream
of what magnificence was, and satisfied it.
Every town and village along that vast stretch of double
river-frontage had a best dwelling, finest dwelling,
mansion,—the home of its wealthiest and most conspicuous
citizen. It is easy to describe it: large grassy yard, with
paling fence painted white—in fair repair; brick walk from gate
to door; big, square, two-story “frame” house, painted white and
porticoed like a Grecian temple—with this difference, that the
imposing fluted columns and Corinthian capitals were a pathetic
sham, being made of white pine, and painted; iron knocker; brass
door knob—discolored, for lack of polishing. Within, an
uncarpeted hall, of planed boards; opening out of it, a parlor,
fifteen feet by fifteen—in some instances five or ten feet
larger; ingrain carpet; mahogany center-table; lamp on it, with
green-paper shade—standing on a gridiron, so to speak, made of
high-colored yarns, by the young ladies of the house, and called
a lamp-mat; several books, piled and disposed, with cast-iron
exactness, according to an inherited and unchangeable plan; among
them, Tupper, much penciled; also, “Friendship’s Offering,” and
“Affection’s Wreath,” with their sappy inanities illustrated in
die-away mezzotints; also, Ossian; “Alonzo and Melissa:” maybe
“Ivanhoe:” also “Album,” full of original “poetry” of the
Thou-hast-wounded-the-spirit-that-loved-thee breed; two or three
goody-goody works—’Shepherd of Salisbury Plain,” etc.; current
number of the chaste and innocuous Godey’s “Lady’s Book,” with
painted fashion-plate of wax-figure women with mouths all
alike—lips and eyelids the same size—each five-foot woman with a
two-inch wedge sticking from under her dress and letting-on to be
half of her foot. Polished air-tight stove (new and deadly
invention), with pipe passing through a board which closes up the
discarded good old fireplace. On each end of the wooden mantel,
over the fireplace, a large basket of peaches and other fruits,
natural size, all done in plaster, rudely, or in wax, and painted
to resemble the originals—which they don’t. Over middle of
mantel, engraving—Washington Crossing the Delaware; on the wall
by the door, copy of it done in thunder-and-lightning crewels by
one of the young ladies—work of art which would have made
Washington hesitate about crossing, if he could have foreseen
what advantage was going to be taken of it. Piano—kettle in
disguise—with music, bound and unbound, piled on it, and on a
stand near by: Battle of Prague; Bird Waltz; Arkansas Traveler;
Rosin the Bow; Marseilles Hymn; On a Lone Barren Isle (St.
Helena); The Last Link is Broken; She wore a Wreath of Roses the
Night when last we met; Go, forget me, Why should Sorrow o’er
that Brow a Shadow fling; Hours there were to Memory Dearer;
Long, Long Ago; Days of Absence; A Life on the Ocean Wave, a Home
on the Rolling Deep; Bird at Sea; and spread open on the rack,
where the plaintive singer has left it, Ro-holl on, silver
moo-hoon, guide the trav-el-lerr his way, etc. Tilted pensively
against the piano, a guitar—guitar capable of playing the
Spanish Fandango by itself, if you give it a start. Frantic work
of art on the wall—pious motto, done on the premises, sometimes
in colored yarns, sometimes in faded grasses: progenitor of the
“God Bless Our Home” of modern commerce. Framed in black moldings
on the wall, other works of arts, conceived and committed on the
premises, by the young ladies; being grim black-and-white
crayons; landscapes, mostly: lake, solitary sail-boat, petrified
clouds, pre-geological trees on shore, anthracite precipice; name
of criminal conspicuous in the corner. Lithograph, Napoleon
Crossing the Alps. Lithograph, The Grave at St. Helena.
Steel-plates, Trumbull’s Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Sally
from Gibraltar. Copper-plates, Moses Smiting the Rock, and
Return of the Prodigal Son. In big gilt frame, slander of the
family in oil: papa holding a book (’Constitution of the United
States’); guitar leaning against mamma, blue ribbons fluttering
from its neck; the young ladies, as children, in slippers and
scalloped pantelettes, one embracing toy horse, the other
beguiling kitten with ball of yarn, and both simpering up at
mamma, who simpers back. These persons all fresh, raw, and
red—apparently skinned. Opposite, in gilt frame, grandpa and
grandma, at thirty and twenty-two, stiff, old-fashioned,
high-collared, puff-sleeved, glaring pallidly out from a
background of solid Egyptian night. Under a glass French clock
dome, large bouquet of stiff flowers done in corpsy-white wax.
Pyramidal what-not in the corner, the shelves occupied chiefly
with bric-a-brac of the period, disposed with an eye to best
effect: shell, with the Lord’s Prayer carved on it; another
shell—of the long-oval sort, narrow, straight orifice, three
inches long, running from end to end—portrait of Washington
carved on it; not well done; the shell had Washington’s mouth,
originally—artist should have built to that. These two are
memorials of the long-ago bridal trip to New Orleans and the
French Market. Other bric-a-brac: Californian
“specimens’—quartz, with gold wart adhering; old Guinea-gold
locket, with circlet of ancestral hair in it; Indian arrow-heads,
of flint; pair of bead moccasins, from uncle who crossed the
Plains; three “alum” baskets of various colors—being
skeleton-frame of wire, clothed-on with cubes of crystallized
alum in the rock-candy style—works of art which were achieved by
the young ladies; their doubles and duplicates to be found upon
all what-nots in the land; convention of desiccated bugs and
butterflies pinned to a card; painted toy-dog, seated upon
bellows-attachment—drops its under jaw and squeaks when pressed
upon; sugar-candy rabbit—limbs and features merged together, not
strongly defined; pewter presidential-campaign medal; miniature
card-board wood-sawyer, to be attached to the stove-pipe and
operated by the heat; small Napoleon, done in wax; spread-open
daguerreotypes of dim children, parents, cousins, aunts, and
friends, in all attitudes but customary ones; no templed portico
at back, and manufactured landscape stretching away in the
distance—that came in later, with the photograph; all these
vague figures lavishly chained and ringed—metal indicated and
secured from doubt by stripes and splashes of vivid gold bronze;
all of them too much combed, too much fixed up; and all of them
uncomfortable in inflexible Sunday-clothes of a pattern which the
spectator cannot realize could ever have been in fashion; husband
and wife generally grouped together—husband sitting, wife
standing, with hand on his shoulder—and both preserving, all
these fading years, some traceable effect of the
daguerreotypist’s brisk “Now smile, if you please!” Bracketed
over what-not—place of special sacredness—an outrage in
water-color, done by the young niece that came on a visit long
ago, and died. Pity, too; for she might have repented of this in
time. Horse-hair chairs, horse-hair sofa which keeps sliding from
under you. Window shades, of oil stuff, with milk-maids and
ruined castles stenciled on them in fierce colors. Lambrequins
dependent from gaudy boxings of beaten tin, gilded. Bedrooms with
rag carpets; bedsteads of the “corded” sort, with a sag in the
middle, the cords needing tightening; snuffy feather-bed—not
aired often enough; cane-seat chairs, splint-bottomed rocker;
looking-glass on wall, school-slate size, veneered frame;
inherited bureau; wash-bowl and pitcher, possibly—but not
certainly; brass candlestick, tallow candle, snuffers. Nothing
else in the room. Not a bathroom in the house; and no visitor
likely to come along who has ever seen one.
That was the residence of the principal citizen, all the way
from the suburbs of New Orleans to the edge of St. Louis. When he
stepped aboard a big fine steamboat, he entered a new and
marvelous world: chimney-tops cut to counterfeit a spraying crown
of plumes—and maybe painted red; pilot-house, hurricane deck,
boiler-deck guards, all garnished with white wooden filigree work
of fanciful patterns; gilt acorns topping the derricks; gilt
deer-horns over the big bell; gaudy symbolical picture on the
paddle-box, possibly; big roomy boiler-deck, painted blue, and
furnished with Windsor armchairs; inside, a far-receding
snow-white “cabin;” porcelain knob and oil-picture on every
stateroom door; curving patterns of filigree-work touched up with
gilding, stretching overhead all down the converging vista; big
chandeliers every little way, each an April shower of glittering
glass-drops; lovely rainbow-light falling everywhere from the
colored glazing of the skylights; the whole a long-drawn,
resplendent tunnel, a bewildering and soul-satisfying spectacle!
In the ladies” cabin a pink and white Wilton carpet, as soft as
mush, and glorified with a ravishing pattern of gigantic flowers.
Then the Bridal Chamber—the animal that invented that idea was
still alive and unhanged, at that day—Bridal Chamber whose
pretentious flummery was necessarily overawing to the now
tottering intellect of that hosannahing citizen. Every state-room
had its couple of cozy clean bunks, and perhaps a looking-glass
and a snug closet; and sometimes there was even a washbowl and
pitcher, and part of a towel which could be told from mosquito
netting by an expert—though generally these things were absent,
and the shirt-sleeved passengers cleansed themselves at a long
row of stationary bowls in the barber shop, where were also
public towels, public combs, and public soap.
Take the steamboat which I have just described, and you have
her in her highest and finest, and most pleasing, and
comfortable, and satisfactory estate. Now cake her over with a
layer of ancient and obdurate dirt, and you have the Cincinnati
steamer awhile ago referred to. Not all over—only inside; for
she was ably officered in all departments except the
steward’s.
But wash that boat and repaint her, and she would be about the
counterpart of the most complimented boat of the old flush times:
for the steamboat architecture of the West has undergone no
change; neither has steamboat furniture and ornamentation
undergone any.
Chapter 39
Manufactures and Miscreants
WHERE
the river, in the Vicksburg region, used to be
corkscrewed, it is now comparatively straight—made so by
cut-off; a former distance of seventy miles is reduced to
thirty-five. It is a change which threw Vicksburg’s neighbor,
Delta, Louisiana, out into the country and ended its career as a
river town. Its whole river-frontage is now occupied by a vast
sand-bar, thickly covered with young trees—a growth which will
magnify itself into a dense forest by-and-bye, and completely
hide the exiled town.
In due time we passed Grand Gulf and Rodney, of war fame, and
reached Natchez, the last of the beautiful hill-cities—for Baton
Rouge, yet to come, is not on a hill, but only on high ground.
Famous Natchez-under-the-hill has not changed notably in twenty
years; in outward aspect—judging by the descriptions of the
ancient procession of foreign tourists—it has not changed in
sixty; for it is still small, straggling, and shabby. It had a
desperate reputation, morally, in the old keel-boating and early
steamboating times—plenty of drinking, carousing, fisticuffing,
and killing there, among the riff-raff of the river, in those
days. But Natchez-on-top-of-the-hill is attractive; has always
been attractive. Even Mrs. Trollope (1827) had to confess its
charms:
“At one or two points the wearisome level line is relieved by
bluffs, as they call the short intervals of high ground. The town
of Natchez is beautifully situated on one of those high spots.
The contrast that its bright green hill forms with the dismal
line of black forest that stretches on every side, the abundant
growth of the pawpaw, palmetto and orange, the copious variety of
sweet-scented flowers that flourish there, all make it appear
like an oasis in the desert. Natchez is the furthest point to the
north at which oranges ripen in the open air, or endure the
winter without shelter. With the exception of this sweet spot, I
thought all the little towns and villages we passed
wretched-looking in the extreme.”
Natchez, like her near and far river neighbors, has railways
now, and is adding to them—pushing them hither and thither into
all rich outlying regions that are naturally tributary to her.
And like Vicksburg and New Orleans, she has her ice-factory: she
makes thirty tons of ice a day. In Vicksburg and Natchez, in my
time, ice was jewelry; none but the rich could wear it. But
anybody and everybody can have it now. I visited one of the
ice-factories in New Orleans, to see what the polar regions might
look like when lugged into the edge of the tropics. But there was
nothing striking in the aspect of the place. It was merely a
spacious house, with some innocent steam machinery in one end of
it and some big porcelain pipes running here and there. No, not
porcelain—they merely seemed to be; they were iron, but the
ammonia which was being breathed through them had coated them to
the thickness of your hand with solid milk-white ice. It ought to
have melted; for one did not require winter clothing in that
atmosphere: but it did not melt; the inside of the pipe was too
cold.
Sunk into the floor were numberless tin boxes, a foot square
and two feet long, and open at the top end. These were full of
clear water; and around each box, salt and other proper stuff was
packed; also, the ammonia gases were applied to the water in some
way which will always remain a secret to me, because I was not
able to understand the process. While the water in the boxes
gradually froze, men gave it a stir or two with a stick
occasionally—to liberate the air-bubbles, I think. Other men
were continually lifting out boxes whose contents had become hard
frozen. They gave the box a single dip into a vat of boiling
water, to melt the block of ice free from its tin coffin, then
they shot the block out upon a platform car, and it was ready for
market. These big blocks were hard, solid, and crystal-clear. In
certain of them, big bouquets of fresh and brilliant tropical
flowers had been frozen-in; in others, beautiful silken-clad
French dolls, and other pretty objects. These blocks were to be
set on end in a platter, in the center of dinner-tables, to cool
the tropical air; and also to be ornamental, for the flowers and
things imprisoned in them could be seen as through plate glass. I
was told that this factory could retail its ice, by wagon,
throughout New Orleans, in the humblest dwelling-house
quantities, at six or seven dollars a ton, and make a sufficient
profit. This being the case, there is business for ice-factories
in the North; for we get ice on no such terms there, if one take
less than three hundred and fifty pounds at a delivery.
The Rosalie Yarn Mill, of Natchez, has a capacity of 6,000
spindles and 160 looms, and employs 100 hands. The Natchez Cotton
Mills Company began operations four years ago in a tw o-story
building of 50 x 190 feet, with 4,000 spindles and 128 looms;
capital $105,000, all subscribed in the town. Two years later,
the same stockholders increased their capital to $225,000; added
a third story to the mill, increased its length to 317 feet;
added machinery to increase the capacity to 10,300 spindles and
304 looms. The company now employ 250 operatives, many of whom
are citizens of Natchez. “The mill works 5,000 bales of cotton
annually and manufactures the best standard quality of brown
shirtings and sheetings and drills, turning out 5,000,000 yards
of these goods
per year.”
A close corporation—stock held at $5,000 per
share, but none in the market.
The changes in the Mississippi River are great and strange,
yet were to be expected; but I was not expecting to live to see
Natchez and these other river towns become manufacturing
strongholds and railway centers.
Speaking of manufactures reminds me of a talk upon that topic
which I heard—which I overheard—on board the Cincinnati boat. I
awoke out of a fretted sleep, with a dull confusion of voices in
my ears. I listened—two men were talking; subject, apparently,
the great inundation. I looked out through the open transom. The
two men were eating a late breakfast; sitting opposite each
other; nobody else around. They closed up the inundation with a
few words—having used it, evidently, as a mere ice-breaker and
acquaintanceship-breeder—then they dropped into business. It
soon transpired that they were drummers—one belonging in
Cincinnati, the other in New Orleans. Brisk men, energetic of
movement and speech; the dollar their god, how to get it their
religion.
“Now as to this article,” said Cincinnati, slashing into the
ostensible butter and holding forward a slab of it on his
knife-blade, “it’s from our house; look at it—smell of it—taste
it. Put any test on it you want to. Take your own time—no
hurry—make it thorough. There now—what do you say? butter,
ain’t it. Not by a thundering sight—it’s oleomargarine! Yes,
sir, that’s what it is—oleomargarine. You can’t tell it from
butter; by George, an expert can’t. It’s from our house. We
supply most of the boats in the West; there’s hardly a pound of
butter on one of them. We are crawling right along—jumping right
along is the word. We are going to have that entire trade. Yes,
and the hotel trade, too. You are going to see the day, pretty
soon, when you can’t find an ounce of butter to bless yourself
with, in any hotel in the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys, outside
of the biggest cities. Why, we are turning out oleomargarine now
by the thousands of tons. And we can sell it so dirt-cheap that
the whole country has got to take it—can’t get around it you
see. Butter don’t stand any show—there ain’t any chance for
competition. Butter’s had its day—and from this out, butter goes
to the wall. There’s more money in oleomargarine than—why, you
can’t imagine the business we do. I’ve stopped in every town from
Cincinnati to Natchez; and I’ve sent home big orders from every
one of them.”
And so-forth and so-on, for ten minutes longer, in the same
fervid strain. Then New Orleans piped up and said—
Yes, it’s a first-rate imitation, that’s a certainty; but it
ain’t the only one around that’s first-rate. For instance, they
make olive-oil out of cotton-seed oil, nowadays, so that you
can’t tell them apart.”
“Yes, that’s so,” responded Cincinnati, “and it was a tip-top
business for a while. They sent it over and brought it back from
France and Italy, with the United States custom-house mark on it
to indorse it for genuine, and there was no end of cash in it;
but France and Italy broke up the game—of course they naturally
would. Cracked on such a rattling impost that cotton-seed
olive-oil couldn’t stand the raise; had to hang up and quit.”
“Oh, it did, did it? You wait here a minute.”
Goes to his state-room, brings back a couple of long bottles,
and takes out the corks—says:
“There now, smell them, taste them, examine the bottles,
inspect the labels. One of “m’s from Europe, the other’s never
been out of this country. One’s European olive-oil, the other’s
American cotton-seed olive-oil. Tell “m apart? “Course you can’t.
Nobody can. People that want to, can go to the expense and
trouble of shipping their oils to Europe and back—it’s their
privilege; but our firm knows a trick worth six of that. We turn
out the whole thing—clean from the word go—in our factory in
New Orleans: labels, bottles, oil, everything. Well, no, not
labels: been buying them abroad—get them dirt-cheap there. You
see, there’s just one little wee speck, essence, or whatever it
is, in a gallon of cotton-seed oil, that give it a smell, or a
flavor, or something—get that out, and you’re all
right—perfectly easy then to turn the oil into any kind of oil
you want to, and there ain’t anybody that can detect the true
from the false. Well, we know how to get that one little particle
out—and we’re the only firm that does. And we turn out an
olive-oil that is just simply perfect—undetectable! We are doing
a ripping trade, too—as I could easily show you by my order-book
for this trip. Maybe you’ll butter everybody’s bread pretty soon,
but we’ll cotton-seed his salad for him from the Gulf to Canada,
and that’s a dead-certain thing.”
Cincinnati glowed and flashed with admiration. The two
scoundrels exchanged business-cards, and rose. As they left the
table, Cincinnati said—
“But you have to have custom-house marks, don’t you? How do
you manage that?”
I did not catch the answer.
We passed Port Hudson, scene of two of the most terrific
episodes of the war—the night-battle there between Farragut’s
fleet and the Confederate land batteries, April 14th, 1863; and
the memorable land battle, two months later, which lasted eight
hours—eight hours of exceptionally fierce and stubborn
fighting—and ended, finally, in the repulse of the Union forces
with great slaughter.
Chapter 40
Castles and Culture
BATON ROUGE
was clothed in flowers, like a bride—no, much
more so; like a greenhouse. For we were in the absolute South
now—no modifications, no compromises, no half-way measures. The
magnolia-trees in the Capitol grounds were lovely and fragrant,
with their dense rich foliage and huge snow-ball blossoms. The
scent of the flower is very sweet, but you want distance on it,
because it is so powerful. They are not good bedroom
blossoms—they might suffocate one in his sleep. We were
certainly in the South at last; for here the sugar region begins,
and the plantations—vast green levels, with sugar-mill and negro
quarters clustered together in the middle distance—were in view.
And there was a tropical sun overhead and a tropical swelter in
the air.
And at this point, also, begins the pilot’s paradise: a wide
river hence to New Orleans, abundance of water from shore to
shore, and no bars, snags, sawyers, or wrecks in his road.
Sir Walter Scott is probably responsible for the Capitol
building; for it is not conceivable that this little sham castle
would ever have been built if he had not run the people mad, a
couple of generations ago, with his medieval romances. The South
has not yet recovered from the debilitating influence of his
books. Admiration of his fantastic heroes and their grotesque
“chivalry” doings and romantic juvenilities still survives here,
in an atmosphere in which is already perceptible the wholesome
and practical nineteenth-century smell of cotton-factories and
locomotives; and traces of its inflated language and other windy
humbuggeries survive along with it. It is pathetic enough, that a
whitewashed castle, with turrets and things—materials all
ungenuine within and without, pretending to be what they are
not—should ever have been built in this otherwise honorable
place; but it is much more pathetic to see this architectural
falsehood undergoing restoration and perpetuation in our day,
when it would have been so easy to let dynamite finish what a
charitable fire began, and then devote this restoration-money to
the building of something genuine.
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Old Capitol Building, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
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Old Capitol Staircase.
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Old Capitol Dome.
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Old Capitol Dome.
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Old Capitol Dome.
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Baton Rouge has no patent on imitation castles, however, and
no monopoly of them. Here is a picture from the advertisement of
the “Female Institute” of Columbia; Tennessee. The following
remark is from the same advertisement—
“The Institute building has long been famed as a model of
striking and beautiful architecture. Visitors are charmed with
its resemblance to the old castles of song and story, with its
towers, turreted walls, and ivy-mantled porches.”
Keeping school in a castle is a romantic thing; as romantic as
keeping hotel in a castle.
By itself the imitation castle is doubtless harmless, and well
enough; but as a symbol and breeder and sustainer of maudlin
Middle-Age romanticism here in the midst of the plainest and
sturdiest and infinitely greatest and worthiest of all the
centuries the world has seen, it is necessarily a hurtful thing
and a mistake.
Here is an extract from the prospectus of a Kentucky “Female
College.” Female college sounds well enough; but since the
phrasing it in that unjustifiable way was done purely in the
interest of brevity, it seems to me that she-college would have
been still better—because shorter, and means the same thing:
that is, if either phrase means anything at all—
“The president is southern by birth, by rearing, by education,
and by sentiment; the teachers are all southern in sentiment, and
with the exception of those born in Europe were born and raised
in the south. Believing the southern to be the
highest type of
civilization this continent has seen,
the young ladies are
trained according to the southern ideas of delicacy, refinement,
womanhood, religion, and propriety; hence we offer a first-class
female college for the south and solicit southern patronage.”
What, warder, ho! the man that can blow so complacent a blast
as that, probably blows it from a castle.
From Baton Rouge to New Orleans, the great sugar plantations
border both sides of the river all the way, and stretch their
league-wide levels back to the dim forest-walls of bearded
cypress in the rear. Shores lonely no longer. Plenty of dwellings
all the way, on both banks—standing so close together, for long
distances, that the broad river lying between the two rows,
becomes a sort of spacious street. A most home-like and
happy-looking region. And now and then you see a pillared and
porticoed great manor-house, embowered in trees. Here is
testimony of one or two of the procession of foreign tourists
that filed along here half a century ago. Mrs. Trollope
says—
“The unbroken flatness of the banks of the Mississippi
continued unvaried for many miles above New Orleans; but the
graceful and luxuriant palmetto, the dark and noble ilex, and the
bright orange, were everywhere to be seen, and it was many days
before we were weary of looking at them.”
Captain Basil Hall—
“The district of country which lies adjacent to the
Mississippi, in the lower parts of Louisiana, is everywhere
thickly peopled by sugar planters, whose showy houses, gay
piazzas, trig gardens, and numerous slave-villages, all clean and
neat, gave an exceedingly thriving air to the river scenery.
All the procession paint the attractive picture in the same
way. The descriptions of fifty years ago do not need to have a
word changed in order to exactly describe the same region as it
appears to-day—except as to the “trigness” of the houses. The
whitewash is gone from the negro cabins now; and many, possibly
most, of the big mansions, once so shining white, have worn out
their paint and have a decayed, neglected look. It is the blight
of the war. Twenty-one years ago everything was trim and trig and
bright along the “coast,” just as it had been in 1827, as
described by those tourists.
Unfortunate tourists! People humbugged them with stupid and
silly lies, and then laughed at them for believing and printing
the same. They told Mrs. Trollope that the alligators—or
crocodiles, as she calls them—were terrible creatures; and
backed up the statement with a blood-curdling account of how one
of these slandered reptiles crept into a squatter cabin one
night, and ate up a woman and five children. The woman, by
herself, would have satisfied any ordinarily-impossible
alligator; but no, these liars must make him gorge the five
children besides. One would not imagine that jokers of this
robust breed would be sensitive—but they were. It is difficult,
at this day, to understand, and impossible to justify, the
reception which the book of the grave, honest, intelligent,
gentle, manly, charitable, well-meaning Capt. Basil Hall got.
Chapter 41
The Metropolis of the South
THE
approaches to New Orleans were familiar; general aspects
were unchanged. When one goes flying through London along a
railway propped in the air on tall arches, he may inspect miles
of upper bedrooms through the open windows, but the lower half of
the houses is under his level and out of sight. Similarly, in
high-river stage, in the New Orleans region, the water is up to
the top of the enclosing levee-rim, the flat country behind it
lies low—representing the bottom of a dish—and as the boat
swims along, high on the flood, one looks down upon the houses
and into the upper windows. There is nothing but that frail
breastwork of earth between the people and destruction.
The old brick salt-warehouses clustered at the upper end of
the city looked as they had always looked; warehouses which had
had a kind of Aladdin’s lamp experience, however, since I had
seen them; for when the war broke out the proprietor went to bed
one night leaving them packed with thousands of sacks of vulgar
salt, worth a couple of dollars a sack, and got up in the morning
and found his mountain of salt turned into a mountain of gold, so
to speak, so suddenly and to so dizzy a height had the war news
sent up the price of the article.
The vast reach of plank wharves remained unchanged, and there
were as many ships as ever: but the long array of steamboats had
vanished; not altogether, of course, but not much of it was
left.
The city itself had not changed—to the eye. It had greatly
increased in spread and population, but the look of the town was
not altered. The dust, waste-paper-littered, was still deep in
the streets; the deep, trough-like gutters alongside the
curbstones were still half full of reposeful water with a dusty
surface; the sidewalks were still—in the sugar and bacon
region—encumbered by casks and barrels and hogsheads; the great
blocks of austerely plain commercial houses were as
dusty-looking as ever.
Canal Street was finer, and more attractive and stirring than
formerly, with its drifting crowds of people, its several
processions of hurrying street-cars, and—toward evening—its
broad second-story verandas crowded with gentlemen and ladies
clothed according to the latest mode.
Not that there is any “architecture” in Canal Street: to speak
in broad, general terms, there is no architecture in New Orleans,
except in the cemeteries. It seems a strange thing to say of a
wealthy, far-seeing, and energetic city of a quarter of a
million inhabitants, but it is true. There is a huge granite U.S.
Custom-house—costly enough, genuine enough, but as a decoration
it is inferior to a gasometer. It looks like a state prison. But
it was built before the war. Architecture in America may be said
to have been born since the war. New Orleans, I believe, has had
the good luck—and in a sense the bad luck—to have had no great
fire in late years. It must be so. If the opposite had been the
case, I think one would be able to tell the “burnt district” by
the radical improvement in its architecture over the old forms.
One can do this in Boston and Chicago. The “burnt district” of
Boston was commonplace before the fire; but now there is no
commercial district in any city in the world that can surpass
it—or perhaps even rival it—in beauty, elegance, and
tastefulness.
However, New Orleans has begun—just this moment, as one may
say. When completed, the new Cotton Exchange will be a stately
and beautiful building; massive, substantial, full of
architectural graces; no shams or false pretenses or uglinesses
about it anywhere. To the city, it will be worth many times its
cost, for it will breed its species. What has been lacking
hitherto, was a model to build toward; something to educate eye
and taste; a suggester, so to speak.
The city is well outfitted with progressive men—thinking,
sagacious, long-headed men. The contrast between the spirit of
the city and the city’s architecture is like the contrast between
waking and sleep. Apparently there is a “boom” in everything but
that one dead feature. The water in the gutters used to be
stagnant and slimy, and a potent disease-breeder; but the gutters
are flushed now, two or three times a day, by powerful machinery;
in many of the gutters the water never stands still, but has a
steady current. Other sanitary improvements have been made; and
with such effect that New Orleans claims to be (during the long
intervals between the occasional yellow-fever assaults) one of
the healthiest cities in the Union. There’s plenty of ice now for
everybody, manufactured in the town. It is a driving place
commercially, and has a great river, ocean, and railway business.
At the date of our visit, it was the best lighted city in the
Union, electrically speaking. The New Orleans electric lights
were more numerous than those of New York, and very much better.
One had this modified noonday not only in Canal and some
neighboring chief streets, but all along a stretch of five miles
of river frontage. There are good clubs in the city now—several
of them but recently organized—and inviting modern-style
pleasure resorts at West End and Spanish Fort. The telephone is
everywhere. One of the most notable advances is in journalism.
The newspapers, as I remember them, were not a striking feature.
Now they are. Money is spent upon them with a free hand. They get
the news, let it cost what it may. The editorial work is not
hack-grinding, but literature. As an example of New Orleans
journalistic achievement, it may be mentioned that the
“Times-Democrat” of August 26, 1882, contained a report of the
year’s business of the towns of the Mississippi Valley, from New
Orleans all the way to St. Paul—two thousand miles. That issue
of the paper consisted of forty pages; seven columns to the page;
two hundred and eighty columns in all; fifteen hundred words to
the column; an aggregate of four hundred and twenty thousand
words. That is to say, not much short of three times as many
words as there are in this book. One may with sorrow contrast
this with the architecture of New Orleans.
I have been speaking of public architecture only. The domestic
article in New Orleans is reproachless, notwithstanding it
remains as it always was. All the dwellings are of wood—in the
American part of the town, I mean—and all have a comfortable
look. Those in the wealthy quarter are spacious; painted
snow-white usually, and generally have wide verandas, or
double-verandas, supported by ornamental columns. These mansions
stand in the center of large grounds, and rise, garlanded with
roses, out of the midst of swelling masses of shining green
foliage and many-colored blossoms. No houses could well be in
better harmony with their surroundings, or more pleasing to the
eye, or more home-like and comfortable-looking.
One even becomes reconciled to the cistern presently; this is
a mighty cask, painted green, and sometimes a couple of stories
high, which is propped against the house-corner on stilts. There
is a mansion-and-brewery suggestion about the combination which
seems very incongruous at first. But the people cannot have
wells, and so they take rain-water. Neither can they conveniently
have cellars, or
graves,
the town being built
upon “made” ground; so they do without both, and few of the
living complain, and none of the others.
Chapter 42
Hygiene and Sentiment
THEY
bury their dead in vaults, above the ground. These vaults
have a resemblance to houses—sometimes to temples; are built of
marble, generally; are architecturally graceful and shapely; they
face the walks and driveways of the cemetery; and when one moves
through the midst of a thousand or so of them and sees their
white roofs and gables stretching into the distance on every
hand, the phrase “city of the dead” has all at once a meaning to
him. Many of the cemeteries are beautiful, and are kept in
perfect order. When one goes from the levee or the business
streets near it, to a cemetery, he observes to himself that if
those people down there would live as neatly while they are alive
as they do after they are dead, they would find many advantages
in it; and besides, their quarter would be the wonder and
admiration of the business world. Fresh flowers, in vases of
water, are to be seen at the portals of many of the vaults:
placed there by the pious hands of bereaved parents and children,
husbands and wives, and renewed daily. A milder form of sorrow
finds its inexpensive and lasting remembrancer in the coarse and
ugly but indestructible “immortelle’—which is a wreath or cross
or some such emblem, made of rosettes of black linen, with
sometimes a yellow rosette at the conjunction of the cross’s
bars—kind of sorrowful breast-pin, so to say. The immortelle
requires no attention: you just hang it up, and there you are;
just leave it alone, it will take care of your grief for you, and
keep it in mind better than you can; stands weather first-rate,
and lasts like boiler-iron.
On sunny days, pretty little chameleons—gracefullest of
legged reptiles—creep along the marble fronts of the vaults, and
catch flies. Their changes of color—as to variety—are not up to
the creature’s reputation. They change color when a person comes
along and hangs up an immortelle; but that is nothing: any
right-feeling reptile would do that.
I will gradually drop this subject of graveyards. I have been
trying all I could to get down to the sentimental part of it, but
I cannot accomplish it. I think there is no genuinely sentimental
part to it. It is all grotesque, ghastly, horrible. Graveyards
may have been justifiable in the bygone ages, when nobody knew
that for every dead body put into the ground, to glut the earth
and the plant-roots, and the air with disease-germs, five or
fifty, or maybe a hundred persons must die before their proper
time; but they are hardly justifiable now, when even the children
know that a dead saint enters upon a century-long career of
assassination the moment the earth closes over his corpse. It is
a grim sort of a thought. The relics of St. Anne, up in Canada,
have now, after nineteen hundred years, gone to curing the sick
by the dozen. But it is merest matter-of-course that these same
relics, within a generation after St. Anne’s death and burial,
made several thousand people sick. Therefore these
miracle-performances are simply compensation, nothing more. St.
Anne is somewhat slow pay, for a Saint, it is true; but better a
debt paid after nineteen hundred years, and outlawed by the
statute of limitations, than not paid at all; and most of the
knights of the halo do not pay at all. Where you find one that
pays—like St. Anne—you find a hundred and fifty that take the
benefit of the statute. And none of them pay any more than the
principal of what they owe—they pay none of the interest either
simple or compound. A Saint can never quite return the principal,
however; for his dead body kills people, whereas his relics heal
only—they never restore the dead to life. That part of the
account is always left unsettled.
“Dr. F. Julius Le Moyne, after fifty years of medical
practice, wrote: "The inhumation of human bodies, dead from
infectious diseases, results in constantly loading the
atmosphere, and polluting the waters, with not only the germs
that rise from simply putrefaction, but also with the specific
germs of the diseases from which death resulted."
“The gases (from buried corpses) will rise to the surface
through eight or ten feet of gravel, just as coal-gas will do,
and there is practically no limit to their power of escape.
“During the epidemic in New Orleans in 1853, Dr. E. H. Barton
reported that in the Fourth District the mortality was four
hundred and fifty-two per thousand—more than double that of any
other. In this district were three large cemeteries, in which
during the previous year more than three thousand bodies had been
buried. In other districts the proximity of cemeteries seemed to
aggravate the disease.
“In 1828 Professor Bianchi demonstrated how the fearful
reappearance of the plague at Modena was caused by excavations in
ground where, three hundred years previously, the victims of the
pestilence had been buried. Mr. Cooper, in explaining the causes
of some epidemics, remarks that the opening of the plague
burial-grounds at Eyam resulted in an immediate outbreak of
disease.’—North American Review, NO. 3, VOL. 135.
In an address before the Chicago Medical Society, in advocacy
of cremation, Dr. Charles W. Purdy made some striking comparisons
to show what a burden is laid upon society by the burial of the
dead:—
“One and one-fourth times more money is expended annually in
funerals in the United States than the Government expends for
public-school purposes. Funerals cost this country in 1880 enough
money to pay the liabilities of all the commercial failures in
the United States during the same year, and give each bankrupt a
capital of $8,630 with which to resume business. Funerals cost
annually more money than the value of the combined gold and
silver yield of the United States in the year 1880! These figures
do not include the sums invested in burial-grounds and expended
in tombs and monuments, nor the loss from depreciation of
property in the vicinity of cemeteries.”
For the rich, cremation would answer as well as burial; for
the ceremonies connected with it could be made as costly and
ostentatious as a Hindu suttee; while for the poor, cremation
would be better than burial, because so
cheap
— so cheap until the poor got
to imitating the rich, which they would do by-and-bye. The
adoption of cremation would relieve us of a muck of threadbare
burial-witticisms; but, on the other hand, it would resurrect a
lot of mildewed old cremation-jokes that have had a rest for two
thousand years.
I have a colored acquaintance who earns his living by odd jobs
and heavy manual labor. He never earns above four hundred dollars
in a year, and as he has a wife and several young children, the
closest scrimping is necessary to get him through to the end of
the twelve months debtless. To such a man a funeral is a colossal
financial disaster. While I was writing one of the preceding
chapters, this man lost a little child. He walked the town over
with a friend, trying to find a coffin that was within his means.
He bought the very cheapest one he could find, plain wood,
stained. It cost him twenty-six dollars. It would have cost less
than four, probably, if it had been built to put something useful
into. He and his family will feel that outlay a good many
months.
Chapter 43
The Art of Inhumation
ABOUT
the same time, I encountered a man in the street, whom I
had not seen for six or seven years; and something like this talk
followed. I said—
“But you used to look sad and oldish; you don’t now. Where did
you get all this youth and bubbling cheerfulness? Give me the
address.”
He chuckled blithely, took off his shining tile, pointed to a
notched pink circlet of paper pasted into its crown, with
something lettered on it, and went on chuckling while I read, “J.
B——, undertaker.” Then he clapped his hat on, gave it an
irreverent tilt to leeward, and cried out—
“That’s what’s the matter! It used to be rough times with me
when you knew me—insurance-agency business, you know; mighty
irregular. Big fire, all right—brisk trade for ten days while
people scared; after that, dull policy-business till next fire.
Town like this don’t have fires often enough—a fellow strikes so
many dull weeks in a row that he gets discouraged. But you bet
you, this is the business! People don’t wait for examples to die.
No, sir, they drop off right along—there ain’t any dull spots in
the undertaker line. I just started in with two or three little
old coffins and a hired hearse, and now look at the thing! I’ve
worked up a business here that would satisfy any man, don’t care
who he is. Five years ago, lodged in an attic; live in a swell
house now, with a mansard roof, and all the modern
inconveniences.”
“Does a coffin pay so well. Is there much profit on a
coffin?”
“Go-way! How you talk!” Then, with a confidential wink, a
dropping of the voice, and an impressive laying of his hand on my
arm; “Look here; there’s one thing in this world which isn’t ever
cheap. That’s a coffin. There’s one thing in this world which a
person don’t ever try to jew you down on. That’s a coffin.
There’s one thing in this world which a person don’t say—“I’ll
look around a little, and if I find I can’t do better I’ll come
back and take it." That’s a coffin. There’s one thing in this
world which a person won’t take in pine if he can go walnut; and
won’t take in walnut if he can go mahogany; and won’t take in
mahogany if he can go an iron casket with silver door-plate and
bronze handles. That’s a coffin. And there’s one thing in this
world which you don’t have to worry around after a person to get
him to pay for. And that’s a coffin. Undertaking?—why it’s the
dead-surest business in Christendom, and the nobbiest.
“Why, just look at it. A rich man won’t have anything but your
very best; and you can just pile it on, too—pile it on and sock
it to him—he won’t ever holler. And you take in a poor man, and
if you work him right he’ll bust himself on a single lay-out. Or
especially a woman. F’r instance: Mrs. O’Flaherty comes
in—widow—wiping her eyes and kind of moaning. Unhandkerchiefs
one eye, bats it around tearfully over the stock; says—
“And fhat might ye ask for that wan?"
“Thirty-nine dollars, madam," says I.
“It “s a foine big price, sure, but Pat shall be buried like
a gintleman, as he was, if I have to work me fingers off for it.
I’ll have that wan, sor."
“Yes, madam," says I, "and it is a very good one, too; not
costly, to be sure, but in this life we must cut our garment to
our clothes, as the saying is." And as she starts out, I heave
in, kind of casually, "This one with the white satin lining is a
beauty, but I am afraid—well, sixty-five dollars is a
rather—rather—but no matter, I felt obliged to say to Mrs.
O’Shaughnessy—“
“D’ye mane to soy that Bridget O’Shaughnessy bought the mate
to that joo-ul box to ship that dhrunken divil to Purgatory
in?"
“Yes, madam."
“Then Pat shall go to heaven in the twin to it, if it takes
the last rap the O’Flaherties can raise; and moind you, stick on
some extras, too, and I’ll give ye another dollar."
“And as I lay-in with the livery stables, of course I don’t
forget to mention that Mrs. O’Shaughnessy hired fifty-four
dollars” worth of hacks and flung as much style into Dennis’s
funeral as if he had been a duke or an assassin. And of course
she sails in and goes the O’Shaughnessy about four hacks and an
omnibus better. That used to be, but that’s all played now; that
is, in this particular town. The Irish got to piling up hacks so,
on their funerals, that a funeral left them ragged and hungry for
two years afterward; so the priest pitched in and broke it all
up. He don’t allow them to have but two hacks now, and sometimes
only one.”
“Well,” said I, “if you are so light-hearted and jolly in
ordinary times, what must you be in an epidemic?”
He shook his head.
“No, you’re off, there. We don’t like to see an epidemic. An
epidemic don’t pay. Well, of course I don’t mean that, exactly;
but it don’t pay in proportion to the regular thing. Don’t it
occur to you, why?”
No.
“Think.”
“I can’t imagine. What is it?”
“It’s just two things.”
“Well, what are they?”
“One’s Embamming.”
“And what’s the other?”
“Ice.”
“How is that?”
“Well, in ordinary times, a person dies, and we lay him up in
ice; one day two days, maybe three, to wait for friends to come.
Takes a lot of it—melts fast. We charge jewelry rates for that
ice, and war-prices for attendance. Well, don’t you know, when
there’s an epidemic, they rush “em to the cemetery the minute the
breath’s out. No market for ice in an epidemic. Same with
Embamming. You take a family that’s able to embam, and you’ve got
a soft thing. You can mention sixteen different ways to do
it—though there ain’t only one or two ways, when you come down
to the bottom facts of it—and they’ll take the highest-priced
way, every time. It’s human nature—human nature in grief. It
don’t reason, you see. Time being, it don’t care a dam. All it
wants is physical immortality for deceased, and they’re willing
to pay for it. All you’ve got to do is to just be ca’m and stack
it up—they’ll stand the racket. Why, man, you can take a defunct
that you couldn’t give away; and get your embamming traps around
you and go to work; and in a couple of hours he is worth a cool
six hundred—that’s what he’s worth. There ain’t anything equal
to it but trading rats for di’monds in time of famine. Well,
don’t you see, when there’s an epidemic, people don’t wait to
embam. No, indeed they don’t; and it hurts the business like
hell-th, as we say—hurts it like hell-th, health, see?—Our
little joke in the trade. Well, I must be going. Give me a call
whenever you need any—I mean, when you’re going by,
sometime.”
In his joyful high spirits, he did the exaggerating himself,
if any has been done. I have not enlarged on him.
With the above brief references to inhumation, let us leave
the subject. As for me, I hope to be cremated. I made that remark
to my pastor once, who said, with what he seemed to think was an
impressive manner—
“I wouldn’t worry about that, if I had your chances.” Much he
knew about it—the family all so opposed to it.
Chapter 44
City Sights
THE
old French part of New Orleans—anciently the Spanish
part—bears no resemblance to the American end of the city: the
American end which lies beyond the intervening brick
business-center. The houses are massed in blocks; are austerely
plain and dignified; uniform of pattern, with here and there a
departure from it with pleasant effect; all are plastered on the
outside, and nearly all have long, iron-railed verandas running
along the several stories. Their chief beauty is the deep, warm,
varicolored stain with which time and the weather have enriched
the plaster. It harmonizes with all the surroundings, and has as
natural a look of belonging there as has the flush upon sunset
clouds. This charming decoration cannot be successfully imitated;
neither is it to be found elsewhere in America.
The iron railings are a specialty, also. The pattern is often
exceedingly light and dainty, and airy and graceful—with a large
cipher or monogram in the center, a delicate cobweb of baffling,
intricate forms, wrought in steel. The ancient railings are
hand-made, and are now comparatively rare and proportionately
valuable. They are become bric-a-brac.
The party had the privilege of idling through this ancient
quarter of New Orleans with the South’s finest literary genius,
the author of “the Grandissimes.” In him the South has found a
masterly delineator of its interior life and its history. In
truth, I find by experience, that the untrained eye and vacant
mind can inspect it, and learn of it, and judge of it, more
clearly and profitably in his books than by personal contact with
it.
With Mr. Cable along to see for you, and describe and explain
and illuminate, a jog through that old quarter is a vivid
pleasure. And you have a vivid sense as of unseen or dimly seen
things—vivid, and yet fitful and darkling; you glimpse salient
features, but lose the fine shades or catch them imperfectly
through the vision of the imagination: a case, as it were, of
ignorant near-sighted stranger traversing the rim of wide vague
horizons of Alps with an inspired and enlightened long-sighted
native.
We visited the old St. Louis Hotel, now occupied by municipal
offices. There is nothing strikingly remarkable about it; but one
can say of it as of the Academy of Music in New York, that if a
broom or a shovel has ever been used in it there is no
circumstantial evidence to back up the fact. It is curious that
cabbages and hay and things do not grow in the Academy of Music;
but no doubt it is on account of the interruption of the light by
the benches, and the impossibility of hoeing the crop except in
the aisles. The fact that the ushers grow their
buttonhole-bouquets on the premises shows what might be done if
they had the
right kind of an agricultural head to the establishment.
We visited also the venerable Cathedral, and the pretty square
in front of it; the one dim with religious light, the other
brilliant with the worldly sort, and lovely with orange-trees and
blossomy shrubs; then we drove in the hot sun through the
wilderness of houses and out on to the wide dead level beyond,
where the villas are, and the water wheels to drain the town, and
the commons populous with cows and children; passing by an old
cemetery where we were told lie the ashes of an early pirate; but
we took him on trust, and did not visit him. He was a pirate with
a tremendous and sanguinary history; and as long as he preserved
unspotted, in retirement, the dignity of his name and the
grandeur of his ancient calling, homage and reverence were his
from high and low; but when at last he descended into politics
and became a paltry alderman, the public “shook” him, and turned
aside and wept. When he died, they set up a monument over him;
and little by little he has come into respect again; but it is
respect for the pirate, not the alderman. To-day the loyal and
generous remember only what he was, and charitably forget what he
became.
Thence, we drove a few miles across a swamp, along a raised
shell road, with a canal on one hand and a dense wood on the
other; and here and there, in the distance, a ragged and
angular-limbed and moss-bearded cypress, top standing out, clear
cut against the sky, and as quaint of form as the apple-trees in
Japanese pictures—such was our course and the surroundings of
it. There was an occasional alligator swimming comfortably along
in the canal, and an occasional picturesque colored person on the
bank, flinging his statue-rigid reflection upon the still water
and watching for a bite.
And by-and-bye we reached the West End, a collection of hotels
of the usual light summer-resort pattern, with broad verandas all
around, and the waves of the wide and blue Lake Pontchartrain
lapping the thresholds. We had dinner on a ground-veranda over
the water—the chief dish the renowned fish called the pompano,
delicious as the less criminal forms of sin.
Thousands of people come by rail and carriage to West End and
to Spanish Fort every evening, and dine, listen to the bands,
take strolls in the open air under the electric lights, go
sailing on the lake, and entertain themselves in various and
sundry other ways.
We had opportunities on other days and in other places to test
the pompano. Notably, at an editorial dinner at one of the clubs
in the city. He was in his last possible perfection there, and
justified his fame. In his suite was a tall pyramid of scarlet
cray-fish—large ones; as large as one’s thumb—delicate,
palatable, appetizing. Also deviled whitebait; also shrimps of
choice quality; and a platter of small soft-shell crabs of a
most superior breed. The other dishes were what one might get at
Delmonico’s, or Buckingham Palace; those I have spoken of can be
had in similar perfection in New Orleans only, I suppose.
In the West and South they have a new institution—the Broom
Brigade. It is composed of young ladies who dress in a uniform
costume, and go through the infantry drill, with broom in place
of musket. It is a very pretty sight, on private view. When they
perform on the stage of a theater, in the blaze of colored fires,
it must be a fine and fascinating spectacle. I saw them go
through their complex manual with grace, spirit, and admirable
precision. I saw them do everything which a human being can
possibly do with a broom, except sweep. I did not see them sweep.
But I know they could learn. What they have already learned
proves that. And if they ever should learn, and should go on the
war-path down Tchoupitoulas or some of those other streets
around there, those thoroughfares would bear a greatly improved
aspect in a very few minutes. But the girls themselves wouldn’t;
so nothing would be really gained, after all.
The drill was in the Washington Artillery building. In this
building we saw many interesting relics of the war. Also a fine
oil-painting representing Stonewall Jackson’s last interview with
General Lee. Both men are on horseback. Jackson has just ridden
up, and is accosting Lee. The picture is very valuable, on
account of the portraits, which are authentic. But, like many
another historical picture, it means nothing without its label.
And one label will fit it as well as another—
First Interview between Lee and Jackson.
Last Interview between Lee and Jackson.
Jackson Introducing Himself to Lee.
Jackson Accepting Lee’s Invitation to Dinner.
Jackson Declining Lee’s Invitation to Dinner—with Thanks.
Jackson Apologizing for a Heavy Defeat.
Jackson Reporting a Great Victory.
Jackson Asking Lee for a Match.
It tells one story, and a sufficient one; for it says quite
plainly and satisfactorily, “Here are Lee and Jackson together.”
The artist would have made it tell that this is Lee and Jackson’s
last interview if he could have done it. But he couldn’t, for
there wasn’t any way to do it. A good legible label is usually
worth, for information, a ton of significant attitude and
expression in a historical picture. In Rome, people with fine
sympathetic natures stand up and weep in front of the celebrated
“Beatrice Cenci the Day before her Execution.” It shows what a
label can do. If they did not know the picture, they would
inspect it unmoved, and say, “Young girl with hay fever; young
girl with her head in a bag.”
|
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“Beatrice Cenci the Day before her Execution.” Guido Reni.
|
I found the half-forgotten Southern intonations and elisions
as pleasing to my ear as they had formerly been. A Southerner
talks music. At least it is music to me, but then I was born in
the South. The educated Southerner has no use for an r, except at
the beginning of a word. He says “honah,” and “dinnah,” and
“Gove’nuh,” and “befo” the waw,” and so on. The words may lack
charm to the eye, in print, but they have it to the ear. When did
the r disappear from Southern speech, and how did it come to
disappear? The custom of dropping it was not borrowed from the
North, nor inherited from England. Many Southerners—most
Southerners—put a y into occasional words that begin with the k
sound. For instance, they say Mr. K’yahtah (Carter) and speak of
playing k’yahds or of riding in the k’yahs. And they have the
pleasant custom—long ago fallen into decay in the North—of
frequently employing the respectful “Sir.” Instead of the curt
Yes, and the abrupt No, they say “Yes, Suh’, “No, Suh.”
But there are some infelicities. Such as “like” for “as,” and
the addition of an “at” where it isn’t needed. I heard an
educated gentleman say, “Like the flag-officer did.” His cook or
his butler would have said, “Like the flag-officer done.” You
hear gentlemen say, “Where have you been at?” And here is the
aggravated form—heard a ragged street Arab say it to a comrade:
“I was a-ask’n’ Tom whah you was a-sett’n’ at.” The very elect
carelessly say “will” when they mean “shall”; and many of them
say, “I didn’t go to do it,” meaning “I didn’t mean to do it.”
The Northern word “guess”—imported from England, where it used
to be common, and now regarded by satirical Englishmen as a
Yankee original—is but little used among Southerners. They say
“reckon.” They haven’t any “doesn’t” in their language; they say
“don’t” instead. The unpolished often use “went” for “gone.” It
is nearly as bad as the Northern “hadn’t ought.” This reminds me
that a remark of a very peculiar nature was made here in my
neighborhood (in the North) a few days ago: “He hadn’t ought to
have went.” How is that? Isn’t that a good deal of a triumph? One
knows the orders combined in this half-breed’s architecture
without inquiring: one parent Northern, the other Southern.
To-day I heard a schoolmistress ask, “Where is John gone?” This
form is so common—so nearly universal, in fact—that if she had
used “whither” instead of “where,” I think it would have sounded
like an affectation.
We picked up one excellent word—a word worth traveling to New
Orleans to get; a nice limber, expressive, handy
word—“lagniappe.” They pronounce it lanny-yap. It is Spanish—so
they said. We discovered it at the head of a column of odds and
ends in the Picayune, the first day; heard twenty people use it
the second; inquired what it meant the third; adopted it and got
facility in swinging it the fourth. It has a restricted meaning,
but I think the people spread it out a little when they choose.
It is the equivalent of the thirteenth roll in a “baker’s dozen.”
It is something thrown in, gratis, for good measure. The custom
originated in the Spanish quarter of the city. When a child or a
servant buys something in a shop—or even the mayor or the
governor, for aught I know—he finishes the operation by
saying—
“Give me something for lagniappe.”
The shopman always responds; gives the child a bit of
licorice-root, gives the servant a cheap cigar or a spool of
thread, gives the governor—I don’t know what he gives the
governor; support, likely.
When you are invited to drink, and this does occur now and
then in New Orleans—and you say, “What, again?—no, I’ve had
enough;” the other party says, “But just this one time more—this
is for lagniappe.” When the beau perceives that he is stacking
his compliments a trifle too high, and sees by the young lady’s
countenance that the edifice would have been better with the top
compliment left off, he puts his “I beg pardon—no harm
intended,” into the briefer form of “Oh, that’s for lagniappe.”
If the waiter in the restaurant stumbles and spills a gill of
coffee down the back of your neck, he says “For lagniappe, sah,”
and gets you another cup without extra charge.
Chapter 45
Southern Sports
IN
the North one hears the war mentioned, in social
conversation, once a month; sometimes as often as once a week;
but as a distinct subject for talk, it has long ago been relieved
of duty. There are sufficient reasons for this. Given a dinner
company of six gentlemen to-day, it can easily happen that four
of them—and possibly five—were not in the field at all. So the
chances are four to two, or five to one, that the war will at no
time during the evening become the topic of conversation; and the
chances are still greater that if it become the topic it will
remain so but a little while. If you add six ladies to the
company, you have added six people who saw so little of the dread
realities of the war that they ran out of talk concerning them
years ago, and now would soon weary of the war topic if you
brought it up.
The case is very different in the South. There, every man you
meet was in the war; and every lady you meet saw the war. The war
is the great chief topic of conversation. The interest in it is
vivid and constant; the interest in other topics is fleeting.
Mention of the war will wake up a dull company and set their
tongues going, when nearly any other topic would fail. In the
South, the war is what A.D. is elsewhere: they date from it. All
day long you hear things “placed” as having happened since the
waw; or du’in” the waw; or befo” the waw; or right aftah the waw;
or “bout two yeahs or five yeahs or ten yeahs befo” the waw or
aftah the waw. It shows how intimately every individual was
visited, in his own person, by that tremendous episode. It gives
the inexperienced stranger a better idea of what a vast and
comprehensive calamity invasion is than he can ever get by
reading books at the fireside.
At a club one evening, a gentleman turned to me and said, in
an aside—
“You notice, of course, that we are nearly always talking
about the war. It isn’t because we haven’t anything else to talk
about, but because nothing else has so strong an interest for us.
And there is another reason: In the war, each of us, in his own
person, seems to have sampled all the different varieties of
human experience; as a consequence, you can’t mention an outside
matter of any sort but it will certainly remind some listener of
something that happened during the war—and out he comes with it.
Of course that brings the talk back to the war. You may try all
you want to, to keep other subjects before the house, and we may
all join in and help, but there can be but one result: the most
random topic would load every man up with war reminiscences, and
shut him up, too; and talk would be likely to stop presently,
because you can’t talk pale inconsequentialities when you’ve got
a crimson fact or fancy in your head that you are burning to
fetch out.”
The poet was sitting some little distance away; and presently
he began to speak—about the moon.
The gentleman who had been talking to me remarked in an
“aside:” “There, the moon is far enough from the seat of war, but
you will see that it will suggest something to somebody about the
war; in ten minutes from now the moon, as a topic, will be
shelved.”
The poet was saying he had noticed something which was a
surprise to him; had had the impression that down here, toward
the equator, the moonlight was much stronger and brighter than up
North; had had the impression that when he visited New Orleans,
many years ago, the moon—
Interruption from the other end of the room—
“Let me explain that. Reminds me of an anecdote. Everything is
changed since the war, for better or for worse; but you’ll find
people down here born grumblers, who see no change except the
change for the worse. There was an old negro woman of this sort.
A young New-Yorker said in her presence, "What a wonderful moon
you have down here!" She sighed and said, "Ah, bless yo” heart,
honey, you ought to seen dat moon befo” de waw!"”
The new topic was dead already. But the poet resurrected it,
and gave it a new start.
A brief dispute followed, as to whether the difference between
Northern and Southern moonlight really existed or was only
imagined. Moonlight talk drifted easily into talk about
artificial methods of dispelling darkness. Then somebody
remembered that when Farragut advanced upon Port Hudson on a dark
night—and did not wish to assist the aim of the Confederate
gunners—he carried no battle-lanterns, but painted the decks of
his ships white, and thus created a dim but valuable light, which
enabled his own men to grope their way around with considerable
facility. At this point the war got the floor again—the ten
minutes not quite up yet.
I was not sorry, for war talk by men who have been in a war is
always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been
in the moon is likely to be dull.
We went to a cockpit in New Orleans on a Saturday afternoon. I
had never seen a cock-fight before. There were men and boys there
of all ages and all colors, and of many languages and
nationalities. But I noticed one quite conspicuous and surprising
absence: the traditional brutal faces. There were no brutal
faces. With no cock-fighting going on, you could have played the
gathering on a stranger for a prayer-meeting; and after it began,
for a revival—provided you blindfolded your stranger—for the
shouting was something prodigious.
A negro and a white man were in the ring; everybody else
outside. The cocks were brought in in sacks; and when time was
called, they were taken out by the two bottle-holders, stroked,
caressed, poked toward each other, and finally liberated. The big
black cock plunged instantly at the little gray one and struck
him on the head with his spur. The gray responded with spirit.
Then the Babel of many-tongued shoutings broke out, and ceased
not thenceforth. When the cocks had been fighting some little
time, I was expecting them momently to drop dead, for both were
blind, red with blood, and so exhausted that they frequently fell
down. Yet they would not give up, neither would they die. The
negro and the white man would pick them up every few seconds,
wipe them off, blow cold water on them in a fine spray, and take
their heads in their mouths and hold them there a moment—to warm
back the perishing life perhaps; I do not know. Then, being set
down again, the dying creatures would totter gropingly about,
with dragging wings, find each other, strike a guesswork blow or
two, and fall exhausted once more.
I did not see the end of the battle. I forced myself to endure
it as long as I could, but it was too pitiful a sight; so I made
frank confession to that effect, and we retired. We heard
afterward that the black cock died in the ring, and fighting to
the last.
Evidently there is abundant fascination about this “sport” for
such as have had a degree of familiarity with it. I never saw
people enjoy anything more than this gathering enjoyed this
fight. The case was the same with old gray-heads and with boys of
ten. They lost themselves in frenzies of delight. The
“cocking-main” is an inhuman sort of entertainment, there is no
question about that; still, it seems a much more respectable and
far less cruel sport than fox-hunting—for the cocks like it;
they experience, as well as confer enjoyment; which is not the
fox’s case.
We assisted—in the French sense—at a mule race, one day. I
believe I enjoyed this contest more than any other mule there. I
enjoyed it more than I remember having enjoyed any other animal
race I ever saw. The grand-stand was well filled with the beauty
and the chivalry of New Orleans. That phrase is not original with
me. It is the Southern reporter’s. He has used it for two
generations. He uses it twenty times a day, or twenty thousand
times a day; or a million times a day—according to the
exigencies. He is obliged to use it a million times a day, if he
have occasion to speak of respectable men and women that often;
for he has no other phrase for such service except that single
one. He never tires of it; it always has a fine sound to him.
There is a kind of swell medieval bulliness and tinsel about it
that pleases his gaudy barbaric soul. If he had been in Palestine
in the early times, we should have had no references to “much
people” out of him. No, he would have said “the beauty and the
chivalry of Galilee” assembled to hear the Sermon on the Mount.
It is likely that the men and women of the South are sick enough
of that phrase by this time, and would like a change, but there
is no immediate prospect of their getting it.
The New Orleans editor has a strong, compact, direct,
unflowery style; wastes no words, and does not gush. Not so with
his average correspondent. In the Appendix I have quoted a good
letter, penned by a trained hand; but the average correspondent
hurls a style which differs from that. For instance—
The “Times-Democrat” sent a relief-steamer up one of the
bayous, last April. This steamer landed at a village, up there
somewhere, and the Captain invited some of the ladies of the
village to make a short trip with him. They accepted and came
aboard, and the steamboat shoved out up the creek. That was all
there was “to it.” And that is all that the editor of the
“Times-Democrat” would have got out of it. There was nothing in
the thing but statistics, and he would have got nothing else out
of it. He would probably have even tabulated them, partly to
secure perfect clearness of statement, and partly to save space.
But his special correspondent knows other methods of handling
statistics. He just throws off all restraint and wallows in
them—
“On Saturday, early in the morning, the beauty of the place
graced our cabin, and proud of her fair freight the gallant
little boat glided up the bayou.”
Twenty-two words to say the ladies came aboard and the boat
shoved out up the creek, is a clean waste of ten good words, and
is also destructive of compactness of statement.
The trouble with the Southern reporter is—Women. They
unsettle him; they throw him off his balance. He is plain, and
sensible, and satisfactory, until a woman heaves in sight. Then
he goes all to pieces; his mind totters, he becomes flowery and
idiotic. From reading the above extract, you would imagine that
this student of Sir Walter Scott is an apprentice, and knows next
to nothing about handling a pen. On the contrary, he furnishes
plenty of proofs, in his long letter, that he knows well enough
how to handle it when the women are not around to give him the
artificial-flower complaint. For instance—
“At 4 o’clock ominous clouds began to gather in the
south-east, and presently from the Gulf there came a blow which
increased in severity every moment. It was not safe to leave the
landing then, and there was a delay. The oaks shook off long
tresses of their mossy beards to the tugging of the wind, and the
bayou in its ambition put on miniature waves in mocking of much
larger bodies of water. A lull permitted a start, and homewards
we steamed, an inky sky overhead and a heavy wind blowing. As
darkness crept on, there were few on board who did not wish
themselves nearer home.”
There is nothing the matter with that. It is good description,
compactly put. Yet there was great temptation, there, to drop
into lurid writing.
But let us return to the mule. Since I left him, I have
rummaged around and found a full report of the race. In it I find
confirmation of the theory which I broached just now—namely,
that the trouble with the Southern reporter is Women: Women,
supplemented by Walter Scott and his knights and beauty and
chivalry, and so on. This is an excellent report, as long as the
women stay out of it. But when they intrude, we have this frantic
result—
“It will be probably a long time before the ladies” stand
presents such a sea of foam-like loveliness as it did yesterday.
The New Orleans women are always charming, but never so much so
as at this time of the year, when in their dainty spring
costumes they bring with them a breath of balmy freshness and an
odor of sanctity unspeakable. The stand was so crowded with them
that, walking at their feet and seeing no possibility of
approach, many a man appreciated as he never did before the
Peri’s feeling at the Gates of Paradise, and wondered what was
the priceless boon that would admit him to their sacred presence.
Sparkling on their white-robed breasts or shoulders were the
colors of their favorite knights, and were it not for the fact
that the doughty heroes appeared on unromantic mules, it would
have been easy to imagine one of King Arthur’s gala-days.”
There were thirteen mules in the first heat; all sorts of
mules, they were; all sorts of complexions, gaits, dispositions,
aspects. Some were handsome creatures, some were not; some were
sleek, some hadn’t had their fur brushed lately; some were
innocently gay and frisky; some were full of malice and all
unrighteousness; guessing from looks, some of them thought the
matter on hand was war, some thought it was a lark, the rest took
it for a religious occasion. And each mule acted according to his
convictions. The result was an absence of harmony well
compensated by a conspicuous presence of variety—variety of a
picturesque and entertaining sort.
All the riders were young gentlemen in fashionable society. If
the reader has been wondering why it is that the ladies of New
Orleans attend so humble an orgy as a mule-race, the thing is
explained now. It is a fashion-freak; all connected with it are
people of fashion.
It is great fun, and cordially liked. The mule-race is one of
the marked occasions of the year. It has brought some pretty fast
mules to the front. One of these had to be ruled out, because he
was so fast that he turned the thing into a one-mule contest, and
robbed it of one of its best features—variety. But every now and
then somebody disguises him with a new name and a new complexion,
and rings him in again.
The riders dress in full jockey costumes of bright-colored
silks, satins, and velvets.
The thirteen mules got away in a body, after a couple of false
starts, and scampered off with prodigious spirit. As each mule
and each rider had a distinct opinion of his own as to how the
race ought to be run, and which side of the track was best in
certain circumstances, and how often the track ought to be
crossed, and when a collision ought to be accomplished, and when
it ought to be avoided, these twenty-six conflicting opinions
created a most fantastic and picturesque confusion, and the
resulting spectacle was killingly comical.
Mile heat; time 2:22. Eight of the thirteen mules distanced. I
had a bet on a mule which would have won if the procession had
been reversed. The second heat was good fun; and so was the
“consolation race for beaten mules,” which followed later; but
the first heat was the best in that respect.
I think that much the most enjoyable of all races is a
steamboat race; but, next to that, I prefer the gay and joyous
mule-rush. Two red-hot steamboats raging along, neck-and-neck,
straining every nerve—that is to say, every rivet in the
boilers—quaking and shaking and groaning from stem to stern,
spouting white steam from the pipes, pouring black smoke from the
chimneys, raining down sparks, parting the river into long breaks
of hissing foam—this is sport that makes a body’s very liver
curl with enjoyment. A horse-race is pretty tame and colorless in
comparison. Still, a horse-race might be well enough, in its way,
perhaps, if it were not for the tiresome false starts. But then,
nobody is ever killed. At least, nobody was ever killed when I
was at a horse-race. They have been crippled, it is true; but
this is little to the purpose.
Chapter 46
Enchantments and Enchanters
THE
largest annual event in New Orleans is a something which
we arrived too late to sample—the Mardi-Gras festivities. I saw
the procession of the Mystic Crew of Comus there, twenty-four
years ago—with knights and nobles and so on, clothed in silken
and golden Paris-made gorgeousnesses, planned and bought for that
single night’s use; and in their train all manner of giants,
dwarfs, monstrosities, and other diverting grotesquerie—a
startling and wonderful sort of show, as it filed solemnly and
silently down the street in the light of its smoking and
flickering torches; but it is said that in these latter days the
spectacle is mightily augmented, as to cost, splendor, and
variety. There is a chief personage—’Rex;” and if I remember
rightly, neither this king nor any of his great following of
subordinates is known to any outsider. All these people are
gentlemen of position and consequence; and it is a proud thing to
belong to the organization; so the mystery in which they hide
their personality is merely for romance’s sake, and not on
account of the police.
Mardi-Gras is of course a relic of the French and Spanish
occupation; but I judge that the religious feature has been
pretty well knocked out of it now. Sir Walter has got the
advantage of the gentlemen of the cowl and rosary, and he will
stay. His medieval business, supplemented by the monsters and the
oddities, and the pleasant creatures from fairy-land, is finer
to look at than the poor fantastic inventions and performances of
the reveling rabble of the priest’s day, and serves quite as
well, perhaps, to emphasize the day and admonish men that the
grace-line between the worldly season and the holy one is
reached.
This Mardi-Gras pageant was the exclusive possession of New
Orleans until recently. But now it has spread to Memphis and St.
Louis and Baltimore. It has probably reached its limit. It is a
thing which could hardly exist in the practical North; would
certainly last but a very brief time; as brief a time as it would
last in London. For the soul of it is the romantic, not the funny
and the grotesque. Take away the romantic mysteries, the kings
and knights and big-sounding titles, and Mardi-Gras would die,
down there in the South. The very feature that keeps it alive in
the South—girly-girly romance—would kill it in the North or in
London. Puck and Punch, and the press universal, would fall upon
it and make merciless fun of it, and its first exhibition would
be also its last.
Against the crimes of the French Revolution and of Bonaparte
may be set two compensating benefactions: the Revolution broke
the chains of the ancien regime and of the Church, and made of a
nation of abject slaves a nation of freemen; and Bonaparte
instituted the setting of merit above birth, and also so
completely stripped the divinity from royalty, that whereas
crowned heads in Europe were gods before, they are only men,
since, and can never be gods again, but only figureheads, and
answerable for their acts like common clay. Such benefactions as
these compensate the temporary harm which Bonaparte and the
Revolution did, and leave the world in debt to them for these
great and permanent services to liberty, humanity, and
progress.
Then comes Sir Walter Scott with his enchantments, and by his
single might checks this wave of progress, and even turns it
back; sets the world in love with dreams and phantoms; with
decayed and swinish forms of religion; with decayed and degraded
systems of government; with the sillinesses and emptinesses, sham
grandeurs, sham gauds, and sham chivalries of a brainless and
worthless long-vanished society. He did measureless harm; more
real and lasting harm, perhaps, than any other individual that
ever wrote. Most of the world has now outlived good part of these
harms, though by no means all of them; but in our South they
flourish pretty forcefully still. Not so forcefully as half a
generation ago, perhaps, but still forcefully. There, the genuine
and wholesome civilization of the nineteenth century is curiously
confused and commingled with the Walter Scott Middle-Age sham
civilization; and so you have practical, common-sense,
progressive ideas, and progressive works; mixed up with the duel,
the inflated speech, and the jejune romanticism of an absurd past
that is dead, and out of charity ought to be buried. But for the
Sir Walter disease, the character of the Southerner—or Southron,
according to Sir Walter’s starchier way of phrasing it—would be
wholly modern, in place of modern and medieval mixed, and the
South would be fully a generation further advanced than it is. It
was Sir Walter that made every gentleman in the South a Major or
a Colonel, or a General or a Judge, before the war; and it was
he, also, that made these gentlemen value these bogus
decorations. For it was he that created rank and caste down
there, and also reverence for rank and caste, and pride and
pleasure in them. Enough is laid on slavery, without fathering
upon it these creations and contributions of Sir Walter.
Sir Walter had so large a hand in making Southern character,
as it existed before the war, that he is in great measure
responsible for the war. It seems a little harsh toward a dead
man to say that we never should have had any war but for Sir
Walter; and yet something of a plausible argument might, perhaps,
be made in support of that wild proposition. The Southerner of
the American Revolution owned slaves; so did the Southerner of
the Civil War: but the former resembles the latter as an
Englishman resembles a Frenchman. The change of character can be
traced rather more easily to Sir Walter’s influence than to that
of any other thing or person.
One may observe, by one or two signs, how deeply that
influence penetrated, and how strongly it holds. If one take up a
Northern or Southern literary periodical of forty or fifty years
ago, he will find it filled with wordy, windy, flowery
“eloquence,” romanticism, sentimentality—all imitated from Sir
Walter, and sufficiently badly done, too—innocent travesties of
his style and methods, in fact. This sort of literature being the
fashion in both sections of the country, there was opportunity
for the fairest competition; and as a consequence, the South was
able to show as many well-known literary names, proportioned to
population, as the North could.
But a change has come, and there is no opportunity now for a
fair competition between North and South. For the North has
thrown out that old inflated style, whereas the Southern writer
still clings to it—clings to it and has a restricted market for
his wares, as a consequence. There is as much literary talent in
the South, now, as ever there was, of course; but its work can
gain but slight currency under present conditions; the authors
write for the past, not the present; they use obsolete forms, and
a dead language. But when a Southerner of genius writes modern
English, his book goes upon crutches no longer, but upon wings;
and they carry it swiftly all about America and England, and
through the great English reprint publishing houses of
Germany—as witness the experience of Mr. Cable and Uncle Remus,
two of the very few Southern authors who do not write in the
Southern style. Instead of three or four widely-known literary
names, the South ought to have a dozen or two—and will have them
when Sir Walter’s time is out.
A curious exemplification of the power of a single book for
good or harm is shown in the effects wrought by “Don Quixote” and
those wrought by “Ivanhoe.” The first swept the world’s
admiration for the medieval chivalry-silliness out of existence;
and the other restored it. As far as our South is concerned, the
good work done by Cervantes is pretty nearly a dead letter, so
effectually has Scott’s pernicious work undermined it.
Chapter 47
Uncle Remus and Mr. Cable
MR. JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS
(’Uncle Remus’) was to arrive from
Atlanta at seven o’clock Sunday morning; so we got up and
received him. We were able to detect him among the crowd of
arrivals at the hotel-counter by his correspondence with a
description of him which had been furnished us from a trustworthy
source. He was said to be undersized, red-haired, and somewhat
freckled. He was the only man in the party whose outside tallied
with this bill of particulars. He was said to be very shy. He is
a shy man. Of this there is no doubt. It may not show on the
surface, but the shyness is there. After days of intimacy one
wonders to see that it is still in about as strong force as ever.
There is a fine and beautiful nature hidden behind it, as all
know who have read the Uncle Remus book; and a fine genius, too,
as all know by the same sign. I seem to be talking quite freely
about this neighbor; but in talking to the public I am but
talking to his personal friends, and these things are permissible
among friends.
He deeply disappointed a number of children who had flocked
eagerly to Mr. Cable’s house to get a glimpse of the illustrious
sage and oracle of the nation’s nurseries. They said—
“Why, he’s white!”
They were grieved about it. So, to console them, the book was
brought, that they might hear Uncle Remus’s Tar-Baby story from
the lips of Uncle Remus himself—or what, in their outraged eyes,
was left of him. But it turned out that he had never read aloud
to people, and was too shy to venture the attempt now. Mr. Cable
and I read from books of ours, to show him what an easy trick it
was; but his immortal shyness was proof against even this
sagacious strategy, so we had to read about Brer Rabbit
ourselves.
Mr. Harris ought to be able to read the negro dialect better
than anybody else, for in the matter of writing it he is the only
master the country has produced. Mr. Cable is the only master in
the writing of French dialects that the country has produced; and
he reads them in perfection. It was a great treat to hear him
read about Jean-ah Poquelin, and about Innerarity and his famous
“pigshoo” representing “Louisihanna RIF-fusing to Hanter the
Union,” along with passages of nicely-shaded German dialect from
a novel which was still in manuscript.
It came out in conversation, that in two different instances
Mr. Cable got into grotesque trouble by using, in his books,
next-to-impossible French names which nevertheless happened to be
borne by living and sensitive citizens of New Orleans. His names
were either inventions or were borrowed from the ancient and
obsolete past, I do not now remember which; but at any rate
living bearers of them turned up, and were a good deal hurt at
having attention directed to themselves and their affairs in so
excessively public a manner.
Mr. Warner and I had an experience of the same sort when we
wrote the book called “The Gilded Age.” There is a character in
it called “Sellers.” I do not remember what his first name was,
in the beginning; but anyway, Mr. Warner did not like it, and
wanted it improved. He asked me if I was able to imagine a person
named “Eschol Sellers.” Of course I said I could not, without
stimulants. He said that away out West, once, he had met, and
contemplated, and actually shaken hands with a man bearing that
impossible name—’Eschol Sellers.” He added—
“It was twenty years ago; his name has probably carried him
off before this; and if it hasn’t, he will never see the book
anyhow. We will confiscate his name. The name you are using is
common, and therefore dangerous; there are probably a thousand
Sellerses bearing it, and the whole horde will come after us; but
Eschol Sellers is a safe name—it is a rock.”
So we borrowed that name; and when the book had been out about
a week, one of the stateliest and handsomest and most
aristocratic looking white men that ever lived, called around,
with the most formidable libel suit in his pocket that
ever—well, in brief, we got his permission to suppress an
edition of
ten million
copies of the book and
change that name to “Mulberry Sellers” in future editions.
Chapter 48
Sugar and Postage
ONE
day, on the street, I encountered the man whom, of all
men, I most wished to see—Horace Bixby; formerly pilot under
me—or rather, over me—now captain of the great steamer “City of
Baton Rouge,” the latest and swiftest addition to the Anchor
Line. The same slender figure, the same tight curls, the same
springy step, the same alertness, the same decision of eye and
answering decision of hand, the same erect military bearing; not
an inch gained or lost in girth, not an ounce gained or lost in
weight, not a hair turned. It is a curious thing, to leave a man
thirty-five years old, and come back at the end of twenty-one
years and find him still only thirty-five. I have not had an
experience of this kind before, I believe. There were some
crow’s-feet, but they counted for next to nothing, since they
were inconspicuous.
His boat was just in. I had been waiting several days for her,
purposing to return to St. Louis in her. The captain and I joined
a party of ladies and gentlemen, guests of Major Wood, and went
down the river fifty-four miles, in a swift tug, to ex-Governor
Warmouth’s sugar plantation. Strung along below the city, were a
number of decayed, ram-shackly, superannuated old steamboats,
not one of which had I ever seen before. They had all been built,
and worn out, and thrown aside, since I was here last. This gives
one a realizing sense of the frailness of a Mississippi boat and
the briefness of its life.
Six miles below town a fat and battered brick chimney,
sticking above the magnolias and live-oaks, was pointed out as
the monument erected by an appreciative nation to celebrate the
battle of New Orleans—Jackson’s victory over the British,
January 8, 1815. The war had ended, the two nations were at
peace, but the news had not yet reached New Orleans. If we had
had the cable telegraph in those days, this blood would not have
been spilt, those lives would not have been wasted; and better
still, Jackson would probably never have been president. We have
gotten over the harms done us by the war of 1812, but not over
some of those done us by Jackson’s presidency.
The Warmouth plantation covers a vast deal of ground, and the
hospitality of the Warmouth mansion is graduated to the same
large scale. We saw steam-plows at work, here, for the first
time. The traction engine travels about on its own wheels, till
it reaches the required spot; then it stands still and by means
of a wire rope pulls the huge plow toward itself two or three
hundred yards across the field, between the rows of cane. The
thing cuts down into the black mold a foot and a half deep. The
plow looks like a fore-and-aft brace of a Hudson river steamer,
inverted. When the negro steersman sits on one end of it, that
end tilts down near the ground, while the other sticks up high in
air. This great see-saw goes rolling and pitching like a ship at
sea, and it is not every circus rider that could stay on it.
The plantation contains two thousand six hundred acres; six
hundred and fifty are in cane; and there is a fruitful orange
grove of five thousand trees. The cane is cultivated after a
modern and intricate scientific fashion, too elaborate and
complex for me to attempt to describe; but it lost $40,000 last
year. I forget the other details. However, this year’s crop will
reach ten or twelve hundred tons of sugar, consequently last
year’s loss will not matter. These troublesome and expensive
scientific methods achieve a yield of a ton and a half and from
that to two tons, to the acre; which is three or four times what
the yield of an acre was in my time.
The drainage-ditches were everywhere alive with little
crabs—’fiddlers.” One saw them scampering sidewise in every
direction
whenever they heard a disturbing noise. Expensive pests, these
crabs; for they bore into the levees, and ruin them.
The great sugar-house was a wilderness of tubs and tanks and
vats and filters, pumps, pipes, and machinery. The process of
making sugar is exceedingly interesting. First, you heave your
cane into the centrifugals and grind out the juice; then run it
through the evaporating pan to extract the fiber; then through
the bone-filter to remove the alcohol; then through the
clarifying tanks to discharge the molasses; then through the
granulating pipe to condense it; then through the vacuum pan to
extract the vacuum. It is now ready for market. I have jotted
these particulars down from memory. The thing looks simple and
easy. Do not deceive yourself. To make sugar is really one of the
most difficult things in the world. And to make it right, is next
to impossible. If you will examine your own supply every now and
then for a term of years, and tabulate the result, you will find
that not two men in twenty can make sugar without getting sand
into it.
We could have gone down to the mouth of the river and visited
Captain Eads” great work, the “jetties,” where the river has been
compressed between walls, and thus deepened to twenty-six feet;
but it was voted useless to go, since at this stage of the water
everything would be covered up and invisible.
We could have visited that ancient and singular burg,
“Pilot-town,” which stands on stilts in the water—so they say;
where nearly all communication is by skiff and canoe, even to the
attending of weddings and funerals; and where the littlest boys
and girls are as handy with the oar as unamphibious children are
with the velocipede.
We could have done a number of other things; but on account of
limited time, we went back home. The sail up the breezy and
sparkling river was a charming experience, and would have been
satisfyingly sentimental and romantic but for the interruptions
of the tug’s pet parrot, whose tireless comments upon the scenery
and the guests were always this-worldly, and often profane. He
had also a superabundance of the discordant, ear-splitting,
metallic laugh common to his breed—a machine-made laugh, a
Frankenstein laugh, with the soul left out of it. He applied it
to every sentimental remark, and to every pathetic song. He
cackled it out with hideous energy after “Home again, home again
from a foreign shore,” and said he “wouldn’t give a damn for a
tug-load of such rot.” Romance and sentiment cannot long survive
this sort of discouragement; so the singing and talking presently
ceased; which so delighted the parrot that he cursed himself
hoarse for joy.
Then the male members of the party moved to the forecastle, to
smoke and gossip. There were several old steamboatmen along, and
I learned from them a great deal of what had been happening to my
former river friends during my long absence. I learned that a
pilot whom I used to steer for is become a spiritualist, and for
more than fifteen years has been receiving a letter every week
from a deceased relative, through a New York spiritualist medium
named Manchester—postage graduated by distance: from the local
post-office in Paradise to New York, five dollars; from New York
to St. Louis, three cents. I remember Mr. Manchester very well. I
called on him once, ten years ago, with a couple of friends, one
of whom wished to inquire after a deceased uncle. This uncle had
lost his life in a peculiarly violent and unusual way, half a
dozen years before: a cyclone blew him some three miles and
knocked a tree down with him which was four feet through at the
butt and sixty-five feet high. He did not survive this triumph.
At the seance just referred to, my friend questioned his late
uncle, through Mr. Manchester, and the late uncle wrote down his
replies, using Mr. Manchester’s hand and pencil for that purpose.
The following is a fair example of the questions asked, and also
of the sloppy twaddle in the way of answers, furnished by
Manchester under the pretense that it came from the specter. If
this man is not the paltriest fraud that lives, I owe him an
apology—
Question. Where are you?
Answer. In the spirit world.
Q. Are you happy?
A. Very happy. Perfectly happy.
Q. How do you amuse yourself?
A. Conversation with friends, and other spirits.
Q. What else?
A. Nothing else. Nothing else is necessary.
Q. What do you talk about?
A. About how happy we are; and about friends left behind in
the earth, and how to influence them for their good.
Q. When your friends in the earth all get to the spirit land,
what shall you have to talk about then?—nothing but about how
happy you all are?
No reply. It is explained that spirits will not answer
frivolous questions.
Q. How is it that spirits that are content to spend an
eternity in frivolous employments, and accept it as happiness,
are so fastidious about frivolous questions upon the subject?
No reply.
Q. Would you like to come back?
A. No.
Q. Would you say that under oath?
A. Yes.
Q. What do you eat there?
A. We do not eat.
Q. What do you drink?
A. We do not drink.
Q. What do you smoke?
A. We do not smoke.
Q. What do you read?
A. We do not read.
Q. Do all the good people go to your place?
A. Yes.
Q. You know my present way of life. Can you suggest any
additions to it, in the way of crime, that will reasonably insure
my going to some other place.
A. No reply.
Q. When did you die?
A. I did not die, I passed away.
Q. Very well, then, when did you pass away? How long have you
been in the spirit land?
A. We have no measurements of time here.
Q. Though you may be indifferent and uncertain as to dates and
times in your present condition and environment, this has nothing
to do with your former condition. You had dates then. One of
these is what I ask for. You departed on a certain day in a
certain year. Is not this true?
A. Yes.
Q. Then name the day of the month.
(Much fumbling with pencil, on the part of the medium,
accompanied by violent spasmodic jerkings of his head and body,
for some little time. Finally, explanation to the effect that
spirits often forget dates, such things being without importance
to them.)
Q. Then this one has actually forgotten the date of its
translation to the spirit land?
This was granted to be the case.
Q. This is very curious. Well, then, what year was it?
(More fumbling, jerking, idiotic spasms, on the part of the
medium. Finally, explanation to the effect that the spirit has
forgotten the year.)
Q. This is indeed stupendous. Let me put one more question,
one last question, to you, before we part to meet no more;—for
even if I fail to avoid your asylum, a meeting there will go for
nothing as a meeting, since by that time you will easily have
forgotten me and my name: did you die a natural death, or were
you cut off by a catastrophe?
A. (After long hesitation and many throes and spasms.) natural
death.
This ended the interview. My friend told the medium that when
his relative was in this poor world, he was endowed with an
extraordinary intellect and an absolutely defectless memory, and
it seemed a great pity that he had not been allowed to keep some
shred of these for his amusement in the realms of everlasting
contentment, and for the amazement and admiration of the rest of
the population there.
This man had plenty of clients—has plenty yet. He receives
letters from spirits located in every part of the spirit world,
and delivers them all over this country through the United States
mail. These letters are filled with advice—advice from “spirits”
who don’t know as much as a tadpole—and this advice is
religiously followed by the receivers. One of these clients was a
man whom the spirits (if one may thus plurally describe the
ingenious Manchester) were teaching how to contrive an improved
railway car-wheel. It is coarse employment for a spirit, but it
is higher and wholesomer activity than talking for ever about
“how happy we are.”
Chapter 49
Episodes in Pilot Life
IN
the course of the tug-boat gossip, it came out that out of
every five of my former friends who had quitted the river, four
had chosen farming as an occupation. Of course this was not
because they were peculiarly gifted, agriculturally, and thus
more likely to succeed as farmers than in other industries: the
reason for their choice must be traced to some other source.
Doubtless they chose farming because that life is private and
secluded from irruptions of undesirable strangers—like the
pilot-house hermitage. And doubtless they also chose it because
on a thousand nights of black storm and danger they had noted the
twinkling lights of solitary farm-houses, as the boat swung by,
and pictured to themselves the serenity and security and coziness
of such refuges at such times, and so had by-and-bye come to
dream of that retired and peaceful life as the one desirable
thing to long for, anticipate, earn, and at last enjoy.
But I did not learn that any of these pilot-farmers had
astonished anybody with their successes. Their farms do not
support them: they support their farms. The pilot-farmer
disappears from the river annually, about the breaking of spring,
and is seen no more till next frost. Then he appears again, in
damaged homespun, combs the hayseed out of his hair, and takes a
pilot-house berth for the winter. In this way he pays the debts
which his farming has achieved during the agricultural season. So
his river bondage is but half broken; he is still the river’s
slave the hardest half of the year.
One of these men bought a farm, but did not retire to it. He
knew a trick worth two of that. He did not propose to pauperize
his farm by applying his personal ignorance to working it. No, he
put the farm into the hands of an agricultural expert to be
worked on shares—out of every three loads of corn the expert to
have two and the pilot the third. But at the end of the season
the pilot received no corn. The expert explained that his share
was not reached. The farm produced only two loads.
Some of the pilots whom I had known had had adventures—the
outcome fortunate, sometimes, but not in all cases. Captain
Montgomery, whom I had steered for when he was a pilot, commanded
the Confederate fleet in the great battle before Memphis; when
his vessel went down, he swam ashore, fought his way through a
squad of soldiers, and made a gallant and narrow escape. He was
always a cool man; nothing could disturb his serenity. Once when
he was captain of the “Crescent City,” I was bringing the boat
into port at New Orleans, and momently expecting orders from the
hurricane deck, but received none. I had stopped the wheels, and
there my authority and responsibility ceased. It was evening—dim
twilight—the captain’s hat was perched upon the big bell, and I
supposed the intellectual end of the captain was in it, but such
was not the case. The captain was very strict; therefore I knew
better than to touch a bell without orders. My duty was to hold
the boat steadily on her calamitous course, and leave the
consequences to take care of themselves—which I did. So we went
plowing past the sterns of steamboats and getting closer and
closer—the crash was bound to come very soon—and still that hat
never budged; for alas, the captain was napping in the texas....
Things were becoming exceedingly nervous and uncomfortable. It
seemed to me that the captain was not going to appear in time to
see the entertainment. But he did. Just as we were walking into
the stern of a steamboat, he stepped out on deck, and said, with
heavenly serenity, “Set her back on both’—which I did; but a
trifle late, however, for the next moment we went smashing
through that other boat’s flimsy outer works with a most
prodigious racket. The captain never said a word to me about the
matter afterwards, except to remark that I had done right, and
that he hoped I would not hesitate to act in the same way again
in like circumstances.
One of the pilots whom I had known when I was on the river had
died a very honorable death. His boat caught fire, and he
remained at the wheel until he got her safe to land. Then he went
out over the breast-board with his clothing in flames, and was
the last person to get ashore. He died from his injuries in the
course of two or three hours, and his was the only life lost.
The history of Mississippi piloting affords six or seven
instances of this sort of martyrdom, and half a hundred instances
of escapes from a like fate which came within a second or two of
being fatally too late; but there is no instance of a pilot
deserting his post to save his life while by remaining and
sacrificing it he might secure other lives from destruction. It
is well worth while to set down this noble fact, and well worth
while to put it in italics, too.
The “cub” pilot is early admonished to despise all perils
connected with a pilot’s calling, and to prefer any sort of death
to the deep dishonor of deserting his post while there is any
possibility of his being useful in it. And so effectively are
these admonitions inculcated, that even young and but half-tried
pilots can be depended upon to stick to the wheel, and die there
when occasion requires. In a Memphis graveyard is buried a young
fellow who perished at the wheel a great many years ago, in White
River, to save the lives of other men. He said to the captain
that if the fire would give him time to reach a sand bar, some
distance away, all could be saved, but that to land against the
bluff bank of the river would be to insure the loss of many
lives. He reached the bar and grounded the boat in shallow water;
but by that time the flames had closed around him, and in
escaping through them he was fatally burned. He had been urged to
fly sooner, but had replied as became a pilot to reply—
“I will not go. If I go, nobody will be saved; if I stay, no
one will be lost but me. I will stay.”
There were two hundred persons on board, and no life was lost
but the pilot’s. There used to be a monument to this young
fellow, in that Memphis graveyard. While we tarried in Memphis on
our down trip, I started out to look for it, but our time was so
brief that I was obliged to turn back before my object was
accomplished.
The tug-boat gossip informed me that Dick Kennet was
dead—blown up, near Memphis, and killed; that several others
whom I had known had fallen in the war—one or two of them shot
down at the wheel; that another and very particular friend, whom
I had steered many trips for, had stepped out of his house in New
Orleans, one night years ago, to collect some money in a remote
part of the city, and had never been seen again—was murdered and
thrown into the river, it was thought; that Ben Thornburgh was
dead long ago; also his wild “cub” whom I used to quarrel with,
all through every daylight watch. A heedless, reckless creature
he was, and always in hot water, always in mischief. An Arkansas
passenger brought an enormous bear aboard, one day, and chained
him to a life-boat on the hurricane deck. Thornburgh’s “cub”
could not rest till he had gone there and unchained the bear, to
“see what he would do.” He was promptly gratified. The bear
chased him around and around the deck, for miles and miles, with
two hundred eager faces grinning through the railings for
audience, and finally snatched off the lad’s coat-tail and went
into the texas to chew it. The off-watch turned out with
alacrity, and left the bear in sole possession. He presently grew
lonesome, and started out for recreation. He ranged the whole
boat—visited every part of it, with an advance guard of fleeing
people in front of him and a voiceless vacancy behind him; and
when his owner captured him at last, those two were the only
visible beings anywhere; everybody else was in hiding, and the
boat was a solitude.
I was told that one of my pilot friends fell dead at the
wheel, from heart disease, in 1869. The captain was on the roof
at the time. He saw the boat breaking for the shore; shouted, and
got no answer; ran up, and found the pilot lying dead on the
floor.
Mr. Bixby had been blown up, in Madrid bend; was not injured,
but the other pilot was lost.
George Ritchie had been blown up near Memphis—blown into the
river from the wheel, and disabled. The water was very cold; he
clung to a cotton bale—mainly with his teeth—and floated until
nearly exhausted, when he was rescued by some deck hands who were
on a piece of the wreck. They tore open the bale and packed him
in the cotton, and warmed the life back into him, and got him
safe to Memphis. He is one of Bixby’s pilots on the “Baton Rouge”
now.
Into the life of a steamboat clerk, now dead, had dropped a
bit of romance—somewhat grotesque romance, but romance
nevertheless. When I knew him he was a shiftless young
spendthrift, boisterous, goodhearted, full of careless
generosities, and pretty conspicuously promising to fool his
possibilities away early, and come to nothing. In a Western city
lived a rich and childless old foreigner and his wife; and in
their family was a comely young girl—sort of friend, sort of
servant. The young clerk of whom I have been speaking—whose name
was not George Johnson, but who shall be called George Johnson
for the purposes of this narrative—got acquainted with this
young girl, and they sinned; and the old foreigner found them
out, and rebuked them. Being ashamed, they lied, and said they
were married; that they had been privately married. Then the old
foreigner’s hurt was healed, and he forgave and blessed them.
After that, they were able to continue their sin without
concealment. By-and-bye the foreigner’s wife died; and presently
he followed after her. Friends of the family assembled to mourn;
and among the mourners sat the two young sinners. The will was
opened and solemnly read. It bequeathed every penny of that old
man’s great wealth to Mrs. George Johnson!
And there was no such person. The young sinners fled forth
then, and did a very foolish thing: married themselves before an
obscure Justice of the Peace, and got him to antedate the thing.
That did no sort of good. The distant relatives flocked in and
exposed the fraudful date with extreme suddenness and surprising
ease, and carried off the fortune, leaving the Johnsons very
legitimately, and legally, and irrevocably chained together in
honorable marriage, but with not so much as a penny to bless
themselves withal. Such are the actual facts; and not all novels
have for a base so telling a situation.
Chapter 50
The “Original Jacobs”
WE
had some talk about Captain Isaiah Sellers, now many years
dead. He was a fine man, a high-minded man, and greatly respected
both ashore and on the river. He was very tall, well built, and
handsome; and in his old age—as I remember him—his hair was as
black as an Indian’s, and his eye and hand were as strong and
steady and his nerve and judgment as firm and clear as anybody’s,
young or old, among the fraternity of pilots. He was the
patriarch of the craft; he had been a keelboat pilot before the
day of steamboats; and a steamboat pilot before any other
steamboat pilot, still surviving at the time I speak of, had ever
turned a wheel. Consequently his brethren held him in the sort of
awe in which illustrious survivors of a bygone age are always
held by their associates. He knew how he was regarded, and
perhaps this fact added some trifle of stiffening to his natural
dignity, which had been sufficiently stiff in its original
state.
He left a diary behind him; but apparently it did not date
back to his first steamboat trip, which was said to be 1811, the
year the first steamboat disturbed the waters of the Mississippi.
At the time of his death a correspondent of the “St. Louis
Republican” culled the following items from the diary—
“In February, 1825, he shipped on board the steamer "Rambler,"
at Florence, Ala., and made during that year three trips to New
Orleans and back—this on the "Gen. Carrol," between Nashville
and New Orleans. It was during his stay on this boat that Captain
Sellers introduced the tap of the bell as a signal to heave the
lead, previous to which time it was the custom for the pilot to
speak to the men below when soundings were wanted. The proximity
of the forecastle to the pilot-house, no doubt, rendered this an
easy matter; but how different on one of our palaces of the
present day.
“In 1827 we find him on board the "President," a boat of two
hundred and eighty-five tons burden, and plying between Smithland
and New Orleans. Thence he joined the "Jubilee" in 1828, and on
this boat he did his first piloting in the St. Louis trade; his
first watch extending from Herculaneum to St. Genevieve. On May
26, 1836, he completed and left Pittsburgh in charge of the
steamer "Prairie," a boat of four hundred tons, and the first
steamer with a state-room cabin ever seen at St. Louis. In 1857
he introduced the signal for meeting boats, and which has, with
some slight change, been the universal custom of this day; in
fact, is rendered obligatory by act of Congress.
“As general items of river history, we quote the following
marginal notes from his general log—
“In March, 1825, Gen. Lafayette left New Orleans for St. Louis
on the low-pressure steamer "Natchez."
“In January, 1828, twenty-one steamers left the New Orleans
wharf to celebrate the occasion of Gen. Jackson’s visit to that
city.
“In 1830 the "North American" made the run from New Orleans to
Memphis in six days—best time on record to that date. It has
since been made in two days and ten hours.
“In 1831 the Red River cut-off formed.
“In 1832 steamer "Hudson" made the run from White River to
Helena, a distance of seventy-five miles, in twelve hours. This
was the source of much talk and speculation among parties
directly interested.
“In 1839 Great Horseshoe cut-off formed.
“Up to the present time, a term of thirty-five years, we
ascertain, by reference to the diary, he has made four hundred
and sixty round trips to New Orleans, which gives a distance of
one million one hundred and four thousand miles, or an average of
eighty-six miles a day.”
Whenever Captain Sellers approached a body of gossiping
pilots, a chill fell there, and talking ceased. For this reason:
whenever six pilots were gathered together, there would always be
one or two newly fledged ones in the lot, and the elder ones
would be always “showing off” before these poor fellows; making
them sorrowfully feel how callow they were, how recent their
nobility, and how humble their degree, by talking largely and
vaporously of old-time experiences on the river; always making it
a point to date everything back as far as they could, so as to
make the new men feel their newness to the sharpest degree
possible, and envy the old stagers in the like degree. And how
these complacent baldheads would swell, and brag, and lie, and
date back—ten, fifteen, twenty years,—and how they did enjoy
the effect produced upon the marveling and envying
youngsters!
And perhaps just at this happy stage of the proceedings, the
stately figure of Captain Isaiah Sellers, that real and only
genuine Son of Antiquity, would drift solemnly into the midst.
Imagine the size of the silence that would result on the instant.
And imagine the feelings of those bald-heads, and the exultation
of their recent audience when the ancient captain would begin to
drop casual and indifferent remarks of a reminiscent
nature—about islands that had disappeared, and cutoffs that had
been made, a generation before the oldest bald-head in the
company had ever set his foot in a pilot-house!
Many and many a time did this ancient mariner appear on the
scene in the above fashion, and spread disaster and humiliation
around him. If one might believe the pilots, he always dated his
islands back to the misty dawn of river history; and he never
used the same island twice; and never did he employ an island
that still existed, or give one a name which anybody present was
old enough to have heard of before. If you might believe the
pilots, he was always conscientiously particular about little
details; never spoke of “the State of Mississippi,” for
instance—no, he would say, “When the State of Mississippi was
where
Arkansas now is,” and would never speak of Louisiana or Missouri
in a general way, and leave an incorrect impression on your
mind—no, he would say, “When Louisiana was up the river
farther,” or “When Missouri was on the Illinois side.”
The old gentleman was not of literary turn or capacity, but he
used to jot down brief paragraphs of plain practical information
about the river, and sign them “MARK TWAIN,” and give them to the
“New Orleans Picayune.” They related to the stage and condition
of the river, and were accurate and valuable; and thus far, they
contained no poison. But in speaking of the stage of the river
to-day, at a given point, the captain was pretty apt to drop in a
little remark about this being the first time he had seen the
water so high or so low at that particular point for forty-nine
years; and now and then he would mention Island So-and-so, and
follow it, in parentheses, with some such observation as
“disappeared in 1807, if I remember rightly.” In these antique
interjections lay poison and bitterness for the other old pilots,
and they used to chaff the “Mark Twain” paragraphs with unsparing
mockery.
It so chanced that one of these
paragraphs
became the text for my first newspaper article. I burlesqued
it broadly, very broadly, stringing my fantastics out to the
extent of eight hundred or a thousand words. I was a “cub” at the
time. I showed my performance to some pilots, and they eagerly
rushed it into print in the “New Orleans True Delta.” It was a
great pity; for it did nobody any worthy service, and it sent a
pang deep into a good man’s heart. There was no malice in my
rubbish; but it laughed at the captain. It laughed at a man to
whom such a thing was new and strange and dreadful. I did not
know then, though I do now, that there is no suffering comparable
with that which a private person feels when he is for the first
time pilloried in print.
Captain Sellers did me the honor to profoundly detest me from
that day forth. When I say he did me the honor, I am not using
empty words. It was a very real honor to be in the thoughts of so
great a man as Captain Sellers, and I had wit enough to
appreciate it and be proud of it. It was distinction to be loved
by such a man; but it was a much greater distinction to be hated
by him, because he loved scores of people; but he didn’t sit up
nights to hate anybody but me.
He never printed another paragraph while he lived, and he
never again signed “Mark Twain” to anything. At the time that the
telegraph brought the news of his death, I was on the Pacific
coast. I was a fresh new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre;
so I confiscated the ancient mariner’s discarded one, and have
done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands—a sign
and symbol and warrant that whatever is found in its company may
be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how I have succeeded,
it would not be modest in me to say.
The captain had an honorable pride in his profession and an
abiding love for it. He ordered his monument before he died, and
kept it near him until he did die. It stands over his grave now,
in Bellefontaine cemetery, St. Louis. It is his image, in marble,
standing on duty at the pilot wheel; and worthy to stand and
confront criticism, for it represents a man who in life would
have stayed there till he burned to a cinder, if duty required
it.
The finest thing we saw on our whole Mississippi trip, we saw
as we approached New Orleans in the steam-tug. This was the
curving frontage of the crescent city lit up with the white glare
of five miles of electric lights. It was a wonderful sight, and
very beautiful.
Chapter 51
Reminiscences
WE
left for St. Louis in the “City of Baton Rouge,” on a
delightfully hot day, but with the main purpose of my visit but
lamely accomplished. I had hoped to hunt up and talk with a
hundred steamboatmen, but got so pleasantly involved in the
social life of the town that I got nothing more than mere
five-minute talks with a couple of dozen of the craft.
I was on the bench of the pilot-house when we backed out and
“straightened up” for the start—the boat pausing for a “good
ready,” in the old-fashioned way, and the black smoke piling out
of the chimneys equally in the old-fashioned way. Then we began
to gather momentum, and presently were fairly under way and
booming along. It was all as natural and familiar—and so were
the shoreward sights—as if there had been no break in my river
life. There was a “cub,” and I judged that he would take the
wheel now; and he did. Captain Bixby stepped into the
pilot-house. Presently the cub closed up on the rank of
steamships. He
made me nervous, for he allowed too much water to show between
our boat and the ships. I knew quite well what was going to
happen, because I could date back in my own life and inspect the
record. The captain looked on, during a silent half-minute, then
took the wheel himself, and crowded the boat in, till she went
scraping along within a hand-breadth of the ships. It was exactly
the favor which he had done me, about a quarter of a century
before, in that same spot, the first time I ever steamed out of
the port of New Orleans. It was a very great and sincere pleasure
to me to see the thing repeated—with somebody else as
victim.
We made Natchez (three hundred miles) in twenty-two hours and
a half— much the swiftest passage I have ever made over that
piece of water.
The next morning I came on with the four o’clock watch, and
saw Ritchie successfully run half a dozen crossings in a fog,
using for his guidance the marked chart devised and patented by
Bixby and himself. This sufficiently evidenced the great value of
the chart.
By and by, when the fog began to clear off, I noticed that the
reflection of a tree in the smooth water of an overflowed bank,
six hundred yards away, was stronger and blacker than the ghostly
tree itself. The faint spectral trees, dimly glimpsed through the
shredding fog, were very pretty things to see.
We had a heavy thunder-storm at Natchez, another at Vicksburg,
and still another about fifty miles below Memphis. They had an
old-fashioned energy which had long been unfamiliar to me. This
third storm was accompanied by a raging wind. We tied up to the
bank when we saw the tempest coming, and everybody left the
pilot-house but me. The wind bent the young trees down, exposing
the pale underside of the leaves; and gust after gust followed,
in quick succession, thrashing the branches violently up and
down, and to this side and that, and creating swift waves of
alternating green and white according to the side of the leaf
that was exposed, and these waves raced after each other as do
their kind over a wind-tossed field of oats. No color that was
visible anywhere was quite natural—all tints were charged with a
leaden tinge from the solid cloud-bank overhead. The river was
leaden; all distances the same; and even the far-reaching ranks
of combing white-caps were dully shaded by the dark, rich
atmosphere through which their swarming legions marched. The
thunder-peals were constant and deafening; explosion followed
explosion with but inconsequential intervals between, and the
reports grew steadily sharper and higher-keyed, and more trying
to the ear; the lightning was as diligent as the thunder, and
produced effects which enchanted the eye and sent electric
ecstasies of mixed delight and apprehension shivering along every
nerve in the body in unintermittent procession. The rain poured
down in amazing volume; the ear-splitting thunder-peals broke
nearer and nearer; the wind increased in fury and began to wrench
off boughs and tree-tops and send them sailing away through
space; the pilot-house fell to rocking and straining and cracking
and surging, and I went down in the hold to see what time it
was.
People boast a good deal about Alpine thunderstorms; but the
storms which I have had the luck to see in the Alps were not the
equals of some which I have seen in the Mississippi Valley. I may
not have seen the Alps do their best, of course, and if they can
beat the Mississippi, I don’t wish to.
On this up trip I saw a little towhead (infant island) half a
mile long, which had been formed during the past nineteen years.
Since there was so much time to spare that nineteen years of it
could be devoted to the construction of a mere towhead, where was
the use, originally, in rushing this whole globe through in six
days? It is likely that if more time had been taken, in the first
place, the world would have been made right, and this ceaseless
improving and repairing would not be necessary now. But if you
hurry a world or a house, you are nearly sure to find out by and
by that you have left out a towhead, or a broom-closet, or some
other little convenience, here and there, which has got to be
supplied, no matter how much expense and vexation it may
cost.
We had a succession of black nights, going up the river, and
it was observable that whenever we landed, and suddenly inundated
the trees with the intense sunburst of the electric light, a
certain curious effect was always produced: hundreds of birds
flocked instantly out from the masses of shining green foliage,
and went careering hither and thither through the white rays, and
often a song-bird tuned up and fell to singing. We judged that
they mistook this superb artificial day for the genuine article.
We had a delightful trip in that thoroughly well-ordered
steamer, and regretted that it was accomplished so speedily. By
means of diligence and activity, we managed to hunt out nearly
all the old friends. One was missing, however; he went to his
reward, whatever it was, two years ago. But I found out all about
him. His case helped me to realize how lasting can be the effect
of a very trifling occurrence. When he was an
apprentice-blacksmith in our village, and I a schoolboy, a couple
of young Englishmen came to the town and sojourned a while; and
one day they got themselves up in cheap royal finery and did the
Richard III swordfight with maniac energy and prodigious powwow,
in the presence of the village boys. This blacksmith cub was
there, and the histrionic poison entered his bones. This vast,
lumbering, ignorant, dull-witted lout was stage-struck, and
irrecoverably. He disappeared, and presently turned up in St.
Louis. I ran across him there, by and by. He was standing musing
on a street corner, with his left hand on his hip, the thumb of
his right supporting his chin, face bowed and frowning, slouch
hat pulled down over his forehead—imagining himself to be
Othello or some such character, and imagining that the passing
crowd marked his tragic bearing and were awestruck.
I joined him, and tried to get him down out of the clouds, but
did not succeed. However, he casually informed me, presently,
that he was a member of the Walnut Street theater company—and he
tried to say it with indifference, but the indifference was thin,
and a mighty exultation showed through it. He said he was cast
for a part in Julius Caesar, for that night, and if I should come
I would see him. If I should come! I said I wouldn’t miss it if I
were dead.
I went away stupefied with astonishment, and saying to myself,
“How strange it is! We always thought this fellow a fool; yet the
moment he comes to a great city, where intelligence and
appreciation abound, the talent concealed in this shabby napkin
is at once discovered, and promptly welcomed and honored.”
But I came away from the theater that night disappointed and
offended; for I had had no glimpse of my hero, and his name was
not in the bills. I met him on the street the next morning, and
before I could speak, he asked—
“Did you see me?”
“No, you weren’t there.”
He looked surprised and disappointed. He said—
“Yes, I was. Indeed I was. I was a Roman soldier.”
“Which one?”
“Why didn’t you see them Roman soldiers that stood back there
in a rank, and sometimes marched in procession around the
stage?”
“Do you mean the Roman army?—those six sandaled roustabouts
in nightshirts, with tin shields and helmets, that marched around
treading on each other’s heels, in charge of a spider-legged
consumptive dressed like themselves?”
“That’s it! that’s it! I was one of them Roman soldiers. I was
the next to the last one. A half a year ago I used to always be
the last one; but I’ve been promoted.”
Well, they told me that that poor fellow remained a Roman
soldier to the last—a matter of thirty-four years. Sometimes
they cast him for a “speaking part,” but not an elaborate one. He
could be trusted to go and say, “My lord, the carriage waits,”
but if they ventured to add a sentence or two to this, his memory
felt the strain and he was likely to miss fire. Yet, poor devil,
he had been patiently studying the part of Hamlet for more than
thirty years, and he lived and died in the belief that some day
he would be invited to play it!
And this is what came of that fleeting visit of those young
Englishmen to our village such ages and ages ago! What noble
horseshoes this man might have made, but for those Englishmen;
and what an inadequate Roman soldier he did make!
A day or two after we reached St. Louis, I was walking along
Fourth Street when a grizzly-headed man gave a sort of start as
he passed me, then stopped, came back, inspected me narrowly,
with a clouding brow, and finally said with deep asperity—
“Look here, Have you got that drink yet?”
A maniac, I judged, at first. But all in a flash I recognized
him. I made an effort to blush that strained every muscle in me,
and answered as sweetly and winningly as ever I knew how—
“Been a little slow, but am just this minute closing in on the
place where they keep it. Come in and help.”
He softened, and said make it a bottle of champagne and he was
agreeable. He said he had seen my name in the papers, and had put
all his affairs aside and turned out, resolved to find me or die;
and make me answer that question satisfactorily, or kill me;
though the most of his late asperity had been rather counterfeit
than otherwise.
This meeting brought back to me the St. Louis riots of about
thirty years ago. I spent a week there, at that time, in a
boarding-house, and had this young fellow for a neighbor across
the hall. We saw some of the fightings and killings; and by and
by we went one night to an armory where two hundred young men had
met, upon call, to be armed and go forth against the rioters,
under command of a military man. We drilled till about ten
o’clock at night; then news came that the mob were in great force
in the lower end of the town, and were sweeping everything before
them. Our column moved at once. It was a very hot night, and my
musket was very heavy. We marched and marched; and the nearer we
approached the seat of war, the hotter I grew and the thirstier I
got. I was behind my friend; so, finally, I asked him to hold my
musket while I dropped out and got a drink. Then I branched off
and went home. I was not feeling any solicitude about him of
course, because I knew he was so well armed, now, that he could
take care of himself without any trouble. If I had had any doubts
about that, I would have borrowed another musket for him. I left
the city pretty early the next morning, and if this grizzled man
had not happened to encounter my name in the papers the other day
in St. Louis, and felt moved to seek me out, I should have
carried to my grave a heart-torturing uncertainty as to whether
he ever got out of the riots all right or not. I ought to have
inquired, thirty years ago; I know that. And I would have
inquired, if I had had the muskets; but, in the circumstances, he
seemed better fixed to conduct the investigations than I was.
One Monday, near the time of our visit to St. Louis, the
“Globe-Democrat” came out with a couple of pages of Sunday
statistics, whereby it appeared that 119,448 St. Louis people
attended the morning and evening church services the day before,
and 23,102 children attended Sunday-school. Thus 142,550 persons,
out of the city’s total of 400,000 population, respected the day
religious-wise. I found these statistics, in a condensed form, in
a telegram of the Associated Press, and preserved them. They made
it apparent that St. Louis was in a higher state of grace than
she could have claimed to be in my time. But now that I canvass
the figures narrowly, I suspect that the telegraph mutilated
them. It cannot be that there are more than 150,000 Catholics in
the town; the other 250,000 must be classified as Protestants.
Out of these 250,000, according to this questionable telegram,
only 26,362 attended church and Sunday-school, while out of the
150,000 Catholics, 116,188 went to church and Sunday-school.
Chapter 52
A Burning Brand
ALL
at once the thought came into my mind, “I have not sought
out Mr. Brown.”
Upon that text I desire to depart from the direct line of my
subject, and make a little excursion. I wish to reveal a secret
which I have carried with me nine years, and which has become
burdensome.
Upon a certain occasion, nine years ago, I had said, with
strong feeling, “If ever I see St. Louis again, I will seek out
Mr. Brown, the great grain merchant, and ask of him the privilege
of shaking him by the hand.”
The occasion and the circumstances were as follows. A friend
of mine, a clergyman, came one evening and said—
“I have a most remarkable letter here, which I want to read to
you, if I can do it without breaking down. I must preface it with
some explanations, however. The letter is written by an ex-thief
and ex-vagabond of the lowest origin and basest rearing, a man
all stained with crime and steeped in ignorance; but, thank God,
with a mine of pure gold hidden away in him, as you shall see.
His letter is written to a burglar named Williams, who is serving
a nine-year term in a certain State prison, for burglary.
Williams was a particularly daring burglar, and plied that trade
during a number of years; but he was caught at last and jailed,
to await trial in a town where he had broken into a house at
night, pistol in hand, and forced the owner to hand over to him
$8,000 in government bonds. Williams was not a common sort of
person, by any means; he was a graduate of Harvard College, and
came of good New England stock. His father was a clergyman. While
lying in jail, his health began to fail, and he was threatened
with consumption. This fact, together with the opportunity for
reflection afforded by solitary confinement, had its effect—its
natural effect. He fell into serious thought; his early training
asserted itself with power, and wrought with strong influence
upon his mind and heart. He put his old life behind him, and
became an earnest Christian. Some ladies in the town heard of
this, visited him, and by their encouraging words supported him
in his good resolutions and strengthened him to continue in his
new life. The trial ended in his conviction and sentence to the
State prison for the term of nine years, as I have before said.
In the prison he became acquainted with the poor wretch referred
to in the beginning of my talk, Jack Hunt, the writer of the
letter which I am going to read. You will see that the
acquaintanceship bore fruit for Hunt. When Hunt’s time was out,
he wandered to St. Louis; and from that place he wrote his letter
to Williams. The letter got no further than the office of the
prison warden, of course; prisoners are not often allowed to
receive letters from outside. The prison authorities read this
letter, but did not destroy it. They had not the heart to do it.
They read it to several persons, and eventually it fell into the
hands of those ladies of whom I spoke a while ago. The other day
I came across an old friend of mine—a clergyman—who had seen
this letter, and was full of it. The mere remembrance of it so
moved him that he could not talk of it without his voice
breaking. He promised to get a copy of it for me; and here it
is—an exact copy, with all the imperfections of the original
preserved. It has many slang expressions in it—thieves’
argot—but their meaning has been interlined, in parentheses, by
the prison authorities’—
St. Louis, June 9th 1872.
Mr. W—— friend Charlie if i may call you so: i no you are
surprised to get a letter from me, but i hope you won’t be mad at
my writing to you. i want to tell you my thanks for the way you
talked to me when i was in prison—it has led me to try and be a
better man; i guess you thought i did not cair for what you said,
& at the first go off I didn’t, but i noed you was a man who
had
don big work with good men & want no sucker, nor want gasing
&
all the boys knod it.
I used to think at nite what you said, & for it i nocked off
swearing months before my time was up, for i saw it want no good,
nohow—the day my time was up you told me if i would shake the
cross (quit stealing) & live on the square for months, it
would
be the best job i ever done in my life. The state agent give me a
ticket to here, & on the car i thought more of what you said
to
me, but didn’t make up my mind. When we got to Chicago on the
cars from there to here, I pulled off an old woman’s leather;
(robbed her of her pocketbook) i hadn’t no more than got it off
when i wished i hadn’t done it, for awhile before that i made up
my mind to be a square bloke, for months on your word, but forgot
it when i saw the leather was a grip (easy to get)—but i kept
clos to her & when she got out of the cars at a way place i
said,
marm have you lost anything. & she tumbled (discovered) her
leather was off (gone)—is this it says i, giving it to her—well
if you aint honest, says she, but i hadn’t got cheak enough to
stand that sort of talk, so i left her in a hurry. When i got
here i had $1 and 25 cents left & i didn’t get no work for 3
days
as i aint strong enough for roust about on a steam bote (for a
deck hand)—The afternoon of the 3rd day I spent my last 10 cts
for moons (large, round sea-biscuit) & cheese & i felt
pretty
rough & was thinking i would have to go on the dipe (picking
pockets) again, when i thought of what you once said about a
fellows calling on the Lord when he was in hard luck, & i
thought
i would try it once anyhow, but when i tryed it i got stuck on
the start, & all i could get off wos, Lord give a poor fellow
a
chance to square it for 3 months for Christ’s sake, amen; & i
kept a thinking, of it over and over as i went along—about an
hour after that i was in 4th St. & this is what happened &
is the
cause of my being where i am now & about which i will tell you
before i get done writing. As i was walking along herd a big
noise & saw a horse running away with a carriage with 2
children
in it, & I grabed up a peace of box cover from the side walk
&
run in the middle of the street, & when the horse came up i
smashed him over the head as hard as i could drive—the bord
split to peces & the horse checked up a little & I grabbed
the
reigns & pulled his head down until he stopped—the gentleman
what owned him came running up & soon as he saw the children
were
all rite, he shook hands with me and gave me a $50 green back,
&
my asking the Lord to help me come into my head, & i was so
thunderstruck i couldn’t drop the reigns nor say nothing—he saw
something was up, &
coming back to me said, my boy are you hurt?
& the thought come into my head just then to ask him for work;
&
i asked him to take back the bill and give me a job—says he,
jump in here & lets talk about it, but keep the money—he asked
me if i could take care of horses & i said yes, for i used to
hang round livery stables & often would help clean & drive
horses, he told me he wanted a man for that work, & would give
me
$16 a month & bord me. You bet i took that chance at once.
that
nite in my little room over the stable i sat a long time thinking
over my past life & of what had just happened & i just got
down
on my nees & thanked the Lord for the job & to help me to
square
it, & to bless you for putting me up to it, & the next
morning i
done it again & got me some new togs (clothes) & a bible
for i
made up my mind after what the Lord had done for me i would read
the bible every nite and morning, & ask him to keep an eye on
me.
When I had been there about a week Mr. Brown (that’s his name)
came in my room one nite and saw me reading the bible—he asked
me if i was a Christian & i told him no—he asked me how it was
i
read the bible instead of papers & books—Well Charlie i
thought
i had better give him a square deal in the start, so i told him
all about my being in prison & about you, & how i had
almost done
give up looking for work & how the Lord got me the job when I
asked him; & the only way i had to pay him back was to read
the
bible & square it, & i asked him to give me a chance for 3
months—he talked to me like a father for a long time, & told
me
i could stay & then i felt better than ever i had done in my
life, for i had given Mr. Brown a fair start with me & now i
didn’t fear no one giving me a back cap (exposing his past life)
& running me off the job—the next morning he called me into
the
library & gave me another square talk, & advised me to
study some
every day, & he would help me one or 2 hours every nite, &
he
gave me a Arithmetic, a spelling book, a Geography & a writing
book, & he hers me every nite—he lets me come into the house
to
prayers every morning, & got me put in a bible class in the
Sunday School which i likes very much for it helps me to
understand my bible better.
Now, Charlie the 3 months on the square are up 2 months ago,
&
as you said, it is the best job i ever did in my life, & i
commenced another of the same sort right away, only it is to God
helping me to last a lifetime Charlie—i wrote this letter to
tell you I do think God has forgiven my sins & herd your
prayers,
for you told me you should pray for me—i no i love to read his
word & tell him all my troubles & he helps me i know for i
have
plenty of chances to steal but i don’t feel to as i once did &
now i take more pleasure in going to church than to the theater
&
that wasnt so once—our minister and others often talk with me
&
a month ago they wanted me to join the church, but I said no, not
now, i may be mistaken in my feelings, i will wait awhile, but
now i feel that God has called me & on the first Sunday in
July i
will join the church—dear friend i wish i could write to you as
i feel, but i cant do it yet—you no i learned to read and write
while prisons & i aint got well enough along to write as i
would
talk; i no i aint spelled all the words rite in this & lots of
other mistakes but you will excuse it i no, for you no i was
brought up in a poor house until i run away, & that i never
new
who my father and mother was & i dont no my right name, &
i hope
you wont be mad at me, but i have as much rite to one name as
another & i have taken your name, for you wont use it when you
get out i no, & you are the man i think most of in the world;
so
i hope you wont be mad—I am doing well, i put $10 a month in
bank with $25 of the $50— if you ever want any or all of it let
me know, & it is yours. i wish you would let me send you some
now. I send you with this a receipt for a year of Littles Living
Age, i didn’t know what you would like & i told Mr. Brown
& he
said he thought you would like it—i wish i was nere you so i
could send you chuck (refreshments) on holidays; it would spoil
this weather from here, but i will send you a box next
thanksgiving any way—next week Mr. Brown takes me into his store
as lite porter & will advance me as soon as i know a little
more—he keeps a big granary store, wholesale—i forgot to tell
you of my mission school, sunday school class—the school is in
the sunday afternoon, i went out two sunday afternoons, and
picked up seven kids (little boys) & got them to come in. two
of
them new as much as i did & i had them put in a class where
they
could learn something. i dont no much myself, but as these kids
cant read i get on nicely with them. i make sure of them by going
after them every Sunday hour before school time, I also got 4
girls to come. tell Mack and Harry about me, if they will come
out here when their time is up i will get them jobs at once. i
hope you will excuse this long letter & all mistakes, i wish i
could see you for i cant write as i would talk—i hope the warm
weather is doing your lungs good—i was afraid when you was
bleeding you would die—give my respects to all the boys and tell
them how i am doing—i am doing well and every one here treats me
as kind as they can—Mr. Brown is going to write to you
sometime—i hope some day you will write to me, this letter is
from your very true friend
C—— W——
who you know as Jack Hunt.
I send you Mr. Brown’s card. Send my letter to him.
Here was true eloquence; irresistible eloquence; and without a
single grace or ornament to help it out. I have seldom been so
deeply stirred by any piece of writing. The reader of it halted,
all the way through, on a lame and broken voice; yet he had tried
to fortify his feelings by several private readings of the letter
before venturing into company with it. He was practising upon me
to see if there was any hope of his being able to read the
document to his prayer-meeting with anything like a decent
command over his feelings. The result was not promising. However,
he determined to risk it; and did. He got through tolerably well;
but his audience broke down early, and stayed in that condition
to the end.
The fame of the letter spread through the town. A brother
minister came and borrowed the manuscript, put it bodily into a
sermon, preached the sermon to twelve hundred people on a Sunday
morning, and the letter drowned them in their own tears. Then my
friend put it into a sermon and went before his Sunday morning
congregation with it. It scored another triumph. The house wept
as one individual.
My friend went on summer vacation up into the fishing regions
of our northern British neighbors, and carried this sermon with
him, since he might possibly chance to need a sermon. He was
asked to preach, one day. The little church was full. Among the
people present were the late Dr. J. G. Holland, the late Mr.
Seymour of the “New York Times,” Mr. Page, the philanthropist and
temperance advocate, and, I think, Senator Frye, of Maine. The
marvelous letter did its wonted work; all the people were moved,
all the people wept; the tears flowed in a steady stream down Dr.
Holland’s cheeks, and nearly the same can be said with regard to
all who were there. Mr. Page was so full of enthusiasm over the
letter that he said he would not rest until he made pilgrimage to
that prison, and had speech with the man who had been able to
inspire a fellow-unfortunate to write so priceless a tract.
Ah, that unlucky Page!—and another man. If they had only been
in Jericho, that letter would have rung through the world and
stirred all the hearts of all the nations for a thousand years to
come, and nobody might ever have found out that it was the
confoundedest, brazenest, ingeniousest piece of fraud and
humbuggery that was ever concocted to fool poor confiding mortals
with!
The letter was a pure swindle, and that is the truth. And take
it by and large, it was without a compeer among swindles. It was
perfect, it was rounded, symmetrical, complete, colossal!
The reader learns it at this point; but we didn’t learn it
till some miles and weeks beyond this stage of the affair. My
friend came back from the woods, and he and other clergymen and
lay missionaries began once more to inundate audiences with their
tears and the tears of said audiences; I begged hard for
permission to print the letter in a magazine and tell the watery
story of its triumphs; numbers of people got copies of the
letter, with permission to circulate them in writing, but not in
print; copies were sent to the Sandwich Islands and other far
regions.
Charles Dudley Warner was at church, one day, when the worn
letter was read and wept over. At the church door, afterward, he
dropped a peculiarly cold iceberg down the clergyman’s back with
the question—
“Do you know that letter to be genuine?”
It was the first suspicion that had ever been voiced; but it
had that sickening effect which first-uttered suspicions against
one’s idol always have. Some talk followed—
“Why—what should make you suspect that it isn’t genuine?”
“Nothing that I know of, except that it is too neat, and
compact, and fluent, and nicely put together for an ignorant
person, an unpractised hand. I think it was done by an educated
man.”
The literary artist had detected the literary machinery. If
you will look at the letter now, you will detect it yourself—it
is observable in every line.
Straightway the clergyman went off, with this seed of
suspicion sprouting in him, and wrote to a minister residing in
that town where Williams had been jailed and converted; asked for
light; and also asked if a person in the literary line (meaning
me) might be allowed to print the letter and tell its history. He
presently received this answer—
Rev. —— ——
MY DEAR FRIEND,—In regard to that “convict’s letter” there
can be no doubt as to its genuineness. “Williams,” to whom it was
written, lay in our jail and professed to have been converted,
and Rev. Mr. ——, the chaplain, had great faith in the
genuineness of the change—as much as one can have in any such
case.
The letter was sent to one of our ladies, who is a
Sunday-school teacher,—sent either by Williams himself, or the
chaplain of the State’s prison, probably. She has been greatly
annoyed in having so much publicity, lest it might seem a breach
of confidence, or be an injury to Williams. In regard to its
publication, I can give no permission; though if the names and
places were omitted, and especially if sent out of the country, I
think you might take the responsibility and do it.
It is a wonderful letter, which no Christian genius, much less
one unsanctified, could ever have written. As showing the work of
grace in a human heart, and in a very degraded and wicked one, it
proves its own origin and reproves our weak faith in its power to
cope with any form of wickedness.
“Mr. Brown” of St. Louis, some one said, was a Hartford man.
Do all whom you send from Hartford serve their Master as
well?
P.S.—Williams is still in the State’s prison, serving out a
long sentence—of nine years, I think. He has been sick and
threatened with consumption, but I have not inquired after him
lately. This lady that I speak of corresponds with him, I
presume, and will be quite sure to look after him.
This letter arrived a few days after it was written—and up
went Mr. Williams’s stock again. Mr. Warner’s low-down suspicion
was laid in the cold, cold grave, where it apparently belonged.
It was a suspicion based upon mere internal evidence, anyway; and
when you come to internal evidence, it’s a big field and a game
that two can play at: as witness this other internal evidence,
discovered by the writer of the note above quoted, that “it is a
wonderful letter—which no Christian genius, much less one
unsanctified, could ever have written.”
I had permission now to print—provided I suppressed names and
places and sent my narrative out of the country. So I chose an
Australian magazine for vehicle, as being far enough out of the
country, and set myself to work on my article. And the ministers
set the pumps going again, with the letter to work the
handles.
But meantime Brother Page had been agitating. He had not
visited the penitentiary, but he had sent a copy of the
illustrious letter to the chaplain of that institution, and
accompanied it with—apparently inquiries. He got an answer,
dated four days later than that other Brother’s reassuring
epistle; and before my article was complete, it wandered into my
hands. The original is before me, now, and I here append it. It
is pretty well loaded with internal evidence of the most solid
description—
STATE’S PRISON, CHAPLAIN’S OFFICE, July 11, 1873.
DEAR BRO. PAGE,—Herewith please find the letter kindly loaned
me. I am afraid its genuineness cannot be established. It
purports to be addressed to some prisoner here. No such letter
ever came to a prisoner here. All letters received are carefully
read by officers of the prison before they go into the hands of
the convicts, and any such letter could not be forgotten. Again,
Charles Williams is not a Christian man, but a dissolute, cunning
prodigal, whose father is a minister of the gospel. His name is
an assumed one. I am glad to have made your acquaintance. I am
preparing a lecture upon life seen through prison bars, and
should like to deliver the same in your vicinity.
And so ended that little drama. My poor article went into the
fire; for whereas the materials for it were now more abundant and
infinitely richer than they had previously been, there were
parties all around me, who, although longing for the publication
before, were a unit for suppression at this stage and complexion
of the game. They said: “Wait—the wound is too fresh, yet.” All
the copies of the famous letter except mine disappeared suddenly;
and from that time onward, the aforetime same old drought set in
in the churches. As a rule, the town was on a spacious grin for a
while, but there were places in it where the grin did not appear,
and where it was dangerous to refer to the ex-convict’s
letter.
A word of explanation. “Jack Hunt,” the professed writer of
the letter, was an imaginary person. The burglar
Williams—Harvard graduate, son of a minister—wrote the letter
himself, to himself: got it smuggled out of the prison; got it
conveyed to persons who had supported and encouraged him in his
conversion—where he knew two things would happen: the
genuineness of the letter would not be doubted or inquired into;
and the nub of it would be noticed, and would have valuable
effect—the effect, indeed, of starting a movement to get Mr.
Williams pardoned out of prison.
That “nub” is so ingeniously, so casually, flung in, and
immediately left there in the tail of the letter, undwelt upon,
that an indifferent reader would never suspect that it was the
heart and core of the epistle, if he even took note of it at all,
This is the “nub”—
“i hope the warm weather is doing your lungs good—I was
afraid when you was bleeding you would die—give my respects,”
etc.
That is all there is of it—simply touch and go—no dwelling
upon it. Nevertheless it was intended for an eye that would be
swift to see it; and it was meant to move a kind heart to try to
effect the liberation of a poor reformed and purified fellow
lying in the fell grip of consumption.
When I for the first time heard that letter read, nine years
ago, I felt that it was the most remarkable one I had ever
encountered. And it so warmed me toward Mr. Brown of St. Louis
that I said that if ever I visited that city again, I would seek
out that excellent man and kiss the hem of his garment if it was
a new one. Well, I visited St. Louis, but I did not hunt for Mr.
Brown; for, alas! the investigations of long ago had proved that
the benevolent Brown, like “Jack Hunt,” was not a real person,
but a sheer invention of that gifted rascal, Williams— burglar,
Harvard graduate, son of a clergyman.
Chapter 53
My Boyhood’s Home
WE
took passage in one of the fast boats of the St. Louis and
St. Paul Packet Company, and started up the river.
When I, as a boy, first saw the mouth of the Missouri River,
it was twenty-two or twenty-three miles above St. Louis,
according to the estimate of pilots; the wear and tear of the
banks have moved it down eight miles since then; and the pilots
say that within five years the river will cut through and move
the mouth down five miles more, which will bring it within ten
miles of St. Louis.
About nightfall we passed the large and flourishing town of
Alton, Illinois; and before daylight next morning the town of
Louisiana, Missouri, a sleepy village in my day, but a brisk
railway center now; however, all the towns out there are railway
centers now. I could not clearly recognize the place. This seemed
odd to me, for when I retired from the rebel army in “61 I
retired upon Louisiana in good order; at least in good enough
order for a person who had not yet learned how to retreat
according to the rules of war, and had to trust to native genius.
It seemed to me that for a first attempt at a retreat it was not
badly done. I had done no advancing in all that campaign that was
at all equal to it.
There was a railway bridge across the river here well
sprinkled with glowing lights, and a very beautiful sight it
was.
At seven in the morning we reached Hannibal, Missouri, where
my boyhood was spent. I had had a glimpse of it fifteen years
ago, and another glimpse six years earlier, but both were so
brief that they hardly counted. The only notion of the town that
remained in my mind was the memory of it as I had known it when I
first quitted it twenty-nine years ago. That picture of it was
still as clear and vivid to me as a photograph. I stepped ashore
with the feeling of one who returns out of a dead-and-gone
generation. I had a sort of realizing sense of what the Bastille
prisoners must have felt when they used to come out and look upon
Paris after years of captivity, and note how curiously the
familiar and the strange were mixed together before them. I saw
the new houses— saw them plainly enough—but they did not affect
the older picture in my mind, for through their solid bricks and
mortar I saw the vanished houses, which had formerly stood there,
with perfect distinctness.
It was Sunday morning, and everybody was abed yet. So I passed
through the vacant streets, still seeing the town as it was, and
not as it is, and recognizing and metaphorically shaking hands
with a hundred familiar objects which no longer exist; and
finally climbed Holiday’s Hill to get a comprehensive view. The
whole town lay spread out below me then, and I could mark and fix
every locality, every detail. Naturally, I was a good deal moved.
I said, “Many of the people I once knew in this tranquil refuge
of my childhood are now in heaven; some, I trust, are in the
other place.” The things about me and before me made me feel like
a boy again—convinced me that I was a boy again, and that I had
simply been dreaming an unusually long dream; but my reflections
spoiled all that; for they forced me to say, “I see fifty old
houses down yonder, into each of which I could enter and find
either a man or a woman who was a baby or unborn when I noticed
those houses last, or a grandmother who was a plump young bride
at that time.”
From this vantage ground the extensive view up and down the
river, and wide over the wooded expanses of Illinois, is very
beautiful—one of the most beautiful on the Mississippi, I think;
which is a hazardous remark to make, for the eight hundred miles
of river between St. Louis and St. Paul afford an unbroken
succession of lovely pictures. It may be that my affection for
the one in question biases my judgment in its favor; I cannot say
as to that. No matter, it was satisfyingly beautiful to me, and
it had this advantage over all the other friends whom I was about
to greet again: it had suffered no change; it was as young and
fresh and comely and gracious as ever it had been; whereas, the
faces of the others would be old, and scarred with the campaigns
of life, and marked with their griefs and defeats, and would give
me no upliftings of spirit.
An old gentleman, out on an early morning walk, came along,
and we discussed the weather, and then drifted into other
matters. I could not remember his face. He said he had been
living here twenty-eight years. So he had come after my time, and
I had never seen him before. I asked him various questions; first
about a mate of mine in Sunday school—what became of him?
“He graduated with honor in an Eastern college, wandered off
into the world somewhere, succeeded at nothing, passed out of
knowledge and memory years ago, and is supposed to have gone to
the dogs.”
“He was bright, and promised well when he was a boy.”
“Yes, but the thing that happened is what became of it
all.”
I asked after another lad, altogether the brightest in our
village school when I was a boy.
“He, too, was graduated with honors, from an Eastern college;
but life whipped him in every battle, straight along, and he died
in one of the Territories, years ago, a defeated man.”
I asked after another of the bright boys.
“He is a success, always has been, always will be, I
think.”
I inquired after a young fellow who came to the town to study
for one of the professions when I was a boy.
“He went at something else before he got through—went from
medicine to law, or from law to medicine—then to some other new
thing; went away for a year, came back with a young wife; fell to
drinking, then to gambling behind the door; finally took his wife
and two young children to her father’s, and went off to Mexico;
went from bad to worse, and finally died there, without a cent to
buy a shroud, and without a friend to attend the funeral.”
“Pity, for he was the best-natured, and most cheery and
hopeful young fellow that ever was.”
I named another boy.
“Oh, he is all right. Lives here yet; has a wife and children,
and is prospering.”
Same verdict concerning other boys.
I named three school-girls.
“The first two live here, are married and have children; the
other is long ago dead—never married.”
I named, with emotion, one of my early sweethearts.
“She is all right. Been married three times; buried two
husbands, divorced from the third, and I hear she is getting
ready to marry an old fellow out in Colorado somewhere. She’s got
children scattered around here and there, most everywheres.”
The answer to several other inquiries was brief and
simple—
“Killed in the war.”
I named another boy.
“Well, now, his case is curious! There wasn’t a human being in
this town but knew that that boy was a perfect chucklehead;
perfect dummy; just a stupid ass, as you may say. Everybody knew
it, and everybody said it. Well, if that very boy isn’t the first
lawyer in the State of Missouri to-day, I’m a Democrat!”
“Is that so?”
“It’s actually so. I’m telling you the truth.”
“How do you account for it?”
“Account for it? There ain’t any accounting for it, except
that if you send a damned fool to St. Louis, and you don’t tell
them he’s a damned fool they’ll never find it out. There’s one
thing sure—if I had a damned fool I should know what to do with
him: ship him to St. Louis— it’s the noblest market in the world
for that kind of property. Well, when you come to look at it all
around, and chew at it and think it over, don’t it just bang
anything you ever heard of?”
“Well, yes, it does seem to. But don’t you think maybe it was
the Hannibal people who were mistaken about the boy, and not the
St. Louis people.”
“Oh, nonsense! The people here have known him from the very
cradle— they knew him a hundred times better than the St. Louis
idiots could have known him. No, if you have got any damned fools
that you want to realize on, take my advice—send them to St.
Louis.”
I mentioned a great number of people whom I had formerly
known. Some were dead, some were gone away, some had prospered,
some had come to naught; but as regarded a dozen or so of the
lot, the answer was comforting:
“Prosperous—live here yet—town littered with their
children.”
I asked about Miss ——.
Died in the insane asylum three or four years ago—never was
out of it from the time she went in; and was always suffering,
too; never got a shred of her mind back.”
If he spoke the truth, here was a heavy tragedy, indeed.
Thirty-six years in a madhouse, that some young fools might have
some fun! I was a small boy, at the time; and I saw those giddy
young ladies come tiptoeing into the room where Miss —— sat
reading at midnight by a lamp. The girl at the head of the file
wore a shroud and a doughface, she crept behind the victim,
touched her on the shoulder, and she looked up and screamed, and
then fell into convulsions. She did not recover from the fright,
but went mad. In these days it seems incredible that people
believed in ghosts so short a time ago. But they did.
After asking after such other folk as I could call to mind, I
finally inquired about myself:
“Oh, he succeeded well enough—another case of damned fool. If
they’d sent him to St. Louis, he’d have succeeded sooner.”
It was with much satisfaction that I recognized the wisdom of
having told this candid gentleman, in the beginning, that my name
was Smith.
Chapter 54
Past and Present
BEING
left to myself, up there, I went on picking out old
houses in the distant town, and calling back their former inmates
out of the moldy past. Among them I presently recognized the
house of the father of Lem Hackett (fictitious name). It carried
me back more than a generation in a moment, and landed me in the
midst of a time when the happenings of life were not the natural
and logical results of great general laws, but of special orders,
and were freighted with very precise and distinct
purposes—partly punitive in intent, partly admonitory; and
usually local in application.
When I was a small boy, Lem Hackett was drowned—on a Sunday.
He fell out of an empty flat-boat, where he was playing. Being
loaded with sin, he went to the bottom like an anvil. He was the
only boy in the village who slept that night. We others all lay
awake, repenting. We had not needed the information, delivered
from the pulpit that evening, that Lem’s was a case of special
judgment—we knew that, already. There was a ferocious
thunder-storm, that night, and it raged continuously until near
dawn. The winds blew, the windows rattled, the rain swept along
the roof in pelting sheets, and at the briefest of intervals the
inky blackness of the night vanished, the houses over the way
glared out white and blinding for a quivering instant, then the
solid darkness shut down again and a splitting peal of thunder
followed, which seemed to rend everything in the neighborhood to
shreds and splinters. I sat up in bed quaking and shuddering,
waiting for the destruction of the world, and expecting it. To me
there was nothing strange or incongruous in heaven’s making such
an uproar about Lem Hackett. Apparently it was the right and
proper thing to do. Not a doubt entered my mind that all the
angels were grouped together, discussing this boy’s case and
observing the awful bombardment of our beggarly little village
with satisfaction and approval. There was one thing which
disturbed me in the most serious way; that was the thought that
this centering of the celestial interest on our village could not
fail to attract the attention of the observers to people among us
who might otherwise have escaped notice for years. I felt that I
was not only one of those people, but the very one most likely to
be discovered. That discovery could have but one result: I should
be in the fire with Lem before the chill of the river had been
fairly warmed out of him. I knew that this would be only just and
fair. I was increasing the chances against myself all the time,
by feeling a secret bitterness against Lem for having attracted
this fatal attention to me, but I could not help it—this sinful
thought persisted in infesting my breast in spite of me. Every
time the lightning glared I caught my breath, and judged I was
gone. In my terror and misery, I meanly began to suggest other
boys, and mention acts of theirs which were wickeder than mine,
and peculiarly needed punishment—and I tried to pretend to
myself that I was simply doing this in a casual way, and without
intent to divert the heavenly attention to them for the purpose
of getting rid of it myself. With deep sagacity I put these
mentions into the form of sorrowing recollections and left-handed
sham-supplications that the sins of those boys might be allowed
to pass unnoticed—’Possibly they may repent.” “It is true that
Jim Smith broke a window and lied about it—but maybe he did not
mean any harm. And although Tom Holmes says more bad words than
any other boy in the village, he probably intends to
repent—though he has never said he would. And whilst it is a
fact that John Jones did fish a little on Sunday, once, he didn’t
really catch anything but only just one small useless mud-cat;
and maybe that wouldn’t have been so awful if he had thrown it
back—as he says he did, but he didn’t. Pity but they would
repent of these dreadful things—and maybe they will yet.”
But while I was shamefully trying to draw attention to these
poor chaps—who were doubtless directing the celestial attention
to me at the same moment, though I never once suspected that—I
had heedlessly left my candle burning. It was not a time to
neglect even trifling precautions. There was no occasion to add
anything to the facilities for attracting notice to me—so I put
the light out.
It was a long night to me, and perhaps the most distressful
one I ever spent. I endured agonies of remorse for sins which I
knew I had committed, and for others which I was not certain
about, yet was sure that they had been set down against me in a
book by an angel who was wiser than I and did not trust such
important matters to memory. It struck me, by and by, that I had
been making a most foolish and calamitous mistake, in one
respect: doubtless I had not only made my own destruction sure by
directing attention to those other boys, but had already
accomplished theirs!—Doubtless the lightning had stretched them
all dead in their beds by this time! The anguish and the fright
which this thought gave me made my previous sufferings seem
trifling by comparison.
Things had become truly serious. I resolved to turn over a new
leaf instantly; I also resolved to connect myself with the church
the next day, if I survived to see its sun appear. I resolved to
cease from sin in all its forms, and to lead a high and blameless
life for ever after. I would be punctual at church and
Sunday-school; visit the sick; carry baskets of victuals to the
poor (simply to fulfil the regulation conditions, although I knew
we had none among us so poor but they would smash the basket over
my head for my pains); I would instruct other boys in right ways,
and take the resulting trouncings meekly; I would subsist
entirely on tracts; I would invade the rum shop and warn the
drunkard— and finally, if I escaped the fate of those who early
become too good to live, I would go for a missionary.
The storm subsided toward daybreak, and I dozed gradually to
sleep with a sense of obligation to Lem Hackett for going to
eternal suffering in that abrupt way, and thus preventing a far
more dreadful disaster—my own loss.
But when I rose refreshed, by and by, and found that those
other boys were still alive, I had a dim sense that perhaps the
whole thing was a false alarm; that the entire turmoil had been
on Lem’s account and nobody’s else. The world looked so bright
and safe that there did not seem to be any real occasion to turn
over a new leaf. I was a little subdued, during that day, and
perhaps the next; after that, my purpose of reforming slowly
dropped out of my mind, and I had a peaceful, comfortable time
again, until the next storm.
That storm came about three weeks later; and it was the most
unaccountable one, to me, that I had ever experienced; for on the
afternoon of that day, “Dutchy” was drowned. Dutchy belonged to
our Sunday-school. He was a German lad who did not know enough to
come in out of the rain; but he was exasperatingly good, and had
a prodigious memory. One Sunday he made himself the envy of all
the youth and the talk of all the admiring village, by reciting
three thousand verses of Scripture without missing a word; then
he went off the very next day and got drowned.
Circumstances gave to his death a peculiar impressiveness. We
were all bathing in a muddy creek which had a deep hole in it,
and in this hole the coopers had sunk a pile of green hickory
hoop poles to soak, some twelve feet under water. We were diving
and “seeing who could stay under longest.” We managed to remain
down by holding on to the hoop poles. Dutchy made such a poor
success of it that he was hailed with laughter and derision every
time his head appeared above water. At last he seemed hurt with
the taunts, and begged us to stand still on the bank and be fair
with him and give him an honest count—’be friendly and kind just
this once, and not miscount for the sake of having the fun of
laughing at him.” Treacherous winks were exchanged, and all said
“All right, Dutchy—go ahead, we’ll play fair.”
Dutchy plunged in, but the boys, instead of beginning to
count, followed the lead of one of their number and scampered to
a range of blackberry bushes close by and hid behind it. They
imagined Dutchy’s humiliation, when he should rise after a
superhuman effort and find the place silent and vacant, nobody
there to applaud. They were “so full of laugh” with the idea,
that they were continually exploding into muffled cackles. Time
swept on, and presently one who was peeping through the briers,
said, with surprise—
“Why, he hasn’t come up, yet!”
The laughing stopped.
“Boys, it “s a splendid dive,” said one.
“Never mind that,” said another, “the joke on him is all the
better for it.”
There was a remark or two more, and then a pause. Talking
ceased, and all began to peer through the vines. Before long, the
boys” faces began to look uneasy, then anxious, then terrified.
Still there was no movement of the placid water. Hearts began to
beat fast, and faces to turn pale. We all glided out, silently,
and stood on the bank, our horrified eyes wandering back and
forth from each other’s countenances to the water.
“Somebody must go down and see!”
Yes, that was plain; but nobody wanted that grisly task.
“Draw straws!”
So we did—with hands which shook so, that we hardly knew what
we were about. The lot fell to me, and I went down. The water was
so muddy I could not see anything, but I felt around among the
hoop poles, and presently grasped a limp wrist which gave me no
response—and if it had I should not have known it, I let it go
with such a frightened suddenness.
The boy had been caught among the hoop poles and entangled
there, helplessly. I fled to the surface and told the awful news.
Some of us knew that if the boy were dragged out at once he might
possibly be resuscitated, but we never thought of that. We did
not think of anything; we did not know what to do, so we did
nothing—except that the smaller lads cried, piteously, and we
all struggled frantically into our clothes, putting on anybody’s
that came handy, and getting them wrong-side-out and
upside-down, as a rule. Then we scurried away and gave the alarm,
but none of us went back to see the end of the tragedy. We had a
more important thing to attend to: we all flew home, and lost not
a moment in getting ready to lead a better life.
The night presently closed down. Then came on that tremendous
and utterly unaccountable storm. I was perfectly dazed; I could
not understand it. It seemed to me that there must be some
mistake. The elements were turned loose, and they rattled and
banged and blazed away in the most blind and frantic manner. All
heart and hope went out of me, and the dismal thought kept
floating through my brain, “If a boy who knows three thousand
verses by heart is not satisfactory, what chance is there for
anybody else?”
Of course I never questioned for a moment that the storm was
on Dutchy’s account, or that he or any other inconsequential
animal was worthy of such a majestic demonstration from on high;
the lesson of it was the only thing that troubled me; for it
convinced me that if Dutchy, with all his perfections, was not a
delight, it would be vain for me to turn over a new leaf, for I
must infallibly fall hopelessly short of that boy, no matter how
hard I might try. Nevertheless I did turn it over—a highly
educated fear compelled me to do that—but succeeding days of
cheerfulness and sunshine came bothering around, and within a
month I had so drifted backward that again I was as lost and
comfortable as ever.
Breakfast time approached while I mused these musings and
called these ancient happenings back to mind; so I got me back
into the present and went down the hill.
On my way through town to the hotel, I saw the house which was
my home when I was a boy. At present rates, the people who now
occupy it are of no more value than I am; but in my time they
would have been worth not less than five hundred dollars apiece.
They are colored folk.
After breakfast, I went out alone again, intending to hunt up
some of the Sunday-schools and see how this generation of pupils
might compare with their progenitors who had sat with me in those
places and had probably taken me as a model—though I do not
remember as to that now. By the public square there had been in
my day a shabby little brick church called the “Old Ship of
Zion,” which I had attended as a Sunday-school scholar; and I
found the locality easily enough, but not the old church; it was
gone, and a trig and rather hilarious new edifice was in its
place. The pupils were better dressed and better looking than
were those of my time; consequently they did not resemble their
ancestors; and consequently there was nothing familiar to me in
their faces. Still, I contemplated them with a deep interest and
a yearning wistfulness, and if I had been a girl I would have
cried; for they were the offspring, and represented, and occupied
the places, of boys and girls some of whom I had loved to love,
and some of whom I had loved to hate, but all of whom were dear
to me for the one reason or the other, so many years gone
by—and, Lord, where be they now!
I was mightily stirred, and would have been grateful to be
allowed to remain unmolested and look my fill; but a
bald-summited superintendent who had been a tow-headed
Sunday-school mate of mine on that spot in the early ages,
recognized me, and I talked a flutter of wild nonsense to those
children to hide the thoughts which were in me, and which could
not have been spoken without a betrayal of feeling that would
have been recognized as out of character with me.
Making speeches without preparation is no gift of mine; and I
was resolved to shirk any new opportunity, but in the next and
larger Sunday-school I found myself in the rear of the
assemblage; so I was very willing to go on the platform a moment
for the sake of getting a good look at the scholars. On the spur
of the moment I could not recall any of the old idiotic talks
which visitors used to insult me with when I was a pupil there;
and I was sorry for this, since it would have given me time and
excuse to dawdle there and take a long and satisfying look at
what I feel at liberty to say was an array of fresh young
comeliness not matchable in another Sunday-school of the same
size. As I talked merely to get a chance to inspect; and as I
strung out the random rubbish solely to prolong the inspection, I
judged it but decent to confess these low motives, and I did
so.
If the Model Boy was in either of these Sunday-schools, I did
not see him. The Model Boy of my time—we never had but the
one—was perfect: perfect in manners, perfect in dress, perfect
in conduct, perfect in filial piety, perfect in exterior
godliness; but at bottom he was a prig; and as for the contents
of his skull, they could have changed place with the contents of
a pie and nobody would have been the worse off for it but the
pie. This fellow’s reproachlessness was a standing reproach to
every lad in the village. He was the admiration of all the
mothers, and the detestation of all their sons. I was told what
became of him, but as it was a disappointment to me, I will not
enter into details. He succeeded in life.
Chapter 55
A Vendetta and Other Things
DURING
my three days” stay in the town, I woke up every
morning with the impression that I was a boy—for in my dreams
the faces were all young again, and looked as they had looked in
the old times—but I went to bed a hundred years old, every
night—for meantime I had been seeing those faces as they are
now.
Of course I suffered some surprises, along at first, before I
had become adjusted to the changed state of things. I met young
ladies who did not seem to have changed at all; but they turned
out to be the daughters of the young ladies I had in
mind—sometimes their grand-daughters. When you are told that a
stranger of fifty is a grandmother, there is nothing surprising
about it; but if, on the contrary, she is a person whom you knew
as a little girl, it seems impossible. You say to yourself, “How
can a little girl be a grandmother.” It takes some little time to
accept and realize the fact that while you have been growing old,
your friends have not been standing still, in that matter.
I noticed that the greatest changes observable were with the
women, not the men. I saw men whom thirty years had changed but
slightly; but their wives had grown old. These were good women;
it is very wearing to be good.
There was a saddler whom I wished to see; but he was gone.
Dead, these many years, they said. Once or twice a day, the
saddler used to go tearing down the street, putting on his coat
as he went; and then everybody knew a steamboat was coming.
Everybody knew, also, that John Stavely was not expecting anybody
by the boat—or any freight, either; and Stavely must have known
that everybody knew this, still it made no difference to him; he
liked to seem to himself to be expecting a hundred thousand tons
of saddles by this boat, and so he went on all his life, enjoying
being faithfully on hand to receive and receipt for those
saddles, in case by any miracle they should come. A malicious
Quincy paper used always to refer to this town, in derision as
“Stavely’s Landing.” Stavely was one of my earliest admirations;
I envied him his rush of imaginary business, and the display he
was able to make of it, before strangers, as he went flying down
the street struggling with his fluttering coat.
But there was a carpenter who was my chiefest hero. He was a
mighty liar, but I did not know that; I believed everything he
said. He was a romantic, sentimental, melodramatic fraud, and his
bearing impressed me with awe. I vividly remember the first time
he took me into his confidence. He was planing a board, and every
now and then he would pause and heave a deep sigh; and
occasionally mutter broken sentences— confused and not
intelligible—but out of their midst an ejaculation sometimes
escaped which made me shiver and did me good: one was, “O God, it
is his blood!” I sat on the tool-chest and humbly and
shudderingly admired him; for I judged he was full of crime. At
last he said in a low voice—
“My little friend, can you keep a secret?”
I eagerly said I could.
“A dark and dreadful one?”
I satisfied him on that point.
“Then I will tell you some passages in my history; for oh, I
must relieve my burdened soul, or I shall die!”
He cautioned me once more to be “as silent as the grave;” then
he told me he was a “red-handed murderer.” He put down his plane,
held his hands out before him, contemplated them sadly, and
said—
“Look—with these hands I have taken the lives of thirty human
beings!”
The effect which this had upon me was an inspiration to him,
and he turned himself loose upon his subject with interest and
energy. He left generalizing, and went into details,—began with
his first murder; described it, told what measures he had taken
to avert suspicion; then passed to his second homicide, his
third, his fourth, and so on. He had always done his murders with
a bowie-knife, and he made all my hairs rise by suddenly
snatching it out and showing it to me.
At the end of this first seance I went home with six of his
fearful secrets among my freightage, and found them a great help
to my dreams, which had been sluggish for a while back. I sought
him again and again, on my Saturday holidays; in fact I spent the
summer with him—all of it which was valuable to me. His
fascinations never diminished, for he threw something fresh and
stirring, in the way of horror, into each successive murder. He
always gave names, dates, places—everything. This by and by
enabled me to note two things: that he had killed his victims in
every quarter of the globe, and that these victims were always
named Lynch. The destruction of the Lynches went serenely on,
Saturday after Saturday, until the original thirty had multiplied
to sixty—and more to be heard from yet; then my curiosity got
the better of my timidity, and I asked how it happened that these
justly punished persons all bore the same name.
My hero said he had never divulged that dark secret to any
living being; but felt that he could trust me, and therefore he
would lay bare before me the story of his sad and blighted life.
He had loved one “too fair for earth,” and she had reciprocated
“with all the sweet affection of her pure and noble nature.” But
he had a rival, a “base hireling” named Archibald Lynch, who said
the girl should be his, or he would “dye his hands in her heart’s
best blood.” The carpenter, “innocent and happy in love’s young
dream,” gave no weight to the threat, but led his “golden-haired
darling to the altar,” and there, the two were made one; there
also, just as the minister’s hands were stretched in blessing
over their heads, the fell deed was done—with a knife—and the
bride fell a corpse at her husband’s feet. And what did the
husband do? He plucked forth that knife, and kneeling by the body
of his lost one, swore to “consecrate his life to the
extermination of all the human scum that bear the hated name of
Lynch.”
That was it. He had been hunting down the Lynches and
slaughtering them, from that day to this—twenty years. He had
always used that same consecrated knife; with it he had murdered
his long array of Lynches, and with it he had left upon the
forehead of each victim a peculiar mark—a cross, deeply incised.
Said he—
“The cross of the Mysterious Avenger is known in Europe, in
America, in China, in Siam, in the Tropics, in the Polar Seas, in
the deserts of Asia, in all the earth. Wherever in the uttermost
parts of the globe, a Lynch has penetrated, there has the
Mysterious Cross been seen, and those who have seen it have
shuddered and said, "It is his mark, he has been here." You have
heard of the Mysterious Avenger—look upon him, for before you
stands no less a person! But beware—breathe not a word to any
soul. Be silent, and wait. Some morning this town will flock
aghast to view a gory corpse; on its brow will be seen the awful
sign, and men will tremble and whisper, "He has been here—it is
the Mysterious Avenger’s mark!" You will come here, but I shall
have vanished; you will see me no more.”
This ass had been reading the “Jibbenainosay,” no doubt, and
had had his poor romantic head turned by it; but as I had not yet
seen the book then, I took his inventions for truth, and did not
suspect that he was a plagiarist.
However, we had a Lynch living in the town; and the more I
reflected upon his impending doom, the more I could not sleep. It
seemed my plain duty to save him, and a still plainer and more
important duty to get some sleep for myself, so at last I
ventured to go to Mr. Lynch and tell him what was about to happen
to him—under strict secrecy. I advised him to “fly,” and
certainly expected him to do it. But he laughed at me; and he did
not stop there; he led me down to the carpenter’s shop, gave the
carpenter a jeering and scornful lecture upon his silly
pretensions, slapped his face, made him get down on his knees and
beg—then went off and left me to contemplate the cheap and
pitiful ruin of what, in my eyes, had so lately been a majestic
and incomparable hero.
The carpenter blustered, flourished his
knife, and doomed this Lynch in his usual volcanic style, the
size of his fateful words undiminished; but it was all wasted
upon me; he was a hero to me no longer, but only a poor, foolish,
exposed humbug. I was ashamed of him, and ashamed of myself; I
took no further interest in him, and never went to his shop any
more. He was a heavy loss to me, for he was the greatest hero I
had ever known. The fellow must have had some talent; for some of
his imaginary murders were so vividly and dramatically described
that I remember all their details yet.
The people of Hannibal are not more changed than is the town.
It is no longer a village; it is a city, with a mayor, and a
council, and water-works, and probably a debt. It has fifteen
thousand people, is a thriving and energetic place, and is paved
like the rest of the west and south—where a well-paved street
and a good sidewalk are things so seldom seen, that one doubts
them when he does see them. The customary half-dozen railways
center in Hannibal now, and there is a new depot which cost a
hundred thousand dollars. In my time the town had no specialty,
and no commercial grandeur; the daily packet usually landed a
passenger and bought a catfish, and took away another passenger
and a hatful of freight; but now a huge commerce in lumber has
grown up and a large miscellaneous commerce is one of the
results. A deal of money changes hands there now.
Bear Creek—so called, perhaps, because it was always so
particularly bare of bears—is hidden out of sight now, under
islands and continents of piled lumber, and nobody but an expert
can find it. I used to get drowned in it every summer regularly,
and be drained out, and inflated and set going again by some
chance enemy; but not enough of it is unoccupied now to drown a
person in. It was a famous breeder of chills and fever in its
day. I remember one summer when everybody in town had this
disease at once. Many chimneys were shaken down, and all the
houses were so racked that the town had to be rebuilt. The chasm
or gorge between Lover’s Leap and the hill west of it is supposed
by scientists to have been caused by glacial action. This is a
mistake.
There is an interesting cave a mile or two below Hannibal,
among the bluffs. I would have liked to revisit it, but had not
time. In my time the person who then owned it turned it into a
mausoleum for his daughter, aged fourteen. The body of this poor
child was put into a copper cylinder filled with alcohol, and
this was suspended in one of the dismal avenues of the cave. The
top of the cylinder was removable; and it was said to be a common
thing for the baser order of tourists to drag the dead face into
view and examine it and comment upon it.
Chapter 56
A Question of Law
THE
slaughter-house is gone from the mouth of Bear Creek and
so is the small jail (or “calaboose’) which once stood in its
neighborhood. A citizen asked, “Do you remember when Jimmy Finn,
the town drunkard, was burned to death in the calaboose?”
Observe, now, how history becomes defiled, through lapse of
time and the help of the bad memories of men. Jimmy Finn was not
burned in the calaboose, but died a natural death in a tan vat,
of a combination of delirium tremens and spontaneous combustion.
When I say natural death, I mean it was a natural death for Jimmy
Finn to die. The calaboose victim was not a citizen; he was a
poor stranger, a harmless whiskey-sodden tramp. I know more about
his case than anybody else; I knew too much of it, in that bygone
day, to relish speaking of it. That tramp was wandering about the
streets one chilly evening, with a pipe in his mouth, and begging
for a match; he got neither matches nor courtesy; on the
contrary, a troop of bad little boys followed him around and
amused themselves with nagging and annoying him. I assisted; but
at last, some appeal which the wayfarer made for forbearance,
accompanying it with a pathetic reference to his forlorn and
friendless condition, touched such sense of shame and remnant of
right feeling as were left in me, and I went away and got him
some matches, and then hied me home and to bed, heavily weighted
as to conscience, and unbuoyant in spirit. An hour or two
afterward, the man was arrested and locked up in the calaboose by
the marshal—large name for a constable, but that was his title.
At two in the morning, the church bells rang for fire, and
everybody turned out, of course—I with the rest. The tramp had
used his matches disastrously: he had set his straw bed on fire,
and the oaken sheathing of the room had caught. When I reached
the ground, two hundred men, women, and children stood massed
together, transfixed with horror, and staring at the grated
windows of the jail. Behind the iron bars, and tugging
frantically at them, and screaming for help, stood the tramp; he
seemed like a black object set against a sun, so white and
intense was the light at his back. That marshal could not be
found, and he had the only key. A battering-ram was quickly
improvised, and the thunder of its blows upon the door had so
encouraging a sound that the spectators broke into wild cheering,
and believed the merciful battle won. But it was not so. The
timbers were too strong; they did not yield. It was said that the
man’s death-grip still held fast to the bars after he was dead;
and that in this position the fires wrapped him about and
consumed him. As to this, I do not know. What was seen after I
recognized the face that was pleading through the bars was seen
by others, not by me.
I saw that face, so situated, every night for a long time
afterward; and I believed myself as guilty of the man’s death as
if I had given him the matches purposely that he might burn
himself up with them. I had not a doubt that I should be hanged
if my connection with this tragedy were found out. The happenings
and the impressions of that time are burnt into my memory, and
the study of them entertains me as much now as they themselves
distressed me then. If anybody spoke of that grisly matter, I was
all ears in a moment, and alert to hear what might be said, for I
was always dreading and expecting to find out that I was
suspected; and so fine and so delicate was the perception of my
guilty conscience, that it often detected suspicion in the most
purposeless remarks, and in looks, gestures, glances of the eye
which had no significance, but which sent me shivering away in a
panic of fright, just the same. And how sick it made me when
somebody dropped, howsoever carelessly and barren of intent, the
remark that “murder will out!” For a boy of ten years, I was
carrying a pretty weighty cargo.
All this time I was blessedly forgetting one thing—the fact
that I was an inveterate talker in my sleep. But one night I
awoke and found my bed-mate—my younger brother—sitting up in
bed and contemplating me by the light of the moon. I said—
“What is the matter?”
“You talk so much I can’t sleep.”
I came to a sitting posture in an instant, with my kidneys in
my throat and my hair on end.
“What did I say. Quick—out with it—what did I say?”
“Nothing much.”
“It’s a lie—you know everything.”
“Everything about what?”
“You know well enough. About that.”
“About what?—I don’t know what you are talking about. I think
you are sick or crazy or something. But anyway, you’re awake, and
I’ll get to sleep while I’ve got a chance.”
He fell asleep and I lay there in a cold sweat, turning this
new terror over in the whirling chaos which did duty as my mind.
The burden of my thought was, How much did I divulge? How much
does he know?—what a distress is this uncertainty! But by and by
I evolved an idea—I would wake my brother and probe him with a
supposititious case. I shook him up, and said—
“Suppose a man should come to you drunk—”
“This is foolish—I never get drunk.”
“I don’t mean you, idiot—I mean the man. Suppose a man should
come to you drunk, and borrow a knife, or a tomahawk, or a
pistol, and you forgot to tell him it was loaded, and—”
“How could you load a tomahawk?”
“I don’t mean the tomahawk, and I didn’t say the tomahawk; I
said the pistol. Now don’t you keep breaking in that way, because
this is serious. There’s been a man killed.”
“What! in this town?”
“Yes, in this town.”
“Well, go on—I won’t say a single word.”
“Well, then, suppose you forgot to tell him to be careful with
it, because it was loaded, and he went off and shot himself with
that pistol—fooling with it, you know, and probably doing it by
accident, being drunk. Well, would it be murder?”
“No—suicide.”
“No, no. I don’t mean his act, I mean yours: would you be a
murderer for letting him have that pistol?”
After deep thought came this answer—
“Well, I should think I was guilty of something—maybe
murder—yes, probably murder, but I don’t quite know.”
This made me very uncomfortable. However, it was not a
decisive verdict. I should have to set out the real case—there
seemed to be no other way. But I would do it cautiously, and keep
a watch out for suspicious effects. I said—
“I was supposing a case, but I am coming to the real one now.
Do you know how the man came to be burned up in the
calaboose?”
“No.”
“Haven’t you the least idea?”
“Not the least.”
“Wish you may die in your tracks if you have?”
“Yes, wish I may die in my tracks.”
“Well, the way of it was this. The man wanted some matches to
light his pipe. A boy got him some. The man set fire to the
calaboose with those very matches, and burnt himself up.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, it is. Now, is that boy a murderer, do you think?”
“Let me see. The man was drunk?”
“Yes, he was drunk.”
“Very drunk?”
“Yes.”
“And the boy knew it?”
“Yes, he knew it.”
There was a long pause. Then came this heavy verdict—
“If the man was drunk, and the boy knew it, the boy murdered
that man. This is certain.”
Faint, sickening sensations crept along all the fibers of my
body, and I seemed to know how a person feels who hears his death
sentence pronounced from the bench. I waited to hear what my
brother would say next. I believed I knew what it would be, and I
was right. He said—
“I know the boy.”
I had nothing to say; so I said nothing. I simply shuddered.
Then he added—
“Yes, before you got half through telling about the thing, I
knew perfectly well who the boy was; it was Ben Coontz!”
I came out of my collapse as one who rises from the dead. I
said, with admiration—
“Why, how in the world did you ever guess it?”
“You told it in your sleep.”
I said to myself, “How splendid that is! This is a habit which
must be cultivated.”
My brother rattled innocently on—
“When you were talking in your sleep, you kept mumbling
something about "matches," which I couldn’t make anything out of;
but just now, when you began to tell me about the man and the
calaboose and the matches, I remembered that in your sleep you
mentioned Ben Coontz two or three times; so I put this and that
together, you see, and right away I knew it was Ben that burnt
that man up.”
I praised his sagacity effusively. Presently he asked—
“Are you going to give him up to the law?”
“No,” I said; “I believe that this will be a lesson to him. I
shall keep an eye on him, of course, for that is but right; but
if he stops where he is and reforms, it shall never be said that
I betrayed him.”
“How good you are!”
“Well, I try to be. It is all a person can do in a world like
this.”
And now, my burden being shifted to other shoulders, my
terrors soon faded away.
The day before we left Hannibal, a curious thing fell under my
notice—the surprising spread which longitudinal time undergoes
there. I learned it from one of the most unostentatious of
men—the colored coachman of a friend of mine, who lives three
miles from town. He was to call for me at the Park Hotel at 7.30
P.M., and drive me out. But he missed it considerably—did not
arrive till ten. He excused himself by saying—
“De time is mos” an hour en a half slower in de country en
what it is in de town; you’ll be in plenty time, boss. Sometimes
we shoves out early for church, Sunday, en fetches up dah right
plum in de middle er de sermon. Diffunce in de time. A body can’t
make no calculations “bout it.”
I had lost two hours and a half; but I had learned a fact
worth four.
Chapter 57
An Archangel
FROM
St. Louis northward there are all the enlivening signs of
the presence of active, energetic, intelligent, prosperous,
practical nineteenth-century populations. The people don’t dream,
they work. The happy result is manifest all around in the
substantial outside aspect of things, and the suggestions of
wholesome life and comfort that everywhere appear.
Quincy is a notable example—a brisk, handsome, well-ordered
city; and now, as formerly, interested in art, letters, and other
high things.
But Marion City is an exception. Marion City has gone
backwards in a most unaccountable way. This metropolis promised
so well that the projectors tacked “city” to its name in the very
beginning, with full confidence; but it was bad prophecy. When I
first saw Marion City, thirty-five years ago, it contained one
street, and nearly or quite six houses. It contains but one house
now, and this one, in a state of ruin, is getting ready to follow
the former five into the river. Doubtless Marion City was too
near to Quincy. It had another disadvantage: it was situated in a
flat mud bottom, below high-water mark, whereas Quincy stands
high up on the slope of a hill.
In the beginning Quincy had the aspect and ways of a model New
England town: and these she has yet: broad, clean streets, trim,
neat dwellings and lawns, fine mansions, stately blocks of
commercial buildings. And there are ample fair-grounds, a well
kept park, and many attractive drives; library, reading-rooms, a
couple of colleges, some handsome and costly churches, and a
grand court-house, with grounds which occupy a square. The
population of the city is thirty thousand. There are some large
factories here, and manufacturing, of many sorts, is done on a
great scale.
La Grange and Canton are growing towns, but I missed
Alexandria; was told it was under water, but would come up to
blow in the summer.
Keokuk was easily recognizable. I lived there in 1857—an
extraordinary year there in real-estate matters. The “boom” was
something wonderful. Everybody bought, everybody sold—except
widows and preachers; they always hold on; and when the tide
ebbs, they get left. Anything in the semblance of a town lot, no
matter how situated, was salable, and at a figure which would
still have been high if the ground had been sodded with
greenbacks.
The town has a population of fifteen thousand now, and is
progressing with a healthy growth. It was night, and we could not
see details, for which we were sorry, for Keokuk has the
reputation of being a beautiful city. It was a pleasant one to
live in long ago, and doubtless has advanced, not retrograded, in
that respect.
A mighty work which was in progress there in my day is
finished now. This is the canal over the Rapids. It is eight
miles long, three hundred feet wide, and is in no place less than
six feet deep. Its masonry is of the majestic kind which the War
Department usually deals in, and will endure like a Roman
aqueduct. The work cost four or five millions.
After an hour or two spent with former friends, we started up
the river again. Keokuk, a long time ago, was an occasional
loafing-place of that erratic genius, Henry Clay Dean. I believe
I never saw him but once; but he was much talked of when I lived
there. This is what was said of him—
He began life poor and without education. But he educated
himself—on the curbstones of Keokuk. He would sit down on a
curbstone with his book, careless or unconscious of the clatter
of commerce and the tramp of the passing crowds, and bury himself
in his studies by the hour, never changing his position except to
draw in his knees now and then to let a dray pass unobstructed;
and when his book was finished, its contents, however abstruse,
had been burnt into his memory, and were his permanent
possession. In this way he acquired a vast hoard of all sorts of
learning, and had it pigeon-holed in his head where he could put
his intellectual hand on it whenever it was wanted.
His clothes differed in no respect from a “wharf-rat’s,”
except that they were raggeder, more ill-assorted and
inharmonious (and therefore more extravagantly picturesque), and
several layers dirtier. Nobody could infer the master-mind in the
top of that edifice from the edifice itself.
He was an orator—by nature in the first place, and later by
the training of experience and practice. When he was out on a
canvass, his name was a lodestone which drew the farmers to his
stump from fifty miles around. His theme was always politics. He
used no notes, for a volcano does not need notes. In 1862, a son
of Keokuk’s late distinguished citizen, Mr. Claggett, gave me
this incident concerning Dean—
The war feeling was running high in Keokuk (in “61), and a
great mass meeting was to be held on a certain day in the new
Athenaeum. A distinguished stranger was to address the house.
After the building had been packed to its utmost capacity with
sweltering folk of both sexes, the stage still remained
vacant—the distinguished stranger had failed to connect. The
crowd grew impatient, and by and by indignant and rebellious.
About this time a distressed manager discovered Dean on a
curb-stone, explained the dilemma to him, took his book away from
him, rushed him into the building the back way, and told him to
make for the stage and save his country.
Presently a sudden silence fell upon the grumbling audience,
and everybody’s eyes sought a single point—the wide, empty,
carpetless stage. A figure appeared there whose aspect was
familiar to hardly a dozen persons present. It was the scarecrow
Dean—in foxy shoes, down at the heels; socks of odd colors, also
“down;” damaged trousers, relics of antiquity, and a world too
short, exposing some inches of naked ankle; an unbuttoned vest,
also too short, and exposing a zone of soiled and wrinkled linen
between it and the waistband; shirt bosom open; long black
handkerchief, wound round and round the neck like a bandage;
bob-tailed blue coat, reaching down to the small of the back, with
sleeves which left four inches of forearm unprotected; small,
stiff-brimmed soldier-cap hung on a corner of the bump
of—whichever bump it was. This figure moved gravely out upon the
stage and, with sedate and measured step, down to the front,
where it paused, and dreamily inspected the house, saying no
word. The silence of surprise held its own for a moment, then was
broken by a just audible ripple of merriment which swept the sea
of faces like the wash of a wave. The figure remained as before,
thoughtfully inspecting. Another wave started—laughter, this
time. It was followed by another, then a third—this last one
boisterous.
And now the stranger stepped back one pace, took off his
soldier-cap, tossed it into the wing, and began to speak, with
deliberation, nobody listening, everybody laughing and
whispering. The speaker talked on unembarrassed, and presently
delivered a shot which went home, and silence and attention
resulted. He followed it quick and fast, with other telling
things; warmed to his work and began to pour his words out,
instead of dripping them; grew hotter and hotter, and fell to
discharging lightnings and thunder—and now the house began to
break into applause, to which the speaker gave no heed, but went
hammering straight on; unwound his black bandage and cast it
away, still thundering; presently discarded the bob tailed coat
and flung it aside, firing up higher and higher all the time;
finally flung the vest after the coat; and then for an untimed
period stood there, like another Vesuvius, spouting smoke and
flame, lava and ashes, raining pumice-stone and cinders, shaking
the moral earth with intellectual crash upon crash, explosion
upon explosion, while the mad multitude stood upon their feet in
a solid body, answering back with a ceaseless hurricane of
cheers, through a thrashing snowstorm of waving
handkerchiefs.
“When Dean came,” said Claggett, “the people thought he was an
escaped lunatic; but when he went, they thought he was an escaped
archangel.”
Burlington, home of the sparkling Burdette, is another hill
city; and also a beautiful one; unquestionably so; a fine and
flourishing city, with a population of twenty-five thousand, and
belted with busy factories of nearly every imaginable
description. It was a very sober city, too—for the moment—for a
most sobering bill was pending; a bill to forbid the manufacture,
exportation, importation, purchase, sale, borrowing, lending,
stealing, drinking, smelling, or possession, by conquest,
inheritance, intent, accident, or otherwise, in the State of
Iowa, of each and every deleterious beverage known to the human
race, except water. This measure was approved by all the rational
people in the State; but not by the bench of Judges.
Burlington has the progressive modern city’s full equipment of
devices for right and intelligent government; including a paid
fire department, a thing which the great city of New Orleans is
without, but still employs that relic of antiquity, the
independent system.
In Burlington, as in all these Upper-River towns, one breathes
a go-ahead atmosphere which tastes good in the nostrils. An
opera-house has lately been built there which is in strong
contrast with the shabby dens which usually do duty as theaters
in cities of Burlington’s size.
We had not time to go ashore in Muscatine, but had a daylight
view of it from the boat. I lived there awhile, many years ago,
but the place, now, had a rather unfamiliar look; so I suppose it
has clear outgrown the town which I used to know. In fact, I know
it has; for I remember it as a small place—which it isn’t now.
But I remember it best for a lunatic who caught me out in the
fields, one Sunday, and extracted a butcher-knife from his boot
and proposed to carve me up with it, unless I acknowledged him to
be the only son of the Devil. I tried to compromise on an
acknowledgment that he was the only member of the family I had
met; but that did not satisfy him; he wouldn’t have any
half-measures; I must say he was the sole and only son of the
Devil—he whetted his knife on his boot. It did not seem worth
while to make trouble about a little thing like that; so I swung
round to his view of the matter and saved my skin whole. Shortly
afterward, he went to visit his father; and as he has not turned
up since, I trust he is there yet.
And I remember Muscatine—still more pleasantly—for its
summer sunsets. I have never seen any, on either side of the
ocean, that equaled them. They used the broad smooth river as a
canvas, and painted on it every imaginable dream of color, from
the mottled daintinesses and delicacies of the opal, all the way
up, through cumulative intensities, to blinding purple and
crimson conflagrations which were enchanting to the eye, but
sharply tried it at the same time. All the Upper Mississippi
region has these extraordinary sunsets as a familiar spectacle.
It is the true Sunset Land: I am sure no other country can show
so good a right to the name. The sunrises are also said to be
exceedingly fine. I do not know.
Chapter 58
On the Upper River
THE
big towns drop in, thick and fast, now: and between
stretch processions of thrifty farms, not desolate solitude. Hour
by hour, the boat plows deeper and deeper into the great and
populous North-west; and with each successive section of it which
is revealed, one’s surprise and respect gather emphasis and
increase. Such a people, and such achievements as theirs, compel
homage. This is an independent race who think for themselves, and
who are competent to do it, because they are educated and
enlightened; they read, they keep abreast of the best and newest
thought, they fortify every weak place in their land with a
school, a college, a library, and a newspaper; and they live
under law. Solicitude for the future of a race like this is not
in order.
This region is new; so new that it may be said to be still in
its babyhood. By what it has accomplished while still teething,
one may forecast what marvels it will do in the strength of its
maturity. It is so new that the foreign tourist has not heard of
it yet; and has not visited it. For sixty years, the foreign
tourist has steamed up and down the river between St. Louis and
New Orleans, and then gone home and written his book, believing
he had seen all of the river that was worth seeing or that had
anything to see. In not six of all these books is there mention
of these Upper River towns—for the reason that the five or six
tourists who penetrated this region did it before these towns
were projected. The latest tourist of them all (1878) made the
same old regulation trip—he had not heard that there was
anything north of St. Louis.
Yet there was. There was this amazing region, bristling with
great towns, projected day before yesterday, so to speak, and
built next morning. A score of them number from fifteen hundred
to five thousand people. Then we have Muscatine, ten thousand;
Winona, ten thousand; Moline, ten thousand; Rock Island, twelve
thousand; La Crosse, twelve thousand; Burlington, twenty-five
thousand; Dubuque, twenty-five thousand; Davenport, thirty
thousand; St. Paul, fifty-eight thousand, Minneapolis, sixty
thousand and upward.
The foreign tourist has never heard of these; there is no note
of them in his books. They have sprung up in the night, while he
slept. So new is this region, that I, who am comparatively young,
am yet older than it is. When I was born, St. Paul had a
population of three persons, Minneapolis had just a third as
many. The then population of Minneapolis died two years ago; and
when he died he had seen himself undergo an increase, in forty
years, of fifty-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine
persons. He had a frog’s fertility.
I must explain that the figures set down above, as the
population of St. Paul and Minneapolis, are several months old.
These towns are far larger now. In fact, I have just seen a
newspaper estimate which gives the former seventy-one thousand,
and the latter seventy-eight thousand. This book will not reach
the public for six or seven months yet; none of the figures will
be worth much then.
We had a glimpse of Davenport, which is another beautiful
city, crowning a hill—a phrase which applies to all these towns;
for they are all comely, all well built, clean, orderly, pleasant
to the eye, and cheering to the spirit; and they are all situated
upon hills. Therefore we will give that phrase a rest. The
Indians have a tradition that Marquette and Joliet camped where
Davenport now stands, in 1673. The next white man who camped
there, did it about a hundred and seventy years later—in 1834.
Davenport has gathered its thirty thousand people within the past
thirty years. She sends more children to her schools now, than
her whole population numbered twenty-three years ago. She has the
usual Upper River quota of factories, newspapers, and
institutions of learning; she has telephones, local telegraphs,
an electric alarm, and an admirable paid fire department,
consisting of six hook and ladder companies, four steam fire
engines, and thirty churches. Davenport is the official residence
of two bishops—Episcopal and Catholic.
Opposite Davenport is the flourishing town of Rock Island,
which lies at the foot of the Upper Rapids. A great railroad
bridge connects the two towns—one of the thirteen which fret the
Mississippi and the pilots, between St. Louis and St. Paul.
The charming island of Rock Island, three miles long and half
a mile wide, belongs to the United States, and the Government has
turned it into a wonderful park, enhancing its natural
attractions by art, and threading its fine forests with many
miles of drives. Near the center of the island one catches
glimpses, through the trees, of ten vast stone four-story
buildings, each of which covers an acre of ground. These are the
Government workshops; for the Rock Island establishment is a
national armory and arsenal.
We move up the river—always through enchanting scenery, there
being no other kind on the Upper Mississippi—and pass Moline, a
center of vast manufacturing industries; and Clinton and Lyons,
great lumber centers; and presently reach Dubuque, which is
situated in a rich mineral region. The lead mines are very
productive, and of wide extent. Dubuque has a great number of
manufacturing establishments; among them a plow factory which has
for customers all Christendom in general. At least so I was told
by an agent of the concern who was on the boat. He said—
“You show me any country under the sun where they really know
how to plow, and if I don’t show you our mark on the plow they
use, I’ll eat that plow; and I won’t ask for any Woostershyre
sauce to flavor it up with, either.”
All this part of the river is rich in Indian history and
traditions. Black Hawk’s was once a puissant name hereabouts; as
was Keokuk’s, further down. A few miles below Dubuque is the Tete
de Mort—Death’s-head rock, or bluff—to the top of which the
French drove a band of Indians, in early times, and cooped them
up there, with death for a certainty, and only the manner of it
matter of choice—to starve, or jump off and kill themselves.
Black Hawk adopted the ways of the white people, toward the end
of his life; and when he died he was buried, near Des Moines, in
Christian fashion, modified by Indian custom; that is to say,
clothed in a Christian military uniform, and with a Christian
cane in his hand, but deposited in the grave in a sitting
posture. Formerly, a horse had always been buried with a chief.
The substitution of the cane shows that Black Hawk’s haughty
nature was really humbled, and he expected to walk when he got
over.
We noticed that above Dubuque the water of the Mississippi was
olive-green—rich and beautiful and semi-transparent, with the
sun on it. Of course the water was nowhere as clear or of as fine
a complexion as it is in some other seasons of the year; for now
it was at flood stage, and therefore dimmed and blurred by the
mud manufactured from caving banks.
The majestic bluffs that overlook the river, along through
this region, charm one with the grace and variety of their forms,
and the soft beauty of their adornment. The steep verdant slope,
whose base is at the water’s edge is topped by a lofty rampart of
broken, turreted rocks, which are exquisitely rich and mellow in
color—mainly dark browns and dull greens, but splashed with
other tints. And then you have the shining river, winding here
and there and yonder, its sweep interrupted at intervals by
clusters of wooded islands threaded by silver channels; and you
have glimpses of distant villages, asleep upon capes; and of
stealthy rafts slipping along in the shade of the forest walls;
and of white steamers vanishing around remote points. And it is
all as tranquil and reposeful as dreamland, and has nothing
this-worldly about it—nothing to hang a fret or a worry
upon.
Until the unholy train comes tearing along—which it presently
does, ripping the sacred solitude to rags and tatters with its
devil’s warwhoop and the roar and thunder of its rushing
wheels—and straightway you are back in this world, and with one
of its frets ready to hand for your entertainment: for you
remember that this is the very road whose stock always goes down
after you buy it, and always goes up again as soon as you sell
it. It makes me shudder to this day, to remember that I once came
near not getting rid of my stock at all. It must be an awful
thing to have a railroad left on your hands.
The locomotive is in sight from the deck of the steamboat
almost the whole way from St. Louis to St. Paul—eight hundred
miles. These railroads have made havoc with the steamboat
commerce. The clerk of our boat was a steamboat clerk before
these roads were built. In that day the influx of population was
so great, and the freight business so heavy, that the boats were
not able to keep up with the demands made upon their carrying
capacity; consequently the captains were very independent and
airy—pretty “biggity,” as Uncle Remus would say. The clerk
nut-shelled the contrast between the former time and the present,
thus—
“Boat used to land—captain on hurricane roof—mighty stiff
and straight—iron ramrod for a spine—kid gloves, plug tile,
hair parted behind—man on shore takes off hat and says—
“Got twenty-eight tons of wheat, cap’n—be great favor if you
can take them."
“Captain says—
“’ll take two of them”—and don’t even condescend to look at
him.
“But nowadays the captain takes off his old slouch, and smiles
all the way around to the back of his ears, and gets off a bow
which he hasn’t got any ramrod to interfere with, and says—
“Glad to see you, Smith, glad to see you—you’re looking
well—haven’t seen you looking so well for years—what you got
for us?"
“Nuth’n", says Smith; and keeps his hat on, and just turns
his back and goes to talking with somebody else.
“Oh, yes, eight years ago, the captain was on top; but it’s
Smith’s turn now. Eight years ago a boat used to go up the river
with every stateroom full, and people piled five and six deep on
the cabin floor; and a solid deck-load of immigrants and
harvesters down below, into the bargain. To get a first-class
stateroom, you’d got to prove sixteen quarterings of nobility and
four hundred years of descent, or be personally acquainted with
the nigger that blacked the captain’s boots. But it’s all changed
now; plenty staterooms above, no harvesters below—there’s a
patent self-binder now, and they don’t have harvesters any more;
they’ve gone where the woodbine twineth—and they didn’t go by
steamboat, either; went by the train.”
Up in this region we met massed acres of lumber rafts coming
down—but not floating leisurely along, in the old-fashioned way,
manned with joyous and reckless crews of fiddling, song-singing,
whiskey-drinking, breakdown-dancing rapscallions; no, the whole
thing was shoved swiftly along by a powerful stern-wheeler,
modern fashion, and the small crews were quiet, orderly men, of a
sedate business aspect, with not a suggestion of romance about
them anywhere.
Along here, somewhere, on a black night, we ran some
exceedingly narrow and intricate island-chutes by aid of the
electric light. Behind was solid blackness—a crackless bank of
it; ahead, a narrow elbow of water, curving between dense walls
of foliage that almost touched our bows on both sides; and here
every individual leaf, and every individual ripple stood out in
its natural color, and flooded with a glare as of noonday
intensified. The effect was strange, and fine, and very
striking.
We passed Prairie du Chien, another of Father Marquette’s
camping-places; and after some hours of progress through varied
and beautiful scenery, reached La Crosse. Here is a town of
twelve or thirteen thousand population, with electric lighted
streets, and with blocks of buildings which are stately enough,
and also architecturally fine enough, to command respect in any
city. It is a choice town, and we made satisfactory use of the
hour allowed us, in roaming it over, though the weather was
rainier than necessary.
Chapter 59
Legends and Scenery
WE
added several passengers to our list, at La Crosse; among
others an old gentleman who had come to this north-western region
with the early settlers, and was familiar with every part of it.
Pardonably proud of it, too. He said—
“You’ll find scenery between here and St. Paul that can give
the Hudson points. You’ll have the Queen’s Bluff—seven hundred
feet high, and just as imposing a spectacle as you can find
anywheres; and Trempeleau Island, which isn’t like any other
island in America, I believe, for it is a gigantic mountain, with
precipitous sides, and is full of Indian traditions, and used to
be full of rattlesnakes; if you catch the sun just right there,
you will have a picture that will stay with you. And above Winona
you’ll have lovely prairies; and then come the Thousand Islands,
too beautiful for anything; green? why you never saw foliage so
green, nor packed so thick; it’s like a thousand plush cushions
afloat on a looking-glass—when the water “s still; and then the
monstrous bluffs on both sides of the river—ragged, rugged,
dark-complected—just the frame that’s wanted; you always want a
strong frame, you know, to throw up the nice points of a delicate
picture and make them stand out.”
The old gentleman also told us a touching Indian legend or
two—but not very powerful ones.
After this excursion into history, he came back to the
scenery, and described it, detail by detail, from the Thousand
Islands to St. Paul; naming its names with such facility,
tripping along his theme with such nimble and confident ease,
slamming in a three-ton word, here and there, with such a
complacent air
of “t isn’t-anything,-I-can-do-it-any-time-I-want-to, and letting
off fine surprises of lurid eloquence at
such judicious intervals, that I presently began to suspect—
But no matter what I began to suspect. Hear him—
“Ten miles above Winona we come to Fountain City, nestling
sweetly at the feet of cliffs that lift their awful fronts,
Jovelike, toward the blue depths of heaven, bathing them in
virgin atmospheres that have known no other contact save that of
angels” wings.
“And next we glide through silver waters, amid lovely and
stupendous aspects of nature that attune our hearts to adoring
admiration, about twelve miles, and strike Mount Vernon, six
hundred feet high, with romantic ruins of a once first-class
hotel perched far among the cloud shadows that mottle its dizzy
heights—sole remnant of once-flourishing Mount Vernon, town of
early days, now desolate and utterly deserted.
“And so we move on. Past Chimney Rock we fly—noble shaft of
six hundred feet; then just before landing at Minnieska our
attention is attracted by a most striking promontory rising over
five hundred feet—the ideal mountain pyramid. Its conic
shape—thickly-wooded surface girding its sides, and its apex
like that of a cone, cause the spectator to wonder at nature’s
workings. From its dizzy heights superb views of the forests,
streams, bluffs, hills and dales below and beyond for miles are
brought within its focus. What grander river scenery can be
conceived, as we gaze upon this enchanting landscape, from the
uppermost point of these bluffs upon the valleys below? The
primeval wildness and awful loneliness of these sublime creations
of nature and nature’s God, excite feelings of unbounded
admiration, and the recollection of which can never be effaced
from the memory, as we view them in any direction.
“Next we have the Lion’s Head and the Lioness’s Head, carved
by nature’s hand, to adorn and dominate the beauteous stream; and
then anon the river widens, and a most charming and magnificent
view of the valley before us suddenly bursts upon our vision;
rugged hills, clad with verdant forests from summit to base,
level prairie lands, holding in their lap the beautiful Wabasha,
City of the Healing Waters, puissant foe of Bright’s disease, and
that grandest conception of nature’s works, incomparable Lake
Pepin—these constitute a picture whereon the tourist’s eye may
gaze uncounted hours, with rapture unappeased and
unappeasable.
“And so we glide along; in due time encountering those
majestic domes, the mighty Sugar Loaf, and the sublime Maiden’s
Rock—which latter, romantic superstition has invested with a
voice; and oft-times as the birch canoe glides near, at twilight,
the dusky paddler fancies he hears the soft sweet music of the
long-departed Winona, darling of Indian song and story.
“Then Frontenac looms upon our vision, delightful resort of
jaded summer tourists; then progressive Red Wing; and Diamond
Bluff, impressive and preponderous in its lone sublimity; then
Prescott and the St. Croix; and anon we see bursting upon us the
domes and steeples of St. Paul, giant young chief of the North,
marching with seven-league stride in the van of progress,
banner-bearer of the highest and newest civilization, carving his
beneficent way with the tomahawk of commercial enterprise,
sounding the warwhoop of Christian culture, tearing off the
reeking scalp of sloth and superstition to plant there the
steam-plow and the school-house—ever in his front stretch arid
lawlessness, ignorance, crime, despair; ever in his wake bloom
the jail, the gallows, and the pulpit; and ever—”
“Have you ever traveled with a panorama?”
“I have formerly served in that capacity.”
My suspicion was confirmed.
“Do you still travel with it?”
“No, she is laid up till the fall season opens. I am helping
now to work up the materials for a Tourist’s Guide which the St.
Louis and St. Paul Packet Company are going to issue this summer
for the benefit of travelers who go by that line.”
“When you were talking of Maiden’s Rock, you spoke of the
long-departed Winona, darling of Indian song and story. Is she
the maiden of the rock?—and are the two connected by
legend?”
“Yes, and a very tragic and painful one. Perhaps the most
celebrated, as well as the most pathetic, of all the legends of
the Mississippi.”
We asked him to tell it. He dropped out of his conversational
vein and back into his lecture-gait without an effort, and rolled
on as follows—
“A little distance above Lake City is a famous point known as
Maiden’s Rock, which is not only a picturesque spot, but is full
of romantic interest from the event which gave it its name, Not
many years ago this locality was a favorite resort for the Sioux
Indians on account of the fine fishing and hunting to be had
there, and large numbers of them were always to be found in this
locality. Among the families which used to resort here, was one
belonging to the tribe of Wabasha. We-no-na (first-born) was the
name of a maiden who had plighted her troth to a lover belonging
to the same band. But her stern parents had promised her hand to
another, a famous warrior, and insisted on her wedding him. The
day was fixed by her parents, to her great grief. She appeared to
accede to the proposal and accompany them to the rock, for the
purpose of gathering flowers for the feast. On reaching the rock,
We-no-na ran to its summit and standing on its edge upbraided her
parents who were below, for their cruelty, and then singing a
death-dirge, threw herself from the precipice and dashed them in
pieces on the rock below.”
“Dashed who in pieces—her parents?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it certainly was a tragic business, as you say. And
moreover, there is a startling kind of dramatic surprise about it
which I was not looking for. It is a distinct improvement upon
the threadbare form of Indian legend. There are fifty Lover’s
Leaps along the Mississippi from whose summit disappointed Indian
girls have jumped, but this is the only jump in the lot hat
turned out in the right and satisfactory way. What became of
Winona?”
“She was a good deal jarred up and jolted: but she got herself
together and disappeared before the coroner reached the fatal
spot; and “tis said she sought and married her true love, and
wandered with him to some distant clime, where she lived happy
ever after, her gentle spirit mellowed and chastened by the
romantic incident which had so early deprived her of the sweet
guidance of a mother’s love and a father’s protecting arm, and
thrown her, all unfriended, upon the cold charity of a censorious
world.”
I was glad to hear the lecturer’s description of the scenery,
for it assisted my appreciation of what I saw of it, and enabled
me to imagine such of it as we lost by the intrusion of
night.
As the lecturer remarked, this whole region is blanketed with
Indian tales and traditions. But I reminded him that people
usually merely mention this fact—doing it in a way to make a
body’s mouth water—and judiciously stopped there. Why? Because
the impression left, was that these tales were full of incident
and imagination—a pleasant impression which would be promptly
dissipated if the tales were told. I showed him a lot of this
sort of literature which I had been collecting, and he confessed
that it was poor stuff, exceedingly sorry rubbish; and I ventured
to add that the legends which he had himself told us were of this
character, with the single exception of the admirable story of
Winona. He granted these facts, but said that if I would hunt up
Mr. Schoolcraft’s book, published near fifty years ago, and now
doubtless out of print, I would find some Indian inventions in it
that were very far from being barren of incident and imagination;
that the tales in Hiawatha were of this sort, and they came from
Schoolcraft’s book; and that there were others in the same book
which Mr. Longfellow could have turned into verse with good
effect. For instance, there was the legend of “The Undying Head.”
He could not tell it, for many of the details had grown dim in
his memory; but he would recommend me to find it and enlarge my
respect for the Indian imagination. He said that this tale, and
most of the others in the book, were current among the Indians
along this part of the Mississippi when he first came here; and
that the contributors to Schoolcraft’s book had got them directly
from Indian lips, and had written them down with strict
exactness, and without embellishments of their own.
I have found the book. The lecturer was right. There are
several legends in it which confirm what he said. I will offer
two of them—’The Undying Head,” and “Peboan and Seegwun, an
Allegory of the Seasons.” The latter is used in Hiawatha; but it
is worth reading in the original form, if only that one may see
how effective a genuine poem can be without the helps and graces
of poetic measure and rhythm—
PEBOAN AND SEEGWUN.
An old man was sitting alone in his lodge, by the side of a
frozen stream. It was the close of winter, and his fire was
almost out, He appeared very old and very desolate. His locks
were white with age, and he trembled in every joint. Day after
day passed in solitude, and he heard nothing but the sound of the
tempest, sweeping before it the new-fallen snow.
One day, as his fire was just dying, a handsome young man
approached and entered his dwelling. His cheeks were red with the
blood of youth, his eyes sparkled with animation, and a smile
played upon his lips. He walked with a light and quick step. His
forehead was bound with a wreath of sweet grass, in place of a
warrior’s frontlet, and he carried a bunch of flowers in his
hand.
“Ah, my son,” said the old man, “I am happy to see you. Come
in. Come and tell me of your adventures, and what strange lands
you have been to see. Let us pass the night together. I will tell
you of my prowess and exploits, and what I can perform. You shall
do the same, and we will amuse ourselves.”
He then drew from his sack a curiously wrought antique pipe,
and having filled it with tobacco, rendered mild by a mixture of
certain leaves, handed it to his guest. When this ceremony was
concluded they began to speak.
“I blow my breath,” said the old man, “and the stream stands
still. The water becomes stiff and hard as clear stone.”
“I breathe,” said the young man, “and flowers spring up over
the plain.”
“I shake my locks,” retorted the old man, “and snow covers the
land. The leaves fall from the trees at my command, and my breath
blows them away. The birds get up from the water, and fly to a
distant land. The animals hide themselves from my breath, and the
very ground becomes as hard as flint.”
“I shake my ringlets,” rejoined the young man, “and warm
showers of soft rain fall upon the earth. The plants lift up
their heads out of the earth, like the eyes of children
glistening with delight. My voice recalls the birds. The warmth
of my breath unlocks the streams. Music fills the groves wherever
I walk, and all nature rejoices.”
At length the sun began to rise. A gentle warmth came over the
place. The tongue of the old man became silent. The robin and
bluebird began to sing on the top of the lodge. The stream began
to murmur by the door, and the fragrance of growing herbs and
flowers came softly on the vernal breeze.
Daylight fully revealed to the young man the character of his
entertainer. When he looked upon him, he had the icy visage of
Peboan.
Streams began to flow from his eyes.
As the sun increased, he grew less and less in stature, and anon
had melted completely away. Nothing remained on the place of his
lodge-fire but the
miskodeed,
a
small white flower, with a pink border, which is one of the
earliest species of northern plants.
“The Undying Head” is a rather long tale, but it makes up in
weird conceits, fairy-tale prodigies, variety of incident, and
energy of movement, for what it
lacks in brevity.
Chapter 60
Speculations and Conclusions
WE
reached St. Paul, at the head of navigation of the
Mississippi, and there our voyage of two thousand miles from New
Orleans ended. It is about a ten-day trip by steamer. It can
probably be done quicker by rail. I judge so because I know that
one may go by rail from St. Louis to Hannibal—a distance of at
least a hundred and twenty miles—in seven hours. This is better
than walking; unless one is in a hurry.
The season being far advanced when we were in New Orleans, the
roses and magnolia blossoms were falling; but here in St. Paul it
was the snow, In New Orleans we had caught an occasional
withering breath from over a crater, apparently; here in St. Paul
we caught a frequent benumbing one from over a glacier,
apparently.
But I wander from my theme. St. Paul is a wonderful town. It
is put together in solid blocks of honest brick and stone, and
has the air of intending to stay. Its post-office was established
thirty-six years ago; and by and by, when the postmaster received
a letter, he carried it to Washington, horseback, to inquire what
was to be done with it. Such is the legend. Two frame houses were
built that year, and several persons were added to the
population. A recent number of the leading St. Paul paper, the
“Pioneer Press,” gives some statistics which furnish a vivid
contrast to that old state of things, to wit: Population, autumn
of the present year (1882), 71,000; number of letters handled,
first half of the year, 1,209,387; number of houses built during
three-quarters of the year, 989; their cost, $3,186,000. The
increase of letters over the corresponding six months of last
year was fifty per cent. Last year the new buildings added to the
city cost above $4,500,000. St. Paul’s strength lies in her
commerce—I mean his commerce. He is a manufacturing city, of
course—all the cities of that region are—but he is peculiarly
strong in the matter of commerce. Last year his jobbing trade
amounted to upwards of $52,000,000.
He has a custom-house, and is building a costly capitol to
replace the one recently burned—for he is the capital of the
State. He has churches without end; and not the cheap poor kind,
but the kind that the rich Protestant puts up, the kind that the
poor Irish “hired-girl” delights to erect. What a passion for
building majestic churches the Irish hired-girl has. It is a fine
thing for our architecture but too often we enjoy her stately
fanes without giving her a grateful thought. In fact, instead of
reflecting that “every brick and every stone in this beautiful
edifice represents an ache or a pain, and a handful of sweat, and
hours of heavy fatigue, contributed by the back and forehead and
bones of poverty,” it is our habit to forget these things
entirely, and merely glorify the mighty temple itself, without
vouchsafing one praiseful thought to its humble builder, whose
rich heart and withered purse it symbolizes.
This is a land of libraries and schools. St. Paul has three
public libraries, and they contain, in the aggregate, some forty
thousand books. He has one hundred and sixteen school-houses, and
pays out more than seventy thousand dollars a year in teachers’
salaries.
There is an unusually fine railway station; so large is it, in
fact, that it seemed somewhat overdone, in the matter of size, at
first; but at the end of a few months it was perceived that the
mistake was distinctly the other way. The error is to be
corrected.
The town stands on high ground; it is about seven hundred feet
above the sea level. It is so high that a wide view of river and
lowland is offered from its streets.
It is a very wonderful town indeed, and is not finished yet.
All the streets are obstructed with building material, and this
is being compacted into houses as fast as possible, to make room
for more—for other people are anxious to build, as soon as they
can get the use of the streets to pile up their bricks and stuff
in.
How solemn and beautiful is the thought, that the earliest
pioneer of civilization, the van-leader of civilization, is never
the steamboat, never the railroad, never the newspaper, never the
Sabbath-school, never the missionary—but always whiskey! Such is
the case. Look history over; you will see. The missionary comes
after the whiskey—I mean he arrives after the whiskey has
arrived; next comes the poor immigrant, with ax and hoe and
rifle; next, the trader; next, the miscellaneous rush; next, the
gambler, the desperado, the highwayman, and all their kindred in
sin of both sexes; and next, the smart chap who has bought up an
old grant that covers all the land; this brings the lawyer tribe;
the vigilance committee brings the undertaker. All these
interests bring the newspaper; the newspaper starts up politics
and a railroad; all hands turn to and build a church and a
jail—and behold, civilization is established for ever in the
land. But whiskey, you see, was the van-leader in this
beneficent work. It always is. It was like a foreigner—and
excusable in a foreigner—to be ignorant of this great truth, and
wander off into astronomy to borrow a symbol. But if he had been
conversant with the facts, he would have said—
Westward the Jug of Empire takes its way.
This great van-leader arrived upon the ground which St. Paul
now occupies, in June 1837. Yes, at that date, Pierre Parrant, a
Canadian, built the first cabin, uncorked his jug, and began to
sell whiskey to the Indians. The result is before us.
All that I have said of the newness, briskness, swift
progress, wealth, intelligence, fine and substantial
architecture, and general slash and go, and energy of St. Paul,
will apply to his near neighbor, Minneapolis—with the addition
that the latter is the bigger of the two cities.
These extraordinary towns were ten miles apart, a few months
ago, but were growing so fast that they may possibly be joined
now, and getting along under a single mayor. At any rate, within
five years from now there will be at least such a substantial
ligament of buildings stretching between them and uniting them
that a stranger will not be able to tell where the one Siamese
twin leaves off and the other begins. Combined, they will then
number a population of two hundred and fifty thousand, if they
continue to grow as they are now growing. Thus, this center of
population at the head of Mississippi navigation, will then begin
a rivalry as to numbers, with that center of population at the
foot of it—New Orleans.
Minneapolis is situated at the falls of St. Anthony, which
stretch across the river, fifteen hundred feet, and have a fall
of eighty-two feet—a waterpower which, by art, has been made of
inestimable value, business-wise, though somewhat to the damage
of the Falls as a spectacle, or as a background against which to
get your photograph taken.
Thirty flouring-mills turn out two million barrels of the very
choicest of flour every year; twenty sawmills produce two hundred
million feet of lumber annually; then there are woolen mills,
cotton mills, paper and oil mills; and sash, nail, furniture,
barrel, and other factories, without number, so to speak. The
great flouring-mills here and at St. Paul use the “new process”
and mash the wheat by rolling, instead of grinding it.
Sixteen railroads meet in Minneapolis, and sixty-five
passenger trains arrive and depart daily. In this place, as in
St. Paul, journalism thrives. Here there are three great dailies,
ten weeklies, and three monthlies.
There is a university, with four hundred students—and, better
still, its good efforts are not confined to enlightening the one
sex. There are sixteen public schools, with buildings which cost
$500,000; there are six thousand pupils and one hundred and
twenty-eight teachers. There are also seventy churches existing,
and a lot more projected. The banks aggregate a capital of
$3,000,000, and the wholesale jobbing trade of the town amounts
to $50,000,000 a year.
Near St. Paul and Minneapolis are several points of
interest—Fort Snelling, a fortress occupying a river-bluff a
hundred feet high; the falls of Minnehaha, White-bear Lake, and
so forth. The beautiful falls of Minnehaha are sufficiently
celebrated—they do not need a lift from me, in that direction.
The White-bear Lake is less known. It is a lovely sheet of water,
and is being utilized as a summer resort by the wealth and
fashion of the State. It has its club-house, and its hotel, with
the modern improvements and conveniences; its fine summer
residences; and plenty of fishing, hunting, and pleasant drives.
There are a dozen minor summer resorts around about St. Paul and
Minneapolis, but the White-bear Lake is the resort. Connected
with White-bear Lake is a most idiotic Indian legend. I would
resist the temptation to print it here, if I could, but the task
is beyond my strength. The guide-book names the preserver of the
legend, and compliments his “facile pen.” Without further comment
or delay then, let us turn the said facile pen loose upon the
reader—
A LEGEND OF WHITE-BEAR LAKE.
Every spring, for perhaps a century, or as long as there has
been a nation of red men, an island in the middle of White-bear
Lake has been visited by a band of Indians for the purpose of
making maple sugar.
Tradition says that many springs ago, while upon this island,
a young warrior loved and wooed the daughter of his chief, and it
is said, also, the maiden loved the warrior. He had again and
again been refused her hand by her parents, the old chief
alleging that he was no brave, and his old consort called him a
woman!
The sun had again set upon the “sugar-bush,” and the bright
moon rose high in the bright blue heavens, when the young warrior
took down his flute and went out alone, once more to sing the
story of his love, the mild breeze gently moved the two gay
feathers in his head-dress, and as he mounted on the trunk of a
leaning tree, the damp snow fell from his feet heavily. As he
raised his flute to his lips, his blanket slipped from his
well-formed shoulders, and lay partly on the snow beneath. He
began his weird, wild love-song, but soon felt that he was cold,
and as he reached back for his blanket, some unseen hand laid it
gently on his shoulders; it was the hand of his love, his
guardian angel. She took her place beside him, and for the
present they were happy; for the Indian has a heart to love, and
in this pride he is as noble as in his own freedom, which makes
him the child of the forest. As the legend runs, a large
white-bear, thinking, perhaps, that polar snows and dismal winter
weather extended everywhere, took up his journey southward. He at
length approached the northern shore of the lake which now bears
his name, walked down the bank and made his way noiselessly
through the deep heavy snow toward the island. It was the same
spring ensuing that the lovers met. They had left their first
retreat, and were now seated among the branches of a large elm
which hung far over the lake. (The same tree is still standing,
and excites universal curiosity and interest.) For fear of being
detected, they talked almost in a whisper, and now, that they
might get back to camp in good time and thereby avoid suspicion,
they were just rising to return, when the maiden uttered a shriek
which was heard at the camp, and bounding toward the young brave,
she caught his blanket, but missed the direction of her foot and
fell, bearing the blanket with her into the great arms of the
ferocious monster. Instantly every man, woman, and child of the
band were upon the bank, but all unarmed. Cries and wailings went
up from every mouth. What was to be done’? In the meantime this
white and savage beast held the breathless maiden in his huge
grasp, and fondled with his precious prey as if he were used to
scenes like this. One deafening yell from the lover warrior is
heard above the cries of hundreds of his tribe, and dashing away
to his wigwam he grasps his faithful knife, returns almost at a
single bound to the scene of fear and fright, rushes out along
the leaning tree to the spot where his treasure fell, and
springing with the fury of a mad panther, pounced upon his prey.
The animal turned, and with one stroke of his huge paw brought
the lovers heart to heart, but the next moment the warrior, with
one plunge of the blade of his knife, opened the crimson sluices
of death, and the dying bear relaxed his hold.
That night there was no more sleep for the band or the lovers,
and as the young and the old danced about the carcass of the dead
monster, the gallant warrior was presented with another plume,
and ere another moon had set he had a living treasure added to
his heart. Their children for many years played upon the skin of
the white-bear—from which the lake derives its name—and the
maiden and the brave remembered long the fearful scene and rescue
that made them one, for Kis-se-me-pa and Ka-go-ka could never
forget their fearful encounter with the huge monster that came so
near sending them to the happy hunting-ground.
It is a perplexing business. First, she fell down out of the
tree—she and the blanket; and the bear caught her and fondled
her—her and the blanket; then she fell up into the tree
again—leaving the blanket; meantime the lover goes war-whooping
home and comes back “heeled,” climbs the tree, jumps down on the
bear, the girl jumps down after him—apparently, for she was up
the tree—resumes her place in the bear’s arms along with the
blanket, the lover rams his knife into the bear, and saves—whom,
the blanket? No—nothing of the sort. You get yourself all worked
up and excited about that blanket, and then all of a sudden, just
when a happy climax seems imminent you are let down flat—nothing
saved but the girl. Whereas, one is not interested in the girl;
she is not the prominent feature of the legend. Nevertheless,
there you are left, and there you must remain; for if you live a
thousand years you will never know who got the blanket. A dead
man could get up a better legend than this one. I don’t mean a
fresh dead man either; I mean a man that’s been dead weeks and
weeks.
We struck the home-trail now, and in a few hours were in that
astonishing Chicago—a city where they are always rubbing the
lamp, and fetching up the genii, and contriving and achieving new
impossibilities. It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try
to keep up with Chicago—she outgrows his prophecies faster than
he can make them. She is always a novelty; for she is never the
Chicago you saw when you passed through the last time. The
Pennsylvania road rushed us to New York without missing schedule
time ten minutes anywhere on the route; and there ended one of
the most enjoyable five-thousand-mile journeys I have ever had
the good fortune to make.
APPENDIX.
A.
[From the New Orleans Times-Democrat, of March 29, 1882.]
VOYAGE OF THE TIMES-DEMOCRAT’S RELIEF BOAT THROUGH THE
INUNDATED REGIONS
IT
was nine o’clock Thursday morning when the “Susie” left the
Mississippi and entered Old River, or what is now called the
mouth of the Red. Ascending on the left, a flood was pouring in
through and over the levees on the Chandler plantation, the most
northern point in Pointe Coupée parish. The water completely
covered the place, although the levees had given way but a short
time before. The stock had been gathered in a large flat-boat,
where, without food, as we passed, the animals were huddled
together, waiting for a boat to tow them off. On the right-hand
side of the river is Turnbull’s Island, and on it is a large
plantation which formerly was pronounced one of the most fertile
in the State. The water has hitherto allowed it to go scot-free
in usual floods, but now broad sheets of water told only where
fields were. The top of the protecting levee could be seen here
and there, but nearly all of it was submerged.
The trees have put on a greener foliage since the water has
poured in, and the woods look bright and fresh, but this pleasant
aspect to the eye is neutralized by the interminable waste of
water. We pass mile after mile, and it is nothing but trees
standing up to their branches in water. A water-turkey now and
again rises and flies ahead into the long avenue of silence. A
pirogue sometimes flits from the bushes and crosses the Red River
on its way out to the Mississippi, but the sad-faced paddlers
never turn their heads to look at our boat. The puffing of the
boat is music in this gloom, which affects one most curiously. It
is not the gloom of deep forests or dark caverns, but a peculiar
kind of solemn silence and impressive awe that holds one perforce
to its recognition. We passed two negro families on a raft tied
up in the willows this morning. They were evidently of the
well-to-do class, as they had a supply of meal and three or four
hogs with them. Their rafts were about twenty feet square, and in
front of an improvised shelter earth had been placed, on which
they built their fire.
The current running down the Atchafalaya was very swift, the
Mississippi showing a predilection in that direction, which needs
only to be seen to enforce the opinion of that river’s desperate
endeavors to find a short way to the Gulf. Small boats, skiffs,
pirogues, etc., are in great demand, and many have been stolen by
piratical negroes, who take them where they will bring the
greatest price. From what was told me by Mr. C. P. Ferguson, a
planter near Red River Landing, whose place has just gone under,
there is much suffering in the rear of that place. The negroes
had given up all thoughts of a crevasse there, as the upper levee
had stood so long, and when it did come they were at its mercy.
On Thursday a number were taken out of trees and off of cabin
roofs and brought in, many yet remaining.
One does not appreciate the sight of earth until he has
traveled through a flood. At sea one does not expect or look for
it, but here, with fluttering leaves, shadowy forest aisles,
house-tops barely visible, it is expected. In fact a grave-yard,
if the mounds were above water, would be appreciated. The river
here is known only because there is an opening in the trees, and
that is all. It is in width, from Fort Adams on the left bank of
the Mississippi to the bank of Rapides Parish, a distance of
about sixty miles. A large portion of this was under cultivation,
particularly along the Mississippi and back of the Red. When Red
River proper was entered, a strong current was running directly
across it, pursuing the same direction as that of the
Mississippi.
After a run of some hours, Black River was reached. Hardly was
it entered before signs of suffering became visible. All the
willows along the banks were stripped of their leaves. One man,
whom your correspondent spoke to, said that he had had one
hundred and fifty head of cattle and one hundred head of hogs. At
the first appearance of water he had started to drive them to the
high lands of Avoyelles, thirty-five miles off, but he lost fifty
head of the beef cattle and sixty hogs. Black River is quite
picturesque, even if its shores are under water. A dense growth
of ash, oak, gum, and hickory make the shores almost
impenetrable, and where one can get a view down some avenue in
the trees, only the dim outlines of distant trunks can be barely
distinguished in the gloom.
A few miles up this river, the depth of water on the banks was
fully eight feet, and on all sides could be seen, still holding
against the strong current, the tops of cabins. Here and there
one overturned was surrounded by drift-wood, forming the nucleus
of possibly some future island.
In order to save coal, as it was impossible to get that fuel
at any point to be touched during the expedition, a look-out was
kept for a wood-pile. On rounding a point a pirogue, skilfully
paddled by a youth, shot out, and in its bow was a girl of
fifteen, of fair face, beautiful black eyes, and demure manners.
The boy asked for a paper, which was thrown to him, and the
couple pushed their tiny craft out into the swell of the
boat.
Presently a little girl, not certainly over twelve years,
paddled out in the smallest little canoe and handled it with all
the deftness of an old voyageur. The little one looked more like
an Indian than a white child, and laughed when asked if she were
afraid. She had been raised in a pirogue and could go anywhere.
She was bound out to pick willow leaves for the stock, and she
pointed to a house near by with water three inches deep on the
floors. At its back door was moored a raft about thirty feet
square, with a sort of fence built upon it, and inside of this
some sixteen cows and twenty hogs were standing. The family did
not complain, except on account of losing their stock, and
promptly brought a supply of wood in a flat.
From this point to the Mississippi River, fifteen miles, there
is not a spot of earth above water, and to the westward for
thirty-five miles there is nothing but the river’s flood. Black
River had risen during Thursday, the 23d, 13⁄4
inches, and was going up at night still. As we progress up the
river habitations become more frequent, but are yet still miles
apart. Nearly all of them are deserted, and the out-houses
floated off. To add to the gloom, almost every living thing seems
to have departed, and not a whistle of a bird nor the bark of the
squirrel can be heard in this solitude. Sometimes a morose gar
will throw his tail aloft and disappear in the river, but beyond
this everything is quiet—the quiet of dissolution. Down the
river floats now a neatly whitewashed hen-house, then a cluster
of neatly split fence-rails, or a door and a bloated carcass,
solemnly guarded by a pair of buzzards, the only bird to be seen,
which feast on the carcass as it bears them along. A
picture-frame in which there was a cheap lithograph of a soldier
on horseback, as it floated on told of some hearth invaded by the
water and despoiled of this ornament.
At dark, as it was not prudent to run, a place alongside the
woods was hunted and to a tall gum-tree the boat was made fast
for the night.
A pretty quarter of the moon threw a pleasant light over
forest and river, making a picture that would be a delightful
piece of landscape study, could an artist only hold it down to
his canvas. The motion of the engines had ceased, the puffing of
the escaping steam was stilled, and the enveloping silence closed
upon us, and such silence it was! Usually in a forest at night
one can hear the piping of frogs, the hum of insects, or the
dropping of limbs; but here nature was dumb. The dark recesses,
those aisles into this cathedral, gave forth no sound, and even
the ripplings of the current die away.
At daylight Friday morning all hands were up, and up the Black
we started. The morning was a beautiful one, and the river, which
is remarkably straight, put on its loveliest garb. The blossoms
of the haw perfumed the air deliciously, and a few birds whistled
blithely along the banks. The trees were larger, and the forest
seemed of older growth than below. More fields were passed than
nearer the mouth, but the same scene presented
itself—smoke-houses drifting out in the pastures, negro quarters
anchored in confusion against some oak, and the modest residence
just showing its eaves above water. The sun came up in a glory of
carmine, and the trees were brilliant in their varied shades of
green. Not a foot of soil is to be seen anywhere, and the water
is apparently growing deeper and deeper, for it reaches up to the
branches of the largest trees. All along, the bordering willows
have been denuded of leaves, showing how long the people have
been at work gathering this fodder for their animals. An old man
in a pirogue was asked how the willow leaves agreed with his
cattle. He stopped in his work, and with an ominous shake of his
head replied: “Well, sir, it “s enough to keep warmth in their
bodies and that’s all we expect, but it’s hard on the hogs,
particularly the small ones. They is dropping off powerful fast.
But what can you do? It “s all we’ve got.”
At thirty miles above the mouth of Black River the water
extends from Natchez on the Mississippi across to the pine hills
of Louisiana, a distance of seventy-three miles, and there is
hardly a spot that is not ten feet under it. The tendency of the
current up the Black is toward the west. In fact, so much is this
the case, the waters of Red River have been driven down from
toward the Calcasieu country, and the waters of the Black enter
the Red some fifteen miles above the mouth of the former, a thing
never before seen by even the oldest steamboatmen. The water now
in sight of us is entirely from the Mississippi.
Up to Trinity, or rather Troy, which is but a short distance
below, the people have nearly all moved out, those remaining
having enough for their present personal needs. Their cattle,
though, are suffering and dying off quite fast, as the
confinement on rafts and the food they get breeds disease.
After a short stop we started, and soon came to a section
where there were many open fields and cabins thickly scattered
about. Here were seen more pictures of distress. On the inside of
the houses the inmates had built on boxes a scaffold on which
they placed the furniture. The bed-posts were sawed off on top,
as the ceiling was not more than four feet from the improvised
floor. The buildings looked very insecure, and threatened every
moment to float off. Near the houses were cattle standing breast
high in the water, perfectly impassive. They did not move in
their places, but stood patiently waiting for help to come. The
sight was a distressing one, and the poor creatures will be sure
to die unless speedily rescued. Cattle differ from horses in this
peculiar quality. A horse, after finding no relief comes, will
swim off in search of food, whereas a beef will stand in its
tracks until with exhaustion it drops in the water and
drowns.
At half-past twelve o’clock a hail was given from a flat-boat
inside the line of the bank. Rounding to we ran alongside, and
General York stepped aboard. He was just then engaged in getting
off stock, and welcomed the “Times-Democrat” boat heartily, as he
said there was much need for her. He said that the distress was
not exaggerated in the least. People were in a condition it was
difficult even for one to imagine. The water was so high there
was great danger of their houses being swept away. It had already
risen so high that it was approaching the eaves, and when it
reaches this point there is always imminent risk of their being
swept away. If this occurs, there will be great loss of life. The
General spoke of the gallant work of many of the people in their
attempts to save their stock, but thought that fully twenty-five
per cent. had perished. Already twenty-five hundred people had
received rations from Troy, on Black River, and he had towed out
a great many cattle, but a very great quantity remained and were
in dire need. The water was now eighteen inches higher than in
1874, and there was no land between Vidalia and the hills of
Catahoula.
At two o’clock the “Susie” reached Troy, sixty-five miles
above the mouth of Black River. Here on the left comes in Little
River; just beyond that the Ouachita, and on the right the
Tensas. These three rivers form the Black River. Troy, or a
portion of it, is situated on and around three large Indian
mounds, circular in shape, which rise above the present water
about twelve feet. They are about one hundred and fifty feet in
diameter, and are about two hundred yards apart. The houses are
all built between these mounds, and hence are all flooded to a
depth of eighteen inches on their floors.
These elevations, built by the aborigines, hundreds of years
ago, are the only points of refuge for miles. When we arrived we
found them crowded with stock, all of which was thin and hardly
able to stand up. They were mixed together, sheep, hogs, horses,
mules, and cattle. One of these mounds has been used for many
years as the grave-yard, and to-day we saw attenuated cows lying
against the marble tomb-stones, chewing their cud in contentment,
after a meal of corn furnished by General York. Here, as below,
the remarkable skill of the women and girls in the management of
the smaller pirogues was noticed. Children were paddling about in
these most ticklish crafts with all the nonchalance of
adepts.
General York has put into operation a perfect system in regard
to furnishing relief. He makes a personal inspection of the place
where it is asked, sees what is necessary to be done, and then,
having two boats chartered, with flats, sends them promptly to
the place, when the cattle are loaded and towed to the pine hills
and uplands of Catahoula. He has made Troy his headquarters, and
to this point boats come for their supply of feed for cattle. On
the opposite side of Little River, which branches to the left out
of Black, and between it and the Ouachita, is situated the town
of Trinity, which is hourly threatened with destruction. It is
much lower than Troy, and the water is eight and nine feet deep
in the houses. A strong current sweeps through it, and it is
remarkable that all of its houses have not gone before. The
residents of both Troy and Trinity have been cared for, yet some
of their stock have to be furnished with food.
As soon as the “Susie” reached Troy, she was turned over to
General York, and placed at his disposition to carry out the work
of relief more rapidly. Nearly all her supplies were landed on
one of the mounds to lighten her, and she was headed down stream
to relieve those below. At Tom Hooper’s place, a few miles from
Troy, a large flat, with about fifty head of stock on board, was
taken in tow. The animals were fed, and soon regained some
strength. To-day we go on Little River, where the suffering is
greatest.
DOWN BLACK RIVER.
Saturday Evening, March 25.
We started down Black River quite early, under the direction
of General York, to bring out what stock could be reached. Going
down river a flat in tow was left in a central locality, and from
there men poled her back in the rear of plantations, picking up
the animals wherever found. In the loft of a gin-house there were
seventeen head found, and after a gangway was built they were led
down into the flat without difficulty. Taking a skiff with the
General, your reporter was pulled up to a little house of two
rooms, in which the water was standing two feet on the floors. In
one of the large rooms were huddled the horses and cows of the
place, while in the other the Widow Taylor and her son were
seated on a scaffold raised on the floor. One or two dug-outs
were drifting about in the roam ready to be put in service at any
time. When the flat was brought up, the side of the house was cut
away as the only means of getting the animals out, and the cattle
were driven on board the boat. General York, in this as in every
case, inquired if the family desired to leave, informing them
that Major Burke, of “The Times-Democrat,” has sent the “Susie”
up for that purpose. Mrs. Taylor said she thanked Major Burke,
but she would try and hold out. The remarkable tenacity of the
people here to their homes is beyond all comprehension. Just
below, at a point sixteen miles from Troy, information was
received that the house of Mr. Tom Ellis was in danger, and his
family were all in it. We steamed there immediately, and a sad
picture was presented. Looking out of the half of the window left
above water, was Mrs. Ellis, who is in feeble health, whilst at
the door were her seven children, the oldest not fourteen years.
One side of the house was given up to the work animals, some
twelve head, besides hogs. In the next room the family lived, the
water coming within two inches of the bed-rail. The stove was
below water, and the cooking was done on a fire on top of it. The
house threatened to give way at any moment: one end of it was
sinking, and, in fact, the building looked a mere shell. As the
boat rounded to, Mr. Ellis came out in a dug-out, and General
York told him that he had come to his relief; that “The
Times-Democrat” boat was at his service, and would remove his
family at once to the hills, and on Monday a flat would take out
his stock, as, until that time, they would be busy.
Notwithstanding the deplorable situation himself and family were
in, Mr. Ellis did not want to leave. He said he thought he would
wait until Monday, and take the risk of his house falling. The
children around the door looked perfectly contented, seeming to
care little for the danger they were in. These are but two
instances of the many. After weeks of privation and suffering,
people still cling to their houses and leave only when there is
not room between the water and the ceiling to build a scaffold on
which to stand. It seemed to be incomprehensible, yet the love
for the old place was stronger than that for safety.
After leaving the Ellis place, the next spot touched at was
the Oswald place. Here the flat was towed alongside the gin-house
where there were fifteen head standing in water; and yet, as they
stood on scaffolds, their heads were above the top of the
entrance. It was found impossible to get them out without cutting
away a portion of the front; and so axes were brought into
requisition and a gap made. After much labor the horses and mules
were securely placed on the flat.
At each place we stop there are always three, four, or more
dug-outs arriving, bringing information of stock in other places
in need. Notwithstanding the fact that a great many had driven a
part of their stock to the hills some time ago, there yet remains
a large quantity, which General York, who is working with
indomitable energy, will get landed in the pine hills by
Tuesday.
All along Black River the “Susie” has been visited by scores
of planters, whose tales are the repetition of those already
heard of suffering and loss. An old planter, who has lived on the
river since 1844, said there never was such a rise, and he was
satisfied more than one quarter of the stock has been lost.
Luckily the people cared first for their work stock, and when
they could find it horses and mules were housed in a place of
safety. The rise which still continues, and was two inches last
night, compels them to get them out to the hills; hence it is
that the work of General York is of such a great value. From
daylight to late at night he is going this way and that, cheering
by his kindly words and directing with calm judgment what is to
be done. One unpleasant story, of a certain merchant in New
Orleans, is told all along the river. It appears for some years
past the planters have been dealing with this individual, and
many of them had balances in his hands. When the overflow came
they wrote for coffee, for meal, and, in fact, for such little
necessities as were required. No response to these letters came,
and others were written, and yet these old customers, with
plantations under water, were refused even what was necessary to
sustain life. It is needless to say he is not popular now on Back
River.
The hills spoken of as the place of refuge for the people and
stock on Black River are in Catahoula parish, twenty-four miles
from Black River.
After filling the flat with cattle we took on board the family
of T. S. Hooper, seven in number, who could not longer remain in
their dwelling, and we are now taking them up Little River to the
hills.
THE FLOOD STILL RISING.
Troy, March 27, 1882, noon.
The flood here is rising about three and a half inches every
twenty-four hours, and rains have set in which will increase
this. General York feels now that our efforts ought to be
directed towards saving life, as the increase of the water has
jeopardized many houses. We intend to go up the Tensas in a few
minutes, and then we will return and go down Black River to take
off families. There is a lack of steam transportation here to
meet the emergency. The General has three boats chartered, with
flats in tow, but the demand for these to tow out stock is
greater than they can meet with promptness. All are working night
and day, and the “Susie” hardly stops for more than an hour
anywhere. The rise has placed Trinity in a dangerous plight, and
momentarily it is expected that some of the houses will float
off. Troy is a little higher, yet all are in the water. Reports
have come in that a woman and child have been washed away below
here, and two cabins floated off. Their occupants are the same
who refused to come off day before yesterday. One would not
believe the utter passiveness of the people.
As yet no news has been received of the steamer “Delia,” which
is supposed to be the one sunk in yesterday’s storm on Lake
Catahoula. She is due here now, but has not arrived. Even the
mail here is most uncertain, and this I send by skiff to Natchez
to get it to you. It is impossible to get accurate data as to
past crops, etc., as those who know much about the matter have
gone, and those who remain are not well versed in the production
of this section.
General York desires me to say that the amount of rations
formerly sent should be duplicated and sent at once. It is
impossible to make any estimate, for the people are fleeing to
the hills, so rapid is the rise. The residents here are in a
state of commotion that can only be appreciated when seen, and
complete demoralization has set in,
If rations are drawn for any particular section hereabouts,
they would not be certain to be distributed, so everything should
be sent to Troy as a center, and the General will have it
properly disposed of. He has sent for one hundred tents, and, if
all go to the hills who are in motion now, two hundred will be
required.
B.
THE
condition of this rich valley of the Lower Mississippi,
immediately after and since the war, constituted one of the
disastrous effects of war most to be deplored. Fictitious
property in slaves was not only righteously destroyed, but very
much of the work which had depended upon the slave labor was also
destroyed or greatly impaired, especially the levee system.
It might have been expected by those who have not investigated
the subject, that such important improvements as the construction
and maintenance of the levees would have been assumed at once by
the several States. But what can the State do where the people
are under subjection to rates of interest ranging from 18 to 30
per cent., and are also under the necessity of pledging their
crops in advance even of planting, at these rates, for the
privilege of purchasing all of their supplies at 100 per cent.
profit?
It has needed but little attention to make it perfectly
obvious that the control of the Mississippi River, if undertaken
at all, must be undertaken by the national government, and cannot
be compassed by States. The river must be treated as a unit; its
control cannot be compassed under a divided or separate system of
administration.
Neither are the States especially interested competent to
combine among themselves for the necessary operations. The work
must begin far up the river; at least as far as Cairo, if not
beyond; and must be conducted upon a consistent general plan
throughout the course of the river.
It does not need technical or scientific knowledge to
comprehend the elements of the case if one will give a little
time and attention to the subject, and when a Mississippi River
commission has been constituted, as the existing commission is,
of thoroughly able men of different walks in life, may it not be
suggested that their verdict in the case should be accepted as
conclusive, so far as any a priori theory of construction or
control can be considered conclusive?
It should be remembered that upon this board are General
Gilmore, General Comstock, and General Suter, of the United
States Engineers; Professor Henry Mitchell (the most competent
authority on the question of hydrography), of the United States
Coast Survey; B. B. Harrod, the State Engineer of Louisiana; Jas.
B. Eads, whose success with the jetties at New Orleans is a
warrant of his competency, and Judge Taylor, of Indiana.
It would be presumption on the part of any single man, however
skilled, to contest the judgment of such a board as this.
The method of improvement proposed by the commission is at
once in accord with the results of engineering experience and
with observations of nature where meeting our wants. As in nature
the growth of trees and their proneness where undermined to fall
across the slope and support the bank secures at some points a
fair depth of channel and some degree of permanence, so in the
project of the engineer the use of timber and brush and the
encouragement of forest growth are the main features. It is
proposed to reduce the width where excessive by brushwood dykes,
at first low, but raised higher and higher as the mud of the
river settles under their shelter, and finally slope them back at
the angle upon which willows will grow freely. In this work there
are many details connected with the forms of these shelter dykes,
their arrangements so as to present a series of settling basins,
etc., a description of which would only complicate the
conception. Through the larger part of the river works of
contraction will not be required, but nearly all the banks on the
concave side of the beds must be held against the wear of the
stream, and much of the opposite banks defended at critical
points. The works having in view this conservative object may be
generally designated works of revetment; and these also will be
largely of brushwood, woven in continuous carpets, or twined into
wire-netting. This veneering process has been successfully
employed on the Missouri River; and in some cases they have so
covered themselves with sediments, and have become so overgrown
with willows, that they may be regarded as permanent. In securing
these mats rubble-stone is to be used in small quantities, and in
some instances the dressed slope between high and low river will
have to be more or less paved with stone.
Any one who has been on the Rhine will have observed
operations not unlike those to which we have just referred; and,
indeed, most of the rivers of Europe flowing among their own
alluvia have required similar treatment in the interest of
navigation and agriculture.
The levee is the crowning work of bank revetment, although not
necessarily in immediate connection. It may be set back a short
distance from the revetted bank; but it is, in effect, the
requisite parapet. The flood river and the low river cannot be
brought into register, and compelled to unite in the excavation
of a single permanent channel, without a complete control of all
the stages; and even the abnormal rise must be provided against,
because this would endanger the levee, and once in force behind
the works of revetment would tear them also away.
Under the general principle that the local slope of a river is
the result and measure of the resistance of its bed, it is
evident that a narrow and deep stream should have less slope,
because it has less frictional surface in proportion to capacity;
i.e., less perimeter in proportion to area of cross section. The
ultimate effect of levees and revetments confining the floods and
bringing all the stages of the river into register is to deepen
the channel and let down the slope. The first effect of the
levees is to raise the surface; but this, by inducing greater
velocity of flow, inevitably causes an enlargement of section,
and if this enlargement is prevented from being made at the
expense of the banks, the bottom must give way and the form of
the waterway be so improved as to admit this flow with less rise.
The actual experience with levees upon the Mississippi River,
with no attempt to hold the banks, has been favorable, and no one
can doubt, upon the evidence furnished in the reports of the
commission, that if the earliest levees had been accompanied by
revetment of banks, and made complete, we should have to-day a
river navigable at low water, and an adjacent country safe from
inundation.
Of course it would be illogical to conclude that the
constrained river can ever lower its flood slope so as to make
levees unnecessary, but it is believed that, by this lateral
constraint, the river as a conduit may be so improved in form
that even those rare floods which result from the coincident
rising of many tributaries will find vent without destroying
levees of ordinary height. That the actual capacity of a channel
through alluvium depends upon its service during floods has been
often shown, but this capacity does not include anomalous, but
recurrent, floods.
It is hardly worth while to consider the projects for
relieving the Mississippi River floods by creating new outlets,
since these sensational propositions have commended themselves
only to unthinking minds, and have no support among engineers.
Were the river bed cast-iron, a resort to openings for surplus
waters might be a necessity; but as the bottom is yielding, and
the best form of outlet is a single deep channel, as realizing
the least ratio of perimeter to area of cross section, there
could not well be a more unphilosophical method of treatment than
the multiplication of avenues of escape.
In the foregoing statement the attempt has been made to
condense in as limited a space as the importance of the subject
would permit, the general elements of the problem, and the
general features of the proposed method of improvement which has
been adopted by the Mississippi River Commission.
The writer cannot help feeling that it is somewhat
presumptuous on his part to attempt to present the facts relating
to an enterprise which calls for the highest scientific skill;
but it is a matter which interests every citizen of the United
States, and is one of the methods of reconstruction which ought
to be approved. It is a war claim which implies no private gain,
and no compensation except for one of the cases of destruction
incident to war, which may well be repaired by the people of the
whole country.
Edward
Atkinson.
Boston, April 14, 1882.
C.
RECEPTION OF CAPTAIN BASIL HALL’S BOOK IN THE UNITED
STATES
HAVING
now arrived nearly at the end of our travels, I am
induced, ere I conclude, again to mention what I consider as one
of the most remarkable traits in the national character of the
Americans; namely, their exquisite sensitiveness and soreness
respecting everything said or written concerning them. Of this,
perhaps, the most remarkable example I can give is the effect
produced on nearly every class of readers by the appearance of
Captain Basil Hall’s “Travels in North America.” In fact, it was
a sort of moral earthquake, and the vibration it occasioned
through the nerves of the republic, from one corner of the Union
to the other, was by no means over when I left the country in
July 1831, a couple of years after the shock.
I was in Cincinnati when these volumes came out, but it was
not till July 1830, that I procured a copy of them. One
bookseller to whom I applied told me that he had had a few copies
before he understood the nature of the work, but that, after
becoming acquainted with it, nothing should induce him to sell
another. Other persons of his profession must, however, have been
less scrupulous; for the book was read in city, town, village,
and hamlet, steamboat, and stage-coach, and a sort of war-whoop
was sent forth perfectly unprecedented in my recollection upon
any occasion whatever.
An ardent desire for approbation, and a delicate sensitiveness
under censure, have always, I believe, been considered as amiable
traits of character; but the condition into which the appearance
of Captain Hall’s work threw the republic shows plainly that
these feelings, if carried to excess, produce a weakness which
amounts to imbecility.
It was perfectly astonishing to hear men who, on other
subjects, were of some judgment, utter their opinions upon this.
I never heard of any instance in which the commonsense generally
found in national criticism was so overthrown by passion. I do
not speak of the want of justice, and of fair and liberal
interpretation: these, perhaps, were hardly to be expected. Other
nations have been called thin-skinned, but the citizens of the
Union have, apparently, no skins at all; they wince if a breeze
blows over them, unless it be tempered with adulation. It was
not, therefore, very surprising that the acute and forcible
observations of a traveler they knew would be listened to should
be received testily. The extraordinary features of the business
were, first, the excess of the rage into which they lashed
themselves; and, secondly, the puerility of the inventions by
which they attempted to account for the severity with which they
fancied they had been treated.
Not content with declaring that the volumes contained no word
of truth, from beginning to end (which is an assertion I heard
made very nearly as often as they were mentioned), the whole
country set to work to discover the causes why Captain Hall had
visited the United States, and why he had published his book.
I have heard it said with as much precision and gravity as if
the statement had been conveyed by an official report, that
Captain Hall had been sent out by the British Government
expressly for the purpose of checking the growing admiration of
England for the Government of the United States,—that it was by
a commission from the treasury he had come, and that it was only
in obedience to orders that he had found anything to object
to.
I do not give this as the gossip of a coterie; I am persuaded
that it is the belief of a very considerable portion of the
country. So deep is the conviction of this singular people that
they cannot be seen without being admired, that they will not
admit the possibility that any one should honestly and sincerely
find aught to disapprove in them or their country.
The American Reviews are, many of them, I believe, well known
in England; I need not, therefore, quote them here, but I
sometimes wondered that they, none of them, ever thought of
translating Obadiah’s curse into classic American; if they had
done so, on placing (he, Basil Hall) between brackets, instead of
(he, Obadiah) it would have saved them a world of trouble.
I can hardly describe the curiosity with which I sat down at
length to peruse these tremendous volumes; still less can I do
justice to my surprise at their contents. To say that I found not
one exaggerated statement throughout the work is by no means
saying enough. It is impossible for any one who knows the country
not to see that Captain Hall earnestly sought out things to
admire and commend. When he praises, it is with evident pleasure;
and when he finds fault, it is with evident reluctance and
restraint, excepting where motives purely patriotic urge him to
state roundly what it is for the benefit of his country should be
known.
In fact, Captain Hall saw the country to the greatest possible
advantage. Furnished, of course, with letters of introduction to
the most distinguished individuals, and with the still more
influential recommendation of his own reputation, he was received
in full drawing-room style and state from one end of the Union
to the other. He saw the country in full dress, and had little or
no opportunity of judging of it unhouselled, unanointed,
unannealed, with all its imperfections on its head, as I and my
family too often had.
Captain Hall had certainly excellent opportunities of making
himself acquainted with the form of the government and the laws;
and of receiving, moreover, the best oral commentary upon them,
in conversation with the most distinguished citizens. Of these
opportunities he made excellent use; nothing important met his
eye which did not receive that sort of analytical attention which
an experienced and philosophical traveler alone can give. This
has made his volumes highly interesting and valuable; but I am
deeply persuaded, that were a man of equal penetration to visit
the United States with no other means of becoming acquainted with
the national character than the ordinary working-day intercourse
of life, he would conceive an infinitely lower idea of the moral
atmosphere of the country than Captain Hall appears to have done;
and the internal conviction on my mind is strong, that if Captain
Hall had not placed a firm restraint on himself, he must have
given expression to far deeper indignation than any he has
uttered against many points in the American character, with which
he shows from other circumstances that he was well acquainted.
His rule appears to have been to state just so much of the truth
as would leave on the mind of his readers a correct impression,
at the least cost of pain to the sensitive folks he was writing
about. He states his own opinions and feelings, and leaves it to
be inferred that he has good grounds for adopting them; but he
spares the Americans the bitterness which a detail of the
circumstances would have produced.
If any one chooses to say that some wicked antipathy to twelve
millions of strangers is the origin of my opinion, I must bear
it; and were the question one of mere idle speculation, I
certainly would not court the abuse I must meet for stating it.
But it is not so.
The candor which he expresses, and evidently feels, they
mistake for irony, or totally distrust; his unwillingness to give
pain to persons from whom he has received kindness, they
scornfully reject as affectation, and although they must know
right well, in their own secret hearts, how infinitely more they
lay at his mercy than he has chosen to betray; they pretend, even
to themselves, that he has exaggerated the bad points of their
character and institutions; whereas, the truth is, that he has
let them off with a degree of tenderness which may be quite
suitable for him to exercise, however little merited; while, at
the same time, he has most industriously magnified their merits,
whenever he could possibly find anything favorable.
D.
THE UNDYING HEAD
IN
a remote part of the North lived a man and his sister, who
had never seen a human being. Seldom, if ever, had the man any
cause to go from home; for, as his wants demanded food, he had
only to go a little distance from the lodge, and there, in some
particular spot, place his arrows, with their barbs in the
ground. Telling his sister where they had been placed, every
morning she would go in search, and never fail of finding each
stuck through the heart of a deer. She had then only to drag them
into the lodge and prepare their food. Thus she lived till she
attained womanhood, when one day her brother, whose name was
Iamo, said to her: “Sister, the time is at hand when you will be
ill. Listen to my advice. If you do not, it will probably be the
cause of my death. Take the implements with which we kindle our
fires. Go some distance from our lodge and build a separate fire.
When you are in want of food, I will tell you where to find it.
You must cook for yourself, and I will for myself. When you are
ill, do not attempt to come near the lodge, or bring any of the
utensils you use. Be sure always to fasten to your belt the
implements you need, for you do not know when the time will come.
As for myself, I must do the best I can.” His sister promised to
obey him in all he had said.
Shortly after, her brother had cause to go from home. She was
alone in her lodge, combing her hair. She had just untied the
belt to which the implements were fastened, when suddenly the
event, to which her brother had alluded, occurred. She ran out of
the lodge, but in her haste forgot the belt. Afraid to return,
she stood for some time thinking. Finally, she decided to enter
the lodge and get it. For, thought she, my brother is not at
home, and I will stay but a moment to catch hold of it. She went
back. Running in suddenly, she caught hold of it, and was coming
out when her brother came in sight. He knew what was the matter.
“Oh,” he said, “did I not tell you to take care. But now you have
killed me.” She was going on her way, but her brother said to
her, “What can you do there now. The accident has happened. Go
in, and stay where you have always stayed. And what will become
of you? You have killed me.”
He then laid aside his hunting-dress and accoutrements, and
soon after both his feet began to turn black, so that he could
not move. Still he directed his sister where to place the arrows,
that she might always have food. The inflammation continued to
increase, and had now reached his first rib; and he said:
“Sister, my end is near. You must do as I tell you. You see my
medicine-sack, and my war-club tied to it. It contains all my
medicines, and my war-plumes, and my paints of all colors. As
soon as the inflammation reaches my breast, you will take my
war-club. It has a sharp point, and you will cut off my head.
When it is free from my body, take it, place its neck in the
sack, which you must open at one end. Then hang it up in its
former place. Do not forget my bow and arrows. One of the last
you will take to procure food. The remainder, tie in my sack, and
then hang it up, so that I can look towards the door. Now and
then I will speak to you, but not often.” His sister again
promised to obey.
In a little time his breast was affected. “Now,” said he,
“take the club and strike off my head.” She was afraid, but he
told her to muster courage. “Strike,” said he, and a smile was on
his face. Mustering all her courage, she gave the blow and cut
off the head. “Now,” said the head, “place me where I told you.”
And fearfully she obeyed it in all its commands. Retaining its
animation, it looked around the lodge as usual, and it would
command its sister to go in such places as it thought would
procure for her the flesh of different animals she needed. One
day the head said: “The time is not distant when I shall be freed
from this situation, and I shall have to undergo many sore evils.
So the superior manito decrees, and I must bear all patiently.”
In this situation we must leave the head.
In a certain part of the country was a village inhabited by a
numerous and warlike band of Indians. In this village was a
family of ten young men—brothers. It was in the spring of the
year that the youngest of these blackened his face and fasted.
His dreams were propitious. Having ended his fast, he went
secretly for his brothers at night, so that none in the village
could overhear or find out the direction they intended to go.
Though their drum was heard, yet that was a common occurrence.
Having ended the usual formalities, he told how favorable his
dreams were, and that he had called them together to know if they
would accompany him in a war excursion. They all answered they
would. The third brother from the eldest, noted for his oddities,
coming up with his war-club when his brother had ceased speaking,
jumped up. “Yes,” said he, “I will go, and this will be the way I
will treat those I am going to fight;” and he struck the post in
the center of the lodge, and gave a yell. The others spoke to
him, saying: “Slow, slow, Mudjikewis, when you are in other
people’s lodges.” So he sat down. Then, in turn, they took the
drum, and sang their songs, and closed with a feast. The youngest
told them not to whisper their intention to their wives, but
secretly to prepare for their journey. They all promised
obedience, and Mudjikewis was the first to say so.
The time for their departure drew near. Word was given to
assemble on a certain night, when they would depart immediately.
Mudjikewis was loud in his demands for his moccasins. Several
times his wife asked him the reason. “Besides,” said she, “you
have a good pair on.” “Quick, quick,” said he, “since you must
know, we are going on a war excursion; so be quick.” He thus
revealed the secret. That night they met and started. The snow
was on the ground, and they traveled all night, lest others
should follow them. When it was daylight, the leader took snow
and made a ball of it, then tossing it into the air, he said: “It
was in this way I saw snow fall in a dream, so that I could not
be tracked.” And he told them to keep close to each other for
fear of losing themselves, as the snow began to fall in very
large flakes. Near as they walked, it was with difficulty they
could see each other. The snow continued falling all that day and
the following night, so it was impossible to track them.
They had now walked for several days, and Mudjikewis was
always in the rear. One day, running suddenly forward, he gave
the
saw-saw-quan,
and struck a tree with
his war-club, and it broke into pieces as if struck with
lightning. “Brothers,” said he, “this will be the way I will
serve those we are going to fight.” The leader answered, “Slow,
slow, Mudjikewis, the one I lead you to is not to be thought of
so lightly.” Again he fell back and thought to himself: “What!
what! who can this be he is leading us to?” He felt fearful and
was silent. Day after day they traveled on, till they came to an
extensive plain, on the borders of which human bones were
bleaching in the sun. The leader spoke: “They are the bones of
those who have gone before us. None has ever yet returned to tell
the sad tale of their fate.” Again Mudjikewis became restless,
and, running forward, gave the accustomed yell. Advancing to a
large rock which stood above the ground, he struck it, and it
fell to pieces. “See, brothers,” said he, “thus will I treat
those whom we are going to fight.” “Still, still,” once more said
the leader; “he to whom I am leading you is not to be compared to
the rock.”
Mudjikewis fell back thoughtful, saying to himself: “I wonder
who this can be that he is going to attack;” and he was afraid.
Still they continued to see the remains of former warriors, who
had been to the place where they were now going, some of whom had
retreated as far back as the place where they first saw the
bones, beyond which no one had ever escaped. At last they came to
a piece of rising ground, from which they plainly distinguished,
sleeping on a distant mountain, a mammoth bear.
The distance between them was very great, but the size of the
animal caused him to be plainly seen. “There,” said the leader,
“it is he to whom I am leading you; here our troubles will
commence, for he is a mishemokwa and a manito. It is he who has
that we prize so dearly (i.e. wampum), to obtain which, the
warriors whose bones we saw, sacrificed their lives. You must not
be fearful: be manly. We shall find him asleep.” Then the leader
went forward and touched the belt around the animal’s neck.
“This,” said he, “is what we must get. It contains the wampum.”
Then they requested the eldest to try and slip the belt over the
bear’s head, who appeared to be fast asleep, as he was not in the
least disturbed by the attempt to obtain the belt. All their
efforts were in vain, till it came to the one next the youngest.
He tried, and the belt moved nearly over the monster’s head, but
he could get it no farther. Then the youngest one, and the
leader, made his attempt, and succeeded. Placing it on the back
of the oldest, he said, “Now we must run,” and off they started.
When one became fatigued with its weight, another would relieve
him. Thus they ran till they had passed the bones of all former
warriors, and were some distance beyond, when looking back, they
saw the monster slowly rising. He stood some time before he
missed his wampum. Soon they heard his tremendous howl, like
distant thunder, slowly filling all the sky; and then they heard
him speak and say, “Who can it be that has dared to steal my
wampum? earth is not so large but that I can find them;” and he
descended from the hill in pursuit. As if convulsed, the earth
shook with every jump he made. Very soon he approached the party.
They, however, kept the belt, exchanging it from one to another,
and encouraging each other; but he gained on them fast.
“Brothers,” said the leader, “has never any one of you, when
fasting, dreamed of some friendly spirit who would aid you as a
guardian?” A dead silence followed. “Well,” said he, “fasting, I
dreamed of being in danger of instant death, when I saw a small
lodge, with smoke curling from its top. An old man lived in it,
and I dreamed he helped me; and may it be verified soon,” he
said, running forward and giving the peculiar yell, and a howl as
if the sounds came from the depths of his stomach, and what is
called checaudum. Getting upon a piece of rising ground, behold!
a lodge, with smoke curling from its top, appeared. This gave
them all new strength, and they ran forward and entered it. The
leader spoke to the old man who sat in the lodge, saying,
“Nemesho, help us; we claim your protection, for the great bear
will kill us.” “Sit down and eat, my grandchildren,” said the old
man. “Who is a great manito?” said he. “There is none but me; but
let me look,” and he opened the door of the lodge, when, lo! at a
little distance he saw the enraged animal coming on, with slow
but powerful leaps. He closed the door. “Yes,” said he, “he is
indeed a great manito: my grandchildren, you will be the cause of
my losing my life; you asked my protection, and I granted it; so
now, come what may, I will protect you. When the bear arrives at
the door, you must run out of the other door of the lodge.” Then
putting his hand to the side of the lodge where he sat, he
brought out a bag which he opened. Taking out two small black
dogs, he placed them before him. “These are the ones I use when I
fight,” said he; and he commenced patting with both hands the
sides of one of them, and he began to swell out, so that he soon
filled the lodge by his bulk; and he had great strong teeth. When
he attained his full size he growled, and from that moment, as
from instinct, he jumped out at the door and met the bear, who in
another leap would have reached the lodge. A terrible combat
ensued. The skies rang with the howls of the fierce monsters. The
remaining dog soon took the field. The brothers, at the onset,
took the advice of the old man, and escaped through the opposite
side of the lodge. They had not proceeded far before they heard
the dying cry of one of the dogs, and soon after of the other.
“Well,” said the leader, “the old man will share their fate: so
run; he will soon be after us.” They started with fresh vigor,
for they had received food from the old man: but very soon the
bear came in sight, and again was fast gaining upon them. Again
the leader asked the brothers if they could do nothing for their
safety. All were silent. The leader, running forward, did as
before. “I dreamed,” he cried, “that, being in great trouble, an
old man helped me who was a manito; we shall soon see his lodge.”
Taking courage, they still went on. After going a short distance
they saw the lodge of the old manito. They entered immediately
and claimed his protection, telling him a manito was after them.
The old man, setting meat before them, said: “Eat! who is a
manito? there is no manito but me; there is none whom I fear;”
and the earth trembled as the monster advanced. The old man
opened the door and saw him coming. He shut it slowly, and said:
“Yes, my grandchildren, you have brought trouble upon me.”
Procuring his medicine-sack, he took out his small war-clubs of
black stone, and told the young men to run through the other side
of the lodge. As he handled the clubs, they became very large,
and the old man stepped out just as the bear reached the door.
Then striking him with one of the clubs, it broke in pieces; the
bear stumbled. Renewing the attempt with the other war-club, that
also was broken, but the bear fell senseless. Each blow the old
man gave him sounded like a clap of thunder, and the howls of the
bear ran along till they filled the heavens.
The young men had now run some distance, when they looked
back. They could see that the bear was recovering from the blows.
First he moved his paws, and soon they saw him rise on his feet.
The old man shared the fate of the first, for they now heard his
cries as he was torn in pieces. Again the monster was in pursuit,
and fast overtaking them. Not yet discouraged, the young men kept
on their way; but the bear was now so close, that the leader once
more applied to his brothers, but they could do nothing. “Well,”
said he, “my dreams will soon be exhausted; after this I have but
one more.” He advanced, invoking his guardian spirit to aid him.
“Once,” said he, “I dreamed that, being sorely pressed, I came to
a large lake, on the shore of which was a canoe, partly out of
water, having ten paddles all in readiness. Do not fear,” he
cried, “we shall soon get it.” And so it was, even as he had
said. Coming to the lake, they saw the canoe with ten paddles,
and immediately they embarked. Scarcely had they reached the
center of the lake, when they saw the bear arrive at its borders.
Lifting himself on his hind legs, he looked all around. Then he
waded into the water; then losing his footing he turned back, and
commenced making the circuit of the lake. Meantime the party
remained stationary in the center to watch his movements. He
traveled all around, till at last he came to the place from
whence he started. Then he commenced drinking up the water, and
they saw the current fast setting in towards his open mouth. The
leader encouraged them to paddle hard for the opposite shore.
When only a short distance from land, the current had increased
so much, that they were drawn back by it, and all their efforts
to reach it were in vain.
Then the leader again spoke, telling them to meet their fates
manfully. “Now is the time, Mudjikewis,” said he, “to show your
prowess. Take courage and sit at the bow of the canoe; and when
it approaches his mouth, try what effect your club will have on
his head.” He obeyed, and stood ready to give the blow; while the
leader, who steered, directed the canoe for the open mouth of the
monster.
Rapidly advancing, they were just about to enter his mouth,
when Mudjikewis struck him a tremendous blow on the head, and
gave the saw-saw-quan. The bear’s limbs doubled under him, and
he fell, stunned by the blow. But before Mudjikewis could renew
it, the monster disgorged all the water he had drank, with a
force which sent the canoe with great velocity to the opposite
shore. Instantly leaving the canoe, again they fled, and on they
went till they were completely exhausted. The earth again shook,
and soon they saw the monster hard after them. Their spirits
drooped, and they felt discouraged. The leader exerted himself,
by actions and words, to cheer them up; and once more he asked
them if they thought of nothing, or could do nothing for their
rescue; and, as before, all were silent. “Then,” he said, “this
is the last time I can apply to my guardian spirit. Now, if we do
not succeed, our fates are decided.” He ran forward, invoking his
spirit with great earnestness, and gave the yell. “We shall soon
arrive,” said he to his brothers, “at the place where my last
guardian spirit dwells. In him I place great confidence. Do not,
do not be afraid, or your limbs will be fear-bound. We shall soon
reach his lodge. Run, run,” he cried.
Returning now to Iamo, he had passed all the time in the same
condition we had left him, the head directing his sister, in
order to procure food, where to place the magic arrows, and
speaking at long intervals. One day the sister saw the eyes of
the head brighten, as if with pleasure. At last it spoke. “Oh,
sister,” it said, “in what a pitiful situation you have been the
cause of placing me! Soon, very soon, a party of young men will
arrive and apply to me for aid; but alas! How can I give what I
would have done with so much pleasure? Nevertheless, take two
arrows, and place them where you have been in the habit of
placing the others, and have meat prepared and cooked before they
arrive. When you hear them coming and calling on my name, go out
and say, "Alas! it is long ago that an accident befell him. I was
the cause of it." If they still come near, ask them in, and set
meat before them. And now you must follow my directions strictly.
When the bear is near, go out and meet him. You will take my
medicine-sack, bows and arrows, and my head. You must then untie
the sack, and spread out before you my paints of all colors, my
war-eagle feathers, my tufts of dried hair, and whatever else it
contains. As the bear approaches, you will take all these
articles, one by one, and say to him, "This is my deceased
brother’s paint," and so on with all the other articles, throwing
each of them as far as you can. The virtues contained in them
will cause him to totter; and, to complete his destruction, you
will take my head, and that too you will cast as far off as you
can, crying aloud, "See, this is my deceased brother’s head." He
will then fall senseless. By this time the young men will have
eaten, and you will call them to your assistance. You must then
cut the carcass into pieces, yes, into small pieces, and scatter
them to the four winds; for, unless you do this, he will again
revive.” She promised that all should be done as he said. She had
only time to prepare the meat, when the voice of the leader was
heard calling upon Iamo for aid. The woman went out and said as
her brother had directed. But the war party being closely
pursued, came up to the lodge. She invited them in, and placed
the meat before them. While they were eating, they heard the bear
approaching. Untying the medicine-sack and taking the head, she
had all in readiness for his approach. When he came up she did as
she had been told; and, before she had expended the paints and
feathers, the bear began to totter, but, still advancing, came
close to the woman. Saying as she was commanded, she then took
the head, and cast it as far from her as she could. As it rolled
along the ground, the blood, excited by the feelings of the head
in this terrible scene, gushed from the nose and mouth. The bear,
tottering, soon fell with a tremendous noise. Then she cried for
help, and the young men came rushing out, having partially
regained their strength and spirits.
Mudjikewis, stepping up, gave a yell and struck him a blow
upon the head. This he repeated, till it seemed like a mass of
brains, while the others, as quick as possible, cut him into very
small pieces, which they then scattered in every direction. While
thus employed, happening to look around where they had thrown the
meat, wonderful to behold, they saw starting up and turning off
in every direction small black bears, such as are seen at the
present day. The country was soon overspread with these black
animals. And it was from this monster that the present race of
bears derived their origin.
Having thus overcome their pursuer, they returned to the
lodge. In the meantime, the woman, gathering the implements she
had used, and the head, placed them again in the sack. But the
head did not speak again, probably from its great exertion to
overcome the monster.
Having spent so much time and traversed so vast a country in
their flight, the young men gave up the idea of ever returning to
their own country, and game being plenty, they determined to
remain where they now were. One day they moved off some distance
from the lodge for the purpose of hunting, having left the wampum
with the woman. They were very successful, and amused themselves,
as all young men do when alone, by talking and jesting with each
other. One of them spoke and said, “We have all this sport to
ourselves; let us go and ask our sister if she will not let us
bring the head to this place, as it is still alive. It may be
pleased to hear us talk, and be in our company. In the meantime
take food to our sister.” They went and requested the head. She
told them to take it, and they took it to their hunting-grounds,
and tried to amuse it, but only at times did they see its eyes
beam with pleasure. One day, while busy in their encampment, they
were unexpectedly attacked by unknown Indians. The skirmish was
long contested and bloody; many of their foes were slain, but
still they were thirty to one. The young men fought desperately
till they were all killed. The attacking party then retreated to
a height of ground, to muster their men, and to count the number
of missing and slain. One of their young men had stayed away,
and, in endeavoring to overtake them, came to the place where the
head was hung up. Seeing that alone retain animation, he eyed it
for some time with fear and surprise. However, he took it down
and opened the sack, and was much pleased to see the beautiful
feathers, one of which he placed on his head.
Starting off, it waved gracefully over him till he reached his
party, when he threw down the head and sack, and told them how he
had found it, and that the sack was full of paints and feathers.
They all looked at the head and made sport of it. Numbers of the
young men took the paint and painted themselves, and one of the
party took the head by the hair and said—
“Look, you ugly thing, and see your paints on the faces of
warriors.”
But the feathers were so beautiful, that numbers of them also
placed them on their heads. Then again they used all kinds of
indignity to the head, for which they were in turn repaid by the
death of those who had used the feathers. Then the chief
commanded them to throw away all except the head. “We will see,”
said he, “when we get home, what we can do with it. We will try
to make it shut its eyes.”
When they reached their homes they took it to the
council-lodge, and hung it up before the fire, fastening it with
raw hide soaked, which would shrink and become tightened by the
action of the fire. “We will then see,” they said, “if we cannot
make it shut its eyes.”
Meantime, for several days, the sister had been waiting for
the young men to bring back the head; till, at last, getting
impatient, she went in search of it. The young men she found
lying within short distances of each other, dead, and covered
with wounds. Various other bodies lay scattered in different
directions around them. She searched for the head and sack, but
they were nowhere to be found. She raised her voice and wept, and
blackened her face. Then she walked in different directions, till
she came to the place from whence the head had been taken. Then
she found the magic bow and arrows, where the young men, ignorant
of their qualities, had left them. She thought to herself that
she would find her brother’s head, and came to a piece of rising
ground, and there saw some of his paints and feathers. These she
carefully put up, and hung upon the branch of a tree till her
return.
At dusk she arrived at the first lodge of a very extensive
village. Here she used a charm, common among Indians when they
wish to meet with a kind reception. On applying to the old man
and woman of the lodge, she was kindly received. She made known
her errand. The old man promised to aid her, and told her the
head was hung up before the council-fire, and that the chiefs of
the village, with their young men, kept watch over it
continually. The former are considered as manitoes. She said she
only wished to see it, and would be satisfied if she could only
get to the door of the lodge. She knew she had not sufficient
power to take it by force. “Come with me,” said the Indian, “I
will take you there.” They went, and they took their seats near
the door. The council-lodge was filled with warriors, amusing
themselves with games, and constantly keeping up a fire to smoke
the head, as they said, to make dry meat. They saw the head move,
and not knowing what to make of it, one spoke and said: “Ha! ha!
It is beginning to feel the effects of the smoke.” The sister
looked up from the door, and her eyes met those of her brother,
and tears rolled down the cheeks of the head. “Well,” said the
chief, “I thought we would make you do something at last. Look!
look at it—shedding tears,” said he to those around him; and
they all laughed and passed their jokes upon it. The chief,
looking around, and observing the woman, after some time said to
the man who came with her: “Who have you got there? I have never
seen that woman before in our village.” “Yes,” replied the man,
“you have seen her; she is a relation of mine, and seldom goes
out. She stays at my lodge, and asked me to allow her to come
with me to this place.” In the center of the lodge sat one of
those young men who are always forward, and fond of boasting and
displaying themselves before others. “Why,” said he, “I have seen
her often, and it is to this lodge I go almost every night to
court her.” All the others laughed and continued their games. The
young man did not know he was telling a lie to the woman’s
advantage, who by that means escaped.
She returned to the man’s lodge, and immediately set out for
her own country. Coming to the spot where the bodies of her
adopted brothers lay, she placed them together, their feet toward
the east. Then taking an ax which she had, she cast it up into
the air, crying out, “Brothers, get up from under it, or it will
fall on you.” This she repeated three times, and the third time
the brothers all arose and stood on their feet.
Mudjikewis commenced rubbing his eyes and stretching himself.
“Why,” said he, “I have overslept myself.” “No, indeed,” said one
of the others, “do you not know we were all killed, and that it
is our sister who has brought us to life?” The young men took the
bodies of their enemies and burned them. Soon after, the woman
went to procure wives for them, in a distant country, they knew
not where; but she returned with ten young women, which she gave
to the ten young men, beginning with the eldest. Mudjikewis
stepped to and fro, uneasy lest he should not get the one he
liked. But he was not disappointed, for she fell to his lot. And
they were well matched, for she was a female magician. They then
all moved into a very large lodge, and their sister told them
that the women must now take turns in going to her brother’s head
every night, trying to untie it. They all said they would do so
with pleasure. The eldest made the first attempt, and with a
rushing noise she fled through the air.
Toward daylight she returned. She had been unsuccessful, as
she succeeded in untying only one of the knots. All took their
turns regularly, and each one succeeded in untying only one knot
each time. But when the youngest went, she commenced the work as
soon as she reached the lodge; although it had always been
occupied, still the Indians never could see any one. For ten
nights now, the smoke had not ascended, but filled the lodge and
drove them out. This last night they were all driven out, and the
young woman carried off the head.
The young people and the sister heard the young woman coming
high through the air, and they heard her saying: “Prepare the
body of our brother.” And as soon as they heard it, they went to
a small lodge where the black body of Iamo lay. His sister
commenced cutting the neck part, from which the neck had been
severed. She cut so deep as to cause it to bleed; and the others
who were present, by rubbing the body and applying medicines,
expelled the blackness. In the meantime, the one who brought it,
by cutting the neck of the head, caused that also to bleed.
As soon as she arrived, they placed that close to the body,
and, by aid of medicines and various other means, succeeded in
restoring Iamo to all his former beauty and manliness. All
rejoiced in the happy termination of their troubles, and they had
spent some time joyfully together, when Iamo said: “Now I will
divide the wampum,” and getting the belt which contained it, he
commenced with the eldest, giving it in equal portions. But the
youngest got the most splendid and beautiful, as the bottom of
the belt held the richest and rarest.
They were told that, since they had all once died, and were
restored to life, they were no longer mortal, but spirits, and
they were assigned different stations in the invisible world.
Only Mudjikewis’s place was, however, named. He was to direct the
west wind, hence generally called Kebeyun, there to remain for
ever. They were commanded, as they had it in their power, to do
good to the inhabitants of the earth, and, forgetting their
sufferings in procuring the wampum, to give all things with a
liberal hand. And they were also commanded that it should also be
held by them sacred; those grains or shells of the pale hue to be
emblematic of peace, while those of the darker hue would lead to
evil and war.
The spirits then, amid songs and shouts, took their flight to
their respective abodes on high; while Iamo, with his sister
Iamoqua, descended into the depths below.
Notes
-
Village.
Hannibal, Missouri. — M.T.
-
“Deck” Passage.
Steerage passage. — M.T.
-
Inside. It may not be
necessary, but still it can do no harm to explain that “inside”
means between the snag and the shore. — M.T.
-
Mark twain.
Two fathoms or twelve feet. “Quarter twain” is
21⁄4
fathoms, 131⁄2 feet. “Mark three” is three
fathoms. — M.T.
-
Partner.
“Partner” is a technical term for “the other
pilot”. — M.T.
-
Learn
“Teach” is not
in the river vocabulary. — M.T.
-
Neither light
nor buoy.
True at the time referred
to; not true now (1882).
— M.T.
-
Larboard.
The
term “larboard” is never used at sea now, to signify the left
hand; but was always used on the river in my time.
— M.T.
-
do’.
Door.
— M.T.
-
Three days, three hours, and twenty
minutes.
Time disputed. Some authorities add 1 hour and
16 minutes to this.
— M.T.
-
Contend.
Capt. Marryat, writing forty-five years ago
says: “St. Louis has 20,000 inhabitants. The river abreast of the
town is crowded with steamboats, lying in two or three tiers.”
— M.T.
-
Under water for months.
For a detailed and interesting description of
the great flood, written on board of the New Orleans
Times-Democrat’s relief-boat, see
Appendix A.
— M.T.
-
Few of those who are
received into its waters ever rise again.
There was a
foolish superstition of some little prevalence in that day, that
the Mississippi would neither buoy up a swimmer, nor permit a
drowned person’s body to rise to the surface.
— M.T.
-
25 per cent.
’But what can the State do where the people are under subjection
to rates of interest ranging from 18 to 30 per cent., and are
also under the necessity of purchasing their crops in advance
even of planting, at these rates, for the privilege of purchasing
all their supplies at 100 per cent. profit?” — Edward
Atkinson.
-
Per year.
New Orleans Timnes-Democrat,
26 Aug, 1882.
-
Highest type of
civilization this continent has seen.
Illustrations of it thoughtlessly
omitted by the advertiser:
Knoxville,
Tenn., October 19.—This morning a few minutes
after ten o’clock, General Joseph A. Mabry, Thomas O’Connor, and
Joseph A. Mabry, Jr., were killed in a shooting affray. The
difficulty began yesterday afternoon by General Mabry attacking
Major O’Connor and threatening to kill him. This was at the fair
grounds, and O’Connor told Mabry that it was not the place to
settle their difficulties. Mabry then told O’Connor he should not
live. It seems that Mabry was armed and O’Connor was not. The
cause of the difficulty was an old feud about the transfer of
some property from Mabry to O’Connor. Later in the afternoon
Mabry sent word to O’Connor that he would kill him on sight. This
morning Major O’Connor was standing in the door of the Mechanics’
National Bank, of which he was president. General Mabry and
another gentleman walked down Gay Street on the opposite side
from the bank. O’Connor stepped into the bank, got a shot gun,
took deliberate aim at General Mabry and fired. Mabry fell dead,
being shot in the left side. As he fell O’Connor fired again, the
shot taking effect in Mabry’s thigh. O’Connor then reached into
the bank and got another shot gun. About this time Joseph A.
Mabry, Jr., son of General Mabry, came rushing down the street,
unseen by O’Connor until within forty feet, when the young man
fired a pistol, the shot taking effect in O’Connor’s right
breast, passing through the body near the heart. The instant
Mabry shot, O’Connor turned and fired, the load taking effect in
young Mabry’s right breast and side. Mabry fell pierced with
twenty buckshot, and almost instantly O’Connor fell dead without
a struggle. Mabry tried to rise, but fell back dead. The whole
tragedy occurred within two minutes, and neither of the three
spoke after he was shot. General Mabry had about thirty buckshot
in his body. A bystander was painfully wounded in the thigh with
a buckshot, and another was wounded in the arm. Four other men
had their clothing pierced by buckshot. The affair caused great
excitement, and Gay Street was thronged with thousands of people.
General Mabry and his son Joe were acquitted only a few days ago
of the murder of Moses Lusby and Don Lusby, father and son, whom
they killed a few weeks ago. Will Mabry was killed by Don Lusby
last Christmas. Major Thomas O’Connor was President of the
Mechanics” National Bank here, and was the wealthiest man in the
State. — Associated Press Telegram.
One day last month, Professor Sharpe, of the Somerville,
Tenn., Female College, “a quiet and gentlemanly man,” was told
that his brother-in-law, a Captain Burton, had threatened to
kill him. Burton, t seems, had already killed one man and driven
his knife into another. The Professor armed himself with a
double-barreled shot gun, started out in search of his
brother-in-law, found him playing billiards in a saloon, and blew
his brains out. The “Memphis Avalanche” reports that the
Professor’s course met with pretty general approval in the
community; knowing that the law was powerless, in the actual
condition of public sentiment, to protect him, he protected
himself.
About the same time, two young men in North Carolina quarreled
about a girl, and “hostile messages” were exchanged. Friends
tried to reconcile them, but had their labor for their pains. On
the 24th the young men met in the public highway. One of them had
a heavy club in his hand, the other an ax. The man with the club
fought desperately for his life, but it was a hopeless fight from
the first. A well-directed blow sent his club whirling out of his
grasp, and the next moment he was a dead man.
About the same time, two “highly connected” young Virginians,
clerks in a hardware store at Charlottesville, while
“skylarking,” came to blows. Peter Dick threw pepper in Charles
Roads’s eyes; Roads demanded an apology; Dick refused to give it,
and it was agreed that a duel was inevitable, but a difficulty
arose; the parties had no pistols, and it was too late at night
to procure them. One of them suggested that butcher-knives would
answer the purpose, and the other accepted the suggestion; the
result was that Roads fell to the floor with a gash in his
abdomen that may or may not prove fatal. If Dick has been
arrested, the news has not reached us. He “expressed deep
regret,” and we are told by a Staunton correspondent of the
“Philadelphia Press” that “every effort has been made to hush the
matter up.” — Extracts from the Public Journals.
-
Graves.
The Israelites are buried in
graves—by permission, I take it, not requirement; but none else,
except the destitute, who are buried at public expense. The
graves are but three or four feet deep.
— M.T.
-
Cheap
Four or
five dollars is the minimum cost.
— M.T.
-
Ten million. Figures taken from memory, and
probably incorrect. Think it was more.
— M.T.
-
Paragraphs.
The
original MS. of it, in the captain’s own hand, has been sent to
me from New Orleans. It reads as follows: —
“Vicksburg, May 4,
1859.
“My opinion for the benefit of the citizens of New Orleans:
The water is higher this far up than it has been since 8. My
opinion is that the water will be feet deep in Canal street
before the first of next June. Mrs. Turner’s plantation at the
head of Big Black Island is all under water, and it has not been
since 1815.
“I. Sellers.”
— M.T.
-
Peboan.
Winter.
— M.T.
-
Miskodeed.
The trailing arbutus.
— M.T.
-
Saw-saw-quan.
War-whoop.
— M.T.
Text Prepared By
Group 1: Fall 2012
- Jens Danielson
- Laetten Galbraith
- Megan Greer
- Jordan Hopper
- Gauge Means
- Taylor Pyles
- Buck Thames
- Katelyn Tolbert
Group 2: Winter 2012-2013
- Erin Doty
- Marshall John
- Justin Wilbanks
- Brandon Willingham
Source
Twain, Mark. Life on the Mississippi. Montreal: Dawson Brothers, 1883. Web. Archive.org.
<http:// archive.org/ details/ life on mississipp 00twaiuoft>.
Anthology of Louisiana
Literature
