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!{footnote [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.']} 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.{footnote [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]} 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, {footnote [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.]} 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.{footnote [See Appendix B.]}

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.