THE WONDERFUL RIVER’S WORK
“Now, then,” said Phil, wrapping a blanket around his person, for the
air was indeed very chill, and prostrating himself over the map, “now,
then, let the ‘interpretative brain’ get in its work! I interrupted the
proceedings just to take a personal observation of the river we are to
hear all about. Go on, Ed!”
“Wait a bit--I’m counting,” said Ed; “twenty-five, twenty-six,
twenty-seven, twenty-eight. There. If you’ll look at the map, you’ll see
that the water which the Mississippi carries down to the sea through a
channel about half a mile wide below New Orleans, comes from
twenty-eight states besides the Indian Territory.”
“What! oh, nonsense!” were the exclamations that greeted this statement.
“Look, and count for yourselves,” said Ed, pointing to various parts of
the map as he proceeded. “Here they are: New York, Pennsylvania, West
Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee,
Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa,
Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado,
Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, and the Indian
Territory. Very little comes from New York or South Carolina or Texas,
and not a great deal from some others of the states named, but some
does, as you will see by following up the lines on the map. The rest of
the states mentioned send the greater part of all their rainfall to the
sea by this route.”
“Well, you could at this moment knock me down with a feather,” said
Irving Strong. “Aren’t you glad, Phil, that we jumped in away up here
before the water got such a mixing up?”
“But that isn’t the most important part of it,” said Ed, after his
companions had finished their playful discussion of the subject.
“What is it, then? Go on,” said Irv. “I’m all ears, though Mrs. Dupont
always thought I was all tongue. What is the most important part of it,
Ed?”
“Why, that this river _created_ most of the states it drains.”
“How do you mean?”
“Why, I mean that but for this great river system it would have taken a
hundred or more years longer than it did to settle this vastest valley
on earth and build it up into great, populous states that produce the
best part of the world’s food supply.”
“Go on, please,” said Will Moreraud, speaking the eager desire of all.
“You see,” said Ed, “in order to settle a country and bring it into
cultivation, you must have some way of getting into it, and still more,
you must have some way of getting the things it produces out of it,
so as to sell them to people that need them. Nobody would have taken
the trouble to raise the produce we now have on board this boat, for
instance,--the hay, grain, flour, apples, cornmeal, onions, potatoes,
and the rest,--if there had been no way of sending the things away and
selling them somewhere. Unless there is a market within reach, nobody
will produce more of anything than he can himself use.”
“Oh, I see,” said Irv. “That’s why I don’t think more than I do. I’ve
no market for my crop of thoughts.”
“You’re mistaken there,” said Constant, who was slow of speech and
usually had little to say. “There’s always a market for thoughts.”
“Where?”
“Right around you. What did we go into this flatboat business for except
to be with Ed? He can’t do half as much as any one of us at an oar, or
at anything else except thinking, and yet we would never have come on
this voyage--”
“Oh, dry up!” said Ed, seeing the compliment that was impending. “I was
going to say--”
“And so was I going to say,” said Constant; “and, in fact, I _am_ going
to say. What I’m going to say is that there isn’t a fellow here who
would be here but for you, Ed. There isn’t a fellow here that wouldn’t
be glad to do all of your share of the work, if Phil would let him, just
for the sake of hearing what you think. Anyhow, that’s why Constant
Thiebaud is a member of this crew.”
It was the longest speech that Constant Thiebaud had ever been known to
make, and it was the most effective one he could have made, because it
put into words the thought that was in every one’s mind. That is the
very essence of oratory and of effective writing. All the great speeches
in the world have been those that cleverly expressed the thought and the
feeling of those who listened. All the great books have been those that
said for the vast, dumb multitudes that which was in their minds and
souls vainly longing for utterance.
When Constant had finished, there was silence for a moment. Then Irv
Strong said impressively:--
“AMEN!”
That exclamation ended the silence, and expressed the common sentiment
of all who were present. For even Jim Hughes, who was listening, had
begun to be interested.
Ed was embarrassed, of course, and for the first time in his life words
completely failed him. He sat up; then he grasped Constant’s hand, and
said, “I thank you, fellows.” And with that he retreated hurriedly to
the cabin for a little while.
Constant went to the pump, and labored hard for a time to draw water
from a bilge that had no leak. Will went to inspect the anchor, as if
he feared that something might be the matter with it. Phil and Irving
jumped overboard, and swam twice around the boat.
Finally, all came on deck again, and Will said:--
“Go on, Ed. We want to hear.”
Ed at once resumed, Jim Hughes meantime working with the steering-oar.
“Well, this great river gave the people who came over the mountains,
and afterward the people who came up it from New Orleans, not only an
outlet to the sea, but a sort of public road, over which they could
travel and trade with each other. When the upper Ohio region began to
be settled, a great swarm of emigrants from the East poured over the
mountains, and made a highway of the river to get themselves and all
that belonged to them to the upper Mississippi, the lower Mississippi,
and the Missouri River country. My father once told me, before he died,
that in his boyhood you could tell a steamboat bound from Pittsburg or
Cincinnati to St. Louis from any other boat, because she was red all
over with ploughs, wagons, and all that sort of thing. Agricultural
implements were all painted red in those days, and as they weren’t very
heavy freight they were bestowed all over the boat,--on the boiler deck
guards, on the hurricane deck, and sometimes were in the cabin, and on
top of the Texas.[2] Now, without these ploughs, wagons, harrows, and
so forth, how could the pioneers ever have brought the great Western
country under cultivation? And without the river how could they ever
have got these necessary implements, or themselves, for that matter, to
the regions where they were needed?”
[2] The “Texas” of a western river steamer is an extra cabin,
built above the main cabin and under the pilot-house, for the
accommodation of the boat’s officers. It was named “Texas” because
about the time of its naming Texas was added to the Union. This
cabin was also something added.--_Author._
“Couldn’t they have taken them overland?”
“Only in a very small and slow way. There were no railroads, no
turnpikes, and even no dirt roads at that time. It would have cost ten
times more to take a wagonload of ploughs through the woods and across
the prairies, from Pittsburg or Cincinnati to Missouri or Iowa, than the
wagon and the ploughs put together were worth when they got there. But
the river came to the rescue. It carried the people and all their
belongings cheaply and quickly, and then it carried their produce to New
Orleans; and so the great West was settled.
“In the meantime the people in Pittsburg, Cincinnati, and other towns
saw that they could make all the wagons, ploughs, and other things
wanted by the people further west much cheaper than the same things
could be sent over the mountains from the East. Thus, factories and
foundries sprang up, new farms were opened and new towns built.”
“Were there steamboats from the first?” asked one of the boys.
“No; when Vevay was settled, Fulton hadn’t yet built the first steamboat
that ever travelled, and when steamboats did appear they were few and
small. Flatboats, just like this one, carried most of the produce to New
Orleans; but as flatboats couldn’t come back up the river, there were a
good many keelboats that brought freight and passengers up as well as
down stream.”
“What are keelboats?”
“Why, they were large barges built with a keel, a sharp bow, and a
modelled stern--in short, like a steamboat’s hull. These keelboats
floated down the river, and the men then pushed them back up stream
with long poles. When the current was too strong for that they got out
on the bank and hauled the boat by ropes. That was called ‘cordelling.’
The steamboats grew, however, in number and size when they came, and as
long ago as 1835 there were more than three hundred of them on the
Mississippi alone. In 1850 there were more than four thousand on these
rivers. They drove the keelboats out of business, but the flatboats
continued because of their cheapness till after the Civil War, when the
great towboats came into use. These, with their acres of barges, could
carry freight even cheaper than flatboats could. For a long time the
steamboats carried all the passengers, too, and many of them were
palaces in magnificence. But the railroads came at last and took the
passenger business away, and much of the freight traffic also, because
they are faster, and still more because they don’t have to go so far to
get anywhere.”
“Why, how’s that? I don’t understand,” said Irv.
“Yes, you do, if you’ll think a bit,” responded Ed.
“Couldn’t _think_ of thinking. I’m too tired or too lazy so tell me,”
was Irv’s rejoinder.
“Well, you know the river is crooked, and the steamboats must follow all
its windings, while the railroads can run nearly straight.”
“Yes, I know,” said Irv, “but the crookedness of the river isn’t enough
to make any very great difference.”
“Isn’t it? Well, down in Chicot County, Arkansas, there is one bend in
the river so big that from the upper landing on a plantation to the
lower landing on the same plantation, the distance by river is seventeen
miles, while you can walk across the neck from one landing to the other
in less than a mile and a half!”
“Whew!” said Phil. “And are there many such trips round Robin Hood’s
barn for us to make on the way down?”
“That’s best answered by telling you that from Cairo to New Orleans the
distance by river is about one thousand and fifty miles, while by rail
it is a little over four hundred miles. But come. It’s getting dark, and
I’ve got to bake some corn pones for supper, so I must quit lecturing.”