The scenery of the Mississippi River changes below St. Louis, and it
loses much of the picturesqueness displayed by the bluff shores above.
The mass of the waters is larger, the shores lower, and the adjacent
regions more subject to overflow. There are many bends and islands,
and the Ohio River comes in at the end of the long low peninsula of
Cairo, further adding to the enormous current. The Southern Illinois
lowlands have long been known as Egypt, and upon these bottom lands
are grown prolific crops of corn. In one field in the great crop of
1899, covering over six thousand acres south of Ava, was raised six
hundred thousand bushels, the banner American cornfield of that year.
Twenty miles below Cairo is Columbus, on a high bluff upon the
Kentucky shore, having Belmont opposite in Missouri, this having been
the scene of General Grant's first battle in the Civil War. The
Confederates in 1861 had fortified Columbus and placed twenty thousand
men there to hold the Mississippi. Grant, in November, made an attack
upon Belmont, and broke up and destroyed their outpost camp in spite
of a heavy fire from Columbus, afterwards cutting his way out and
returning to Cairo. When in the next spring Forts Henry and Donelson
were captured, the Confederates found Columbus untenable and abandoned
it without a contest. Fifty miles below is Donaldson Point, and off it
the noted Island No. 10, for all these islands below Cairo were
numbered. The Union gunboats attacked Island No. 10 in March, 1862,
and carried on a bombardment and siege for a month, when it was
captured with New Madrid on the Missouri shore several miles farther
down, they being mutually dependent. The remains of earthworks are
still visible on the island, and also the canal cut to assist in the
investment. The Mississippi beyond, skirts the various bluffs of the
Chickasaw region on the eastern bank, while on the western shore are
broad alluvial lowlands, as the great river passes between Tennessee
and Arkansas. On the first Chickasaw bluff is Fort Pillow, another
Confederate stronghold, which, however, they were compelled to abandon
in June, 1862, as the Union army had got in their rear. Here
afterwards occurred the "Fort Pillow Massacre," in April, 1864, when
the Confederates under General Forrest attacked and captured it.
All the region hereabout was inhabited by the Chickasaw Indians, who
were so called in their language because they were "swamp-dwellers"
and "eaters of the bog-potato." This tribe long ago removed to the
Indian territory, where they are now in a prosperous condition and
successful agriculturists. On the southwestern border of Tennessee is
what is known as the fourth Chickasaw bluff, and here is the city of
Memphis, the leading town between St. Louis and New Orleans. The bluff
shore rises about eighty feet above the river at the ordinary stage of
water, and is fronted by a wide levee extending for two miles and a
broad esplanade bordered by warehouses. It was here that De Soto in
1541, with his band of adventurous explorers searching for gold, came
and first saw the great river, their chronicler writing home "the
river was so broad that if a man stood still on the other side, it
could not be told whether he was a man or no; the channel was very
deep, the current strong, the water muddy and filled with floating
trees." Memphis is a handsome city, attractively laid out, the
residential section having spacious lawn-bordered avenues, and there
being an attractive park in the centre, the Court Square inhabited by
numerous squirrels and adorned by Andrew Jackson's bust. Memphis has
seventy thousand people, and a large trade both by river and railroad,
being a leading cotton-shipping port, whence steamboats take vast
amounts down to New Orleans for foreign export. Among its attractions
are the cotton compresses and cotton-seed oil mills. In the Civil War,
Memphis was captured by the Union gunboats in June, 1862, and held
afterwards. On the outskirts, a grim memorial of the great conflict,
is the National Cemetery, with fourteen thousand Union soldiers'
graves.