OLD RIVER DAYS
Among the honored citizens of Vicksburg, at the time of our visit, were
a number of old steamboat men who knew the river in its golden days;
among them, Captain "Mose" Smith, Captain Tom Young, Captain W.S.
("Billy") Jones, and Captain S.H. Parisot--the latter probably the
oldest surviving Mississippi River captain.
We were sent to see Captain Parisot at his house, where he received us
kindly, entertained us for an hour or more with reminiscences, and
showed us a most interesting collection of souvenirs of the river,
including photographs of famous boats, famous deck loads of cotton, and
famous characters: among the latter the celebrated rivals, Captain John
W. Cannon of the _Robert E. Lee_ and Captain Thomas P. Leathers of the
_Natchez_. Captain Parisot knew both these men well, and was himself
aboard the _Lee_ at the time of her famous race with the _Natchez_ from
New Orleans to St. Louis.
"We left New Orleans 3½ minutes ahead of the _Natchez_," said Captain
Parisot, "made the run to Vicksburg in 24 hours and 28 minutes, beat her
to Cairo by 1 hour and 12 minutes, and to St. Louis by more than 3
hours."
Captain Parisot's father was a soldier under Napoleon I, and moved to
Warren County, Mississippi, after having been wounded at Moscow. He
built, at the foot of Main Street, Vicksburg, the first brick house that
city had.
"There was a law in France," said the captain, "that any citizen absent
from the country for thirty-five years lost all claim to property. My
father's people were pretty well off, so in '42 he started back, but he
was taken ill and died in New Orleans."
Captain Parisot was born in 1828, and in 1847 began "learning the
river." In 1854 he became part owner of a boat, and three years later
purchased one of his own.
"I bought her in Cincinnati," he said. Then, reflectively, he added:
"There was a good deal of drinking in those days. When I brought her
down on her first trip I had 183 tons of freight, and 500 barrels of
whisky, from Cincinnati, for one little country store--Barksdale &
McFarland's, at Yazoo City."
"There was a good deal of gambling, too, wasn't there?" one of us
suggested.
"There was indeed," smiled the old captain. "Every steamboat was a
gambling house, and there used to be big games before the war."
"How big?"
"Well," he returned, "as Captain Leathers once put it, it used to be
'nigger ante and plantation limit.' And that's no joke about playing for
niggers either. Those old planters would play for anything. I've known
people to get on a boat at Yazoo City to come to Vicksburg, and get in a
game, and never get off at Vicksburg at all--just go back to Yazoo; yes,
and come down again, to keep the game going.
"There was a saloon called the Exchange near our house in Yazoo, and I
remember once my father got into a game, there, with a gambler named
Spence Thrift. That was before the war. Thrift was a terrible stiff
bluffer. When he got ready to clean up, he'd shove up his whole pile.
Well, he did that to my father. Thrift's pile was twenty-two hundred
dollars, and all my father had in front of him was eight hundred. But he
owned a young negro named Calvin, so he called Calvin, and told him:
'Here, boy! Jump up on the table.' That equalled the gambler's pile; and
it finished him--he threw down his hand, beaten.
"Business in those times was done largely on friendship. It used to be
said that I 'owned' the Yazoo River when I was running my line. I knew
everybody up there. They were my friends, and they gave me their
business for that reason, and also because I brought the cotton down
here to Vicksburg, and reshipped it from here on, down the river. It was
considered an advantage to reship cotton because moving it from one boat
to another knocked the mud off the bales.
"There used to be some enormous cargoes of cotton carried. The largest
boat on the river was the _Henry Frank_, owned by Frank Hicks of
Memphis. She ran between Memphis and New Orleans, and on one trip
carried 9226 bales. Those were the old-style bales, of course. They
weighed 425 to 450 pounds each, as against 550 to 600 pounds, which is
the weight of a bale to-day, now that powerful machinery is used to make
them. The heavy bale came into use partly to beat transportation
charges, as rates were not made by weight, but at so much per bale.
"The land up the Yazoo belonged to the State, and the State sold it for
$1.25 per acre. The fellows that got up there first weren't any too
anxious to see new folks coming in and entering land. Used to try all
kinds of schemes to get them out.
"There were two brothers up there named Parker. One of them was a
surveyor--we called him 'Baldy'--and the other was lumbering, getting
timber out of the cypress breaks and rafting it down. Almost all the
timber used from Vicksburg to New Orleans came out of there.
"One time a man came up the Yazoo to take up land and went to stop with
Baldy Parker. When they sat down to dinner Baldy took some flour and
sprinkled it all over his meat.
"'What's that?' asked the stranger.
"'Quinine,' says Baldy. 'Haven't you got any?'
"'No,' says the fellow; 'what would I want it for?'
"'You'll find out if you go out there in the swamps,' Baldy tells him.
'It's full of malaria. We eat quinine on everything.'
"The fellow was quiet through the rest of the meal.
"Pretty soon they got up to go out, and Baldy took up a pair of
stovepipes.
"'What do you do with them pipes?' asks the stranger.
"'Wear 'em, of course,' says Baldy. 'Haven't you got any?'
"'No,' says the fellow. 'What for?'
"'Why,' says Baldy, 'the rattlesnakes out there will bite the legs right
off of you.'
"With that the fellow had enough. He didn't go any farther, but turned
around and took the boat down the river."
In all his years as captain and line owner on the river, Captain Parisot
never lost a vessel. "I never insured against sinking," he told us.
"Just against fire. But I got the best pilots I could hire. In all I
built twenty-seven steamboats. I had $150,000 worth of boats when I sold
my line in 1880. After I sold they did lose some boats."
Later we saw Captain "Billy" Jones, a much younger man than Captain
Parisot, yet old enough to have known the river in its prime. Captain
Jones deserted the river years ago, and is now a golfer with a
prosperous banking business on the side.
"Captain Parisot was right when he said business on the river was done
largely on friendship," said Captain Jones. "Also business used to be
turned down for the opposite reason. There was a historic case of that
in this town.
"Captain Tom Leathers was in the habit of refusing to take freight on
the _Natchez_ if he didn't like the shipper or the consignee. For some
reason or other he had it in for the firm of Lamkin & Eggleston,
wholesale grocers here in Vicksburg, and declined their freight. They
sued him in the Circuit Court and got judgment. Leathers carried the
case to the Supreme Court, but the verdict was sustained and he had to
pay $2500 damages. He was furious.
"'What's the use,' he said, 'of being a steamboat captain if you can't
tell people to go to hell?'"
It is the lamentable fact, and I must face it, and so must you if you
intend to read on, that the language of the river was rough. At least
ninety-nine out of every hundred river stories are, therefore, not
printable in full. Either they must be vitiated by deletions, or
interpreted at certain points by blanks and "blanketys." As for me, I
prefer the blankety-blanks and I consider that this method of avoiding
the complete truth relieves me of all responsibility. And of course, if
that is so, it absolves, at the same time, good Captain "Billy" Jones,
or any one else who may have happened to tell me the stories.
Both Leathers and Cannon were large, powerful men, and they always hated
each other. Leathers was never popular, for he was very arrogant, but he
had a great reputation for pushing the _Natchez_ through on time. Also,
such friends as he did have always stuck by him.
Something of the feeling between the two old river characters is
revealed in the following story related by Captain Jones:
"Ed Snodgrass, who lived in St. Joseph, La., was a friend of both Cannon
and Leathers. When the _Natchez_ would arrive at St. Joseph, he would go
and give Leathers news about Cannon, and when the _Lee_ came in he would
see Cannon and tell him about Leathers.
"Well, one time Leathers was laid up with a carbuncle on his back, and
brought a doctor up on the boat with him. So, of course, Ed Snodgrass
told Cannon about it when he came along.
"'A carbuncle, eh?' said Cannon.
"'Yes,' said Ed.
"'Well,' said Cannon, 'you tell the old blankety-blank-blank that I had
a brother--a bigger, stronger man than I am--and he had one o' them
things and died in two weeks.'
"Soon after that Cannon made a misstep when backing the _Natchez_ out,
at Natchez, and fell, breaking his collar bone. Of course Ed Snodgrass
gave the news to Leathers when he came along.
"'Huh!' said Leathers. 'His collar bone, eh? You tell the old
blankety-blank-blank that I wish it had been his blankety-blank neck!'"
I asked Captain Jones for stories about gambling.
"After the war," he said, "there weren't the big poker games there used
to be. Mostly we had sucker games then. There was a gambler named George
Duval who wrote a book--or, rather, he had somebody write it for him,
for he was a very ignorant fellow, and began his life calking the seams
of boats in a shipyard. He had a partner who was known as 'Jew Mose,'
who used to dress like a rich planter. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and a
very elegant tail coat, and was a big, handsome man.
"After the boat left New Orleans, this 'Jew Mose' would disguise himself
with whiskers and goggles, go to the barber shop and lay out his game.
George Duval and a fellow called 'Canada Bill' were the cappers. They
would bring in suckers, get their money, and generally get off the boat
about Baton Rouge.
"Once when I was a clerk on the _Robert E. Lee_, Duval got a young
fellow in tow, and the young fellow wanted to bet on the game, but he
had a friend with him, and his friend kept pulling him away.
"Later, when Duval had given up the idea of getting this young fellow's
money, and closed up his game, he appeared in the social hall of the
boat with a small bag held up to his face.
"Somebody asked him what was in the bag.
"'It's hot salt,' he said. 'I've got a toothache, and a bag of hot salt
is the best thing in the world for toothache.'
"Presently, when he went to his stateroom to get something, he left the
bag of salt on the stove to heat it up. While he was gone somebody
suggested, as a joke, that they dump out the salt and fill the bag with
ashes, instead. So they did it. And when Duval came back he held it up
to his face again, and seemed perfectly satisfied.
"'How does it feel now?' one of the fellows asked.
"'Fine,' said Duval. 'Hot salt is the best thing going.'
"At that, the man who had prevented the young fellow from betting, down
in the barber shop, earlier in the day, offered to bet Duval a hundred
dollars that the bag didn't contain salt.
"Duval took the bet and raised him back another hundred. But the man had
only fifty dollars left. However, another fellow, standing in the crowd,
put in the extra fifty to make two hundred dollars a side.
"Then Duval opened the bag, and it _was_ salt. He had changed the bags,
and the fellows who worked up the trick were his cappers."
One of the old-time river gamblers was an individual, blind in one eye,
known as "One-eyed Murphy." Murphy was an extremely artful manipulator
of cards, and made a business of cheating. One day, shortly after the
_Natchez_ had backed out from New Orleans and got under way, Marion
Knowles, a picturesque gentleman of the period, and one who had the
reputation of being polite even in the most trying circumstances, and no
matter how well he had dined, came in and stood for a time as a
spectator beside a table at which Murphy was playing poker with some
guileless planters. Mr. Knowles was not himself guileless, and very
shortly he perceived that the one-eyed gambler was dealing himself cards
from the bottom of the pack. Thereupon he drew his revolver from his
pocket and rapping with it on the table addressed the assembly:
"Gentlemen," he said, speaking in courtly fashion, "I regret to say that
there is something wrong here. I will not call any names, neither will I
make any personal allusions. _But if it doesn't stop, damn me if I don't
shoot his other eye out!_"
I cannot drop the river, and stories of river gambling, without
referring to one more tale which is a classic. It is a long story about
a big poker game, and to tell it properly one must know the exact words.
I do not know them, and therefore shall not attempt to tell the whole
story, but shall give you only the beginning.
It is supposed to be told by a Virginian.
"There was me," he says, "and another very distinguished gentleman from
Virginia and a gentleman from Kentucky, and a man from Ohio, and a
fellow from New York, and a blankety-blank from Boston--"
That is all I know of the story, but I can guess who got the money in
that game.
Can't you?