DECLINING YEARS.
It is a sad reflection that, after a life of hard and useful work and
the prominent part he took in up-building the great West, Captain La
Barge should have closed his career in comparative want. But such were
the vicissitudes of the business to which his life had been devoted.
That business had passed away, and like a sinking ship it dragged down
all who clung to it. Captain La Barge struggled bravely against these
adverse conditions, but it was impossible to withstand the downward
tendency.
[Illustration: STEAMBOAT WRECK ON THE MISSOURI RIVER]
From 1890 to 1894 Captain La Barge held a position under the city
government of St. Louis. His very last remunerative work of any kind
was for the United States Government, under the direction of the author
of this work, whom he helped compile a list of the steamboat wrecks
which have occurred on the Missouri River. This work was done in the
year 1897, and was published as a part of the report of the Missouri
River Commission for that year. Although the number of these wrecks
lacks but five of three hundred, the Captain’s memory embraced them
nearly all, and most of them with great accuracy of detail.
[Sidenote: GREATEST WRECK OF ALL.]
Truly a mournful task was this to the veteran pilot. What reminiscences
of a strange and wonderful past did it bring to mind! He lived over
again his river life of fifty years, saw the old keelboat, the
mackinaw, and the canoe, dodged again the bullets of the treacherous
savages, killed the wild buffalo, sparred his boat over sandbars or
warped it up the rapids, beheld again the wild rush to the gold fields,
heard the tramp of the army going to battle on the plains, and mused
upon a thousand other features of a life that existed no more. And as
he recalled one by one these wrecks of a once flourishing business,
he could not but reflect that the greatest wreck of all was the
business itself. It was gone--buried so deep in the sands of commercial
competition that not even the pennant staff or smokestack caused a
ripple on the surface--passengers, cargo, and all that clung to her a
total loss.
Captain La Barge survived most of his associates in the river business,
and in his later years was frequently consulted by those who had
occasion to recover facts concerning the early history of the river.
He lived only about two years after the completion of his work for the
government. He had grown visibly feebler during this time, and it was
apparent to those who knew him that the end of his life was near. It
came at last, however, quite unexpectedly. He was taken suddenly ill on
the 2d of April, 1899, and at 3 P. M. of the following day breathed his
last.
[Sidenote: JESUITS HONOR LA BARGE.]
The funeral of Captain La Barge was from the St. Xavier Cathedral in
St. Louis, and was largely attended. The Jesuits were under a deep debt
of gratitude to the Captain, who, throughout his career, had extended
to their missionaries the freedom of his boats. Through mistaken
information they had often credited this generosity to the American Fur
Company, for which Captain La Barge worked so much. Upon discovering
their error they made due acknowledgment of it, and upon this occasion
made a particular point to correct it and to acknowledge their lasting
debt to the great pilot. It was probably in line with this purpose that
the Church paid to the deceased its very highest honors. On Thursday
morning, April 6, solemn high mass was celebrated at the Cathedral for
the repose of the soul. Archbishop Kain, assisted by eight priests,
officiated at the mass. Six grandsons of the deceased acted as pall
bearers. Father Walter H. Hill, a lifelong friend of Captain La Barge,
preached the funeral sermon. In the course of his remarks he said:
“Captain La Barge led an honorable life. In the eyes of the Church to
which he belonged he led a good life. There was no stigma upon his
name. No vice marred his character to bring the blush of shame to his
children. His life was an example of which they might well be proud.”
[Sidenote: A WONDERFUL METAMORPHOSIS.]
The speaker drew an interesting picture of the changes that had taken
place in the city of St. Louis and in the great West within the span
of this man’s life. In his infancy he had actually been in peril from
the Indians in what are now the outskirts of the city. Then luxury and
plenty, as we now know them, had no existence. The mother cared for
her children and did the work of the house. The candle and not the
incandescent furnished light at night. Water was pumped from the well
and people did not ride to and from their business in swift electric
cars. In the words of a local paper, commenting upon the Captain’s
career, “He passed through all the gradations and progressive steps
of the century until in its very last year the sun of his life set
forever, and his expiring gaze beheld a little village grown to a great
metropolis, enmeshed in a perfect tangle of railways, factories, and
furnaces, teeming with busy activity, converting the crude material
into every possible contrivance imaginable for the use of man; palatial
mansions where, in his youth, was a wilderness; in short, every
improvement that the brain of man had wrought.”
Father Hill illustrated this marvelous growth by a reference to the
growth of his own Church in St. Louis: “As I stand here to-day,” he
said, “to pay the last sad tribute of respect to the memory of the
friend of my early youth, I cannot help thinking of the marvelous
changes that have been wrought in the last eighty-four years. On the
evening of October 22, 1815, a mother entered a little frame church
on the banks of the Mississippi, bearing an infant in her arms. The
parent had come to have the child baptized. Tallow candles lighted her
way through the aisle to the rude altar where the ceremony was to be
performed. To-day the remains of that babe, grown to manhood’s estate
and full of years, lie before me. The spirit now dwells in his Father’s
house. At the christening were only the most primitive conveniences;
at the burial services his remains rest in a magnificent granite
structure; hundreds of electric lights glare upon the dead; hundreds of
heads are bowed in silent prayer. Which of us can ponder for an instant
upon the span of this life and not be bewildered at the contemplation?”
[Sidenote: A FIT RESTING PLACE.]
Captain La Barge was buried in the beautiful Calvary Cemetery, which
lies adjacent to the even more beautiful Bellefontaine Cemetery in
the northern part of the City of St. Louis. His grave is within a
short distance of where he spent his earliest infancy, and is in all
respects a peculiarly appropriate resting place after a life like
his. To the eastward, in full view where not cut off by the foliage,
flows the mighty Mississippi. To the northward the impetuous Missouri
brings down its flood from the dim and shadowy distance. How often had
this individual guided his intrepid bark up the channels of these two
streams, headed for remote and almost unknown ports, and anon, gliding
swiftly on his homeward journey, sped eastward into the Mississippi and
south to the port to which he always returned. Standing by his grave
and overlooking the valleys of these streams, their history through the
past two centuries thrills the mind like a romance of the past.
[Sidenote: PERSONAL APPEARANCE.]
In personal appearance Captain La Barge was one of the most
distinguished-looking men of the West in his time. He stood five feet
ten, was well proportioned, weighed about 180 pounds, was erect,
muscular, and alert, with a sharp, quick eye and a quiet energy in
all his movements. He always wore a beard after reaching manhood’s
estate, and in later years bore a striking resemblance to General
Grant. Colonel Thomas of the army, long stationed in St. Louis, always
addressed him by the name, Grant; and only a few years before his death
a gentleman met him on the street and said, “Well, if I did not know
Grant is dead, I should say there he comes.”
[Sidenote: SUNSHINE AND TEMPEST.]
Captain La Barge’s manner in social intercourse was mild and agreeable,
and his accent pleasant to a degree. It was a satisfaction to hear him
talk. Although almost invariably soft and unobtrusive, his voice would
occasionally swell, under the influence of emotion, until it possessed
all the power of command. It is said that this characteristic marked
his entire career. His men were not deceived by it. They never dared to
take undue advantage of the sunshine of his manner, lest they call down
upon them the thunder of the tempest.
Captain La Barge was a lifelong, consistent Catholic in religion, and
in politics a lifelong, consistent Democrat.