DESCENT OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER
LEAVE CAIRO, ILLINOIS.-- THE LONGEST RIVER IN THE WORLD.-- BOOK
GEOGRAPHY AND BOAT GEOGRAPHY.-- CHICKASAW BLUFF.-- MEETING WITH THE
PARAKEETS.-- FORT DONALDSON.-- EARTHQUAKES AND LAKES.-- WEIRD BEAUTY
OF REELFOOT LAKE.-- JOE ECKEL'S BAR.-- SHANTY-BOAT COOKING.-- FORT
PILLOW.-- MEMPHIS.-- A NEGRO JUSTICE.-- "DE COMMON LAW OB
MISSISSIPPI."
MY floating home was now upon the broad Mississippi, which text-book
geographers still insist upon calling "the Father of Waters--the
largest river in North America." Its current was about one-third
faster than that of its tributary, the Ohio. Its banks were covered
with heavy forests, and for miles along its course the great
wilderness was broken only by the half-tilled lands of the cotton-
planter.
From Cairo southward the river is very tortuous, turning back upon
itself as if imitating the convolutions of a crawling serpent, and
following a channel of more than eleven hundred and fifty miles before
its waters unite with those of the Gulf of Mexico. This country
between the mouth of the Ohio and the Gulf of Mexico is truly the
delta of the Mississippi, for the river north of Cairo cuts through
table-lands, and is confined to its old bed; but below the mouth of
the Ohio the great river persistently seeks for new channels, and, as
we approach New Orleans, we discover branches which carry off a
considerable portion of its water to the Gulf coast in southwestern
Louisiana.
It is always with some degree of hesitation that I introduce
geographical details into my books, as I well know that a taste for
the study of physical geography has not been developed among my
countrymen. Where among all our colleges is there a well-supported
chair of physical geography occupied by an American? We sometimes hear
of a "Professor of Geology and Physical Geography," but the last is
only a sort of appendage--a tail--to the former. When a student of
American geography begins the study in earnest, he discovers that our
geographies are insufficient, are filled with errors, and that our
maps possess a greater number of inaccuracies than truths. When he
goes into the field to study the physical geography of his native
land, he is forced to go through the disagreeable process of
unlearning all he has been taught from the poor textbooks of stay-at-
home travellers and closet students, whose compilations have burdened
his mind with errors. In despair he turns to the topographical charts
and maps of the "United States Coast and Geodetic Survey," and of the
"Engineer Corps of the United States Army," and in the truthful and
interesting results of the practical labors of trained observers he
takes courage as he enters anew his field of study. The cartographer
of the shop economically constructs his unreliable maps to supply a
cheap demand; and strange to say, though the results of the government
surveys are freely at his disposal, he rarely makes use of them. It
costs too much to alter the old map-plates, and but few persons will
feel sufficiently interested to criticise the faults of his latest
edition.
"How do you get the interior details?" I once asked the agent of one
of the largest map establishments in the United States. "Oh," he
answered, "when we cannot get township details from local surveys, we
sling them in anyhow." An error once taught from our geographies and
maps will remain an error for a generation, and our text-book
geographers will continue to repeat it, for they do not travel over
the countries they describe, and rarely adopt the results of
scientific investigation. The most unpopular study in the schools of
the United States is that of the geography of our country. It does not
amount merely to a feeling of indifference, but in some colleges to a
positive prejudice. The chief mountain-climbing club of America,
counting among its members some of the best minds of our day, was
confronted by this very prejudice. "If you introduce the study of
physical geography in connection with the explorations of mountains, I
will not join your association," said a gentleman living almost within
the shadow of the buildings of our oldest university.
A committee of Chinese who called upon the school authorities of a
Pacific-coast city, several years since, respectfully petitioned that
"you will not waste the time of our children in teaching them
geography. You say the world is ROUND; some of us say it is FLAT. What
difference does it make to our business if it be round or flat? The
study of geography will not help us to make money. It may do for
Melican man, but it is not good for Chinese."
I once knew a chairman of the school trustees in a town in New Jersey
to remove his daughters from the public school simply because the
teacher insisted that it was his duty to instruct his pupils in the
study of geography. "My boys may go to sea some day, and then
geography may be of service to them," said this chairman to the
teacher, "but if my daughters study it they will waste their time. Of
what use can geography be to girls who will never command a vessel?"
While conscious that I may inflict an uninteresting chapter upon my
reader who may have accompanied me with a commendable degree of
patience so far upon my lonely voyage, I nevertheless feel it a duty
to place on record a few facts that are well known to scientific men,
if not to the writers of popular geographies, regarding the existence
within the boundaries of our own country of the longest river in the
world. It is time that the recognition of this fact should be
established in every school in the United States. As this is a very
important subject, let us examine it in detail.
THE MISSOURI IS THE LONGEST RIVER IN THE WORLD, AND THE MISSISSIPPI IS
ONLY A BRANCH OF IT. The Mississippi River joins its current with that
of the Missouri about two hundred miles above the mouth of the Ohio;
consequently, as we are now to allow the largest stream (the Missouri)
to bear its name from its source all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, it
follows that the Ohio flows into the Missouri and not into the
Mississippi River. The Missouri, and NOT the Mississippi, is the main
stream of what has been called the Mississippi Basin. The Missouri,
when taken from its fountain-heads of the Gallatin, Madison, and Red
Rock lakes, or, if we take the Jefferson Fork as the principal
tributary, has a length, from its source to its union with the
Mississippi, of above three thousand miles. The United States
Topographical Engineers have credited it with a length of two thousand
nine hundred and eight miles, when divested of some of these tributary
extensions. The same good authority gives the Mississippi a length of
thirteen hundred and thirty miles from its source to its junction with
the Missouri.
At this junction of the two rivers the Missouri has a mean discharge
of one hundred and twenty thousand cubic feet of water per second, or
one-seventh greater than that of the Mississippi, which has a mean
discharge of one hundred and five thousand cubic feet per second. The
Missouri drains five hundred and eighteen thousand square miles of
territory, while the Mississippi drains only one hundred and sixty-
nine thousand square miles. While the latter river has by far the
greatest rainfall, the Missouri discharges the largest amount of
water, and at the point of union of the two streams is from fifteen to
seventeen hundred miles the longer of the two. Therefore, according to
natural laws, the Missouri is the main stream, and the smaller and
shorter Mississippi is only a branch of it. From the junction of the
two rivers the current, increased by numerous tributaries, follows a
crooked channel some thirteen hundred and fifty-five miles to the Gulf
of Mexico. The Missouri, therefore, has a total length of four
thousand three hundred and sixty-three miles, without counting some of
its highest sources.
The learned Professor A. Guyot, in a treatise on physical geography,
written for "A. J. Johnson's New Illustrated Family Atlas of the
World," informs us that the Amazon River, the great drainer of the
eastern Andes, is three thousand five hundred and fifty miles long,
and is the LONGEST RIVER IN THE WORLD.
According to the figures used by me in reference to the Missouri and
Mississippi, and which are the results of actual observations made by
competent engineers, the reader will find, notwithstanding the
statements made by our best geographers in regard to the length of the
Amazon, that there is one river within the confines of our country
which is eight hundred and thirteen miles longer than the Amazon, and
is the longest though not the widest river in the world. The rivers of
what is now called the Mississippi Basin drain one million two hundred
and forty-four thousand square miles of territory, while the broader
Amazon, with its many tributaries, drains the much larger area of two
million two hundred and seventy-five thousand square miles.
A century after the Spaniard, De Soto, had discovered the lower
Mississippi, and had been interred in its bed, a French interpreter,
of "Three Rivers," on the northern bank of the St. Lawrence River,
named Jean Nicollet, explored one of the northern tributaries of the
Mississippi. This was about the year 1639.
It was reserved for La Salle to make the first thorough exploration of
the Mississippi. A few months after he had returned, alone, from his
examination of the Ohio as far as the falls at Louisville, in 1669-70,
this undaunted man followed the Great Lakes of the north to the
western shore of Lake Michigan, and making a portage to a river,
"evidently the Illinois," traversed it to its intersection with
another river, "flowing from the north-west to the south-east," which
river must have been the Mississippi, and which it is affirmed La
Salle descended to the thirty-sixth degree of latitude, when he became
convinced that this unexplored stream discharged itself, not into the
Gulf of California, but into the Gulf of Mexico. So La Salle was the
discoverer of the Illinois as well as of the Ohio; and during his
subsequent visits to the Mississippi gave that river a thorough
exploration.
My entrance to the Mississippi River was marked by the advent of
severe squalls of wind and rain, which drove me about noon to the
shelter of Island No. 1, where I dined, and where in half an hour the
sun came out in all its glory. Many peculiar features of the
Mississippi attracted my notice. Sand bars appeared above the water,
and large flocks of ducks and geese rested upon them. Later, the high
Chickasaw Bluff, the first and highest of a series which rise at
intervals, like islands out of the low bottoms as far south as
Natchez, came into view on the left side of the river. The mound-
builders of past ages used these natural fortresses to hold at bay the
fierce tribes of the north, and long afterward this Chickasaw Bluff
played a conspicuous part in the civil war between the states.
Columbus, a small village, and the terminus of a railroad, is at the
foot of the heights.
A little lower down, and opposite Chalk Bluff, was a heavily wooded
island, a part of the territory of the state of Illinois, and known as
Wolf Island, or Island No. 5. At five o'clock in the afternoon I ran
into a little thoroughfare on the eastern side of this island, and
moored the duck-boat under its muddy banks. The wind increased to a
gale before morning, and kept me through the entire day, and until the
following morning, an unwilling captive. Reading and cooking helped to
while away the heavy hours, but having burned up all the dry wood I
could find, I was forced to seek other quarters, which were found in a
romantic stream that flowed out of a swamp and joined the Mississippi
just one mile above Hickman, on the Kentucky side. Having passed a
comfortable night, and making an early start without breakfast, I
rowed rapidly over a smooth current to the stream called Bayou du
Chien Creek, in which I made a very attractive camp among the giant
sycamores, sweet-gums, and cotton-woods. The warm sunshine penetrated
into this sheltered spot, while the wind had fallen to a gentle
zephyr, and came in refreshing puffs through the lofty trees. Here
birds were numerous, and briskly hopped about my fire while I made an
omelet and boiled some wheaten grits.
[Meeting with the parakeets.]
In this retired haunt of the birds I remained through the whole of
that sunny Sunday, cooking my three meals, and reading my Bible, as
became a civilized man. While enjoying this immunity from the
disturbing elements of the great public thoroughfare, the river,
curious cries were borne upon the wind above the tall tree-tops like
the chattering calls of parrots, to which my ear had become accustomed
in the tropical forests of Cuba. As the noise grew louder with the
approach of a feathered flock of visitors, and the screams of the
birds became more discordant, I peered through the branches of the
forest to catch a glimpse of what I had searched for through many
hundred miles of wilderness since my boyhood, but what had so far
eluded my eager eyes. I felt certain these strange cries must come
from the Carolina Parrot, or Parakeet (Conurus Carolinensis), which,
though once numerous in all the country west of the Alleghanies as far
north as the southern shores of the Great Lakes, has so rapidly
diminished in number since 1825, that we find it only as an occasional
inhabitant of the middle states south of the Ohio River. In fact, this
species is now chiefly confined to Florida, western Louisiana, Texas,
Arkansas, and the Indian Territory. That careful and reliable
ornithologist, Dr. Elliot Coues, seems to doubt whether it is now
entitled to a place in the avi-fauna of South Carolina, where it was
once found in large flocks.
The birds soon reached the locality of my camp, and circling through
the clear, warm atmosphere above the tree-tops, they gradually settled
lower and lower, suspiciously scanning my fire, screaming as though
their little throats would burst, while the sunlight seemed to fill
the air with the reflections of the green, gold, and carmine of their
brilliant plumage. They dropped into the foliage of the grove, and for
a moment were as quiet as though life had departed from them, while I
kept close to my hiding-place behind an immense fallen tree, from
beneath which I could watch my feathery guests.
The bodies of the adult birds were emerald green, with bright blue
reflections. The heads were yellow, excepting the forehead and cheeks,
which were scarlet. The large, thick, and hooked bill was white, as
well as the bare orbital space around the eye. The feet were a light
flesh-color. The length from tip of bill to end of tail was about
fourteen inches. The young birds could be easily distinguished from
the adults by their short tails and the uniform coat of green, while
in some cases the frontlet of scarlet was just beginning to show
itself. The adult males were longer than the females.
The Carolina Parrot does not put on its bright-yellow hues until the
second season, and its most brilliant tints do not come to perfection
until the bird is fully two years old. They feed upon the seeds of the
cockle-burrs, which grow in abandoned fields of the planter, as well
as upon fruits of all kinds, much of which they waste in their
uneconomical method of eating. The low alluvial bottom-lands of the
river, where pecan and beech nuts abound, are their favorite hunting-
grounds.
It is singular that Alexander Wilson, and, in fact, all the
naturalists, except Audubon, who have written about this interesting
bird, have failed to examine its nest and eggs. By the unsatisfactory
manner in which Audubon refers to the nidification of this parakeet,
one is led to believe that even he did not become personally
acquainted with its breeding habits.
The offer by Mr. Maynard of one dollar for every parrot's egg
delivered to him, induced a Florida cracker to cut a path into a dense
cypress swamp at Dunn's Lake, about the middle of the month of June.
The hunter was occupied three days in the enterprise, and returned
much disgusted with the job. He had found the nests of the parakeets
in the hollow cypress-trees of the swamp, but he was too late to
secure the eggs, as they were hatched, and the nests filled with young
birds. The number of young in each nest seemed to leave no doubt of
the fact of several adults nesting in one hole. Probably the eggs are
laid about the last of May.
These birds are extremely gregarious, and have been seen at sunset to
cluster upon the trunk of a gigantic cypress like a swarm of bees. One
after another slowly crawls through a hole into the cavity until it is
filled up, while those who are not so fortunate as to obtain entrance,
or reserved seats, cling to the outside of the trunk with their claws,
and keep their position through the night chiefly by hooking the tip
of the upper mandible of the beak into the bark of the tree. The
backwoodsmen confidently assert that they have found as many as twenty
eggs of a greenish white in a single hollow of a cypress-tree; and as
it is generally supposed, judging from the known habits of other
species of this genus, that the Carolina Parrot lays only two eggs,
but few naturalists doubt that these birds nest in companies. It is a
very difficult task to find the nests of parrots in the West Indies,
some of them building in the hollowed top of the dead trunk of a royal
palm which has been denuded of its branches; and there, upon the
unprotected summit of a single column eighty feet in height, without
any shelter from tropical storms, the Cuban Parrot rears its young.
The Carolina Parrot is the only one of this species which may truly be
said to be a permanent resident of our country. The Mexican species
are sometimes met with along the southwestern boundaries of the United
States, but they emigrate only a few miles northward of their own
regions. The salt-licks in the great button-wood bottoms along the
Mississippi were once the favorite resorts of these birds, and they
delighted to drink the saline water. It is to be regretted that so
interesting a bird should have been so ruthlessly slaughtered where
they were once so numerous. Only the young birds are fit to eat, but
we read in the accounts of our pioneer naturalists that from eight to
twenty birds were often killed by the single discharge of a gun, and
that as the survivors would again and again return to the lurking-
place of their destroyer, attracted by the distressing cries of their
wounded comrades, the unfeeling sportsman would continue his work of
destruction until more than half of a large flock would be
exterminated. This interesting parakeet may, during the next century,
pass out of existence, and be known to our descendants as the Great
Auk (Alca impennis) is now known to us, as a very rare specimen in the
museums of natural history.
On Monday, January 3, I rowed out of the Bayou du Chien, and soon
reached the town of Hickman, Kentucky, where I invested in a basketful
of mince-pies, that deleterious compound so dear to every American
heart. A large flatboat, built upon the most primitive principles, and
without cabin of any kind, was leaving the landing, evidently bound on
a fishing-cruise, for her hold was filled with long nets and barrels
of provisions. A large roll of canvas, to be used as a protection
against rain, was stowed in one end of the odd craft, while at the
other end was a large and very rusty cooking-stove, with a joint of
pipe rising above it. The crew of fishermen labored at a pair of long
sweeps until the flat reached the strong current, when they took in
their oars, and, clustering about the stove, filled their pipes, and
were soon reclining at their ease on the pile of nets, apparently as
well satisfied with their tub as Diogenes was with his. As I rowed
past them, they roused themselves into some semblance of interest, and
gazed upon the little white boat, so like a pumpkin-seed in shape,
which soon passed from their view as it disappeared down the wide
Mississippi.
There was something in the appearance of that rough flatboat that made
me wish I had hailed her quiet crew; for, strange to say, they did not
send after me a shower of slang phrases and uncouth criticisms, the
usual prelude to conversation among flatboat-men when they desire to
cultivate the acquaintance of a fellow-voyager. In fact, it was rather
startling not to have the usual greeting, and I wondered why I heard
no friendly expressions, such as, "Here, you river thief, haul
alongside and report yourself! Whar did you come from? Come and take a
pull at the bottle! It's prime stuff, I tell ye; will kill a man at
forty paces," &c. The rusty stove was as strong an attraction as the
quiet crew, as I thought how convenient it would be to run alongside
of the old boat and utilize it for my culinary purposes. The unwonted
silence, however, proved conclusively that some refined instinct,
unknown to the usual crews of such boats, governed these voyagers, and
I feared to intrude upon so dignified a party.
Descending a long straight reach, after making a run of twenty-three
miles, I crossed the limits of Kentucky, and, entering Tennessee, saw
on its shore, in a deep bend of the river, the site of a
fortification, while opposite to it lay the low Island No. 10. Both of
these places were full of interest, being the scenes of conflict in
our civil war. The little white sneak-box glided down another long
bend, over the wrecks of seven steamboats, and passed New Madrid, on
the Missouri shore. The mouth of Reelfoot Bayou then opened before me,
a creek which conducts the waters from the weird recesses of one of
the most interesting lakes in America,--a lake which was the immediate
result of a disastrous series of disturbances generally referred to as
the New Madrid earthquakes, and which took place in 1811-13. Much of
the country in the vicinity of New Madrid and Fort Donaldson was
involved in these serious shocks. Swamps were upheaved and converted
into dry uplands, while cultivated uplands were depressed below the
average water level, and became swamps or ponds of water. 'The
inhabitants, deprived of their little farms, were reduced to such a
stage of suffering as to call for aid from government, and new lands
were granted them in place of their fields which had sunk out of
sight. Hundreds of square miles of territory were lost during the two
years of terrestrial convulsions.
The most interesting effect of the subsidence of the land was the
creation of Reelfoot Lake, the fluvial entrance to which is from the
tortuous Mississippi some forty-five miles below Hickman, Kentucky.
The northern portion of the lake is west of and a short distance from
Fort Donaldson, about twenty miles from Hickman, by the river route.
As Reelfoot Lake possesses the peculiar flora and characteristics of a
multitude of other swamp-lakes throughout the wilderness of the lower
Mississippi valley, I cannot better describe them all than by giving
to the reader a description of that lake, written by an intelligent
observer who visited the locality in 1874.
"Nothing," he says, "could well exceed the singularity of the view
that meets the eye as one comes out of the shadows of the forest on to
the border of this sheet of water. From the marshy shore spreads out
the vast extent of the seemingly level carpet of vegetation,--a mat of
plants, studded over with a host of beautiful flowers; through this
green prairie runs a maze of water-ways, some just wide enough for a
pirogue, some widening into pools of darkened water. All over this
expanse rise the trunks of gigantic cypresses, shorn of all their
limbs, and left like great obelisks, scattered so thickly that the
distance is lost in the forest of spires. Some are whitened and some
blackened by decay and fire; many rise to a hundred feet or more above
the lake. The branches are all gone, save in a few more gigantic
forms, whose fantastic remnants of the old forest arches add to the
illusion of monumental ruin which forces itself on the mind. The
singularity of the general effect is quite matched by the wonder of
the detail.
"Taking the solitary dug-out canoe, or pirogue, as it is called in the
vernacular, we paddled out into the tangle of water-paths. The green
carpet, studded with yellow and white, that we saw from the shores,
resolved itself into a marvellously beautiful and varied vegetation.
From the tangle of curious forms the eye selects two noble flowers:
our familiar northern water-lily, grown to a royal form, its flowers
ten inches broad, and its floating pads near a foot across; and
another grander flower, the Wampapin lily, the queen of American
flowers. It is worth a long journey to see this shy denizen of our
swamps in its full beauty. From the midst of its great floating
leaves, which are two feet or more in diameter, rise two large leaves
borne upon stout foot-stalks that bring them a yard above the water;
from between these elevated leaves rises to a still greater height the
stem of the flower. The corolla itself is a gold-colored cup a foot in
diameter, lily-like in a general way, but with a large pestle-shaped
ovary rising in the centre of the flower, in which are planted a
number of large seeds, the 'pins' of Wampapin. These huge golden cups
are poised on their stems, and wave in the breeze above great wheel-
like leaves, while the innumerable white lilies fill in the spaces
between, and enrich the air with their perfume.
"Slowly we crept through the tangled paths until we were beyond the
sight of shore, in the perfect silence of this vast ruined temple, on
every side the endless obelisks of the decaying cypress, and as far as
the eye could see were ranged the numberless nodding bells of the
yellow lilies, and the still-eyed white stars below them. While we
waited in the coming evening, the silence was so deep, the whir of a
bald eagle's wings, as he swept through the air, was audible from
afar. The lonely creature sat on the peak of one of the wooden towers
over our boat, and looked curiously down upon us. The waters seemed
full of fish, and, indeed, the lake has much celebrity as a place for
such game. We could see them creeping through the mazes of the water-
forest, in a slow, blind way, not a bit like the dance of the northern
creatures of the active waters of our mountain streams.
"There is something of forgetfulness in such a scene, a sense of a
world far away, with no path back to it. One might fall to eating our
Wampapin lily, as did the Chickasaws of old, and find in it the all-
forgetting lotus, for it is, indeed, the brother of the lotus of the
Nile. We do not know how far these forgotten savages found the mystic
influence of the Nilotic lotus in these queenly flowers of the swamps,
but tradition says that they ate not only the seeds, but the bulbous
roots, which the natives aver are quite edible. So we, too, can claim
a lotus-eating race, and are even able to try the soul-subduing powers
of the plant at our will.
"There is something in the weight of life and death in these swamps
that subdues the mind, and makes the steps we take fall as in a dream.
It was not easy to fix a basis for memory with the pencil, and
recollection shapes a vast sensation of strangeness, a feeling as if
one had trod for a moment beyond the brink of time, rather than any
distinct images."
At sunset I came upon Joe Eckel's Bar,--not the fluvial establishment
so much resorted to by people ashore,--but a genuine Mississippi
sandbar, or shoal, which was covered with two feet of water, and
afforded lodgment for a heavy raft of trees that had floated upon it.
The island was also partly submerged, but I found a cove with a sandy
beach on its lower end; and running into the little bay, I staked the
boat in one foot of water, much to the annoyance of flocks of wild-
fowl which circled about me at intervals all night. The current had
been turbid during the day, and to supply myself with drinking-water
it was necessary to fill a can from the river and wait for the
sediment to precipitate itself before it was fit for use. Fifty-six
miles were logged for the day's row.
In the morning Joe Eckel's Bar was alive with geese and ducks,
cackling a lusty farewell as I pushed through the drift stuff and
resumed my voyage down the swelling river.
The reaches were usually five miles in length, though some of them
were very much longer. Sometimes deposits of sand and vegetable matter
will build up a small island adjacent to a large one, and then a dense
thicket of cotton-wood brush takes possession of it, and assists
materially in resisting the encroachments of the current. These
little, low islands, covered with thickets, are called tow-heads, and
the maps of the Engineer Corps of the United States distinguish them
from the originally numbered islands in the following manner: "Island
No. 18," and "Tow Head of Island No.18."
In addition to the numbered islands, which commence with Island No. 1,
below the mouth of the Ohio, and end with Island No. 125, above the
inlet to Bayou La Fourche, in Louisiana, there are many which have
been named after their owners. During one generation a planter may
live upon a peninsula comprising many thousand acres, with his cotton-
fields and houses fronting on the Mississippi. The treacherous current
of this river may suddenly cut a new way across his estate inland at a
distance of two miles from his home. As the gradual change goes on, he
looks from the windows of his house upon a new scene. He no longer has
the rapid flowing river, enlivened by the passage of steamboats and
other craft; but before him is a sombre bayou, or crescent-shaped
lake, whose muddy waters are almost motionless. He was the proprietor
of Needham's Point, he is now the owner of Needham's Island, and lives
in the quiet atmosphere of the backwoods of Tennessee.
This day's row carried me past heavily-wooded shores, cotton-fields
with some of the cotton still unpicked; past the limits of Missouri on
the left side, and into the wild state of Arkansas at Island No. 21. I
finally camped on Island No. 26, in a half submerged thicket, after a
row of fifty-eight miles.
As there were many flat and shanty boats floating southward, I adopted
a plan by means of which my dinners were frequently cooked with little
trouble to myself or others. About an hour before noon I gazed about
within the narrow horizon for one of those floating habitations, and
rowing alongside, engaged in conversation with its occupants. The men
would tell what success they had had in collecting the skins of wild
animals (though silent upon the subject of pig-stealing), while the
women would talk of the homes they had left, and sigh for the
refinements and comforts of "city life," by which they meant their
former existence in some small town on the upper river. While we were
exchanging our budgets of information I would obtain the consent of
the presiding goddess of the boat to stew my ambrosia upon her stove,
the sneak-box floating the while alongside its tub-like companion.
Many a half hour was spent in this way; and, besides the comfort of a
hot dinner, there were advantages afforded for the study of characters
not to be found elsewhere.
These peculiar boats, so often encountered, found refuge in the
frequent cut-offs behind the many islands of the river; for besides
those islands which have been numbered, new ones are forming every
year. At times, when the water is very high, the current will cut a
new route across the low isthmus, or neck, of a peninsula, around
which sweeps a long reach of the main channel, leaving the tortuous
bend which it has deserted to be gradually filled up with snags,
deposits of alluvium, and finally to be carpeted with a vegetable
growth. In some cases, as the stream works away to the eastward or
westward, it remains an inland crescent-shaped lake, numbers of which
are to be found in the wilderness many miles from the parent stream. I
have known the channel of the Mississippi to be shortened twenty miles
during a freshet, and a steam-boat which had followed the great ox-bow
bend in ascending the river, on its return trip shot through the new
cut-off of a few hundred feet in length, upon fifteen feet of water
where a fortnight before a forest had been growing.
The area of land on both sides of the Mississippi subjected to annual
overflow, like the country surrounding the Nile, in Egypt, is very
large. There are localities thirty or forty miles away from the river
where the height of the overflow of the previous year is plainly
registered upon the trunks of the trees by a coating of yellow mud,
which sometimes reaches as high as a man's head. This great region
possesses vast tracts of rich land, as well as millions of acres of
low swamps and bayou bottoms.
The traveller, the hunter, the zologist, and the botanist can all
find here in these rich river bottoms a ready reward for any
inconveniences experienced on the route. Strange types of half-
civilized whites, game enough to satisfy the most rapacious, beast and
bird of peculiar species, and over all the immense forests of cypress,
sweet-gums, Spanish-oaks, tulip-trees, sycamores, cotton-woods, white-
oaks, &c., while the most delicate wild-flowers "waste their sweetness
on the desert air." Across all this natural beauty the whisper of
desolation casts a cloud, for here during most of the year arises the
health-destroying malaria.
Upon the high lands the squatter builds his log cabin, and makes his
clearing where the rich soil and warm sun assist his rude agricultural
labors, and he is rewarded with a large crop of maize and sweet
potatoes. These, with bacon from his herd of wandering pigs, give
sustenance to his family of children, who, hatless and bonnetless,
roam through the woods until the sun bleaches their hair to the color
of flax. With tobacco, whiskey, and ammunition for himself, and an
ample supply of snuff for his wife, he drags out an indolent
existence; but he is the pioneer of American civilization, and as he
migrates every few years to a more western wilderness, his lands are
frequently occupied by a more intelligent and industrious class, and
his improvements are improved upon. The new-comer, with greater
ambition and more ample means, raises cotton instead of corn, and
depends upon the Ohio valley for a supply of that cereal.
Wednesday, January 5th, was a sunny and windy day. The Arkansas shores
afforded me a protection from the wind as I rowed down towards Fort
Pillow, which, according to the map of the United States Engineer
Corps, is situated upon Chickasaw Bluff No. 1, though some writers and
map-makers designate the Columbus Bluff, below the mouth of the Ohio,
as the first Chickasaw Bluff. The site of Fort Pillow is about thirty
feet above the water. It commands the low country opposite, and two
reaches of the river for a long distance. A little below the fort, on
the right bank of the river, was an extensive cotton-field, still
white with the flossy cellulose. Here I landed under the shady trees,
and gathered cotton, the result of peaceful labor. Truly had the sword
been beaten into the ploughshare, and the spear into a pruning-hook,
for above me frowned down Fort Pillow, the scene of the terrible negro
massacre in our late war. Now the same sun shone so brightly upon the
graves scattered here and there, and warmed into life the harvest sown
in peace.
At intervals I caught glimpses of negro cabins, with their clearings,
and their little crops of cotton glistening in the sun. The island
tow-heads and sand-bars were numerous, and in places the Mississippi
broadened into lake-like areas, while the yellow current, now heavily
charged with mud, arose in height every hour. The climate was growing
delightful. It was like a June day in the northern states. Each soft
breeze of the balmy atmosphere seemed to say, as I felt its strange,
fascinating influence, "You are nearing the goal!" The shadows of the
twilight found me safely ensconced behind the lower end of Island No.
33, where in the bayou between it and the Tennessee shore I lazily
watched fair Luna softly emerging from the clouds, and lending to the
grand old woods her tender light.
I proceeded southward the next day, rowing comfortably after having
divested myself of all superfluous apparel. The negroes, on their one-
horse plantations, gave a hearty hail as I passed, but I noted here a
feature I had remarked when upon my "Voyage of the Paper Canoe," on
the eastern coast. It was the silence in which these people worked.
The merry song of the darky was no longer heard as in the "auld lang
syne." Then he was the slave of a white master. Now he is the slave of
responsibilities and cares which press heavily upon his heretofore
unthinking nature. To-day he has a future IF he can make it.
During the day, a lone woman on a shanty-boat, which was securely
fastened to an old stump, volunteered much information in regard "her
man," and the money he expected to receive for the skins he had been
collecting during the winter. She said he would get in New Orleans
thirty-five cents apiece for his coon-skins, one dollar for minks, and
one dollar and a half each for beaver and otter skins. She informed me
that the sunken country below Memphis, on the Arkansas side, was full
of deer and bears.
By rowing briskly I was able to pass Memphis, the principal river port
of Tennessee, at five o'clock in the afternoon. This flourishing city
is situated upon one of the Chickasaw bluffs, thirty feet above the
river. At the base of the bluff a bed of sandstone projects into the
water, it being the only known stratum of rock along the river between
Cairo and the Gulf. From the Ohio River to Vicksburg, a distance of
six hundred miles, it is asserted that there is no other site for a
commercial city: so Memphis, though isolated, enjoys this advantage,
which has, in fact, made her the busy cotton-shipping port she is to-
day. Her population is about forty thousand. As Memphis is connected
by railroads with the towns and villages of all the back country, in
addition to her water advantages, she may be called the business
centre of an immense area of cultivated land. The view of the city
from the river is striking. Her esplanade, several hundred feet in
width, sweeps along the bluffs and is covered with large warehouses.
Pushing steadily southward, I looked out anxiously for a good camping-
ground for the night, feeling that a rest had been well earned, for I
had rowed sixty-one miles that day. Soon after passing Horn Lake Bend,
the thickets of Crow Island attracted my attention, for along the
muddy, crumbling bank the mast of a little sloop arose from the water,
and a few feet inland the bright blaze of a camp-fire shone through
the mists of evening. A cheery hail of; "I say, stranger, pull in, and
tie up here," came from a group of three roughly-clad men, who were
bending over the coals, busily engaged in frying salt pork and
potatoes. The swift current forced me into an eddy close to the camp.
One of the men caught my painter, and drew me close under the lee of
their roughly constructed sloop of about two tons' burden. When seated
by the bright fire, "the boys" told me their history. They were out of
work; so, investing sixty dollars in an old sloop, putting on board a
barrel of pork, a barrel of flour, some potatoes, coffee, salt, and
molasses, (which cargo was to last three months,) they started to cut
canes in the canebrakes of White River, Arkansas. These canes were to
be utilized as fishing-poles, and being carefully assorted and
fastened into bundles, were to be shipped to Cincinnati by steamer,
and from there by rail to Cleveland, Ohio, where Mr. Farrar, their
consignee, would dispose of them for the party. They had come down the
Mississippi from Keokuk, Iowa, having left that place December 13th,
and had experienced various delays, having several times been frozen
up in creeks. They would be able to cut, during the winter, twenty-
five thousand fishing-rods, enough, one would think, to clear the
streams of all the finny tribe. Mr. F. C. Stirling, of Painesville,
Ohio, was the principal of the party, and I found him an unusually
intelligent young man. He had passed the previous winter alone upon
White River in an experimental sort of way, and had succeeded in
obtaining the finest lot of fishing-rods that had ever been sent
north.
There was so much to be talked about, and so many experiences in
voyaging to be exchanged, that we decided to remain that night on Crow
Island, as there was not much risk of. my being deluged by the passing
steamers, for it was evident that the steamboat channel hugged the
bank of the opposite side of the river. I took ashore chocolate,
canned milk, white sugar, and some of the Hickman mince-pies, while
the boys rolled logs of wood on to the fire, and buried potatoes in
the hot ashes. Stirling went to work at bread-making, and putting his
dough in one of those flat-bottomed, three-legged, iron-covered
vessels, which my reader will now recognize as the bake-pan, or Dutch
oven, placed it on the coals, and loaded its cover with hot embers.
The potatoes were soon baked, and possessed a mealiness not usually
found in those served up by the family cook. Stirling's bread was a
success, and my chocolate disappeared down the throats of the hearty
western boys as fast as its scalding temperature would admit.
Stirling told me of his life during the previous winter in the swamps
of White River. On one occasion, a steamer having lost her anchor near
his locality, the captain of the boat offered to reward Stirling
liberally if he would recover the lost property; so, while the captain
was making his up-river trip, the Ohio boy worked industriously
dredging for the cable. He found it; and under-running the heavy rope,
raised it and the anchor. When the steamer returned to Beteley's
Landing, Stirling delivered the anchor and coil of rope to the
captain, who, intending to defraud the young man of the promised
reward, ordered the mate to "cast off the lines." The gong had
signalled the engineer to get under way, but not quick enough to
escape the young salvage-owner, who grasped the coil of rope and
dragged it ashore, shouting to the captain, "You may keep your anchor,
but I will keep your cable as salvage, to which I am entitled for my
trouble in saving your property."
A few days later, Stirling, wishing to know whether he could legally
hold his salvage fees, paddled down to Bolivia, a small town in the
state of Mississippi, to obtain legal advice in regard to the matter.
The white people referred him to a negro justice of the peace, whom
they assured him "had more law-larnin' than any white man in the
diggings, and is the honestest nigger in these parts." Being ushered
into the presence of a dignified negro, the cutter of fishing-poles
informed the "justice" that he desired legal advice in a case of
salvage.
"Dat's rite, dat's berry good, sah," said the negro; "now you jes' set
rite down he'ar, and macadimize de case to me. I gibs ebery man
justice--no turnin' to de rite or de leff hand."
Stirling stated the facts, the colored justice puckering up his shiny
brow, and his whole countenance expressing perplexity. "I want to
know," said the possessor of the cable, "whether I can legally hold on
to the coil of rope; use it or sell it for my own benefit, without
being sued by the captain, who broke his agreement with me."
The colored man attempted to consult a volume containing a digest of
laws; but being an indifferent reader, he handed it to Stirling,
saying, "Now you, sah, jes look froo de book and find de larnin' on de
case." Having carefully consulted the book, Stirling declared he found
nothing that covered the salvage question in regard to cables and
anchors. "Nuffin at all? nuffin at all?" asked the justice, seriously.
"Now let me rest de case a moment fur perspection." As he pondered on
a case which could not be decided by precedent, an idea seemed to
lighten his sable features, for he straightened himself up and
exclaimed, "Den I will gib you an opinion. Dis court will apply de
common law ob de state ob Mississippi; and dis is it: 'What you hab,
dat you keep!' DIS is de teachings ob de bar, de bench, and de code."
Having received this august opinion, Stirling paddled back in his dug-
out canoe to the swamps of Arkansas, much amused, if not impressed,
with the negro's simple method of successfully disposing of a case, so
unlike the usual procrastinating customs which fetter the courts
presided over by learned white men.
Early on the following day I left the camp of the Ohio boys, for their
progress was assisted by a large sail, and it would have been
impossible for me to have kept up with them. They also travelled by
night as well as by day, keeping one man at the helm while the others
slept. At the lower end of Crow Island I left the state of Tennessee
and entered the confines of Mississippi, having Arkansas still on my
right hand.
During part of the afternoon I accompanied a flatboat-man and his
family as far as Island No. 60, where we ran into a little bayou for
the night. There was a rowdy settlement here, and many rough fellows
were in the streets, shouting and fighting; but as I entered the bayou
after dark, and secreted myself in the half submerged swamp, no one
knew of my being there: so I felt safe from insult. The owner of the
flatboat with whom I had entered the bayou intended to fish for the
settlement. He was an old trapper, and informed me that bears were
still abundant in parts of Alabama. He said the Canada Goose bred in
small numbers in the lakes of the back country. His experiences with
human nature found expression in his advice to me when I parted from
him the next morning. "Don't leave your boat alone for half an hour in
these parts, stranger. Niggers is bad, and some white folks too."
Promising my new friend to look out for number one, I waved an adieu
to him and his, and went on my solitary way.