After speaking at Keokuk this morning we got aboard this brand new
stern-wheel steamer of the regular Mississippi type and started
down-stream. I went up on the texas and of course felt an almost
irresistible desire to ask the pilot about Mark Twain. It is a broad,
shallow, muddy river, at places the channel being barely wide enough for
the boat to go through, though to my inexperienced eyes the whole
river looks like a channel. The bottom lands, Illinois on one side
and Missouri on the other, are sometimes over-grown with forests and
sometimes great rich cornfields, with here and there a house, here and
there villages, and now and then a little town. At every such place
all the people of the neighborhood have gathered to greet me. The
water-front of the towns would be filled with a dense packed mass of
men, women, and children, waving flags. The little villages have not
only their own population, but also the farmers who have driven in in
their wagons with their wives and children from a dozen miles back--just
such farmers as came to see you and the cavalry on your march through
Iowa last summer.
It is my first trip on the Mississippi, and I am greatly interested in
it. How wonderful in its rapidity of movement has been the history of
our country, compared with the history of the old world. For untold
ages this river had been flowing through the lonely continent, not very
greatly changed since the close of the Pleistocene. During all these
myriads of years the prairie and the forest came down to its banks.
The immense herds of the buffalo and the elk wandered along them season
after season, and the Indian hunters on foot or in canoes trudged along
the banks or skimmed the water. Probably a thousand years saw no change
that would have been noticeable to our eyes. Then three centuries
ago began the work of change. For a century its effects were not
perceptible. Just nothing but an occasional French fleet or wild half
savage French-Canadian explorer passing up or down the river or one
of its branches in an Indian canoe; then the first faint changes, the
building of one or two little French fur traders' hamlets, the passing
of one or two British officers' boats, and the very rare appearance of
the uncouth American backwoodsman.
Then the change came with a rush. Our settlers reached the head-waters
of the Ohio, and flatboats and keel-boats began to go down to the mouth
of the Mississippi, and the Indians and the game they followed began
their last great march to the west. For ages they had marched back and
forth, but from this march there was never to be a return. Then the day
of steamboat traffic began, and the growth of the first American cities
and states along the river with their strength and their squalor and
their raw pride. Then this mighty steamboat traffic passed its zenith
and collapsed, and for a generation the river towns have dwindled
compared with the towns which took their importance from the growth of
the railroads. I think of it all as I pass down the river.
October 4. . . . We are steaming down the river now between Tennessee
and Arkansas. The forest comes down a little denser to the bank, the
houses do not look quite so well kept; otherwise there is not much
change. There are a dozen steamers accompanying us, filled with
delegates from various river cities. The people are all out on the banks
to greet us still. Moreover, at night, no matter what the hour is that
we pass a town, it is generally illuminated, and sometimes whistles and
noisy greetings, while our steamboats whistle in equally noisy response,
so that our sleep is apt to be broken. Seventeen governors of different
states are along, in a boat by themselves. I have seen a good deal of
them, however, and it has been of real use to me, especially as regards
two or three problems that are up. At St. Louis there was an enormous
multitude of people out to see us. The procession was in a drenching
rain, in which I stood bareheaded, smiling affably and waving my drowned
hat to those hardy members of the crowd who declined to go to shelter.
At Cairo, I was also greeted with great enthusiasm, and I was interested
to find that there was still extreme bitterness felt over Dickens's
description of the town and the people in "Martin Chuzzlewit" sixty-five
years ago.