I am now on what I believe will be my last trip of any consequence while
I am President. Until I got to Keokuk, Iowa, it was about like any other
trip, but it is now pleasant going down the Mississippi, though I admit
that I would rather be at home. We are on a funny, stern-wheel steamer.
Mr. John McIlhenny is with me, and Capt. Seth Bullock among others.
We have seen wild geese and ducks and cormorants on the river, and the
people everywhere come out in boats and throng or cluster on the banks
to greet us.
October 4. You would be greatly amused at these steamboats, and I
think you will like your trip up the Mississippi next spring, if only
everything goes right, and Mother is able to make it. There is no hold
to the boat, just a flat bottom with a deck, and on this deck a foot or
so above the water stands the engine-room, completely open at the sides
and all the machinery visible as you come up to the boat. Both ends are
blunt, and the gangways are drawn up to big cranes. Of course the boats
could not stand any kind of a sea, but here they are very useful, for
they are shallow and do not get hurt when they bump into the bank or one
another. The river runs down in a broad, swirling, brown current, and
nobody but an expert could tell the channel. One pilot or another is up
in the _Texas_ all day long and all night. Now the channel goes close
under one bank, then we have to cross the river and go under the other
bank; then there will come a deep spot when we can go anywhere. Then we
wind in and out among shoals and sand-bars. At night the steamers are
all lighted up, for there are a dozen of them in company with us. It is
nice to look back at them as they twist after us in a long winding line
down the river.