THESE dry details are of importance in one particular.
They give me an opportunity of introducing one of the Mississippi'soddest peculiarities,--that of shortening its length from time to time.
If you will throw a long, pliant apple-paring over your shoulder,it will pretty fairly shape itself into an average sectionof the Mississippi River; that is, the nine or ten hundred milesstretching from Cairo, Illinois, southward to New Orleans,the same being wonderfully crooked, with a brief straight bithere and there at wide intervals. The two hundred-mile stretchfrom Cairo northward to St. Louis is by no means so crooked,that being a rocky country which the river cannot cut much.
The water cuts the alluvial banks of the 'lower' river into deephorseshoe curves; so deep, indeed, that in some places if you were to getashore at one extremity of the horseshoe and walk across the neck,half or three quarters of a mile, you could sit down and rest a coupleof hours while your steamer was coming around the long elbow,at a speed of ten miles an hour, to take you aboard again.
When the river is rising fast, some scoundrel whose plantationis back in the country, and therefore of inferior value,has only to watch his chance, cut a little gutter across the narrowneck of land some dark night, and turn the water into it,and in a wonderfully short time a miracle has happened: to wit,the whole Mississippi has taken possession of that little ditch,and placed the countryman's plantation on its bank (quadrupling itsvalue), and that other party's formerly valuable plantation findsitself away out yonder on a big island; the old watercourse aroundit will soon shoal up, boats cannot approach within ten milesof it, and down goes its value to a fourth of its former worth.
Watches are kept on those narrow necks, at needful times,and if a man happens to be caught cutting a ditch across them,the chances are all against his ever having another opportunity tocut a ditch.
Pray observe some of the effects of this ditching business.
Once there was a neck opposite Port Hudson, Louisiana, which was onlyhalf a mile across, in its narrowest place. You could walk acrossthere in fifteen minutes; but if you made the journey around the capeon a raft, you traveled thirty-five miles to accomplish the same thing.
In 1722 the river darted through that neck, deserted its old bed,and thus shortened itself thirty-five miles. In the same way itshortened itself twenty-five miles at Black Hawk Point in 1699.
Below Red River Landing, Raccourci cut-off was made (forty or fiftyyears ago, I think). This shortened the river twenty-eight miles.
In our day, if you travel by river from the southernmost of thesethree cut-offs to the northernmost, you go only seventy miles.
To do the same thing a hundred and seventy-six years ago, one hadto go a hundred and fifty-eight miles!--shortening of eighty-eightmiles in that trifling distance. At some forgotten time in the past,cut-offs were made above Vidalia, Louisiana; at island 92; at island 84;and at Hale's Point. These shortened the river, in the aggregate,seventy-seven miles.
Since my own day on the Mississippi, cut-offs have been made atHurricane Island; at island 100; at Napoleon, Arkansas; at Walnut Bend;and at Council Bend. These shortened the river, in the aggregate,sixty-seven miles. In my own time a cut-off was made at American Bend,which shortened the river ten miles or more.
Therefore, the Mississippi between Cairo and New Orleans was twelvehundred and fifteen miles long one hundred and seventy-six years ago.
It was eleven hundred and eighty after the cut-off of 1722.
It was one thousand and forty after the American Bend cut-off. It haslost sixty-seven miles since. Consequently its length is only ninehundred and seventy-three miles at present.
Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and 'let on'
to prove what had occurred in the remote past by what had occurredin a given time in the recent past, or what will occur in the far futureby what has occurred in late years, what an opportunity is here!
Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact data to argue from!
Nor 'development of species,' either! Glacial epochs are great things,but they are vague--vague. Please observe:--In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the LowerMississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles.
That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year.
Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic,can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period,' just a millionyears ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwardsof one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck outover the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same tokenany person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from nowthe Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long,and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together,and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutualboard of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science.
One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a triflinginvestment of fact.
When the water begins to flow through one of those ditches Ihave been speaking of, it is time for the people thereaboutsto move. The water cleaves the banks away like a knife.
By the time the ditch has become twelve or fifteen feet wide,the calamity is as good as accomplished, for no power on earthcan stop it now. When the width has reached a hundred yards,the banks begin to peel off in slices half an acre wide.
The current flowing around the bend traveled formerlyonly five miles an hour; now it is tremendously increasedby the shortening of the distance. I was on board the firstboat that tried to go through the cut-off at American Bend,but we did not get through. It was toward midnight, and a wildnight it was--thunder, lightning, and torrents of rain.
It was estimated that the current in the cut-off was makingabout fifteen or twenty miles an hour; twelve or thirteenwas the best our boat could do, even in tolerably slack water,therefore perhaps we were foolish to try the cut-off. However,Mr. Brown was ambitious, and he kept on trying.
The eddy running up the bank, under the 'point,' was aboutas swift as the current out in the middle; so we wouldgo flying up the shore like a lightning express train,get on a big head of steam, and 'stand by for a surge'
when we struck the current that was whirling by the point.
But all our preparations were useless. The instant the current hitus it spun us around like a top, the water deluged the forecastle,and the boat careened so far over that one could hardly keephis feet. The next instant we were away down the river,clawing with might and main to keep out of the woods.
We tried the experiment four times. I stood on the forecastlecompanion way to see. It was astonishing to observe howsuddenly the boat would spin around and turn tail the momentshe emerged from the eddy and the current struck her nose.
The sounding concussion and the quivering would have beenabout the same if she had come full speed against a sand-bank.
Under the lightning flashes one could see the plantation cabinsand the goodly acres tumble into the river; and the crash theymade was not a bad effort at thunder. Once, when we spun around,we only missed a house about twenty feet, that had a light burningin the window; and in the same instant that house went overboard.
Nobody could stay on our forecastle; the water swept acrossit in a torrent every time we plunged athwart the current.
At the end of our fourth effort we brought up in the woods two milesbelow the cut-off; all the country there was overflowed, of course.
A day or two later the cut-off was three-quarters of a mile wide,and boats passed up through it without much difficulty, and sosaved ten miles.
The old Raccourci cut-off reduced the river's length twenty-eight miles.
There used to be a tradition connected with it. It was said that a boatcame along there in the night and went around the enormous elbowthe usual way, the pilots not knowing that the cut-off had been made.
It was a grisly, hideous night, and all shapes were vague and distorted.
The old bend had already begun to fill up, and the boat got torunning away from mysterious reefs, and occasionally hitting one.
The perplexed pilots fell to swearing, and finally uttered the entirelyunnecessary wish that they might never get out of that place.
As always happens in such cases, that particular prayer was answered,and the others neglected. So to this day that phantom steamer is stillbutting around in that deserted river, trying to find her way out.
More than one grave watchman has sworn to me that on drizzly,dismal nights, he has glanced fearfully down that forgotten riveras he passed the head of the island, and seen the faint glowof the specter steamer's lights drifting through the distant gloom,and heard the muffled cough of her 'scape-pipes and the plaintive cryof her leadsmen.
In the absence of further statistics, I beg to close this chapterwith one more reminiscence of 'Stephen.'
Most of the captains and pilots held Stephen's note forborrowed sums, ranging from two hundred and fifty dollars upward.
Stephen never paid one of these notes, but he was very promptand very zealous about renewing them every twelve months.
Of course there came a time, at last, when Stephen couldno longer borrow of his ancient creditors; so he wasobliged to lie in wait for new men who did not know him.
Such a victim was good-hearted, simple natured young Yates(I use a fictitious name, but the real name began, as thisone does, with a Y). Young Yates graduated as a pilot,got a berth, and when the month was ended and he steppedup to the clerk's office and received his two hundredand fifty dollars in crisp new bills, Stephen was there!
His silvery tongue began to wag, and in a very little whileYates's two hundred and fifty dollars had changed hands.
The fact was soon known at pilot headquarters, and the amusementand satisfaction of the old creditors were large and generous.
But innocent Yates never suspected that Stephen's promiseto pay promptly at the end of the week was a worthless one.
Yates called for his money at the stipulated time;Stephen sweetened him up and put him off a week. He called then,according to agreement, and came away sugar-coated again,but suffering under another postponement. So the thing went on.
Yates haunted Stephen week after week, to no purpose, and at lastgave it up. And then straightway Stephen began to haunt Yates!
Wherever Yates appeared, there was the inevitable Stephen.
And not only there, but beaming with affection and gushingwith apologies for not being able to pay. By and by,whenever poor Yates saw him coming, he would turn and fly,and drag his company with him, if he had company; but itwas of no use; his debtor would run him down and corner him.
Panting and red-faced, Stephen would come, with outstretched handsand eager eyes, invade the conversation, shake both of Yates'sarms loose in their sockets, and begin--'My, what a race I've had! I saw you didn't see me,and so I clapped on all steam for fear I'd miss you entirely.
And here you are! there, just stand so, and let melook at you! just the same old noble countenance.'
[To Yates's friend:] 'Just look at him! LOOK at him!
Ain't it just GOOD to look at him! AIN'T it now? Ain't he justa picture! SOME call him a picture; I call him a panorama!
That's what he is--an entire panorama. And now I'm reminded!
How I do wish I could have seen you an hour earlier!
For twenty-four hours I've been saving up that two hundredand fifty dollars for you; been looking for you everywhere.
I waited at the Planter's from six yesterday evening till two o'clockthis morning, without rest or food; my wife says, "Where have youbeen all night?" I said, "This debt lies heavy on my mind."She says, "In all my days I never saw a man take a debt to heartthe way you do." I said, "It's my nature; how can I change it?"She says, "Well, do go to bed and get some rest." I said,"Not till that poor, noble young man has got his money."So I set up all night, and this morning out I shot, and the firstman I struck told me you had shipped on the "Grand Turk"and gone to New Orleans. Well, sir, I had to lean up againsta building and cry. So help me goodness, I couldn't help it.
The man that owned the place come out cleaning up with a rag,and said he didn't like to have people cry against his building,and then it seemed to me that the whole world had turnedagainst me, and it wasn't any use to live any more; and comingalong an hour ago, suffering no man knows what agony, I met JimWilson and paid him the two hundred and fifty dollars on account;and to think that here you are, now, and I haven't got a cent!
But as sure as I am standing here on this ground on thisparticular brick,--there, I've scratched a mark on the brickto remember it by,--I'll borrow that money and pay it overto you at twelve o'clock sharp, tomorrow! Now, stand so;let me look at you just once more.'
And so on. Yates's life became a burden to him. He could not escape hisdebtor and his debtor's awful sufferings on account of not being able to pay.
He dreaded to show himself in the street, lest he should find Stephen lyingin wait for him at the comer.
Bogart's billiard saloon was a great resort for pilots in those days.
They met there about as much to exchange river news as to play.
One morning Yates was there; Stephen was there, too, but kept outof sight. But by and by, when about all the pilots had arrivedwho were in town, Stephen suddenly appeared in the midst, and rushedfor Yates as for a long-lost brother.
'OH, I am so glad to see you! Oh my soul, the sight of you issuch a comfort to my eyes! Gentlemen, I owe all of you money;among you I owe probably forty thousand dollars. I want to pay it;I intend to pay it every last cent of it. You all know,without my telling you, what sorrow it has cost me to remain so longunder such deep obligations to such patient and generous friends;but the sharpest pang I suffer--by far the sharpest--is fromthe debt I owe to this noble young man here; and I have come to thisplace this morning especially to make the announcement that Ihave at last found a method whereby I can pay off all my debts!
And most especially I wanted HIM to be here when I announced it.
Yes, my faithful friend,--my benefactor, I've found the method!
I've found the method to pay off all my debts, and you'll get your money!'
Hope dawned in Yates's eye; then Stephen, beaming benignantly,and placing his hand upon Yates's head, added, 'I am going to pay themoff in alphabetical order!'
Then he turned and disappeared. The full significance of Stephen's 'method'
did not dawn upon the perplexed and musing crowd for some two minutes;and then Yates murmured with a sigh--'Well, the Y's stand a gaudy chance. He won't get any further than the C'sin THIS world, and I reckon that after a good deal of eternity has wastedaway in the next one, I'll still be referred to up there as "that poor,ragged pilot that came here from St. Louis in the early days!"
DURING the two or two and a half years of my apprenticeship,I served under many pilots, and had experience of manykinds of steamboatmen and many varieties of steamboats;for it was not always convenient for Mr. Bixby to have mewith him, and in such cases he sent me with somebody else.
I am to this day profiting somewhat by that experience;for in that brief, sharp schooling, I got personally and familiarlyacquainted with about all the different types of human naturethat are to be found in fiction, biography, or history.
The fact is daily borne in upon me, that the average shore-employmentrequires as much as forty years to equip a man with this sortof an education. When I say I am still profiting by this thing,I do not mean that it has constituted me a judge of men--no, it has not done that; for judges of men are born, not made.
My profit is various in kind and degree; but the feature of itwhich I value most is the zest which that early experience hasgiven to my later reading. When I find a well-drawn characterin fiction or biography, I generally take a warm personalinterest in him, for the reason that I have known him before--met him on the river.
The figure that comes before me oftenest, out of the shadows of thatvanished time, is that of Brown, of the steamer 'Pennsylvania'--the manreferred to in a former chapter, whose memory was so good and tiresome.
He was a middle-aged, long, slim, bony, smooth-shaven, horse-faced, ignorant,stingy, malicious, snarling, fault hunting, mote-magnifying tyrant.
I early got the habit of coming on watch with dread at my heart.
No matter how good a time I might have been having with the off-watch below,and no matter how high my spirits might be when I started aloft, my soulbecame lead in my body the moment I approached the pilot-house.
I still remember the first time I ever entered the presence of that man.
The boat had backed out from St. Louis and was 'straightening down;'
I ascended to the pilot-house in high feather, and very proudto be semi-officially a member of the executive family of so fastand famous a boat. Brown was at the wheel. I paused in the middleof the room, all fixed to make my bow, but Brown did not look around.
I thought he took a furtive glance at me out of the corner of his eye,but as not even this notice was repeated, I judged I had been mistaken.
By this time he was picking his way among some dangerous 'breaks' abreastthe woodyards; therefore it would not be proper to interrupt him; so Istepped softly to the high bench and took a seat.
There was silence for ten minutes; then my new boss turnedand inspected me deliberately and painstakingly from headto heel for about--as it seemed to me--a quarter of an hour.
After which he removed his countenance and I saw it no morefor some seconds; then it came around once more, and thisquestion greeted me--'Are you Horace Bigsby's cub?'
'Yes, sir.'
After this there was a pause and another inspection. Then--'What's your name?'
I told him. He repeated it after me. It was probably the onlything he ever forgot; for although I was with him many monthshe never addressed himself to me in any other way than 'Here!'
and then his command followed.
'Where was you born?'
'In Florida, Missouri.'
A pause. Then--'Dern sight better staid there!'
By means of a dozen or so of pretty direct questions, he pumpedmy family history out of me.
The leads were going now, in the first crossing. This interruptedthe inquest. When the leads had been laid in, he resumed--'How long you been on the river?'
I told him. After a pause--'Where'd you get them shoes?'
I gave him the information.
'Hold up your foot!'
I did so. He stepped back, examined the shoe minutely and contemptuously,scratching his head thoughtfully, tilting his high sugar-loaf hat well forwardto facilitate the operation, then ejaculated, 'Well, I'll be dod derned!'
and returned to his wheel.
What occasion there was to be dod derned about it is a thingwhich is still as much of a mystery to me now as it was then.
It must have been all of fifteen minutes--fifteen minutesof dull, homesick silence--before that long horse-faceswung round upon me again--and then, what a change!
It was as red as fire, and every muscle in it was working.
Now came this shriek--'Here!--You going to set there all day?'
I lit in the middle of the floor, shot there by the electricsuddenness of the surprise. As soon as I could get my voice I said,apologetically:--'I have had no orders, sir.'
'You've had no ORDERS! My, what a fine bird we are! We must have ORDERS!
Our father was a GENTLEMAN--owned slaves--and we've been to SCHOOL.
Yes, WE are a gentleman, TOO, and got to have ORDERS! ORDERS, is it?
ORDERS is what you want! Dod dern my skin, I'LL learn you to swell yourselfup and blow around here about your dod-derned ORDERS! G'way from the wheel!
(I had approached it without knowing it.)I moved back a step or two, and stood as in a dream, all my sensesstupefied by this frantic assault.
'What you standing there for? Take that ice-pitcher down tothe texas-tender-come, move along, and don't you be all day about it!'
The moment I got back to the pilot-house, Brown said--'Here! What was you doing down there all this time?'
'I couldn't find the texas-tender; I had to go all the way to the pantry.'
'Derned likely story! Fill up the stove.'
I proceeded to do so. He watched me like a cat.
Presently he shouted--'Put down that shovel? Deadest numskull I ever saw--ain't even got sense enough to load up a stove.
All through the watch this sort of thing went on. Yes, and thesubsequent watches were much like it, during a stretch of months.
As I have said, I soon got the habit of coming on duty with dread.
The moment I was in the presence, even in the darkest night,I could feel those yellow eyes upon me, and knew their ownerwas watching for a pretext to spit out some venom on me.
Preliminarily he would say-'Here! Take the wheel.'
Two minutes later--'WHERE in the nation you going to? Pull her down! pull her down!'
After another moment--'Say! You going to hold her all day? Let her go--meet her! meet her!'
Then he would jump from the bench, snatch the wheel from me,and meet her himself, pouring out wrath upon me all the time.
George Ritchie was the other pilot's cub. He was havinggood times now; for his boss, George Ealer, was as kindheartedas Brown wasn't. Ritchie had steeled for Brown the season before;consequently he knew exactly how to entertain himself and plague me,all by the one operation. Whenever I took the wheel for a momenton Ealer's watch, Ritchie would sit back on the bench and play Brown,with continual ejaculations of 'Snatch her! snatch her!
Derndest mud-cat I ever saw!' 'Here! Where you going NOW?
Going to run over that snag?' 'Pull her DOWN ! Don't you hear me?
Pull her DOWN!' 'There she goes! JUST as I expected!
I TOLD you not to cramp that reef G'way from the wheel!'
So I always had a rough time of it, no matter whose watch it was;and sometimes it seemed to me that Ritchie's good-natured badgeringwas pretty nearly as aggravating as Brown's dead-earnest nagging.
I often wanted to kill Brown, but this would not answer.
A cub had to take everything his boss gave, in the way ofvigorous comment and criticism; and we all believed that therewas a United States law making it a penitentiary offense tostrike or threaten a pilot who was on duty. However, I couldIMAGINE myself killing Brown; there was no law against that;and that was the thing I used always to do the moment I was abed.
Instead of going over my river in my mind as was my duty,I threw business aside for pleasure, and killed Brown.
I killed Brown every night for months; not in old, stale,commonplace ways, but in new and picturesque ones;--ways that weresometimes surprising for freshness of design and ghastliness ofsituation and environment.
Brown was ALWAYS watching for a pretext to find fault;and if he could find no plausible pretext, he would invent one.
He would scold you for shaving a shore, and for not shaving it;for hugging a bar, and for not hugging it; for 'pulling down'
when not invited, and for not pulling down when not invited;for firing up without orders, and for waiting FOR orders. In a word,it was his invariable rule to find fault with EVERYTHING you did;and another invariable rule of his was to throw all his remarks(to you) into the form of an insult.
One day we were approaching New Madrid, bound down and heavily laden.
Brown was at one side of the wheel, steering; I was at the other,standing by to 'pull down' or 'shove up.' He cast a furtive glance at meevery now and then. I had long ago learned what that meant; viz., he wastrying to invent a trap for me. I wondered what shape it was going to take.
By and by he stepped back from the wheel and said in his usual snarly way--'Here!--See if you've got gumption enough to round her to.'
This was simply BOUND to be a success; nothing could prevent it;for he had never allowed me to round the boat to before;consequently, no matter how I might do the thing, he couldfind free fault with it. He stood back there with his greedyeye on me, and the result was what might have been foreseen:
I lost my head in a quarter of a minute, and didn't know what Iwas about; I started too early to bring the boat around,but detected a green gleam of joy in Brown's eye, and correctedmy mistake; I started around once more while too high up,but corrected myself again in time; I made other false moves,and still managed to save myself; but at last I grew so confusedand anxious that I tumbled into the very worst blunder of all--I got too far down before beginning to fetch the boat around.
Brown's chance was come.
His face turned red with passion; he made one bound,hurled me across the house with a sweep of his arm,spun the wheel down, and began to pour out a stream ofvituperation upon me which lasted till he was out of breath.
In the course of this speech he called me all the differentkinds of hard names he could think of, and once or twice Ithought he was even going to swear--but he didn't this time.
'Dod dern' was the nearest he ventured to the luxury of swearing,for he had been brought up with a wholesome respect for futurefire and brimstone.
That was an uncomfortable hour; for there was a big audienceon the hurricane deck. When I went to bed that night,I killed Brown in seventeen different ways-all of them new.
Two trips later, I got into serious trouble. Brown was steering;I was 'pulling down.' My younger brother appeared on the hurricane deck,and shouted to Brown to stop at some landing or other a mile or so below.
Brown gave no intimation that he had heard anything. But that washis way: he never condescended to take notice of an under clerk.
The wind was blowing; Brown was deaf (although he always pretendedhe wasn't), and I very much doubted if he had heard the order.
If I had two heads, I would have spoken; but as I had only one, it seemedjudicious to take care of it; so I kept still.
Presently, sure enough, we went sailing by that plantation.
Captain Klinefelter appeared on the deck, and said--'Let her come around, sir, let her come around.
Didn't Henry tell you to land here?'
'NO, sir!'
'I sent him up to do, it.'
'He did come up; and that's all the good it done, the dod-derned fool.
He never said anything.'
'Didn't YOU hear him?' asked the captain of me.
Of course I didn't want to be mixed up in this business,but there was no way to avoid it; so I said--'Yes, sir.'
I knew what Brown's next remark would be, before he uttered it; it was--'Shut your mouth! you never heard anything of the kind.'
I closed my mouth according to instructions. An hour later,Henry entered the pilot-house, unaware of what had been going on.
He was a thoroughly inoffensive boy, and I was sorry to seehim come, for I knew Brown would have no pity on him.
Brown began, straightway--'Here! why didn't you tell me we'd got to land at that plantation?'
'I did tell you, Mr. Brown.'
'It's a lie!'
I said--'You lie, yourself. He did tell you.'
Brown glared at me in unaffected surprise; and for as much as a momenthe was entirely speechless; then he shouted to me--'I'll attend to your case in half a minute!' then to Henry,'And you leave the pilot-house; out with you!'
It was pilot law, and must be obeyed. The boy started out,and even had his foot on the upper step outside the door, when Brown,with a sudden access of fury, picked up a ten-pound lump of coaland sprang after him; but I was between, with a heavy stool,and I hit Brown a good honest blow which stretched-him out.
I had committed the crime of crimes--I had lifted my hand againsta pilot on duty! I supposed I was booked for the penitentiary sure,and couldn't be booked any surer if I went on and squared my long accountwith this person while I had the chance; consequently I stuck to himand pounded him with my fists a considerable time--I do not know how long,the pleasure of it probably made it seem longer than it really was;--but in the end he struggled free and jumped up and sprang to the wheel:
a very natural solicitude, for, all this time, here was this steamboattearing down the river at the rate of fifteen miles an hour and nobody atthe helm! However, Eagle Bend was two miles wide at this bank-full stage,and correspondingly long and deep; and the boat was steering herselfstraight down the middle and taking no chances. Still, that was only luck--a body MIGHT have found her charging into the woods.
Perceiving, at a glance, that the 'Pennsylvania' was in no danger,Brown gathered up the big spy-glass, war-club fashion, and orderedme out of the pilot-house with more than Comanche bluster.
But I was not afraid of him now; so, instead of going, I tarried,and criticized his grammar; I reformed his ferocious speeches for him,and put them into good English, calling his attention to the advantageof pure English over the bastard dialect of the Pennsylvaniancollieries whence he was extracted. He could have done his partto admiration in a cross-fire of mere vituperation, of course;but he was not equipped for this species of controversy;so he presently laid aside his glass and took the wheel,muttering and shaking his head; and I retired to the bench.
The racket had brought everybody to the hurricane deck, and I trembledwhen I saw the old captain looking up from the midst of the crowd.
I said to myself, 'Now I AM done for!'--For although, as a rule,he was so fatherly and indulgent toward the boat's family,and so patient of minor shortcomings, he could be stern enough whenthe fault was worth it.
I tried to imagine what he WOULD do to a cub pilot who had been guiltyof such a crime as mine, committed on a boat guard-deep with costly freightand alive with passengers. Our watch was nearly ended. I thought I wouldgo and hide somewhere till I got a chance to slide ashore. So I slippedout of the pilot-house, and down the steps, and around to the texas door--and was in the act of gliding within, when the captain confronted me!
I dropped my head, and he stood over me in silence a moment or two,then said impressively--'Follow me.'
I dropped into his wake; he led the way to his parlor in the forwardend of the texas. We were alone, now. He closed the after door;then moved slowly to the forward one and closed that. He sat down;I stood before him. He looked at me some little time, then said--'So you have been fighting, Mr. Brown?'
I answered meekly--'Yes, sir.'
'Do you know that that is a very serious matter?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Are you aware that this boat was plowing down the river fullyfive minutes with no one at the wheel?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Did you strike him first?'
'Yes, sir.'
'What with?'
'A stool, sir.'
'Hard?'
'Middling, sir.'
'Did it knock him down?'
'He--he fell, sir.'
'Did you follow it up? Did you do anything further?'
'Yes, sir.'
'What did you do?'
'Pounded him, sir.'
'Pounded him?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Did you pound him much?--that is, severely?'
'One might call it that, sir, maybe.'
'I'm deuced glad of it! Hark ye, never mention that I said that.
You have been guilty of a great crime; and don't you ever beguilty of it again, on this boat. BUT--lay for him ashore!
Give him a good sound thrashing, do you hear? I'll pay the expenses.
Now go--and mind you, not a word of this to anybody. Clear out with you!--you've been guilty of a great crime, you whelp!'
I slid out, happy with the sense of a close shave and a mighty deliverance;and I heard him laughing to himself and slapping his fat thighs after I hadclosed his door.
When Brown came off watch he went straight to the captain,who was talking with some passengers on the boiler deck,and demanded that I be put ashore in New Orleans--and added--'I'll never turn a wheel on this boat again while that cub stays.'
The captain said--'But he needn't come round when you are on watch, Mr. Brown.
'I won't even stay on the same boat with him. One of us hasgot to go ashore.'
'Very well,' said the captain, 'let it be yourself;'
and resumed his talk with the passengers.
During the brief remainder of the trip, I knew how an emancipated slave feels;for I was an emancipated slave myself. While we lay at landings,I listened to George Ealer's flute; or to his readings from his two bibles,that is to say, Goldsmith and Shakespeare; or I played chess with him--and would have beaten him sometimes, only he always took back his last moveand ran the game out differently.
WE lay three days in New Orleans, but the captain did not succeedin finding another pilot; so he proposed that I should standa daylight watch, and leave the night watches to George Ealer.
But I was afraid; I had never stood a watch of any sort by myself,and I believed I should be sure to get into trouble in the head ofsome chute, or ground the boat in a near cut through some bar or other.
Brown remained in his place; but he would not travel with me.
So the captain gave me an order on the captain of the 'A. T. Lacey,'
for a passage to St. Louis, and said he would find a newpilot there and my steersman's berth could then be resumed.
The 'Lacey' was to leave a couple of days after the 'Pennsylvania.'
The night before the 'Pennsylvania' left, Henry and I satchatting on a freight pile on the levee till midnight.
The subject of the chat, mainly, was one which I think wehad not exploited before--steamboat disasters. One was thenon its way to us, little as we suspected it; the water whichwas to make the steam which should cause it, was washing pastsome point fifteen hundred miles up the river while we talked;--but it would arrive at the right time and the right place.
We doubted if persons not clothed with authority were of muchuse in cases of disaster and attendant panic; still, they mightbe of SOME use; so we decided that if a disaster ever fellwithin our experience we would at least stick to the boat,and give such minor service as chance might throw in the way.
Henry remembered this, afterward, when the disaster came,and acted accordingly.
The 'Lacey' started up the river two days behind the 'Pennsylvania.'
We touched at Greenville, Mississippi, a couple of days out,and somebody shouted--'The "Pennsylvania" is blown up at Ship Island, and a hundredand fifty lives lost!'
At Napoleon, Arkansas, the same evening, we got an extra,issued by a Memphis paper, which gave some particulars.
It mentioned my brother, and said he was not hurt.
Further up the river we got a later extra. My brother wasagain mentioned; but this time as being hurt beyond help.
We did not get full details of the catastrophe until we reached Memphis.
This is the sorrowful story--It was six o'clock on a hot summer morning. The 'Pennsylvania'
was creeping along, north of Ship Island, about sixty miles belowMemphis on a half-head of steam, towing a wood-flat which was fastbeing emptied. George Ealer was in the pilot-house-alone, I think;the second engineer and a striker had the watch in the engine room;the second mate had the watch on deck; George Black, Mr. Wood,and my brother, clerks, were asleep, as were also Brown andthe head engineer, the carpenter, the chief mate, and one striker;Captain Klinefelter was in the barber's chair, and the barber waspreparing to shave him. There were a good many cabin passengers aboard,and three or four hundred deck passengers--so it was said at the time--and not very many of them were astir. The wood being nearly all outof the flat now, Ealer rang to 'come ahead' full steam, and the nextmoment four of the eight boilers exploded with a thunderous crash,and the whole forward third of the boat was hoisted toward the sky!
The main part of the mass, with the chimneys, dropped upon the boat again,a mountain of riddled and chaotic rubbish--and then, after a little,fire broke out.
Many people were flung to considerable distances, and fell in the river;among these were Mr. Wood and my brother, and the carpenter.
The carpenter was still stretched upon his mattress when he struckthe water seventy-five feet from the boat. Brown, the pilot,and George Black, chief clerk, were never seen or heard of afterthe explosion. The barber's chair, with Captain Klinefelterin it and unhurt, was left with its back overhanging vacancy--everything forward of it, floor and all, had disappeared;and the stupefied barber, who was also unhurt, stood with one toeprojecting over space, still stirring his lather unconsciously,and saying, not a word.
When George Ealer saw the chimneys plunging aloft in front of him,he knew what the matter was; so he muffled his face in the lapels ofhis coat, and pressed both hands there tightly to keep this protectionin its place so that no steam could get to his nose or mouth.
He had ample time to attend to these details while he was going upand returning. He presently landed on top of the unexploded boilers,forty feet below the former pilot-house, accompanied by his wheeland a rain of other stuff, and enveloped in a cloud of scalding steam.
All of the many who breathed that steam, died; none escaped.
But Ealer breathed none of it. He made his way to the free airas quickly as he could; and when the steam cleared away he returnedand climbed up on the boilers again, and patiently huntedout each and every one of his chessmen and the several jointsof his flute.
By this time the fire was beginning to threaten. Shrieks andgroans filled the air. A great many persons had been scalded,a great many crippled; the explosion had driven an iron crowbarthrough one man's body--I think they said he was a priest.
He did not die at once, and his sufferings were very dreadful.
A young French naval cadet, of fifteen, son of a French admiral,was fearfully scalded, but bore his tortures manfully.
Both mates were badly scalded, but they stood to theirposts, nevertheless. They drew the wood-boat aft, and theyand the captain fought back the frantic herd of frightenedimmigrants till the wounded could be brought there and placedin safety first.
When Mr. Wood and Henry fell in the water, they struck out for shore,which was only a few hundred yards away; but Henry presently saidhe believed he was not hurt (what an unaccountable error!), andtherefore would swim back to the boat and help save the wounded.
So they parted, and Henry returned.
By this time the fire was making fierce headway, and severalpersons who were imprisoned under the ruins were begging piteouslyfor help. All efforts to conquer the fire proved fruitless;so the buckets were presently thrown aside and the officersfell-to with axes and tried to cut the prisoners out.
A striker was one of the captives; he said he was not injured,but could not free himself; and when he saw that the fire waslikely to drive away the workers, he begged that some one wouldshoot him, and thus save him from the more dreadful death.
The fire did drive the axmen away, and they had to listen,helpless, to this poor fellow's supplications till the flamesended his miseries.
The fire drove all into the wood-flat that could be accommodated there;it was cut adrift, then, and it and the burning steamer floateddown the river toward Ship Island. They moored the flat at the headof the island, and there, unsheltered from the blazing sun,the half-naked occupants had to remain, without food or stimulants,or help for their hurts, during the rest of the day. A steamercame along, finally, and carried the unfortunates to Memphis,and there the most lavish assistance was at once forthcoming.
By this time Henry was insensible. The physicians examined hisinjuries and saw that they were fatal, and naturally turned theirmain attention to patients who could be saved.
Forty of the wounded were placed upon pallets on the floor of a greatpublic hall, and among these was Henry. There the ladies of Memphiscame every day, with flowers, fruits, and dainties and delicaciesof all kinds, and there they remained and nursed the wounded.
All the physicians stood watches there, and all the medical students;and the rest of the town furnished money, or whatever else was wanted.
And Memphis knew how to do all these things well; for many adisaster like the 'Pennsylvania's' had happened near her doors,and she was experienced, above all other cities on the river,in the gracious office of the Good Samaritan'
The sight I saw when I entered that large hall was new and strange to me.
Two long rows of prostrate forms--more than forty, in all--and every faceand head a shapeless wad of loose raw cotton. It was a gruesome spectacle.
I watched there six days and nights, and a very melancholy experience it was.
There was one daily incident which was peculiarly depressing:
this was the removal of the doomed to a chamber apart. It was donein order that the MORALE of the other patients might not be injuriouslyaffected by seeing one of their number in the death-agony. The fated onewas always carried out with as little stir as possible, and the stretcherwas always hidden from sight by a wall of assistants; but no matter:
everybody knew what that cluster of bent forms, with its muffledstep and its slow movement meant; and all eyes watched it wistfully,and a shudder went abreast of it like a wave.
I saw many poor fellows removed to the 'death-room,' and saw them nomore afterward. But I saw our chief mate carried thither more than once.
His hurts were frightful, especially his scalds. He was clothed inlinseed oil and raw cotton to his waist, and resembled nothing human.
He was often out of his mind; and then his pains would make him raveand shout and sometimes shriek. Then, after a period of dumb exhaustion,his disordered imagination would suddenly transform the great apartmentinto a forecastle, and the hurrying throng of nurses into the crew;and he would come to a sitting posture and shout, 'Hump yourselves,HUMP yourselves, you petrifactions, snail-bellies, pall-bearers! goingto be all DAY getting that hatful of freight out?' and supplementthis explosion with a firmament-obliterating irruption or profanitywhich nothing could stay or stop till his crater was empty. And nowand then while these frenzies possessed him, he would tear off handfulsof the cotton and expose his cooked flesh to view. It was horrible.
It was bad for the others, of course--this noise and these exhibitions;so the doctors tried to give him morphine to quiet him. But, in his mindor out of it, he would not take it. He said his wife had been killedby that treacherous drug, and he would die before he would take it.
He suspected that the doctors were concealing it in his ordinary medicinesand in his water--so he ceased from putting either to his lips.
Once, when he had been without water during two sweltering days,he took the dipper in his hand, and the sight of the limpid fluid,and the misery of his thirst, tempted him almost beyond his strength;but he mastered himself and threw it away, and after that he allowedno more to be brought near him. Three times I saw him carriedto the death-room, insensible and supposed to be dying; but each timehe revived, cursed his attendants, and demanded to be taken back.
He lived to be mate of a steamboat again.
But he was the only one who went to the death-room and returned alive.
Dr. Peyton, a principal physician, and rich in all the attributesthat go to constitute high and flawless character, did all thateducated judgment and trained skill could do for Henry; but, as thenewspapers had said in the beginning, his hurts were past help.
On the evening of the sixth day his wandering mind busied itself withmatters far away, and his nerveless fingers 'picked at his coverlet.'
His hour had struck; we bore him to the death-room, poor boy.
IN due course I got my license. I was a pilot now, full fledged.
I dropped into casual employments; no misfortunes resulting,intermittent work gave place to steady and protracted engagements.
Time drifted smoothly and prosperously on, and I supposed--and hoped--that I was going to follow the river the rest of my days, and dieat the wheel when my mission was ended. But by and by the war came,commerce was suspended, my occupation was gone.
I had to seek another livelihood. So I became a silver minerin Nevada; next, a newspaper reporter; next, a gold miner,in California; next, a reporter in San Francisco; next, a specialcorrespondent in the Sandwich Islands; next, a roving correspondentin Europe and the East; next, an instructional torch-bearer onthe lecture platform; and, finally, I became a scribbler of books,and an immovable fixture among the other rocks of New England.
In so few words have I disposed of the twenty-one slow-driftingyears that have come and gone since I last looked from the windowsof a pilot-house.
Let us resume, now.
AFTER twenty-one years' absence, I felt a very strong desireto see the river again, and the steamboats, and such ofthe boys as might be left; so I resolved to go out there.
I enlisted a poet for company, and a stenographer to 'take him down,'
and started westward about the middle of April.
As I proposed to make notes, with a view to printing,I took some thought as to methods of procedure.
I reflected that if I were recognized, on the river, I shouldnot be as free to go and come, talk, inquire, and spy around,as I should be if unknown; I remembered that it was the customof steamboatmen in the old times to load up the confidingstranger with the most picturesque and admirable lies, and putthe sophisticated friend off with dull and ineffectual facts:
so I concluded, that, from a business point of view, it wouldbe an advantage to disguise our party with fictitious names.
The idea was certainly good, but it bred infinite bother;for although Smith, Jones, and Johnson are easy namesto remember when there is no occasion to remember them,it is next to impossible to recollect them when they are wanted.
How do criminals manage to keep a brand-new ALIAS in mind?
This is a great mystery. I was innocent; and yet was seldomable to lay my hand on my new name when it was needed;and it seemed to me that if I had had a crime on my conscienceto further confuse me, I could never have kept the name by meat all.
We left per Pennsylvania Railroad, at 8 A.M. April 18.
'EVENING. Speaking of dress. Grace and picturesqueness dropgradually out of it as one travels away from New York.'
I find that among my notes. It makes no differencewhich direction you take, the fact remains the same.
Whether you move north, south, east, or west, no matter:
you can get up in the morning and guess how far you have come,by noting what degree of grace and picturesqueness is bythat time lacking in the costumes of the new passengers,--I do not mean of the women alone, but of both sexes.
It may be that CARRIAGE is at the bottom of this thing;and I think it is; for there are plenty of ladies and gentlemenin the provincial cities whose garments are all made by the besttailors and dressmakers of New York; yet this has no perceptibleeffect upon the grand fact: the educated eye never mistakesthose people for New-Yorkers. No, there is a godless grace,and snap, and style about a born and bred New-Yorker which mereclothing cannot effect.
'APRIL 19. This morning, struck into the region of full goatees-sometimesaccompanied by a mustache, but only occasionally.'
It was odd to come upon this thick crop of an obsolete anduncomely fashion; it was like running suddenly across a forgottenacquaintance whom you had supposed dead for a generation.
The goatee extends over a wide extent of country; and is accompaniedby an iron-clad belief in Adam and the biblical history of creation,which has not suffered from the assaults of the scientists.
'AFTERNOON. At the railway stations the loafers carry BOTHhands in their breeches pockets; it was observable, heretofore,that one hand was sometimes out of doors,--here, never.
This is an important fact in geography.'
If the loafers determined the character of a country, it wouldbe still more important, of course.
'Heretofore, all along, the station-loafer has been often observed to scratchone shin with the other foot; here, these remains of activity are wanting.
This has an ominous look.'
By and by, we entered the tobacco-chewing region.
Fifty years ago, the tobacco-chewing region covered the union.
It is greatly restricted now.
Next, boots began to appear. Not in strong force, however.
Later--away down the Mississippi--they became the rule.
They disappeared from other sections of the union with the mud;no doubt they will disappear from the river villages, also,when proper pavements come in.
We reached St. Louis at ten o'clock at night. At the counterof the hotel I tendered a hurriedly-invented fictitious name,with a miserable attempt at careless ease. The clerk paused,and inspected me in the compassionate way in which one inspectsa respectable person who is found in doubtful circumstances;then he said--'It's all right; I know what sort of a room you want.
Used to clerk at the St. James, in New York.'
An unpromising beginning for a fraudulent career. We started tothe supper room, and met two other men whom I had known elsewhere.
How odd and unfair it is: wicked impostors go around lecturing undermy NOM DE GUERRE and nobody suspects them; but when an honest manattempts an imposture, he is exposed at once.
One thing seemed plain: we must start down the river the next day,if people who could not be deceived were going to crop up at this rate:
an unpalatable disappointment, for we had hoped to have a week in St. Louis.
The Southern was a good hotel, and we could have had a comfortabletime there. It is large, and well conducted, and its decorations donot make one cry, as do those of the vast Palmer House, in Chicago.
True, the billiard-tables were of the Old Silurian Period, and the cues andballs of the Post-Pliocene; but there was refreshment in this, not discomfort;for there is rest and healing in the contemplation of antiquities.
The most notable absence observable in the billiard-room, was theabsence of the river man. If he was there he had taken in his sign,he was in disguise. I saw there none of the swell airs and graces,and ostentatious displays of money, and pompous squanderings of it,which used to distinguish the steamboat crowd from the dry-land crowdin the bygone days, in the thronged billiard-rooms of St. Louis.
In those times, the principal saloons were always populous with river men;given fifty players present, thirty or thirty-five were likelyto be from the river. But I suspected that the ranks were thin now,and the steamboatmen no longer an aristocracy. Why, in my time theyused to call the 'barkeep' Bill, or Joe, or Tom, and slap him onthe shoulder; I watched for that. But none of these people did it.
Manifestly a glory that once was had dissolved and vanished away inthese twenty-one years.
When I went up to my room, I found there the young man called Rogers, crying.
Rogers was not his name; neither was Jones, Brown, Dexter, Ferguson, Bascom,nor Thompson; but he answered to either of these that a body found handyin an emergency; or to any other name, in fact, if he perceived that youmeant him. He said--'What is a person to do here when he wants a drink of water?--drink this slush?'
'Can't you drink it?'
'I could if I had some other water to wash it with.'
Here was a thing which had not changed; a score of years had not affectedthis water's mulatto complexion in the least; a score of centurieswould succeed no better, perhaps. It comes out of the turbulent,bank-caving Missouri, and every tumblerful of it holds nearly an acreof land in solution. I got this fact from the bishop of the diocese.
If you will let your glass stand half an hour, you can separatethe land from the water as easy as Genesis; and then you will findthem both good: the one good to eat, the other good to drink.
The land is very nourishing, the water is thoroughly wholesome.
The one appeases hunger; the other, thirst. But the nativesdo not take them separately, but together, as nature mixed them.
When they find an inch of mud in the bottom of a glass,they stir it up, and then take the draught as they would gruel.
It is difficult for a stranger to get used to this batter, but onceused to it he will prefer it to water. This is really the case.
It is good for steamboating, and good to drink; but it is worthlessfor all other purposes, except baptizing.
Next morning, we drove around town in the rain.
The city seemed but little changed. It WAS greatly changed,but it did not seem so; because in St. Louis, as in Londonand Pittsburgh, you can't persuade a new thing to look new;the coal smoke turns it into an antiquity the moment you takeyour hand off it. The place had just about doubled its size,since I was a resident of it, and was now become a cityof 400,000 inhabitants; still, in the solid business parts,it looked about as it had looked formerly. Yet I am sure thereis not as much smoke in St. Louis now as there used to be.
The smoke used to bank itself in a dense billowy black canopy overthe town, and hide the sky from view. This shelter is very muchthinner now; still, there is a sufficiency of smoke there, I think.
I heard no complaint.
However, on the outskirts changes were apparent enough; notably indwelling-house architecture. The fine new homes are noble and beautifuland modern. They stand by themselves, too, with green lawns around them;whereas the dwellings of a former day are packed together in blocks,and are all of one pattern, with windows all alike, set in an archedframe-work of twisted stone; a sort of house which was handsome enoughwhen it was rarer.
There was another change--the Forest Park. This was new to me.
It is beautiful and very extensive, and has the excellent meritof having been made mainly by nature. There are other parks,and fine ones, notably Tower Grove and the Botanical Gardens;for St. Louis interested herself in such improvements at an earlierday than did the most of our cities.
The first time I ever saw St. Louis, I could have bought it for sixmillion dollars, and it was the mistake of my life that I did not do it.
It was bitter now to look abroad over this domed and steepled metropolis,this solid expanse of bricks and mortar stretching away on every handinto dim, measure-defying distances, and remember that I had allowedthat opportunity to go by. Why I should have allowed it to go by seems,of course, foolish and inexplicable to-day, at a first glance; yet therewere reasons at the time to justify this course.
A Scotchman, Hon. Charles Augustus Murray, writing some forty-five or fiftyyears ago, said--'The streets are narrow, ill paved and ill lighted.'
Those streets are narrow still, of course; many of them are ill paved yet;but the reproach of ill lighting cannot be repeated, now. The 'CatholicNew Church' was the only notable building then, and Mr. Murray was confidentlycalled upon to admire it, with its 'species of Grecian portico, surmounted bya kind of steeple, much too diminutive in its proportions, and surmountedby sundry ornaments' which the unimaginative Scotchman found himself 'quiteunable to describe;' and therefore was grateful when a German tourist helpedhim out with the exclamation--'By ----, they look exactly like bed-posts!'
St. Louis is well equipped with stately and noble public buildings now,and the little church, which the people used to be so proud of, lost itsimportance a long time ago. Still, this would not surprise Mr. Murray,if he could come back; for he prophesied the coming greatness of St. Louiswith strong confidence.
The further we drove in our inspection-tour, the more sensibly Irealized how the city had grown since I had seen it last; changes indetail became steadily more apparent and frequent than at first, too:
changes uniformly evidencing progress, energy, prosperity.
But the change of changes was on the 'levee.' This time,a departure from the rule. Half a dozen sound-asleep steamboatswhere I used to see a solid mile of wide-awake ones!
This was melancholy, this was woeful. The absence of the pervadingand jocund steamboatman from the billiard-saloon was explained.
He was absent because he is no more. His occupation is gone,his power has passed away, he is absorbed into the common herd,he grinds at the mill, a shorn Samson and inconspicuous.
Half a dozen lifeless steamboats, a mile of empty wharves,a negro fatigued with whiskey stretched asleep, in a wide andsoundless vacancy, where the serried hosts of commerce used tocontend!
'St. Louis has 20,000 inhabitants. THE RIVER ABREAST OF THE TOWNIS CROWDED WITH STEAMBOATS, LYING IN TWO OR THREE TIERS.']> Herewas desolation, indeed.
'The old, old sea, as one in tears,Comes murmuring, with foamy lips,And knocking at the vacant piers,Calls for his long-lost multitude of ships.'
The towboat and the railroad had done their work, and done itwell and completely. The mighty bridge, stretching along overour heads, had done its share in the slaughter and spoliation.
Remains of former steamboatmen told me, with wan satisfaction,that the bridge doesn't pay. Still, it can be no sufficientcompensation to a corpse, to know that the dynamite that laid himout was not of as good quality as it had been supposed to be.
The pavements along the river front were bad: the sidewalkswere rather out of repair; there was a rich abundance of mud.
All this was familiar and satisfying; but the ancient armies of drays,and struggling throngs of men, and mountains of freight, were gone;and Sabbath reigned in their stead. The immemorial mile of cheapfoul doggeries remained, but business was dull with them;the multitudes of poison-swilling Irishmen had departed, and intheir places were a few scattering handfuls of ragged negroes,some drinking, some drunk, some nodding, others asleep.
St. Louis is a great and prosperous and advancing city;but the river-edge of it seems dead past resurrection.
Mississippi steamboating was born about 1812; at the end of thirty years,it had grown to mighty proportions; and in less than thirty more,it was dead! A strangely short life for so majestic a creature.
Of course it is not absolutely dead, neither is a crippled octogenarianwho could once jump twenty-two feet on level ground; but as contrastedwith what it was in its prime vigor, Mississippi steamboating maybe called dead.
It killed the old-fashioned keel-boating, by reducingthe freight-trip to New Orleans to less than a week.
The railroads have killed the steamboat passenger traffic by doingin two or three days what the steamboats consumed a week in doing;and the towing-fleets have killed the through-freight trafficby dragging six or seven steamer-loads of stuff down the riverat a time, at an expense so trivial that steamboat competitionwas out of the question.
Freight and passenger way-traffic remains to the steamers.
This is in the hands--along the two thousand miles of river betweenSt. Paul and New Orleans---of two or three close corporations wellfortified with capital; and by able and thoroughly business-likemanagement and system, these make a sufficiency of money outof what is left of the once prodigious steamboating industry.
I suppose that St. Louis and New Orleans have not suffered materiallyby the change, but alas for the wood-yard man!
He used to fringe the river all the way; his close-ranked merchandisestretched from the one city to the other, along the banks,and he sold uncountable cords of it every year for cash on the nail;but all the scattering boats that are left burn coal now,and the seldomest spectacle on the Mississippi to-day is a wood-pile.
Where now is the once wood-yard man?
MY idea was, to tarry a while in every town between St. Louisand New Orleans. To do this, it would be necessary to go from placeto place by the short packet lines. It was an easy plan to make,and would have been an easy one to follow, twenty years ago-but not now.
There are wide intervals between boats, these days.
I wanted to begin with the interesting old French settlementsof St. Genevieve and Kaskaskia, sixty miles below St. Louis.
There was only one boat advertised for that section--a Grand Tower packet. Still, one boat was enough; so we wentdown to look at her. She was a venerable rack-heap, and a fraudto boot; for she was playing herself for personal property,whereas the good honest dirt was so thickly caked all overher that she was righteously taxable as real estate.
There are places in New England where her hurricane deckwould be worth a hundred and fifty dollars an acre.
The soil on her forecastle was quite good--the new crop of wheatwas already springing from the cracks in protected places.
The companionway was of a dry sandy character, and wouldhave been well suited for grapes, with a southern exposureand a little subsoiling. The soil of the boiler deckwas thin and rocky, but good enough for grazing purposes.
A colored boy was on watch here--nobody else visible.
We gathered from him that this calm craft would go, as advertised,'if she got her trip;' if she didn't get it, she would waitfor it.
'Has she got any of her trip?'
'Bless you, no, boss. She ain't unloadened, yit. She only comein dis mawnin'.'
He was uncertain as to when she might get her trip, but thought itmight be to-morrow or maybe next day. This would not answer at all;so we had to give up the novelty of sailing down the river on a farm.
We had one more arrow in our quiver: a Vicksburg packet, the 'Gold Dust,'
was to leave at 5 P.M. We took passage in her for Memphis, and gaveup the idea of stopping off here and there, as being impracticable.
She was neat, clean, and comfortable. We camped on the boiler deck,and bought some cheap literature to kill time with. The vender was avenerable Irishman with a benevolent face and a tongue that worked easilyin the socket, and from him we learned that he had lived in St. Louisthirty-four years and had never been across the river during that period.
Then he wandered into a very flowing lecture, filled with classic namesand allusions, which was quite wonderful for fluency until the fact becamerather apparent that this was not the first time, nor perhaps the fiftieth,that the speech had been delivered. He was a good deal of a character,and much better company than the sappy literature he was selling.
A random remark, connecting Irishmen and beer, brought this nugget ofinformation out of him--They don't drink it, sir. They can't drink it, sir.
Give an Irishman lager for a month, and he's a dead man.
An Irishman is lined with copper, and the beer corrodes it.
But whiskey polishes the copper and is the saving of him, sir.'
At eight o'clock, promptly, we backed out and crossed the river.
As we crept toward the shore, in the thick darkness, a blindingglory of white electric light burst suddenly from our forecastle,and lit up the water and the warehouses as with a noon-day glare.
Another big change, this--no more flickering, smoky, pitch-dripping,ineffectual torch-baskets, now: their day is past. Next, instead ofcalling out a score of hands to man the stage, a couple of men and ahatful of steam lowered it from the derrick where it was suspended,launched it, deposited it in just the right spot, and the whole thingwas over and done with before a mate in the olden time could havegot his profanity-mill adjusted to begin the preparatory services.
Why this new and simple method of handling the stages was not thoughtof when the first steamboat was built, is a mystery which helps one torealize what a dull-witted slug the average human being is.
We finally got away at two in the morning, and when I turned outat six, we were rounding to at a rocky point where there was an oldstone warehouse--at any rate, the ruins of it; two or three decayeddwelling-houses were near by, in the shelter of the leafy hills;but there were no evidences of human or other animal life to be seen.
I wondered if I had forgotten the river; for I had no recollection whateverof this place; the shape of the river, too, was unfamiliar; there wasnothing in sight, anywhere, that I could remember ever having seen before.
I was surprised, disappointed, and annoyed.
We put ashore a well-dressed lady and gentleman, and two well-dressed,lady-like young girls, together with sundry Russia-leather bags.
A strange place for such folk! No carriage was waiting.
The party moved off as if they had not expected any, and struckdown a winding country road afoot.
But the mystery was explained when we got under way again;for these people were evidently bound for a large town which layshut in behind a tow-head (i.e., new island) a couple of milesbelow this landing. I couldn't remember that town; I couldn'tplace it, couldn't call its name. So I lost part of my temper.
I suspected that it might be St. Genevieve--and so it provedto be. Observe what this eccentric river had been about:
it had built up this huge useless tow-head directlyin front of this town, cut off its river communications,fenced it away completely, and made a 'country' town of it.
It is a fine old place, too, and deserved a better fate.
It was settled by the French, and is a relic of a time when onecould travel from the mouths of the Mississippi to Quebec and beon French territory and under French rule all the way.
Presently I ascended to the hurricane deck and cast a longingglance toward the pilot-house.
AFTER a close study of the face of the pilot on watch, I was satisfied that Ihad never seen him before; so I went up there. The pilot inspected me;I re-inspected the pilot. These customary preliminaries over, I satdown on the high bench, and he faced about and went on with his work.
Every detail of the pilot-house was familiar to me, with one exception,--a large-mouthed tube under the breast-board. I puzzled over that thing aconsiderable time; then gave up and asked what it was for.
'To hear the engine-bells through.'
It was another good contrivance which ought to have been inventedhalf a century sooner. So I was thinking, when the pilot asked--'Do you know what this rope is for?'
I managed to get around this question, without committing myself.
'Is this the first time you were ever in a pilot-house?'
I crept under that one.
'Where are you from?'
'New England.'
'First time you have ever been West?'
I climbed over this one.
'If you take an interest in such things, I can tell you what allthese things are for.'
I said I should like it.
'This,' putting his hand on a backing-bell rope, 'is to sound the fire-alarm;this,' putting his hand on a go-ahead bell, 'is to call the texas-tender;this one,' indicating the whistle-lever, 'is to call the captain'--and so he went on, touching one object after another, and reeling offhis tranquil spool of lies.
I had never felt so like a passenger before.
I thanked him, with emotion, for each new fact, and wrote itdown in my note-book. The pilot warmed to his opportunity,and proceeded to load me up in the good old-fashioned way.
At times I was afraid he was going to rupture his invention;but it always stood the strain, and he pulled through all right.
He drifted, by easy stages, into revealments of the river'smarvelous eccentricities of one sort and another,and backed them up with some pretty gigantic illustrations.
For instance-'Do you see that little boulder sticking out of the water yonder? well,when I first came on the river, that was a solid ridge of rock,over sixty feet high and two miles long. All washed away but that.'
[This with a sigh.)I had a mighty impulse to destroy him, but it seemed to me that killing,in any ordinary way, would be too good for him.
Once, when an odd-looking craft, with a vast coal-scuttle slantingaloft on the end of a beam, was steaming by in the distance,he indifferently drew attention to it, as one might to an objectgrown wearisome through familiarity, and observed that it wasan 'alligator boat.'
'An alligator boat? What's it for?'
'To dredge out alligators with.'
'Are they so thick as to be troublesome?'
'Well, not now, because the Government keeps them down.
But they used to be. Not everywhere; but in favorite places,here and there, where the river is wide and shoal-like Plum Point,and Stack Island, and so on--places they call alligator beds.'
'Did they actually impede navigation?'
'Years ago, yes, in very low water; there was hardly a trip, then, that wedidn't get aground on alligators.'
It seemed to me that I should certainly have to get out my tomahawk.
However, I restrained myself and said--'It must have been dreadful.'
'Yes, it was one of the main difficulties about piloting.
It was so hard to tell anything about the water; the damnedthings shift around so--never lie still five minutes at a time.
You can tell a wind-reef, straight off, by the look of it;you can tell a break; you can tell a sand-reef--that's all easy;but an alligator reef doesn't show up, worth anything.
Nine times in ten you can't tell where the water is;and when you do see where it is, like as not it ain't therewhen YOU get there, the devils have swapped around so, meantime.
Of course there were some few pilots that could judge ofalligator water nearly as well as they could of any other kind,but they had to have natural talent for it; it wasn't a thinga body could learn, you had to be born with it. Let me see:
there was Ben Thornburg, and Beck Jolly, and Squire Bell,and Horace Bixby, and Major Downing, and John Stevenson,and Billy Gordon, and Jim Brady, and George Ealer,and Billy Youngblood--all A 1 alligator pilots. THEY could tellalligator water as far as another Christian could tell whiskey.
Read it?--Ah, COULDN'T they, though! I only wish I had as manydollars as they could read alligator water a mile and a half off.
Yes, and it paid them to do it, too. A good alligator pilot couldalways get fifteen hundred dollars a month. Nights, other peoplehad to lay up for alligators, but those fellows never laidup for alligators; they never laid up for anything but fog.
They could SMELL the best alligator water it was said;I don't know whether it was so or not, and I think a body's gothis hands full enough if he sticks to just what he knows himself,without going around backing up other people's say-so's,though there's a plenty that ain't backward about doing it,as long as they can roust out something wonderful to tell.
Which is not the style of Robert Styles, by as much asthree fathom--maybe quarter-LESS.'
[My! Was this Rob Styles?--This mustached and stately figure?-A slimenough cub, in my time. How he has improved in comeliness in five-and-twentyyear and in the noble art of inflating his facts.] After these musings,I said aloud-'I should think that dredging out the alligators wouldn't have done much good,because they could come back again right away.'
'If you had had as much experience of alligators as I have, you wouldn'ttalk like that. You dredge an alligator once and he's CONVINCED.
It's the last you hear of HIM. He wouldn't come back for pie.
If there's one thing that an alligator is more down on than another,it's being dredged. Besides, they were not simply shovedout of the way; the most of the scoopful were scooped aboard;they emptied them into the hold; and when they had got a trip,they took them to Orleans to the Government works.'
'What for?'
'Why, to make soldier-shoes out of their hides.
All the Government shoes are made of alligator hide.
It makes the best shoes in the world. They last five years,and they won't absorb water. The alligator fishery is aGovernment monopoly. All the alligators are Government property--just like the live-oaks. You cut down a live-oak, andGovernment fines you fifty dollars; you kill an alligator,and up you go for misprision of treason--lucky duck if theydon't hang you, too. And they will, if you're a Democrat.
The buzzard is the sacred bird of the South, and you can'ttouch him; the alligator is the sacred bird of the Government,and you've got to let him alone.'
'Do you ever get aground on the alligators now?'
'Oh, no! it hasn't happened for years.'
'Well, then, why do they still keep the alligator boats in service?'
'Just for police duty--nothing more. They merely go up and downnow and then. The present generation of alligators know themas easy as a burglar knows a roundsman; when they see one coming,they break camp and go for the woods.'
After rounding-out and finishing-up and polishing-off the alligator business,he dropped easily and comfortably into the historical vein, and told of sometremendous feats of half-a-dozen old-time steamboats of his acquaintance,dwelling at special length upon a certain extraordinary performance of hischief favorite among this distinguished fleet--and then adding--'That boat was the "Cyclone,"--last trip she ever made--she sunk,that very trip--captain was Tom Ballou, the most immortal liar that everI struck. He couldn't ever seem to tell the truth, in any kind of weather.
Why, he would make you fairly shudder. He WAS the most scandalous liar!
I left him, finally; I couldn't stand it. The proverb says, "like master,like man;" and if you stay with that kind of a man, you'll come undersuspicion by and by, just as sure as you live. He paid first-class wages;but said I, What's wages when your reputation's in danger? So I letthe wages go, and froze to my reputation. And I've never regretted it.
Reputation's worth everything, ain't it? That's the way I look at it.
He had more selfish organs than any seven men in the world--all packedin the stern-sheets of his skull, of course, where they belonged.
They weighed down the back of his head so that it made his nose tilt upin the air. People thought it was vanity, but it wasn't, it was malice.
If you only saw his foot, you'd take him to be nineteen feet high,but he wasn't; it was because his foot was out of drawing.
He was intended to be nineteen feet high, no doubt, if his footwas made first, but he didn't get there; he was only five feet ten.
That's what he was, and that's what he is. You take the lies out of him,and he'll shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice out of him,and he'll disappear. That "Cyclone" was a rattler to go, and the sweetestthing to steer that ever walked the waters. Set her amidships,in a big river, and just let her go; it was all you had to do.
She would hold herself on a star all night, if you let her alone.
You couldn't ever feel her rudder. It wasn't any more labor to steerher than it is to count the Republican vote in a South Carolina election.
One morning, just at daybreak, the last trip she ever made, they tookher rudder aboard to mend it; I didn't know anything about it; I backedher out from the wood-yard and went a-weaving down the river all serene.
When I had gone about twenty-three miles, and made four horribly crookedcrossings----'
'Without any rudder?'
'Yes--old Capt. Tom appeared on the roof and began to find faultwith me for running such a dark night--'
'Such a DARK NIGHT ?--Why, you said----'
'Never mind what I said,--'twas as dark as Egypt now, though prettysoon the moon began to rise, and----'
'You mean the SUN--because you started out just at break of---- look here!
Was this BEFORE you quitted the captain on account of his lying, or----'
'It was before--oh, a long time before. And as I was saying, he----'
'But was this the trip she sunk, or was----'
'Oh, no!--months afterward. And so the old man, he----'
'Then she made TWO last trips, because you said----'
He stepped back from the wheel, swabbing away his perspiration,and said--'Here!' (calling me by name), 'YOU take her and lie a while--you're handier at it than I am. Trying to play yourself for a strangerand an innocent!--why, I knew you before you had spoken seven words;and I made up my mind to find out what was your little game.
It was to DRAW ME OUT. Well, I let you, didn't I?
Now take the wheel and finish the watch; and next time play fair,and you won't have to work your passage.'
Thus ended the fictitious-name business. And not six hours outfrom St. Louis! but I had gained a privilege, any way, for I hadbeen itching to get my hands on the wheel, from the beginning.
I seemed to have forgotten the river, but I hadn't forgottenhow to steer a steamboat, nor how to enjoy it, either.