THE scenery, from St. Louis to Cairo--two hundred miles--is variedand beautiful. The hills were clothed in the fresh foliage of spring now,and were a gracious and worthy setting for the broad river flowing between.
Our trip began auspiciously, with a perfect day, as to breeze and sunshine,and our boat threw the miles out behind her with satisfactory despatch.
We found a railway intruding at Chester, Illinois; Chester hasalso a penitentiary now, and is otherwise marching on. At GrandTower, too, there was a railway; and another at Cape Girardeau.
The former town gets its name from a huge, squat pillar of rock,which stands up out of the water on the Missouri side of the river--a piece of nature's fanciful handiwork--and is one of themost picturesque features of the scenery of that region.
For nearer or remoter neighbors, the Tower has the Devil'sBake Oven--so called, perhaps, because it does not powerfullyresemble anybody else's bake oven; and the Devil's Tea Table--this latter a great smooth-surfaced mass of rock, with diminishingwine-glass stem, perched some fifty or sixty feet above the river,beside a beflowered and garlanded precipice, and sufficientlylike a tea-table to answer for anybody, Devil or Christian.
Away down the river we have the Devil's Elbow and the Devil'sRace-course, and lots of other property of his which I cannot nowcall to mind.
The Town of Grand Tower was evidently a busier place than ithad been in old times, but it seemed to need some repairshere and there, and a new coat of whitewash all over.
Still, it was pleasant to me to see the old coat once more.
'Uncle' Mumford, our second officer, said the place had beensuffering from high water, and consequently was not lookingits best now. But he said it was not strange that it didn'twaste white-wash on itself, for more lime was made there,and of a better quality, than anywhere in the West;and added--'On a dairy farm you never can get any milkfor your coffee, nor any sugar for it on a sugar plantation;and it is against sense to go to a lime town to hunt for white-wash.'
In my own experience I knew the first two items to be true;and also that people who sell candy don't care for candy;therefore there was plausibility in Uncle Mumford's final observationthat 'people who make lime run more to religion than whitewash.'
Uncle Mumford said, further, that Grand Tower was a great coalingcenter and a prospering place.
Cape Girardeau is situated on a hillside, and makes a handsome appearance.
There is a great Jesuit school for boys at the foot of the town by the river.
Uncle Mumford said it had as high a reputation for thoroughness as anysimilar institution in Missouri ' There was another college higher up onan airy summit--a bright new edifice, picturesquely and peculiarly toweredand pinnacled--a sort of gigantic casters, with the cruets all complete.
Uncle Mumford said that Cape Girardeau was the Athens of Missouri,and contained several colleges besides those already mentioned; and all ofthem on a religious basis of one kind or another. He directed my attentionto what he called the 'strong and pervasive religious look of the town,'
but I could not see that it looked more religious than the other hilltowns with the same slope and built of the same kind of bricks.
Partialities often make people see more than really exists.
Uncle Mumford has been thirty years a mate on the river.
He is a man of practical sense and a level head; has observed;has had much experience of one sort and another; has opinions;has, also, just a perceptible dash of poetry in his composition,an easy gift of speech, a thick growl in his voice, and an oathor two where he can get at them when the exigencies of hisoffice require a spiritual lift. He is a mate of the blessedold-time kind; and goes gravely damning around, when thereis work to the fore, in a way to mellow the ex-steamboatman'sheart with sweet soft longings for the vanished days that shallcome no more. 'GIT up there you! Going to be all day?
Why d'n't you SAY you was petrified in your hind legs,before you shipped!'
He is a steady man with his crew; kind and just, but firm;so they like him, and stay with him. He is still in the slouchygarb of the old generation of mates; but next trip the AnchorLine will have him in uniform--a natty blue naval uniform,with brass buttons, along with all the officers of the line--and then he will be a totally different style of scenery from whathe is now.
Uniforms on the Mississippi! It beats all the other changesput together, for surprise. Still, there is another surprise--that it was not made fifty years ago. It is so manifestly sensible,that it might have been thought of earlier, one would suppose.
During fifty years, out there, the innocent passenger in needof help and information, has been mistaking the mate forthe cook, and the captain for the barber--and being roughlyentertained for it, too. But his troubles are ended now.
And the greatly improved aspect of the boat's staff is anotheradvantage achieved by the dress-reform period.
Steered down the bend below Cape Girardeau. They used to call it'Steersman's Bend;' plain sailing and plenty of water in it, always;about the only place in the Upper River that a new cub was allowedto take a boat through, in low water.
Thebes, at the head of the Grand Chain, and Commerce at the footof it, were towns easily rememberable, as they had not undergoneconspicuous alteration. Nor the Chain, either--in the natureof things; for it is a chain of sunken rocks admirablyarranged to capture and kill steamboats on bad nights.
A good many steamboat corpses lie buried there, out of sight;among the rest my first friend the 'Paul Jones;' she knocked herbottom out, and went down like a pot, so the historian told me--Uncle Mumford. He said she had a gray mare aboard, and a preacher.
To me, this sufficiently accounted for the disaster; as it did,of course, to Mumford, who added--'But there are many ignorant people who would scoff at sucha matter, and call it superstition. But you will always noticethat they are people who have never traveled with a gray mareand a preacher. I went down the river once in such company.
We grounded at Bloody Island; we grounded at Hanging Dog;we grounded just below this same Commerce; we jolted BeaverDam Rock; we hit one of the worst breaks in the 'Graveyard'
behind Goose Island; we had a roustabout killed in a fight;we burnt a boiler; broke a shaft; collapsed a flue; and went intoCairo with nine feet of water in the hold--may have been more,may have been less. I remember it as if it were yesterday.
The men lost their heads with terror. They painted the mare blue,in sight of town, and threw the preacher overboard, or we shouldnot have arrived at all. The preacher was fished out and saved.
He acknowledged, himself, that he had been to blame.
I remember it all, as if it were yesterday.'
That this combination--of preacher and gray mare--should breed calamity,seems strange, and at first glance unbelievable; but the fact is fortifiedby so much unassailable proof that to doubt is to dishonor reason.
I myself remember a case where a captain was warned by numerous friendsagainst taking a gray mare and a preacher with him, but persisted in hispurpose in spite of all that could be said; and the same day--it may havebeen the next, and some say it was, though I think it was the same day--he got drunk and fell down the hatchway, and was borne to his home a corpse.
This is literally true.
No vestige of Hat Island is left now; every shred of it is washed away.
I do not even remember what part of the river it used to be in,except that it was between St. Louis and Cairo somewhere.
It was a bad region--all around and about Hat Island, in early days.
A farmer who lived on the Illinois shore there, said that twenty-ninesteamboats had left their bones strung along within sight from his house.
Between St. Louis and Cairo the steamboat wrecks average one to the mile;--two hundred wrecks, altogether.
I could recognize big changes from Commerce down. Beaver Dam Rock wasout in the middle of the river now, and throwing a prodigious 'break;'
it used to be close to the shore, and boats went down outside of it.
A big island that used to be away out in mid-river, has retiredto the Missouri shore, and boats do not go near it any more.
The island called Jacket Pattern is whittled down to a wedge now,and is booked for early destruction. Goose Island is all gonebut a little dab the size of a steamboat. The perilous 'Graveyard,'
among whose numberless wrecks we used to pick our way so slowlyand gingerly, is far away from the channel now, and a terror to nobody.
One of the islands formerly called the Two Sisters is gone entirely;the other, which used to lie close to the Illinois shore, is now onthe Missouri side, a mile away; it is joined solidly to the shore,and it takes a sharp eye to see where the seam is--but it isIllinois ground yet, and the people who live on it have to ferrythemselves over and work the Illinois roads and pay Illinois taxes:
singular state of things!
Near the mouth of the river several islands were missing--washed away.
Cairo was still there--easily visible across the long, flat point uponwhose further verge it stands; but we had to steam a long way aroundto get to it. Night fell as we were going out of the 'Upper River'
and meeting the floods of the Ohio. We dashed along without anxiety;for the hidden rock which used to lie right in the way has moved upstream a long distance out of the channel; or rather, about one countyhas gone into the river from the Missouri point, and the Cairo point has'made down' and added to its long tongue of territory correspondingly.
The Mississippi is a just and equitable river; it never tumbles one man's farmoverboard without building a new farm just like it for that man's neighbor.
This keeps down hard feelings.
Going into Cairo, we came near killing a steamboat which paidno attention to our whistle and then tried to cross our bows.
By doing some strong backing, we saved him; which was a great loss,for he would have made good literature.
Cairo is a brisk town now; and is substantially built, and has a citylook about it which is in noticeable contrast to its former estate,as per Mr. Dickens's portrait of it. However, it was alreadybuilding with bricks when I had seen it last--which was when Colonel(now General) Grant was drilling his first command there.
Uncle Mumford says the libraries and Sunday-schools havedone a good work in Cairo, as well as the brick masons.
Cairo has a heavy railroad and river trade, and her situation atthe junction of the two great rivers is so advantageous that shecannot well help prospering.
When I turned out, in the morning, we had passed Columbus, Kentucky,and were approaching Hickman, a pretty town, perched on a handsome hill.
Hickman is in a rich tobacco region, and formerly enjoyed a greatand lucrative trade in that staple, collecting it there in herwarehouses from a large area of country and shipping it by boat;but Uncle Mumford says she built a railway to facilitate this commercea little more, and he thinks it facilitated it the wrong way--took the bulk of the trade out of her hands by 'collaring it alongthe line without gathering it at her doors.'
TALK began to run upon the war now, for we were getting downinto the upper edge of the former battle-stretch by this time.
Columbus was just behind us, so there was a good deal saidabout the famous battle of Belmont. Several of the boat'sofficers had seen active service in the Mississippi war-fleet. Igathered that they found themselves sadly out of their elementin that kind of business at first, but afterward got accustomedto it, reconciled to it, and more or less at home in it.
One of our pilots had his first war experience in the Belmontfight, as a pilot on a boat in the Confederate service.
I had often had a curiosity to know how a green hand might feel,in his maiden battle, perched all solitary and alone on highin a pilot house, a target for Tom, Dick and Harry, and nobody athis elbow to shame him from showing the white feather when mattersgrew hot and perilous around him; so, to me his story was valuable--it filled a gap for me which all histories had left tillthat time empty.
THE PILOT'S FIRST BATTLEHe said--It was the 7th of November. The fight began at seven in the morning.
I was on the 'R. H. W. Hill.' Took over a load of troops from Columbus.
Came back, and took over a battery of artillery. My partner said he was goingto see the fight; wanted me to go along. I said, no, I wasn't anxious,I would look at it from the pilot-house. He said I was a coward, and left.
That fight was an awful sight. General Cheatham made his men striptheir coats off and throw them in a pile, and said, 'Now follow meto hell or victory!' I heard him say that from the pilot-house;and then he galloped in, at the head of his troops. Old General Pillow,with his white hair, mounted on a white horse, sailed in, too, leading histroops as lively as a boy. By and by the Federals chased the rebels back,and here they came! tearing along, everybody for himself and Devil takethe hindmost! and down under the bank they scrambled, and took shelter.
I was sitting with my legs hanging out of the pilot-house window.
All at once I noticed a whizzing sound passing my ear.
Judged it was a bullet. I didn't stop to think about anything,I just tilted over backwards and landed on the floor, and staid there.
The balls came booming around. Three cannon-balls went through the chimney;one ball took off the corner of the pilot-house; shells were screamingand bursting all around. Mighty warm times--I wished I hadn't come.
I lay there on the pilot-house floor, while the shots came faster and faster.
I crept in behind the big stove, in the middle of the pilot-house.
Presently a minie-ball came through the stove, and just grazed my head,and cut my hat. I judged it was time to go away from there. The captainwas on the roof with a red-headed major from Memphis--a fine-looking man.
I heard him say he wanted to leave here, but 'that pilot is killed.'
I crept over to the starboard side to pull the bell to set her back;raised up and took a look, and I saw about fifteen shot holesthrough the window panes; had come so lively I hadn't noticed them.
I glanced out on the water, and the spattering shot were like a hailstorm.
I thought best to get out of that place. I went down the pilot-house guy,head first--not feet first but head first--slid down--before I struckthe deck, the captain said we must leave there. So I climbed up the guyand got on the floor again. About that time, they collared my partnerand were bringing him up to the pilot-house between two soldiers.
Somebody had said I was killed. He put his head in and saw me on the floorreaching for the backing bells. He said, 'Oh, hell, he ain't shot,'
and jerked away from the men who had him by the collar, and ran below.
We were there until three o'clock in the afternoon, and then got away allright.
The next time I saw my partner, I said, 'Now, come out, be honest,and tell me the truth. Where did you go when you went to see that battle?'
He says, 'I went down in the hold.'
All through that fight I was scared nearly to death.
I hardly knew anything, I was so frightened; but you see,nobody knew that but me. Next day General Polk sent for me,and praised me for my bravery and gallant conduct.
I never said anything, I let it go at that. I judged it wasn't so,but it was not for me to contradict a general officer.
Pretty soon after that I was sick, and used up, and had to gooff to the Hot Springs. When there, I got a good manyletters from commanders saying they wanted me to come back.
I declined, because I wasn't well enough or strong enough;but I kept still, and kept the reputation I had made.
A plain story, straightforwardly told; but Mumford told methat that pilot had 'gilded that scare of his, in spots;'
that his subsequent career in the war was proof of it.
We struck down through the chute of Island No. 8, and I went belowand fell into conversation with a passenger, a handsome man,with easy carriage and an intelligent face. We were approachingIsland No. 10, a place so celebrated during the war.
This gentleman's home was on the main shore in its neighborhood.
I had some talk with him about the war times; but presentlythe discourse fell upon 'feuds,' for in no part of the Southhas the vendetta flourished more briskly, or held out longerbetween warring families, than in this particular region.
This gentleman said--'There's been more than one feud around here, in old times, but Ireckon the worst one was between the Darnells and the Watsons.
Nobody don't know now what the first quarrel was about, it's so long ago;the Darnells and the Watsons don't know, if there's any of them living,which I don't think there is. Some says it was about a horse or a cow--anyway, it was a little matter; the money in it wasn't of no consequence--none in the world--both families was rich. The thing could have beenfixed up, easy enough; but no, that wouldn't do. Rough words had been passed;and so, nothing but blood could fix it up after that. That horseor cow, whichever it was, cost sixty years of killing and crippling!
Every year or so somebody was shot, on one side or the other; and as fastas one generation was laid out, their sons took up the feud and keptit a-going. And it's just as I say; they went on shooting each other,year in and year out--making a kind of a religion of it, you see--till they'd done forgot, long ago, what it was all about. Wherever aDarnell caught a Watson, or a Watson caught a Darnell, one of 'em was goingto get hurt--only question was, which of them got the drop on the other.
They'd shoot one another down, right in the presence of the family.
They didn't hunt for each other, but when they happened to meet,they puffed and begun. Men would shoot boys, boys would shoot men.
A man shot a boy twelve years old--happened on him in the woods,and didn't give him no chance. If he HAD 'a' given him a chance,the boy'd 'a' shot him. Both families belonged to the same church(everybody around here is religious); through all this fifty orsixty years' fuss, both tribes was there every Sunday, to worship.
They lived each side of the line, and the church was at a landingcalled Compromise. Half the church and half the aisle was in Kentucky,the other half in Tennessee. Sundays you'd see the families drive up,all in their Sunday clothes, men, women, and children, and file up the aisle,and set down, quiet and orderly, one lot on the Tennessee side of the churchand the other on the Kentucky side; and the men and boys would lean their gunsup against the wall, handy, and. then all hands would join in with the prayerand praise; though they say the man next the aisle didn't kneel down,along with the rest of the family; kind of stood guard. I don't know;never was at that church in my life; but I remember that that's what usedto be said.
'Twenty or twenty-five years ago, one of the feud familiescaught a young man of nineteen out and killed him.
Don't remember whether it was the Darnells and Watsons,or one of the other feuds; but anyway, this young man rode up--steamboat laying there at the time--and the first thinghe saw was a whole gang of the enemy. He jumped down behinda wood-pile, but they rode around and begun on him, he firing back,and they galloping and cavorting and yelling and banging awaywith all their might. Think he wounded a couple of them;but they closed in on him and chased him into the river;and as he swum along down stream, they followed along the bankand kept on shooting at him; and when he struck shore he was dead.
Windy Marshall told me about it. He saw it. He was captainof the boat.
'Years ago, the Darnells was so thinned out that the old manand his two sons concluded they'd leave the country. They startedto take steamboat just above No. 10; but the Watsons got wind of it;and they arrived just as the two young Darnells was walking upthe companion-way with their wives on their arms. The fightbegun then, and they never got no further--both of them killed.
After that, old Darnell got into trouble with the man that runthe ferry, and the ferry-man got the worst of it--and died.
But his friends shot old Darnell through and through--filled himfull of bullets, and ended him.'
The country gentleman who told me these things had been rearedin ease and comfort, was a man of good parts, and was college bred.
His loose grammar was the fruit of careless habit, not ignorance.
This habit among educated men in the West is not universal, but itis prevalent--prevalent in the towns, certainly, if not in the cities;and to a degree which one cannot help noticing, and marveling at.
I heard a Westerner who would be accounted a highly educated manin any country, say 'never mind, it DON'T MAKE NO DIFFERENCE, anyway.'
A life-long resident who was present heard it, but it made no impressionupon her. She was able to recall the fact afterward, when reminded of it;but she confessed that the words had not grated upon her ear at the time--a confession which suggests that if educated people can hear suchblasphemous grammar, from such a source, and be unconscious of the deed,the crime must be tolerably common--so common that the general ear hasbecome dulled by familiarity with it, and is no longer alert, no longersensitive to such affronts.
No one in the world speaks blemishless grammar; no one hasever written it--NO one, either in the world or out of it(taking the Scriptures for evidence on the latter point);therefore it would not be fair to exact grammatical perfectionfrom the peoples of the Valley; but they and all other peoplesmay justly be required to refrain from KNOWINGLY and PURPOSELYdebauching their grammar.
I found the river greatly changed at Island No. 10.
The island which I remembered was some three miles longand a quarter of a mile wide, heavily timbered, and laynear the Kentucky shore--within two hundred yards of it,I should say. Now, however, one had to hunt for it witha spy-glass. Nothing was left of it but an insignificantlittle tuft, and this was no longer near the Kentucky shore;it was clear over against the opposite shore, a mile away.
In war times the island had been an important place,for it commanded the situation; and, being heavily fortified,there was no getting by it. It lay between the upper and lowerdivisions of the union forces, and kept them separate, until ajunction was finally effected across the Missouri neck of land;but the island being itself joined to that neck now, the wide riveris without obstruction.
In this region the river passes from Kentucky into Tennessee,back into Missouri, then back into Kentucky, and thence into Tennessee again.
So a mile or two of Missouri sticks over into Tennessee.
The town of New Madrid was looking very unwell;but otherwise unchanged from its former condition and aspect.
Its blocks of frame-houses were still grouped in the sameold flat plain, and environed by the same old forests.
It was as tranquil as formerly, and apparently had neither grownnor diminished in size. It was said that the recent high waterhad invaded it and damaged its looks. This was surprising news;for in low water the river bank is very high there (fifty feet), andin my day an overflow had always been considered an impossibility.
This present flood of 1882 Will doubtless be celebratedin the river's history for several generations before a delugeof like magnitude shall be seen. It put all the unprotectedlow lands under water, from Cairo to the mouth; it broke downthe levees in a great many places, on both sides of the river;and in some regions south, when the flood was at its highest,the Mississippi was SEVENTY MILES wide! a number of liveswere lost, and the destruction of property was fearful.
The crops were destroyed, houses washed away, and shelterless menand cattle forced to take refuge on scattering elevations hereand there in field and forest, and wait in peril and sufferinguntil the boats put in commission by the national and localgovernments and by newspaper enterprise could come and rescue them.
The properties of multitudes of people were under water for months,and the poorer ones must have starved by the hundred if succorhad not been promptly afforded.
interesting description of the great flood, written on boardof the New Orleans TIMES-DEMOCRAT'S relief-boat, see AppendixA]> The water had been falling during a considerable time now,yet as a rule we found the banks still under water.
WE met two steamboats at New Madrid. Two steamboats in sightat once! an infrequent spectacle now in the lonesome Mississippi.
The loneliness of this solemn, stupendous flood is impressive--and depressing. League after league, and still league after league,it pours its chocolate tide along, between its solid forest walls,its almost untenanted shores, with seldom a sail or a movingobject of any kind to disturb the surface and break the monotonyof the blank, watery solitude; and so the day goes, the night comes,and again the day--and still the same, night after nightand day after day--majestic, unchanging sameness of serenity,repose, tranquillity, lethargy, vacancy--symbol of eternity,realization of the heaven pictured by priest and prophet,and longed for by the good and thoughtless!
Immediately after the war of 1812, tourists began to cometo America, from England; scattering ones at first, then a sortof procession of them--a procession which kept up its plodding,patient march through the land during many, many years.
Each tourist took notes, and went home and published a book--a book which was usually calm, truthful, reasonable, kind;but which seemed just the reverse to our tender-footed progenitors.
A glance at these tourist-books shows us that in certain of itsaspects the Mississippi has undergone no change since thosestrangers visited it, but remains to-day about as it was then.
The emotions produced in those foreign breasts by these aspectswere not all formed on one pattern, of course; they HADto be various, along at first, because the earlier touristswere obliged to originate their emotions, whereas in oldercountries one can always borrow emotions from one's predecessors.
And, mind you, emotions are among the toughest things inthe world to manufacture out of whole cloth; it is easier tomanufacture seven facts than one emotion. Captain Basil Hall.
R.N., writing fifty-five years ago, says--'Here I caught the first glimpse of the object I had so long wishedto behold, and felt myself amply repaid at that moment for allthe trouble I had experienced in coming so far; and stood looking atthe river flowing past till it was too dark to distinguish anything.
But it was not till I had visited the same spot a dozen times,that I came to a right comprehension of the grandeur of the scene.'
Following are Mrs. Trollope's emotions. She is writing a few months laterin the same year, 1827, and is coming in at the mouth of the Mississippi--'The first indication of our approach to land was the appearanceof this mighty river pouring forth its muddy mass of waters,and mingling with the deep blue of the Mexican Gulf. I never behelda scene so utterly desolate as this entrance of the Mississippi.
Had Dante seen it, he might have drawn images of another Bolgia fromits horrors. One only object rears itself above the eddying waters;this is the mast of a vessel long since wrecked in attempting to crossthe bar, and it still stands, a dismal witness of the destructionthat has been, and a boding prophet of that which is to come.'
Emotions of Hon. Charles Augustus Murray (near St. Louis), seven years later--'It is only when you ascend the mighty current for fifty or ahundred miles, and use the eye of imagination as well as thatof nature, that you begin to understand all his might and majesty.
You see him fertilizing a boundless valley, bearing along in his coursethe trophies of his thousand victories over the shattered forest--here carrying away large masses of soil with all their growth,and there forming islands, destined at some future period to bethe residence of man; and while indulging in this prospect,it is then time for reflection to suggest that the currentbefore you has flowed through two or three thousand miles, and hasyet to travel one thousand three hundred more before reachingits ocean destination.'
Receive, now, the emotions of Captain Marryat, R.N. author of the sea tales,writing in 1837, three years after Mr. Murray--'Never, perhaps, in the records of nations, was there an instance of acentury of such unvarying and unmitigated crime as is to be collectedfrom the history of the turbulent and blood-stained Mississippi.
The stream itself appears as if appropriate for the deeds which havebeen committed. It is not like most rivers, beautiful to the sight,bestowing fertility in its course; not one that the eye lovesto dwell upon as it sweeps along, nor can you wander uponits banks, or trust yourself without danger to its stream.
It is a furious, rapid, desolating torrent, loaded with alluvial soil;and few of those who are received into its waters ever rise again,in that day, that the Mississippi would neither buoy up a swimmer,nor permit a drowned person's body to rise to the surface.]> or cansupport themselves long upon its surface without assistance fromsome friendly log. It contains the coarsest and most uneatableof fish, such as the cat-fish and such genus, and as you descend,its banks are occupied with the fetid alligator, while the pantherbasks at its edge in the cane-brakes, almost impervious to man.
Pouring its impetuous waters through wild tracks covered withtrees of little value except for firewood, it sweeps down wholeforests in its course, which disappear in tumultuous confusion,whirled away by the stream now loaded with the masses of soilwhich nourished their roots, often blocking up and changingfor a time the channel of the river, which, as if in anger at itsbeing opposed, inundates and devastates the whole country round;and as soon as it forces its way through its former channel,plants in every direction the uprooted monarchs of the forest(upon whose branches the bird will never again perch, or the raccoon,the opossum, or the squirrel climb) as traps to the adventurousnavigators of its waters by steam, who, borne down upon these concealeddangers which pierce through the planks, very often have not timeto steer for and gain the shore before they sink to the bottom.
There are no pleasing associations connected with the great common sewerof the Western America, which pours out its mud into the Mexican Gulf,polluting the clear blue sea for many miles beyond its mouth.
It is a river of desolation; and instead of reminding you,like other beautiful rivers, of an angel which has descendedfor the benefit of man, you imagine it a devil, whose energieshave been only overcome by the wonderful power of steam.'
It is pretty crude literature for a man accustomed tohandling a pen; still, as a panorama of the emotions sentweltering through this noted visitor's breast by the aspectand traditions of the 'great common sewer,' it has a value.
A value, though marred in the matter of statistics by inaccuracies;for the catfish is a plenty good enough fish for anybody,and there are no panthers that are 'impervious to man.'
Later still comes Alexander Mackay, of the Middle Temple, Barrister at Law,with a better digestion, and no catfish dinner aboard, and feels as follows--'The Mississippi! It was with indescribable emotions that I first felt myselfafloat upon its waters. How often in my schoolboy dreams, and in my wakingvisions afterwards, had my imagination pictured to itself the lordly stream,rolling with tumultuous current through the boundless region to which ithas given its name, and gathering into itself, in its course to the ocean,the tributary waters of almost every latitude in the temperate zone!
Here it was then in its reality, and I, at length, steaming against its tide.
I looked upon it with that reverence with which everyone must regard a greatfeature of external nature.'
So much for the emotions. The tourists, one and all, remark uponthe deep, brooding loneliness and desolation of the vast river.
Captain Basil Hall, who saw it at flood-stage, says--'Sometimes we passed along distances of twenty or thirty miles withoutseeing a single habitation. An artist, in search of hints for a paintingof the deluge, would here have found them in abundance.'
The first shall be last, etc. just two hundred years ago,the old original first and gallantest of all the foreign tourists,pioneer, head of the procession, ended his weary and tediousdiscovery-voyage down the solemn stretches of the great river--La Salle, whose name will last as long as the river itself shall last.
We quote from Mr. Parkman-'And now they neared their journey's end. On the sixthof April, the river divided itself into three broad channels.
La Salle followed that of the west, and D'Autraythat of the east; while Tonty took the middle passage.
As he drifted down the turbid current, between the lowand marshy shores, the brackish water changed to brine,and the breeze grew fresh with the salt breath of the sea.
Then the broad bosom of the great Gulf opened on his sight,tossing its restless billows, limitless, voiceless, lonely as whenborn of chaos, without a sail, without a sign of life.'
Then, on a spot of solid ground, La Salle reared a column 'bearingthe arms of France; the Frenchmen were mustered under arms;and while the New England Indians and their squaws looked onin wondering silence, they chanted the TE DEUM, THE EXAUDIAT,and the DOMINE SALVUM FAC REGEM.'
Then, whilst the musketry volleyed and rejoicing shouts burst forth,the victorious discoverer planted the column, and made proclamationin a loud voice, taking formal possession of the river andthe vast countries watered by it, in the name of the King.
The column bore this inscription-LOUIS LE GRAND, ROY DE FRANCE ET DE NAVARRE, REGNE; LE NEUVIEME AVRIL,1682.
New Orleans intended to fittingly celebrate, this present year,the bicentennial anniversary of this illustrious event;but when the time came, all her energies and surplus money wererequired in other directions, for the flood was upon the land then,making havoc and devastation everywhere.
ALL day we swung along down the river, and had the stream almostwholly to ourselves. Formerly, at such a stage of the water,we should have passed acres of lumber rafts, and dozens of bigcoal barges; also occasional little trading-scows, peddlingalong from farm to farm, with the peddler's family on board;possibly, a random scow, bearing a humble Hamlet and Co.
on an itinerant dramatic trip. But these were all absent.
Far along in the day, we saw one steamboat; just one, and no more.
She was lying at rest in the shade, within the wooded mouthof the Obion River. The spy-glass revealed the fact that shewas named for me--or HE was named for me, whichever you prefer.
As this was the first time I had ever encountered this speciesof honor, it seems excusable to mention it, and at the same timecall the attention of the authorities to the tardiness of myrecognition of it.
Noted a big change in the river, at Island 21. It was a very large island,and used to be out toward mid-stream; but it is joined fast to the mainshore now, and has retired from business as an island.
As we approached famous and formidable Plum Point, darkness fell,but that was nothing to shudder about--in these modem times.
For now the national government has turned the Mississippiinto a sort of two-thousand-mile torchlight procession.
In the head of every crossing, and in the foot of everycrossing, the government has set up a clear-burning lamp.
You are never entirely in the dark, now; there is always a beaconin sight, either before you, or behind you, or abreast.
One might almost say that lamps have been squandered there.
Dozens of crossings are lighted which were not shoalwhen they were created, and have never been shoal since;crossings so plain, too, and also so straight, that a steamboatcan take herself through them without any help, after she has beenthrough once. Lamps in such places are of course not wasted;it is much more convenient and comfortable for a pilot to holdon them than on a spread of formless blackness that won'tstay still; and money is saved to the boat, at the same time,for she can of course make more miles with her rudderamidships than she can with it squared across her stern andholding her back.
But this thing has knocked the romance out of piloting, to a large extent.
It, and some other things together, have knocked all the romance out of it.
For instance, the peril from snags is not now what it once was.
The government's snag-boats go patrolling up and down, in thesematter-of-fact days, pulling the river's teeth; they have rooted outall the old clusters which made many localities so formidable; and theyallow no new ones to collect. Formerly, if your boat got away from you,on a black night, and broke for the woods, it was an anxious time with you;so was it also, when you were groping your way through solidifieddarkness in a narrow chute; but all that is changed now--you flash outyour electric light, transform night into day in the twinkling of an eye,and your perils and anxieties are at an end. Horace Bixby and GeorgeRitchie have charted the crossings and laid out the courses by compass;they have invented a lamp to go with the chart, and have patented the whole.
With these helps, one may run in the fog now, with considerable security,and with a confidence unknown in the old days.
With these abundant beacons, the banishment of snags, plenty ofdaylight in a box and ready to be turned on whenever needed,and a chart and compass to fight the fog with, piloting, at a goodstage of water, is now nearly as safe and simple as driving stage,and is hardly more than three times as romantic.
And now in these new days, these days of infinite change, the AnchorLine have raised the captain above the pilot by giving him the biggerwages of the two. This was going far, but they have not stopped there.
They have decreed that the pilot shall remain at his post, and stand hiswatch clear through, whether the boat be under way or tied up to the shore.
We, that were once the aristocrats of the river, can't go to bed now,as we used to do, and sleep while a hundred tons of freight arelugged aboard; no, we must sit in the pilot-house; and keep awake, too.
Verily we are being treated like a parcel of mates and engineers.
The Government has taken away the romance of our calling; the Company hastaken away its state and dignity.
Plum Point looked as it had always looked by night, with theexception that now there were beacons to mark the crossings,and also a lot of other lights on the Point and along its shore;these latter glinting from the fleet of the United StatesRiver Commission, and from a village which the officials have builton the land for offices and for the employes of the service.
The military engineers of the Commission have taken upontheir shoulders the job of making the Mississippi over again--a job transcended in size by only the original job of creating it.
They are building wing-dams here and there, to deflect the current;and dikes to confine it in narrower bounds; and other dikes to makeit stay there; and for unnumbered miles along the Mississippi,they are felling the timber-front for fifty yards back,with the purpose of shaving the bank down to low-water markwith the slant of a house roof, and ballasting it with stones;and in many places they have protected the wasting shores with rowsof piles. One who knows the Mississippi will promptly aver--not aloud, but to himself--that ten thousand River Commissions,with the mines of the world at their back, cannot tame thatlawless stream, cannot curb it or confine it, cannot say to it,Go here, or Go there, and make it obey; cannot save a shorewhich it has sentenced; cannot bar its path with an obstructionwhich it will not tear down, dance over, and laugh at.
But a discreet man will not put these things into spoken words;for the West Point engineers have not their superiors anywhere;they know all that can be known of their abstruse science;and so, since they conceive that they can fetter and handcuffthat river and boss him, it is but wisdom for the unscientific manto keep still, lie low, and wait till they do it. Captain Eads,with his jetties, has done a work at the mouth of the Mississippiwhich seemed clearly impossible; so we do not feel full confidencenow to prophesy against like impossibilities. Otherwise one wouldpipe out and say the Commission might as well bully the cometsin their courses and undertake to make them behave, as try to bullythe Mississippi into right and reasonable conduct.
I consulted Uncle Mumford concerning this and cognate matters;and I give here the result, stenographically reported, and thereforeto be relied on as being full and correct; except that I havehere and there left out remarks which were addressed to the men,such as 'where in blazes are you going with that barrel now?'
and which seemed to me to break the flow of the written statement,without compensating by adding to its information or its clearness.
Not that I have ventured to strike out all such interjections;I have removed only those which were obviously irrelevant;wherever one occurred which I felt any question about, I havejudged it safest to let it remain.
UNCLE MUMFORD'S IMPRESSIONSUncle Mumford said--'As long as I have been mate of a steamboat--thirty years--I have watched this river and studied it. Maybe I could have learntmore about it at West Point, but if I believe it I wish I may be WHATARE YOU SUCKING YOUR FINGERS THERE FOR ?--COLLAR THAT KAG OF NAILS!
Four years at West Point, and plenty of books and schooling, will learna man a good deal, I reckon, but it won't learn him the river.
You turn one of those little European rivers over to this Commission,with its hard bottom and clear water, and it would just be a holidayjob for them to wall it, and pile it, and dike it, and tame it down,and boss it around, and make it go wherever they wanted it to,and stay where they put it, and do just as they said, every time.
But this ain't that kind of a river. They have started in herewith big confidence, and the best intentions in the world;but they are going to get left. What does Ecclesiastes vii. 13 say?
Says enough to knock THEIR little game galley-west, don't it?
Now you look at their methods once. There at Devil's Island,in the Upper River, they wanted the water to go one way, the water wantedto go another. So they put up a stone wall. But what does the rivercare for a stone wall? When it got ready, it just bulged through it.
Maybe they can build another that will stay; that is, up there--but not down here they can't. Down here in the Lower River, they drivesome pegs to turn the water away from the shore and stop it from slicingoff the bank; very well, don't it go straight over and cut somebodyelse's bank? Certainly. Are they going to peg all the banks?
Why, they could buy ground and build a new Mississippi cheaper.
They are pegging Bulletin Tow-head now. It won't do any good.
If the river has got a mortgage on that island, it will foreclose,sure, pegs or no pegs. Away down yonder, they have driven two rowsof piles straight through the middle of a dry bar half a mile long,which is forty foot out of the water when the river is low.
What do you reckon that is for? If I know, I wish I may landin-HUMP YOURSELF, YOU SON OF AN UNDERTAKER!--OUT WITH THAT COAL-OIL, NOW,LIVELY, LIVELY! And just look at what they are trying to do downthere at Milliken's Bend. There's been a cut-off in that section,and Vicksburg is left out in the cold. It's a country town now.
The river strikes in below it; and a boat can't go up to the townexcept in high water. Well, they are going to build wing-dams inthe bend opposite the foot of 103, and throw the water over and cutoff the foot of the island and plow down into an old ditch wherethe river used to be in ancient times; and they think they can persuadethe water around that way, and get it to strike in above Vicksburg,as it used to do, and fetch the town back into the world again.
That is, they are going to take this whole Mississippi,and twist it around and make it run several miles UP STREAM.
Well you've got to admire men that deal in ideas of that size and cantote them around without crutches; but you haven't got to believethey can DO such miracles, have you! And yet you ain't absolutelyobliged to believe they can't. I reckon the safe way, where a mancan afford it, is to copper the operation, and at the same time buyenough property in Vicksburg to square you up in case they win.
Government is doing a deal for the Mississippi, now--spending loadsof money on her. When there used to be four thousand steamboatsand ten thousand acres of coal-barges, and rafts and trading scows,there wasn't a lantern from St. Paul to New Orleans, and the snagswere thicker than bristles on a hog's back; and now when there'sthree dozen steamboats and nary barge or raft, Government hassnatched out all the snags, and lit up the shores like Broadway,and a boat's as safe on the river as she'd be in heaven.
And I reckon that by the time there ain't any boats left at all,the Commission will have the old thing all reorganized, and dredged out,and fenced in, and tidied up, to a degree that will make navigationjust simply perfect, and absolutely safe and profitable; and allthe days will be Sundays, and all the mates will be Sunday-schoolsu-WHAT-IN-THE-NATION-YOU-FOOLING-AROUND-THERE-FOR, YOU SONSOF UNRIGHTEOUSNESS, HEIRS OF PERDITION ! GOING TO BE A YEAR GETTING THATHOGSHEAD ASHORE ?'
During our trip to New Orleans and back, we had many conversations withriver men, planters, journalists, and officers of the River Commission--with conflicting and confusing results. To wit:-1. Some believed in the Commission's scheme to arbitrarilyand permanently confine (and thus deepen) the channel,preserve threatened shores, etc.
2. Some believed that the Commission's money ought to be spentonly on building and repairing the great system of levees.
3. Some believed that the higher you build your levee,the higher the river's bottom will rise; and that consequentlythe levee system is a mistake.
4. Some believed in the scheme to relieve the river, in flood-time,by turning its surplus waters off into Lake Borgne, etc.
5. Some believed in the scheme of northern lake-reservoirs to replenishthe Mississippi in low-water seasons.
Wherever you find a man down there who believes in one of thesetheories you may turn to the next man and frame your talk uponthe hypothesis that he does not believe in that theory; and afteryou have had experience, you do not take this course doubtfully,or hesitatingly, but with the confidence of a dying murderer--converted one, I mean. For you will have come to know, with a deepand restful certainty, that you are not going to meet two peoplesick of the same theory, one right after the other. No, there willalways be one or two with the other diseases along between.
And as you proceed, you will find out one or two other things.
You will find out that there is no distemper of the lot butis contagious; and you cannot go where it is without catching it.
You may vaccinate yourself with deterrent facts as much as you please--it will do no good; it will seem to 'take,' but it doesn't;the moment you rub against any one of those theorists, make upyour mind that it is time to hang out your yellow flag.
Yes, you are his sure victim: yet his work is not all to your hurt--only part of it; for he is like your family physician, who comesand cures the mumps, and leaves the scarlet-fever behind.
If your man is a Lake-Borgne-relief theorist, for instance,he will exhale a cloud of deadly facts and statistics which will layyou out with that disease, sure; but at the same time he will cureyou of any other of the five theories that may have previously gotinto your system.
I have had all the five; and had them 'bad;' but ask me not,in mournful numbers, which one racked me hardest, or whichone numbered the biggest sick list, for I do not know.
In truth, no one can answer the latter question.
Mississippi Improvement is a mighty topic, down yonder.
Every man on the river banks, south of Cairo, talks about itevery day, during such moments as he is able to spare fromtalking about the war; and each of the several chief theorieshas its host of zealous partisans; but, as I have said,it is not possible to determine which cause numbersthe most recruits.
All were agreed upon one point, however: if Congress would makea sufficient appropriation, a colossal benefit would result.
Very well; since then the appropriation has been made--possibly a sufficient one, certainly not too large a one.
Let us hope that the prophecy will be amply fulfilled.
One thing will be easily granted by the reader; that an opinion fromMr. Edward Atkinson, upon any vast national commercial matter, comes as nearranking as authority, as can the opinion of any individual in the union.
What he has to say about Mississippi River Improvement will be foundin the Appendix.
Sometimes, half a dozen figures will reveal, as with a lightning-flash,the importance of a subject which ten thousand labored words,with the same purpose in view, had left at last but dim and uncertain.
Here is a case of the sort--paragraph from the 'Cincinnati Commercial'-'The towboat "Jos. B. Williams" is on her way to New Orleans witha tow of thirty-two barges, containing six hundred thousand bushels(seventy-six pounds to the bushel) of coal exclusive of her own fuel,being the largest tow ever taken to New Orleans or anywhere elsein the world. Her freight bill, at 3 cents a bushel, amounts to$18,000. It would take eighteen hundred cars, of three hundred andthirty-three bushels to the car, to transport this amount of coal.
At $10 per ton, or $100 per car, which would be a fair price forthe distance by rail, the freight bill would amount to $180,000,or $162,000 more by rail than by river. The tow will be takenfrom Pittsburg to New Orleans in fourteen or fifteen days.
It would take one hundred trains of eighteen cars to the trainto transport this one tow of six hundred thousand bushels of coal,and even if it made the usual speed of fast freight lines, it wouldtake one whole summer to put it through by rail.'
When a river in good condition can enable one to save $162,000 and a wholesummer's time, on a single cargo, the wisdom of taking measures to keepthe river in good condition is made plain to even the uncommercial mind.
WE passed through the Plum Point region, turned Craighead's Point,and glided unchallenged by what was once the formidable Fort Pillow,memorable because of the massacre perpetrated there during the war.
Massacres are sprinkled with some frequency through the historiesof several Christian nations, but this is almost the only onethat can be found in American history; perhaps it is the only onewhich rises to a size correspondent to that huge and somber title.
We have the 'Boston Massacre,' where two or three people were killed;but we must bunch Anglo-Saxon history together to find the fellowto the Fort Pillow tragedy; and doubtless even then we must travelback to the days and the performances of Coeur de Lion, that fine'hero,' before we accomplish it.
More of the river's freaks. In times past, the channel usedto strike above Island 37, by Brandywine Bar, and down towardsIsland 39. Afterward, changed its course and went fromBrandywine down through Vogelman's chute in the Devil's Elbow,to Island 39--part of this course reversing the old order;the river running UP four or five miles, instead of down,and cutting off, throughout, some fifteen miles of distance.
This in 1876. All that region is now called Centennial Island.
There is a tradition that Island 37 was one of the principal abidingplaces of the once celebrated 'Murel's Gang.' This was a colossalcombination of robbers, horse-thieves, negro-stealers, and counterfeiters,engaged in business along the river some fifty or sixty years ago.
While our journey across the country towards St. Louis was inprogress we had had no end of Jesse James and his stirring history;for he had just been assassinated by an agent of the Governor of Missouri,and was in consequence occupying a good deal of space in the newspapers.
Cheap histories of him were for sale by train boys. According to these,he was the most marvelous creature of his kind that had ever existed.
It was a mistake. Murel was his equal in boldness; in pluck; in rapacity;in cruelty, brutality, heartlessness, treachery, and in general andcomprehensive vileness and shamelessness; and very much his superiorin some larger aspects. James was a retail rascal; Murel, wholesale.
James's modest genius dreamed of no loftier flight than the planningof raids upon cars, coaches, and country banks; Murel projectednegro insurrections and the capture of New Orleans; and furthermore,on occasion, this Murel could go into a pulpit and edify the congregation.
What are James and his half-dozen vulgar rascals compared with thisstately old-time criminal, with his sermons, his meditated insurrectionsand city-captures, and his majestic following of ten hundred men,sworn to do his evil will!
Here is a paragraph or two concerning this big operator,from a now forgotten book which was published half a century ago--He appears to have been a most dexterous as well as consummate villain.
When he traveled, his usual disguise was that of an itinerant preacher;and it is said that his discourses were very 'soul-moving'--interestingthe hearers so much that they forgot to look after their horses,which were carried away by his confederates while he was preaching.
But the stealing of horses in one State, and selling them in another,was but a small portion of their business; the most lucrativewas the enticing slaves to run away from their masters, that theymight sell them in another quarter. This was arranged as follows;they would tell a negro that if he would run away from his master,and allow them to sell him, he should receive a portion of the moneypaid for him, and that upon his return to them a second time they wouldsend him to a free State, where he would be safe. The poor wretchescomplied with this request, hoping to obtain money and freedom;they would be sold to another master, and run away again, to their employers;sometimes they would be sold in this manner three or four times,until they had realized three or four thousand dollars by them;but as, after this, there was fear of detection, the usual custom wasto get rid of the only witness that could be produced against them,which was the negro himself, by murdering him, and throwing his body intothe Mississippi. Even if it was established that they had stolen a negro,before he was murdered, they were always prepared to evade punishment;for they concealed the negro who had run away, until he was advertised,and a reward offered to any man who would catch him. An advertisementof this kind warrants the person to take the property, if found.
And then the negro becomes a property in trust, when, therefore,they sold the negro, it only became a breach of trust, not stealing;and for a breach of trust, the owner of the property can only have redressby a civil action, which was useless, as the damages were never paid.
It may be inquired, how it was that Murel escaped Lynch law undersuch circumstances This will be easily understood when it is statedthat he had MORE THAN A THOUSAND SWORN CONFEDERATES, all ready ata moment's notice to support any of the gang who might be in trouble.
The names of all the principal confederates of Murel were obtainedfrom himself, in a manner which I shall presently explain.
The gang was composed of two classes: the Heads or Council, as theywere called, who planned and concerted, but seldom acted; they amountedto about four hundred. The other class were the active agents,and were termed strikers, and amounted to about six hundred and fifty.
These were the tools in the hands of the others; they ran all the risk,and received but a small portion of the money; they were in the powerof the leaders of the gang, who would sacrifice them at any time by handingthem over to justice, or sinking their bodies in the Mississippi.
The general rendezvous of this gang of miscreants was on the Arkansasside of the river, where they concealed their negroes in the morasses andcane-brakes.
The depredations of this extensive combination were severely felt;but so well were their plans arranged, that although Murel,who was always active, was everywhere suspected, there was no proofto be obtained. It so happened, however, that a young man of the nameof Stewart, who was looking after two slaves which Murel had decoyedaway, fell in with him and obtained his confidence, took the oath,and was admitted into the gang as one of the General Council.
By this means all was discovered; for Stewart turned traitor,although he had taken the oath, and having obtained every information,exposed the whole concern, the names of all the parties, and finallysucceeded in bringing home sufficient evidence against Murel,to procure his conviction and sentence to the Penitentiary(Murel was sentenced to fourteen years' imprisonment); so manypeople who were supposed to be honest, and bore a respectablename in the different States, were found to be among the listof the Grand Council as published by Stewart, that every attemptwas made to throw discredit upon his assertions--his characterwas vilified, and more than one attempt was made to assassinate him.
He was obliged to quit the Southern States in consequence.
It is, however, now well ascertained to have been all true;and although some blame Mr. Stewart for having violated his oath,they no longer attempt to deny that his revelations were correct.
I will quote one or two portions of Murel's confessions toMr. Stewart, made to him when they were journeying together.
I ought to have observed, that the ultimate intentions of Mureland his associates were, by his own account, on a very extended scale;having no less an object in view than RAISING THE BLACKS AGAINSTTHE WHITES, TAKING POSSESSION OF, AND PLUNDERING NEW ORLEANS,AND MAKING THEMSELVES POSSESSORS OF THE TERRITORY. The following area few extracts:--'I collected all my friends about New Orleans at one of our friends'
houses in that place, and we sat in council three days before wegot all our plans to our notion; we then determined to undertakethe rebellion at every hazard, and make as many friends as wecould for that purpose. Every man's business being assigned him,I started to Natchez on foot, having sold my horse in New Orleans,--with the intention of stealing another after I started.
I walked four days, and no opportunity offered for me to get a horse.
The fifth day, about twelve, I had become tired, and stopped at a creekto get some water and rest a little. While I was sitting on a log,looking down the road the way that I had come, a man came in sightriding on a good-looking horse. The very moment I saw him, I wasdetermined to have his horse, if he was in the garb of a traveler.
He rode up, and I saw from his equipage that he was a traveler.
I arose and drew an elegant rifle pistol on him and ordered him to dismount.
He did so, and I took his horse by the bridle and pointed down the creek,and ordered him to walk before me. He went a few hundred yardsand stopped. I hitched his horse, and then made him undress himself,all to his shirt and drawers, and ordered him to turn his back to me.
He said, 'If you are determined to kill me, let me have time to praybefore I die,' I told him I had no time to hear him pray. He turned aroundand dropped on his knees, and I shot him through the back of the head.
I ripped open his belly and took out his entrails, and sunk him in the creek.
I then searched his pockets, and found four hundred dollars and thirty-sevencents, and a number of papers that I did not take time to examine.
I sunk the pocket-book and papers and his hat, in the creek.
His boots were brand-new, and fitted me genteelly; and I putthem on and sunk my old shoes in the creek, to atone for them.
I rolled up his clothes and put them into his portmanteau, as they werebrand-new cloth of the best quality. I mounted as fine a horse as everI straddled, and directed my course for Natchez in much better stylethan I had been for the last five days.
'Myself and a fellow by the name of Crenshaw gathered four goodhorses and started for Georgia. We got in company with a youngSouth Carolinian just before we got to Cumberland Mountain,and Crenshaw soon knew all about his business. He had beento Tennessee to buy a drove of hogs, but when he got there porkwas dearer than he calculated, and he declined purchasing.
We concluded he was a prize. Crenshaw winked at me; I understoodhis idea. Crenshaw had traveled the road before, but I never had;we had traveled several miles on the mountain, when he passednear a great precipice; just before we passed it Crenshaw askedme for my whip, which had a pound of lead in the butt; I handedit to him, and he rode up by the side of the South Carolinian,and gave him a blow on the side of the head and tumbled himfrom his horse; we lit from our horses and fingered his pockets;we got twelve hundred and sixty-two dollars. Crenshaw saidhe knew a place to hide him, and he gathered him under his arms,and I by his feet, and conveyed him to a deep crevice in the browof the precipice, and tumbled him into it, and he went out of sight;we then tumbled in his saddle, and took his horse with us, which wasworth two hundred dollars.
'We were detained a few days, and during that time our friend wentto a little village in the neighborhood and saw the negro advertised(a negro in our possession), and a description of the two men of whomhe had been purchased, and giving his suspicions of the men.
It was rather squally times, but any port in a storm:
we took the negro that night on the bank of a creek which runsby the farm of our friend, and Crenshaw shot him through the head.
We took out his entrails and sunk him in the creek.
'He had sold the other negro the third time on Arkansaw River for upwardsof five hundred dollars; and then stole him and delivered him into the handof his friend, who conducted him to a swamp, and veiled the tragic scene,and got the last gleanings and sacred pledge of secrecy; as a game of thatkind will not do unless it ends in a mystery to all but the fraternity.
He sold the negro, first and last, for nearly two thousand dollars,and then put him for ever out of the reach of all pursuers; and they cannever graze him unless they can find the negro; and that they cannot do,for his carcass has fed many a tortoise and catfish before this time,and the frogs have sung this many a long day to the silent reposeof his skeleton.'
We were approaching Memphis, in front of which city, and witnessed byits people, was fought the most famous of the river battles of the Civil War.
Two men whom I had served under, in my river days, took part in that fight:
Mr. Bixby, head pilot of the union fleet, and Montgomery, Commodore of theConfederate fleet. Both saw a great deal of active service during the war,and achieved high reputations for pluck and capacity.
As we neared Memphis, we began to cast about for an excuse to staywith the 'Gold Dust' to the end of her course--Vicksburg. We wereso pleasantly situated, that we did not wish to make a change.
I had an errand of considerable importance to do at Napoleon, Arkansas,but perhaps I could manage it without quitting the 'Gold Dust.'
I said as much; so we decided to stick to present quarters.
The boat was to tarry at Memphis till ten the next morning. It is abeautiful city, nobly situated on a commanding bluff overlooking the river.
The streets are straight and spacious, though not paved in a way to incitedistempered admiration. No, the admiration must be reserved for the town'ssewerage system, which is called perfect; a recent reform, however, for itwas just the other way, up to a few years ago--a reform resulting fromthe lesson taught by a desolating visitation of the yellow-fever. Inthose awful days the people were swept off by hundreds, by thousands;and so great was the reduction caused by flight and by death together,that the population was diminished three-fourths, and so remained for a time.
Business stood nearly still, and the streets bore an empty Sunday aspect.
Here is a picture of Memphis, at that disastrous time,drawn by a German tourist who seems to have been an eye-witnessof the scenes which he describes. It is from Chapter VII,of his book, just published, in Leipzig, 'Mississippi-Fahrten, vonErnst von Hesse-Wartegg.'--'In August the yellow-fever had reached its extremest height.
Daily, hundreds fell a sacrifice to the terrible epidemic.
The city was become a mighty graveyard, two-thirds of the populationhad deserted the place, and only the poor, the aged and the sick,remained behind, a sure prey for the insidious enemy.
The houses were closed: little lamps burned in front of many--a sign that here death had entered. Often, several laydead in a single house; from the windows hung black crape.
The stores were shut up, for their owners were gone away or dead.
'Fearful evil! In the briefest space it struck down and swept awayeven the most vigorous victim. A slight indisposition, then an hourof fever, then the hideous delirium, then--the Yellow Death !
On the street corners, and in the squares, lay sick men, suddenly overtakenby the disease; and even corpses, distorted and rigid. Food failed.
Meat spoiled in a few hours in the fetid and pestiferous air,and turned black.
'Fearful clamors issue from many houses; then after a seasonthey cease, and all is still: noble, self-sacrificing men comewith the coffin, nail it up, and carry it away, to the graveyard.
In the night stillness reigns. Only the physicians and thehearses hurry through the streets; and out of the distance,at intervals, comes the muffled thunder of the railway train,which with the speed of the wind, and as if hunted by furies,flies by the pest-ridden city without halting.'
But there is life enough there now. The population exceeds forty thousandand is augmenting, and trade is in a flourishing condition. We droveabout the city; visited the park and the sociable horde of squirrels there;saw the fine residences, rose-clad and in other ways enticing to the eye;and got a good breakfast at the hotel.
A thriving place is the Good Samaritan City of the Mississippi:
has a great wholesale jobbing trade; foundries, machine shops;and manufactories of wagons, carriages, and cotton-seed oil;and is shortly to have cotton mills and elevators.
Her cotton receipts reached five hundred thousand bales last year--an increase of sixty thousand over the year before. Out fromher healthy commercial heart issue five trunk lines of railway;and a sixth is being added.
This is a very different Memphis from the one which the vanishedand unremembered procession of foreign tourists used to putinto their books long time ago. In the days of the nowforgotten but once renowned and vigorously hated Mrs. Trollope,Memphis seems to have consisted mainly of one long street oflog-houses, with some outlying cabins sprinkled around rearwardtoward the woods; and now and then a pig, and no end of mud.
That was fifty-five years ago. She stopped at the hotel.
Plainly it was not the one which gave us our breakfast.
She says--'The table was laid for fifty persons, and was nearly full.
They ate in perfect silence, and with such astonishing rapiditythat their dinner was over literally before ours was begun;the only sounds heard were those produced by the knives and forks,with the unceasing chorus of coughing, ETC.'
'Coughing, etc.' The 'etc.' stands for an unpleasant word there,a word which she does not always charitably cover up, but sometimes prints.
You will find it in the following description of a steamboat dinnerwhich she ate in company with a lot of aristocratic planters;wealthy, well-born, ignorant swells they were, tinselled with the usualharmless military and judicial titles of that old day of cheap shamsand windy pretense--'The total want of all the usual courtesies of the table;the voracious rapidity with which the viands were seizedand devoured; the strange uncouth phrases and pronunciation;the loathsome spitting, from the contamination of which itwas absolutely impossible to protect our dresses; the frightfulmanner of feeding with their knives, till the whole bladeseemed to enter into the mouth; and the still more frightfulmanner of cleaning the teeth afterward with a pocket knife,soon forced us to feel that we were not surroundedby the generals, colonels, and majors of the old world;and that the dinner hour was to be anything rather than anhour of enjoyment.'
IT was a big river, below Memphis; banks brimming full, everywhere,and very frequently more than full, the waters pouring out overthe land, flooding the woods and fields for miles into the interior;and in places, to a depth of fifteen feet; signs, all about,of men's hard work gone to ruin, and all to be doneover again, with straitened means and a weakened courage.
A melancholy picture, and a continuous one;--hundreds of miles of it.
Sometimes the beacon lights stood in water three feet deep,in the edge of dense forests which extended for miles without farm,wood-yard, clearing, or break of any kind; which meant thatthe keeper of the light must come in a skiff a great distanceto discharge his trust,--and often in desperate weather.
Yet I was told that the work is faithfully performed,in all weathers; and not always by men, sometimes by women,if the man is sick or absent. The Government furnishes oil,and pays ten or fifteen dollars a month for the lighting and tending.
A Government boat distributes oil and pays wages once a month.
The Ship Island region was as woodsy and tenantless as ever.
The island has ceased to be an island; has joined itself compactlyto the main shore, and wagons travel, now, where the steamboats usedto navigate. No signs left of the wreck of the 'Pennsylvania.'
Some farmer will turn up her bones with his plow one day, no doubt,and be surprised.
We were getting down now into the migrating negro region.
These poor people could never travel when they were slaves;so they make up for the privation now. They stay on a plantation tillthe desire to travel seizes them; then they pack up, hail a steamboat,and clear out. Not for any particular place; no, nearly anyplace will answer; they only want to be moving. The amountof money on hand will answer the rest of the conundrum for them.
If it will take them fifty miles, very well; let it be fifty.
If not, a shorter flight will do.
During a couple of days, we frequently answered these hails.
Sometimes there was a group of high-water-stained, tumble-down cabins,populous with colored folk, and no whites visible; with grasslesspatches of dry ground here and there; a few felled trees,with skeleton cattle, mules, and horses, eating the leaves andgnawing the bark--no other food for them in the flood-wasted land.
Sometimes there was a single lonely landing-cabin; near itthe colored family that had hailed us; little and big, old and young,roosting on the scant pile of household goods; these consistingof a rusty gun, some bed-ticks, chests, tinware, stools, a crippledlooking-glass, a venerable arm-chair, and six or eight base-bornand spiritless yellow curs, attached to the family by strings.
They must have their dogs; can't go without their dogs.
Yet the dogs are never willing; they always object; so, one after another,in ridiculous procession, they are dragged aboard; all four feetbraced and sliding along the stage, head likely to be pulled off;but the tugger marching determinedly forward, bending to his work,with the rope over his shoulder for better purchase.
Sometimes a child is forgotten and left on the bank; but nevera dog.
The usual river-gossip going on in the pilot-house. Island No. 63--an island with a lovely 'chute,' or passage, behind it in the former times.
They said Jesse Jamieson, in the 'Skylark,' had a visiting pilotwith him one trip--a poor old broken-down, superannuated fellow--left him at the wheel, at the foot of 63, to run off the watch.
The ancient mariner went up through the chute, and down the river outside;and up the chute and down the river again; and yet again and again;and handed the boat over to the relieving pilot, at the end of threehours of honest endeavor, at the same old foot of the island wherehe had originally taken the wheel! A darkey on shore who had observedthe boat go by, about thirteen times, said, ' 'clar to gracious,I wouldn't be s'prised if dey's a whole line o' dem Sk'ylarks! '
Anecdote illustrative of influence of reputation in the changingof opinion. The 'Eclipse' was renowned for her swiftness.
One day she passed along; an old darkey on shore, absorbed inhis own matters, did not notice what steamer it was.
Presently someone asked--'Any boat gone up?'
'Yes, sah.'
'Was she going fast?'
'Oh, so-so--loafin' along.'
'Now, do you know what boat that was?'
'No, sah.'
'Why, uncle, that was the "Eclipse." '
'No! Is dat so? Well, I bet it was--cause she jes' went by here a-SPARKLIN'!'
Piece of history illustrative of the violent style of some of the peopledown along here, During the early weeks of high water, A's fence railswashed down on B's ground, and B's rails washed up in the eddy and landedon A's ground. A said, 'Let the thing remain so; I will use your rails,and you use mine.' But B objected--wouldn't have it so. One day,A came down on B's ground to get his rails. B said, 'I'll kill you!'
and proceeded for him with his revolver. A said, 'I'm not armed.'
So B, who wished to do only what was right, threw down his revolver;then pulled a knife, and cut A's throat all around, but gave hisprincipal attention to the front, and so failed to sever the jugular.
Struggling around, A managed to get his hands on the discarded revolver,and shot B dead with it--and recovered from his own injuries.
Further gossip;--after which, everybody went below to getafternoon coffee, and left me at the wheel, alone,Something presently reminded me of our last hour in St. Louis,part of which I spent on this boat's hurricane deck, aft.
I was joined there by a stranger, who dropped into conversationwith me--a brisk young fellow, who said he was born in a townin the interior of Wisconsin, and had never seen a steamboatuntil a week before. Also said that on the way down from LaCrosse he had inspected and examined his boat so diligentlyand with such passionate interest that he had mastered the wholething from stem to rudder-blade. Asked me where I was from.
I answered, New England. 'Oh, a Yank!' said he; and wentchatting straight along, without waiting for assent or denial.
He immediately proposed to take me all over the boat and tellme the names of her different parts, and teach me their uses.
Before I could enter protest or excuse, he was alreadyrattling glibly away at his benevolent work; and when Iperceived that he was misnaming the things, and inhospitablyamusing himself at the expense of an innocent stranger froma far country, I held my peace, and let him have his way.
He gave me a world of misinformation; and the further he went,the wider his imagination expanded, and the more he enjoyedhis cruel work of deceit. Sometimes, after palming offa particularly fantastic and outrageous lie upon me, he wasso 'full of laugh' that he had to step aside for a minute,upon one pretext or another, to keep me from suspecting.
I staid faithfully by him until his comedy was finished.
Then he remarked that he had undertaken to 'learn' meall about a steamboat, and had done it; but that if he hadoverlooked anything, just ask him and he would supply the lack.
'Anything about this boat that you don't know the nameof or the purpose of, you come to me and I'll tell you.'
I said I would, and took my departure; disappeared, and approachedhim from another quarter, whence he could not see me.
There he sat, all alone, doubling himself up and writhingthis way and that, in the throes of unappeasable laughter.
He must have made himself sick; for he was not publicly visibleafterward for several days. Meantime, the episode dropped outof my mind.
The thing that reminded me of it now, when I was alone at the wheel,was the spectacle of this young fellow standing in the pilot-house door,with the knob in his hand, silently and severely inspecting me.
I don't know when I have seen anybody look so injured as he did.
He did not say anything--simply stood there and looked;reproachfully looked and pondered. Finally he shut the door,and started away; halted on the texas a minute; came slowly backand stood in the door again, with that grieved look in his face;gazed upon me awhile in meek rebuke, then said--'You let me learn you all about a steamboat, didn't you?'
'Yes,' I confessed.
'Yes, you did--DIDN'T you?'
'Yes.'
' You are the feller that--that-- --'
Language failed. Pause--impotent struggle for further words--then he gave it up, choked out a deep, strong oath, and departed for good.
Afterward I saw him several times below during the trip; but he was cold--would not look at me. Idiot, if he had not been in such a sweatto play his witless practical joke upon me, in the beginning,I would have persuaded his thoughts into some other direction,and saved him from committing that wanton and silly impoliteness.
I had myself called with the four o'clock watch, mornings,for one cannot see too many summer sunrises on the Mississippi.
They are enchanting. First, there is the eloquence of silence;for a deep hush broods everywhere. Next, there is the hauntingsense of loneliness, isolation, remoteness from the worryand bustle of the world. The dawn creeps in stealthily;the solid walls of black forest soften to gray, and vaststretches of the river open up and reveal themselves; the wateris glass-smooth, gives off spectral little wreaths of white mist,there is not the faintest breath of wind, nor stir of leaf;the tranquillity is profound and infinitely satisfying.
Then a bird pipes up, another follows, and soon the pipingsdevelop into a jubilant riot of music. You see none of the birds;you simply move through an atmosphere of song which seemsto sing itself. When the light has become a little stronger,you have one of the fairest and softest pictures imaginable.
You have the intense green of the massed and crowded foliagenear by; you see it paling shade by shade in front of you;upon the next projecting cape, a mile off or more, the tinthas lightened to the tender young green of spring; the capebeyond that one has almost lost color, and the furthest one,miles away under the horizon, sleeps upon the water a meredim vapor, and hardly separable from the sky above itand about it. And all this stretch of river is a mirror,and you have the shadowy reflections of the leafage andthe curving shores and the receding capes pictured in it.
Well, that is all beautiful; soft and rich and beautiful;and when the sun gets well up, and distributes a pink flushhere and a powder of gold yonder and a purple haze where it willyield the best effect, you grant that you have seen somethingthat is worth remembering.
We had the Kentucky Bend country in the early morning--scene of a strange and tragic accident in the old times,Captain Poe had a small stern-wheel boat, for years the homeof himself and his wife. One night the boat struck a snag inthe head of Kentucky Bend, and sank with astonishing suddenness;water already well above the cabin floor when the captain got aft.
So he cut into his wife's state-room from above with an ax;she was asleep in the upper berth, the roof a flimsier one thanwas supposed; the first blow crashed down through the rottenboards and clove her skull.
This bend is all filled up now--result of a cut-off; and the sameagent has taken the great and once much-frequented Walnut Bend,and set it away back in a solitude far from the accustomed trackof passing steamers.
Helena we visited, and also a town I had not heard of before, it beingof recent birth--Arkansas City. It was born of a railway; the Little Rock,Mississippi River and Texas Railroad touches the river there.
We asked a passenger who belonged there what sort of a place it was.
'Well,' said he, after considering, and with the air of one whowishes to take time and be accurate, 'It's a hell of a place.'
A description which was photographic for exactness. There wereseveral rows and clusters of shabby frame-houses, and a supply of mudsufficient to insure the town against a famine in that articlefor a hundred years; for the overflow had but lately subsided.
There were stagnant ponds in the streets, here and there, and a dozenrude scows were scattered about, lying aground wherever they happenedto have been when the waters drained off and people could do theirvisiting and shopping on foot once more. Still, it is a thriving place,with a rich country behind it, an elevator in front of it,and also a fine big mill for the manufacture of cotton-seed oil.
I had never seen this kind of a mill before.
Cotton-seed was comparatively valueless in my time; but itis worth $12 or $13 a ton now, and none of it is thrown away.
The oil made from it is colorless, tasteless, and almost if notentirely odorless. It is claimed that it can, by proper manipulation,be made to resemble and perform the office of any and all oils,and be produced at a cheaper rate than the cheapest of the originals.
Sagacious people shipped it to Italy, doctored it, labeled it,and brought it back as olive oil. This trade grew to be so formidablethat Italy was obliged to put a prohibitory impost upon it to keep itfrom working serious injury to her oil industry.
Helena occupies one of the prettiest situations on the Mississippi.
Her perch is the last, the southernmost group of hills which one seeson that side of the river. In its normal condition it is a pretty town;but the flood (or possibly the seepage) had lately been ravaging it;whole streets of houses had been invaded by the muddy water,and the outsides of the buildings were still belted with a broad stainextending upwards from the foundations. Stranded and discarded scows layall about; plank sidewalks on stilts four feet high were still standing;the board sidewalks on the ground level were loose and ruinous,--a couple of men trotting along them could make a blind man thinka cavalry charge was coming; everywhere the mud was black and deep,and in many places malarious pools of stagnant water were standing.
A Mississippi inundation is the next most wasting and desolatinginfliction to a fire.
We had an enjoyable time here, on this sunny Sunday:
two full hours' liberty ashore while the boat discharged freight.
In the back streets but few white people were visible,but there were plenty of colored folk--mainly women and girls;and almost without exception upholstered in bright new clothesof swell and elaborate style and cut--a glaring and hilariouscontrast to the mournful mud and the pensive puddles.
Helena is the second town in Arkansas, in point of population--which is placed at five thousand. The country about it isexceptionally productive. Helena has a good cotton trade;handles from forty to sixty thousand bales annually; she hasa large lumber and grain commerce; has a foundry, oil mills,machine shops and wagon factories--in brief has $1,000,000invested in manufacturing industries. She has two railways,and is the commercial center of a broad and prosperous region.
Her gross receipts of money, annually, from all sources, are placed bythe New Orleans 'Times-Democrat' at $4,000,000.
WE were approaching Napoleon, Arkansas. So I began to thinkabout my errand there. Time, noonday; and bright and sunny.
This was bad--not best, anyway; for mine was not(preferably) a noonday kind of errand. The more I thought,the more that fact pushed itself upon me--now in one form,now in another. Finally, it took the form of a distinct question:
is it good common sense to do the errand in daytime, when, by alittle sacrifice of comfort and inclination, you can have nightfor it, and no inquisitive eyes around. This settled it.
Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road outof most perplexities.
I got my friends into my stateroom, and said I was sorry to createannoyance and disappointment, but that upon reflection it reallyseemed best that we put our luggage ashore and stop over at Napoleon.
Their disapproval was prompt and loud; their language mutinous.
Their main argument was one which has always been the first to cometo the surface, in such cases, since the beginning of time:
'But you decided and AGREED to stick to this boat, etc.; as if,having determined to do an unwise thing, one is thereby bound to go aheadand make TWO unwise things of it, by carrying out that determination.
I tried various mollifying tactics upon them, with reasonably good success:
under which encouragement, I increased my efforts; and, to show them that Ihad not created this annoying errand, and was in no way to blame for it,I presently drifted into its history--substantially as follows:
Toward the end of last year, I spent a few months in Munich, Bavaria.
In November I was living in Fraulein Dahlweiner's PENSION,1a, Karlstrasse; but my working quarters were a mile from there,in the house of a widow who supported herself by taking lodgers.
She and her two young children used to drop in every morning and talkGerman to me--by request. One day, during a ramble about the city,I visited one of the two establishments where the Government keeps andwatches corpses until the doctors decide that they are permanently dead,and not in a trance state. It was a grisly place, that spacious room.
There were thirty-six corpses of adults in sight, stretched on theirbacks on slightly slanted boards, in three long rows--all of themwith wax-white, rigid faces, and all of them wrapped in white shrouds.
Along the sides of the room were deep alcoves, like bay windows;and in each of these lay several marble-visaged babes, utterly hidden andburied under banks of fresh flowers, all but their faces and crossed hands.
Around a finger of each of these fifty still forms, both greatand small, was a ring; and from the ring a wire led to the ceiling,and thence to a bell in a watch-room yonder, where, day and night,a watchman sits always alert and ready to spring to the aid of anyof that pallid company who, waking out of death, shall make a movement--for any, even the slightest, movement will twitch the wire and ringthat fearful bell. I imagined myself a death-sentinel drowsingthere alone, far in the dragging watches of some wailing, gusty night,and having in a twinkling all my body stricken to quivering jelly bythe sudden clamor of that awful summons! So I inquired about this thing;asked what resulted usually? if the watchman died, and the restoredcorpse came and did what it could to make his last moments easy.
But I was rebuked for trying to feed an idle and frivolous curiosityin so solemn and so mournful a place; and went my way witha humbled crest.
Next morning I was telling the widow my adventure, when she exclaimed--'Come with me! I have a lodger who shall tell you all you want to know.
He has been a night-watchman there.'
He was a living man, but he did not look it. He was abed, and hadhis head propped high on pillows; his face was wasted and colorless,his deep-sunken eyes were shut; his hand, lying on his breast,was talon-like, it was so bony and long-fingered. The widowbegan her introduction of me. The man's eyes opened slowly,and glittered wickedly out from the twilight of their caverns;he frowned a black frown; he lifted his lean hand and waved usperemptorily away. But the widow kept straight on, till shehad got out the fact that I was a stranger and an American.
The man's face changed at once; brightened, became even eager--and the next moment he and I were alone together.
I opened up in cast-iron German; he responded in quite flexible English;thereafter we gave the German language a permanent rest.
This consumptive and I became good friends. I visited him every day, and wetalked about everything. At least, about everything but wives and children.
Let anybody's wife or anybody's child be mentioned, and three thingsalways followed: the most gracious and loving and tender light glimmeredin the man's eyes for a moment; faded out the next, and in its place camethat deadly look which had flamed there the first time I ever saw hislids unclose; thirdly, he ceased from speech, there and then for that day;lay silent, abstracted, and absorbed; apparently heard nothing that I said;took no notice of my good-byes, and plainly did not know, by either sightor hearing, when I left the room.
When I had been this Karl Ritter's daily and sole intimate during two months,he one day said, abruptly--'I will tell you my story.'
A DYING MAN S CONFESSIONThen he went on as follows:--I have never given up, until now. But now I have given up.
I am going to die. I made up my mind last night that itmust be, and very soon, too. You say you are going torevisit your river, by-and-bye, when you find opportunity.
Very well; that, together with a certain strange experiencewhich fell to my lot last night, determines me to tell youmy history--for you will see Napoleon, Arkansas; and for mysake you will stop there, and do a certain thing for me--a thing which you will willingly undertake after you shall haveheard my narrative.
Let us shorten the story wherever we can, for it will need it, being long.
You already know how I came to go to America, and how I came to settlein that lonely region in the South. But you do not know that I had a wife.
My wife was young, beautiful, loving, and oh, so divinely good andblameless and gentle! And our little girl was her mother in miniature.
It was the happiest of happy households.
One night--it was toward the close of the war--I woke upout of a sodden lethargy, and found myself bound and gagged,and the air tainted with chloroform! I saw two men in the room,and one was saying to the other, in a hoarse whisper, 'I toldher I would, if she made a noise, and as for the child--'
The other man interrupted in a low, half-crying voice--'You said we'd only gag them and rob them, not hurt them;or I wouldn't have come.'
'Shut up your whining; had to change the plan when they waked up;you done all you could to protect them, now let that satisfy you;come, help rummage.'
Both men were masked, and wore coarse, ragged 'nigger' clothes;they had a bull's-eye lantern, and by its light I noticedthat the gentler robber had no thumb on his right hand.
They rummaged around my poor cabin for a moment; the head banditthen said, in his stage whisper--'It's a waste of time--he shall tell where it's hid.
Undo his gag, and revive him up.'
The other said--'All right--provided no clubbing.'
'No clubbing it is, then--provided he keeps still.'
They approached me; just then there was a sound outside;a sound of voices and trampling hoofs; the robbers held theirbreath and listened; the sounds came slowly nearer and nearer;then came a shout--'HELLO, the house! Show a light, we want water.'
'The captain's voice, by G----!' said the stage-whispering ruffian,and both robbers fled by the way of the back door, shutting offtheir bull's-eye as they ran.
The strangers shouted several times more, then rode by--there seemed to be a dozen of the horses--and I heard nothing more.
I struggled, but could not free myself from my bonds.
I tried to speak, but the gag was effective; I could not make a sound.
I listened for my wife's voice and my child's--listened long and intently,but no sound came from the other end of the room where their bed was.
This silence became more and more awful, more and more ominous,every moment. Could you have endured an hour of it, do you think?
Pity me, then, who had to endure three. Three hours--? it was three ages!
Whenever the clock struck, it seemed as if years had gone by since Ihad heard it last. All this time I was struggling in my bonds;and at last, about dawn, I got myself free, and rose up and stretchedmy stiff limbs. I was able to distinguish details pretty well.
The floor was littered with things thrown there by the robbersduring their search for my savings. The first object that caughtmy particular attention was a document of mine which I had seenthe rougher of the two ruffians glance at and then cast away.
It had blood on it! I staggered to the other end of the room.
Oh, poor unoffending, helpless ones, there they lay, their troubles ended,mine begun!
Did I appeal to the law--I? Does it quench the pauper's thirst if the Kingdrink for him? Oh, no, no, no--I wanted no impertinent interference ofthe law. Laws and the gallows could not pay the debt that was owing to me!
Let the laws leave the matter in my hands, and have no fears: I wouldfind the debtor and collect the debt. How accomplish this, do you say?
How accomplish it, and feel so sure about it, when I had neither seenthe robbers' faces, nor heard their natural voices, nor had any ideawho they might be? Nevertheless, I WAS sure--quite sure, quite confident.
I had a clue--a clue which you would not have valued--a clue which wouldnot have greatly helped even a detective, since he would lack the secretof how to apply it. I shall come to that, presently--you shall see.
Let us go on, now, taking things in their due order. There was onecircumstance which gave me a slant in a definite direction to begin with:
Those two robbers were manifestly soldiers in tramp disguise; and notnew to military service, but old in it--regulars, perhaps; they didnot acquire their soldierly attitude, gestures, carriage, in a day,nor a month, nor yet in a year. So I thought, but said nothing.
And one of them had said, 'the captain's voice, by G----!'--the one whoselife I would have. Two miles away, several regiments were in camp,and two companies of U.S. cavalry. When I learned that Captain Blakely,of Company C had passed our way, that night, with an escort, I said nothing,but in that company I resolved to seek my man. In conversation I studiouslyand persistently described the robbers as tramps, camp followers;and among this class the people made useless search, none suspecting thesoldiers but me.
Working patiently, by night, in my desolated home, I madea disguise for myself out of various odds and ends of clothing;in the nearest village I bought a pair of blue goggles.
By-and-bye, when the military camp broke up, and Company C wasordered a hundred miles north, to Napoleon, I secreted my smallhoard of money in my belt, and took my departure in the night.
When Company C arrived in Napoleon, I was already there.
Yes, I was there, with a new trade--fortune-teller. Not to seem partial,I made friends and told fortunes among all the companiesgarrisoned there; but I gave Company C the great bulk of my attentions.
I made myself limitlessly obliging to these particular men;they could ask me no favor, put upon me no risk, which I would decline.
I became the willing butt of their jokes; this perfected my popularity;I became a favorite.
I early found a private who lacked a thumb--what joy it was to me!
And when I found that he alone, of all the company, had losta thumb, my last misgiving vanished; I was SURE I was onthe right track. This man's name was Kruger, a German.
There were nine Germans in the company. I watched, to see who mightbe his intimates; but he seemed to have no especial intimates.
But I was his intimate; and I took care to make the intimacy grow.
Sometimes I so hungered for my revenge that I could hardlyrestrain myself from going on my knees and begging him to pointout the man who had murdered my wife and child; but I managedto bridle my tongue. I bided my time, and went on telling fortunes,as opportunity offered.
My apparatus was simple: a little red paint and a bit of white paper.
I painted the ball of the client's thumb, took a print of it on the paper,studied it that night, and revealed his fortune to him next day.
What was my idea in this nonsense? It was this: When I was a youth,I knew an old Frenchman who had been a prison-keeper for thirty years,and he told me that there was one thing about a person which never changed,from the cradle to the grave--the lines in the ball of the thumb;and he said that these lines were never exactly alike in the thumbsof any two human beings. In these days, we photograph the new criminal,and hang his picture in the Rogues' Gallery for future reference;but that Frenchman, in his day, used to take a print of the ball of a newprisoner's thumb and put that away for future reference. He always saidthat pictures were no good--future disguises could make them useless;'The thumb's the only sure thing,' said he; 'you can't disguise that.'
And he used to prove his theory, too, on my friends and acquaintances;it always succeeded.
I went on telling fortunes. Every night I shut myself in, all alone,and studied the day's thumb-prints with a magnifying-glass. Imaginethe devouring eagerness with which I pored over those mazy red spirals,with that document by my side which bore the right-hand thumb-and-finger-marksof that unknown murderer, printed with the dearest blood--to me--that was ever shed on this earth! And many and many a time I had to repeatthe same old disappointed remark, 'will they NEVER correspond!'
But my reward came at last. It was the print of the thumb of the forty-thirdman of Company C whom I had experimented on--Private Franz Adler.
An hour before, I did not know the murderer's name, or voice,or figure, or face, or nationality; but now I knew all these things!
I believed I might feel sure; the Frenchman's repeated demonstrationsbeing so good a warranty. Still, there was a way to MAKE sure.
I had an impression of Kruger's left thumb. In the morning I took him asidewhen he was off duty; and when we were out of sight and hearing of witnesses,I said, impressively-'A part of your fortune is so grave, that I thought it would bebetter for you if I did not tell it in public. You and another man,whose fortune I was studying last night,--Private Adler,--have been murdering a woman and a child! You are being dogged:
within five days both of you will be assassinated.'
He dropped on his knees, frightened out of his wits;and for five minutes he kept pouring out the same set of words,like a demented person, and in the same half-crying way whichwas one of my memories of that murderous night in my cabin--'I didn't do it; upon my soul I didn't do it; and I triedto keep HIM from doing it; I did, as God is my witness.
He did it alone.'
This was all I wanted. And I tried to get rid of the fool; but no,he clung to me, imploring me to save him from the assassin. He said--'I have money--ten thousand dollars--hid away, the fruit of lootand thievery; save me--tell me what to do, and you shallhave it, every penny. Two-thirds of it is my cousin Adler's;but you can take it all. We hid it when we first came here.
But I hid it in a new place yesterday, and have not told him--shall not tell him. I was going to desert, and get away with it all.
It is gold, and too heavy to carry when one is running and dodging;but a woman who has been gone over the river two days to preparemy way for me is going to follow me with it; and if I got no chanceto describe the hiding-place to her I was going to slip my silverwatch into her hand, or send it to her, and she would understand.
There's a piece of paper in the back of the case, which tells it all.
Here, take the watch--tell me what to do!'
He was trying to press his watch upon me, and was exposing the paperand explaining it to me, when Adler appeared on the scene,about a dozen yards away. I said to poor Kruger--'Put up your watch, I don't want it. You shan't cometo any harm. Go, now; I must tell Adler his fortune.
Presently I will tell you how to escape the assassin;meantime I shall have to examine your thumbmark again.
Say nothing to Adler about this thing--say nothing to anybody.'
He went away filled with fright and gratitude, poor devil.
I told Adler a long fortune--purposely so long that I couldnot finish it; promised to come to him on guard, that night,and tell him the really important part of it--the tragicalpart of it, I said--so must be out of reach of eavesdroppers.
They always kept a picket-watch outside the town--mere disciplineand ceremony--no occasion for it, no enemy around.
Toward midnight I set out, equipped with the countersign,and picked my way toward the lonely region where Adler wasto keep his watch. It was so dark that I stumbled right ona dim figure almost before I could get out a protecting word.
The sentinel hailed and I answered, both at the same moment.
I added, 'It's only me--the fortune-teller.' Then I slipped to the poordevil's side, and without a word I drove my dirk into his heart!
YA WOHL, laughed I, it WAS the tragedy part of his fortune, indeed!
As he fell from his horse, he clutched at me, and my blue gogglesremained in his hand; and away plunged the beast dragging him,with his foot in the stirrup.
I fled through the woods, and made good my escape, leaving the accusinggoggles behind me in that dead man's hand.
This was fifteen or sixteen years ago. Since then I have wanderedaimlessly about the earth, sometimes at work, sometimes idle;sometimes with money, sometimes with none; but always tired of life,and wishing it was done, for my mission here was finished, with the actof that night; and the only pleasure, solace, satisfaction I had,in all those tedious years, was in the daily reflection,'I have killed him!'
Four years ago, my health began to fail. I had wandered into Munich,in my purposeless way. Being out of money, I sought work,and got it; did my duty faithfully about a year, and was thengiven the berth of night watchman yonder in that dead-housewhich you visited lately. The place suited my mood. I liked it.
I liked being with the dead--liked being alone with them.
I used to wander among those rigid corpses, and peer intotheir austere faces, by the hour. The later the time,the more impressive it was; I preferred the late time.
Sometimes I turned the lights low: this gave perspective, you see;and the imagination could play; always, the dim receding ranksof the dead inspired one with weird and fascinating fancies.
Two years ago--I had been there a year then--I was sitting all alonein the watch-room, one gusty winter's night, chilled, numb, comfortless;drowsing gradually into unconsciousness; the sobbing of the windand the slamming of distant shutters falling fainter and fainterupon my dulling ear each moment, when sharp and suddenlythat dead-bell rang out a blood-curdling alarum over my head!
The shock of it nearly paralyzed me; for it was the first time I hadever heard it.
I gathered myself together and flew to the corpse-room. About midwaydown the outside rank, a shrouded figure was sitting upright,wagging its head slowly from one side to the other--a grisly spectacle!
Its side was toward me. I hurried to it and peered into its face.
Heavens, it was Adler!
Can you divine what my first thought was? Put into words,it was this: 'It seems, then, you escaped me once:
there will be a different result this time!'
Evidently this creature was suffering unimaginable terrors.
Think what it must have been to wake up in the midst of thatvoiceless hush, and, look out over that grim congregationof the dead! What gratitude shone in his skinny white facewhen he saw a living form before him! And how the fervencyof this mute gratitude was augmented when his eyes fellupon the life-giving cordials which I carried in my hands!
Then imagine the horror which came into this pinched face when Iput the cordials behind me, and said mockingly--'Speak up, Franz Adler--call upon these dead. Doubtless they will listenand have pity; but here there is none else that will.'
He tried to speak, but that part of the shroud which bound his jaws,held firm and would not let him. He tried to lift imploring hands,but they were crossed upon his breast and tied. I said-'Shout, Franz Adler; make the sleepers in the distantstreets hear you and bring help. Shout--and lose no time,for there is little to lose. What, you cannot? That is a pity;but it is no matter--it does not always bring help.
When you and your cousin murdered a helpless woman and childin a cabin in Arkansas--my wife, it was, and my child!--they shrieked for help, you remember; but it did no good;you remember that it did no good, is it not so? Your teeth chatter--then why cannot you shout? Loosen the bandages with your hands--then you can. Ah, I see--your hands are tied, they cannot aid you.
How strangely things repeat themselves, after long years;for MY hands were tied, that night, you remember? Yes, tied muchas yours are now--how odd that is. I could not pull free.
It did not occur to you to untie me; it does not occurto me to untie you. Sh----! there's a late footstep.
It is coming this way. Hark, how near it is! One can countthe footfalls--one--two--three. There--it is just outside.
Now is the time! Shout, man, shout!--it is the one sole chancebetween you and eternity! Ah, you see you have delayed too long--it is gone by. There--it is dying out. It is gone! Think of it--reflect upon it--you have heard a human footstep for the last time.
How curious it must be, to listen to so common a sound as that,and know that one will never hear the fellow to it again.'
Oh, my friend, the agony in that shrouded face was ecstasy to see!
I thought of a new torture, and applied it--assisting myself with a trifleof lying invention--'That poor Kruger tried to save my wife and child, and Idid him a grateful good turn for it when the time came.
I persuaded him to rob you; and I and a woman helped him to desert,and got him away in safety.' A look as of surprise and triumphshone out dimly through the anguish in my victim's face.
I was disturbed, disquieted. I said--'What, then--didn't he escape?'
A negative shake of the head.
'No? What happened, then?'
The satisfaction in the shrouded face was still plainer.
The man tried to mumble out some words--could not succeed;tried to express something with his obstructed hands--failed;paused a moment, then feebly tilted his head, in a meaning way,toward the corpse that lay nearest him.
'Dead?' I asked. 'Failed to escape?--caught in the act and shot?'
Negative shake of the head.
'How, then?'
Again the man tried to do something with his hands. I watched closely,but could not guess the intent. I bent over and watched still more intently.
He had twisted a thumb around and was weakly punching at his breast with it.
'Ah--stabbed, do you mean?'
Affirmative nod, accompanied by a spectral smile of suchpeculiar devilishness, that it struck an awakening lightthrough my dull brain, and I cried--'Did I stab him, mistaking him for you?--for that stroke was meantfor none but you.'
The affirmative nod of the re-dying rascal was as joyous as his failingstrength was able to put into its expression.
'O, miserable, miserable me, to slaughter the pitying soul that,stood a friend to my darlings when they were helpless, and wouldhave saved them if he could! miserable, oh, miserable, miserable me!'
I fancied I heard the muffled gurgle of a, mocking laugh.
I took my face out of my hands, and saw my enemy sinking back uponhis inclined board.
He was a satisfactory long time dying. He had a wonderful vitality,an astonishing constitution. Yes, he was a pleasant long time at it.
I got a chair and a newspaper, and sat down by him and read.
Occasionally I took a sip of brandy. This was necessary,on account of the cold. But I did it partly because I saw,that along at first, whenever I reached for the bottle,he thought I was going to give him some. I read aloud:
mainly imaginary accounts of people snatched from the grave'sthreshold and restored to life and vigor by a few spoonsfulof liquor and a warm bath. Yes, he had a long, hard death of it--three hours and six minutes, from the time he rang his bell.
It is believed that in all these eighteen years that have elapsed sincethe institution of the corpse-watch, no shrouded occupant of the Bavariandead-houses has ever rung its bell. Well, it is a harmless belief.
Let it stand at that.
The chill of that death-room had penetrated my bones.
It revived and fastened upon me the disease which had beenafflicting me, but which, up to that night, had beensteadily disappearing. That man murdered my wife and my child;and in three days hence he will have added me to his list.
No matter--God! how delicious the memory of it!--I caught himescaping from his grave, and thrust him back into it.
After that night, I was confined to my bed for a week;but as soon as I could get about, I went to the dead-housebooks and got the number of the house which Adler had died in.
A wretched lodging-house, it was. It was my idea that he wouldnaturally have gotten hold of Kruger's effects, being his cousin;and I wanted to get Kruger's watch, if I could. But while I was sick,Adler's things had been sold and scattered, all except a few old letters,and some odds and ends of no value. However, through those letters,I traced out a son of Kruger's, the only relative left.
He is a man of thirty now, a shoemaker by trade, and living atNo. 14 Konigstrasse, Mannheim--widower, with several small children.
Without explaining to him why, I have furnished two-thirds ofhis support, ever since.
Now, as to that watch--see how strangely things happen!
I traced it around and about Germany for more than a year,at considerable cost in money and vexation; and at last I got it.
Got it, and was unspeakably glad; opened it, and found nothingin it! Why, I might have known that that bit of paper was notgoing to stay there all this time. Of course I gave up that tenthousand dollars then; gave it up, and dropped it out of my mind:
and most sorrowfully, for I had wanted it for Kruger's son.
Last night, when I consented at last that I must die, I began tomake ready. I proceeded to burn all useless papers; and sure enough,from a batch of Adler's, not previously examined with thoroughness,out dropped that long-desired scrap! I recognized it in a moment.
Here it is--I will translate it:
'Brick livery stable, stone foundation, middle of town, corner of Orleansand Market. Corner toward Court-house. Third stone, fourth row.
Stick notice there, saying how many are to come.'
There--take it, and preserve it. Kruger explained that that stonewas removable; and that it was in the north wall of the foundation,fourth row from the top, and third stone from the west.
The money is secreted behind it. He said the closing sentence wasa blind, to mislead in case the paper should fall into wrong hands.
It probably performed that office for Adler.
Now I want to beg that when you make your intended journey down the river,you will hunt out that hidden money, and send it to Adam Kruger, care ofthe Mannheim address which I have mentioned. It will make a rich man of him,and I shall sleep the sounder in my grave for knowing that I have donewhat I could for the son of the man who tried to save my wife and child--albeit my hand ignorantly struck him down, whereas the impulse of my heartwould have been to shield and serve him.
There was a profound and impressive silence, which lasteda considerable time; then both men broke into a fusilladeof exciting and admiring ejaculations over the strange incidentsof the tale; and this, along with a rattling fire of questions,was kept up until all hands were about out of breath.
Then my friends began to cool down, and draw off,under shelter of occasional volleys, into silence andabysmal reverie. For ten minutes now, there was stillness.
Then Rogers said dreamily--'Ten thousand dollars.'
Adding, after a considerable pause--'Ten thousand. It is a heap of money.'
Presently the poet inquired--'Are you going to send it to him right away?'
'Yes,' I said. 'It is a queer question.'
No reply. After a little, Rogers asked, hesitatingly:
'ALL of it?--That is--I mean----'
'Certainly, all of it.'
I was going to say more, but stopped--was stopped by atrain of thought which started up in me. Thompson spoke,but my mind was absent, and I did not catch what he said.
But I heard Rogers answer--'Yes, it seems so to me. It ought to be quite sufficient;for I don't see that he has done anything.'
Presently the poet said--'When you come to look at it, it is more than sufficient. Just look at it--five thousand dollars! Why, he couldn't spend it in a lifetime!
And it would injure him, too; perhaps ruin him--you want to look at that.
In a little while he would throw his last away, shut up his shop, maybe taketo drinking, maltreat his motherless children, drift into other evil courses,go steadily from bad to worse----'
'Yes, that's it,' interrupted Rogers, fervently, 'I've seen ita hundred times--yes, more than a hundred. You put money intothe hands of a man like that, if you want to destroy him, that's all;just put money into his hands, it's all you've got to do;and if it don't pull him down, and take all the usefulness out of him,and all the self-respect and everything, then I don't know human nature--ain't that so, Thompson? And even if we were to give him a THIRDof it; why, in less than six months--'
'Less than six WEEKS, you'd better say!' said I, warming up and breaking in.
'Unless he had that three thousand dollars in safe hands where he couldn'ttouch it, he would no more last you six weeks than---- '
'Of COURSE he wouldn't,' said Thompson; 'I've edited books for thatkind of people; and the moment they get their hands on the royalty--maybe it's three thousand, maybe it's two thousand----'
'What business has that shoemaker with two thousand dollars,I should like to know?' broke in Rogers, earnestly. 'A man perhapsperfectly contented now, there in Mannheim, surrounded by his own class,eating his bread with the appetite which laborious industry alonecan give, enjoying his humble life, honest, upright, pure in heart;and BLEST!--yes, I say blest! blest above all the myriads that goin silk attire and walk the empty artificial round of social folly--but just you put that temptation before him once! just you lay fifteenhundred dollars before a man like that, and say----'
'Fifteen hundred devils!' cried I, 'FIVE hundred would rot his principles,paralyze his industry, drag him to the rumshop, thence to the gutter,thence to the almshouse, thence to----'
'WHY put upon ourselves this crime, gentlemen?' interrupted the poetearnestly and appealingly. 'He is happy where he is, and AS he is.
Every sentiment of honor, every sentiment of charity, every sentimentof high and sacred benevolence warns us, beseeches us, commands us to leavehim undisturbed. That is real friendship, that is true friendship.
We could follow other courses that would be more showy; but none that wouldbe so truly kind and wise, depend upon it.'
After some further talk, it became evident that each of us, down in his heart,felt some misgivings over this settlement of the matter. It was manifestthat we all felt that we ought to send the poor shoemaker SOMETHING.
There was long and thoughtful discussion of this point; and we finally decidedto send him a chromo.
Well, now that everything seemed to be arranged satisfactorilyto everybody concerned, a new trouble broke out: it transpired thatthese two men were expecting to share equally in the money with me.
That was not my idea. I said that if they got half of it between themthey might consider themselves lucky. Rogers said--'Who would have had ANY if it hadn't been for me? I flung out the first hint--but for that it would all have gone to the shoemaker.'
Thompson said that he was thinking of the thing himself at the very momentthat Rogers had originally spoken.
I retorted that the idea would have occurred to me plenty soon enough,and without anybody's help. I was slow about thinking, maybe, but I was sure.
This matter warmed up into a quarrel; then into a fight; and each mangot pretty badly battered. As soon as I had got myself mended up aftera fashion, I ascended to the hurricane deck in a pretty sour humor.
I found Captain McCord there, and said, as pleasantly as my humor would permit--'I have come to say good-bye, captain. I wish to go ashore at Napoleon.'
'Go ashore where?'
'Napoleon.'
The captain laughed; but seeing that I was not in a jovial mood,stopped that and said--'But are you serious?'
'Serious? I certainly am.'
The captain glanced up at the pilot-house and said--'He wants to get off at Napoleon!'
'Napoleon ?'
'That's what he says.'
'Great Caesar's ghost!'
Uncle Mumford approached along the deck. The captain said--'Uncle, here's a friend of yours wants to get off at Napoleon!'
'Well, by ----?'
I said--'Come, what is all this about? Can't a man go ashore at Napoleonif he wants to?'
'Why, hang it, don't you know? There ISN'T any Napoleon any more.
Hasn't been for years and years. The Arkansas River burst through it,tore it all to rags, and emptied it into the Mississippi!'
'Carried the WHOLE town away?-banks, churches, jails,newspaper-offices, court-house, theater, fire department,livery stable EVERYTHING ?'
'Everything. just a fifteen-minute job.' or such a matter.
Didn't leave hide nor hair, shred nor shingle of it, except thefag-end of a shanty and one brick chimney. This boat is paddlingalong right now, where the dead-center of that town used to be;yonder is the brick chimney-all that's left of Napoleon.
These dense woods on the right used to be a mile back of the town.
Take a look behind you--up-stream--now you begin to recognizethis country, don't you?'
'Yes, I do recognize it now. It is the most wonderful thing I ever heard of;by a long shot the most wonderful--and unexpected.'
Mr. Thompson and Mr. Rogers had arrived, meantime, with satchelsand umbrellas, and had silently listened to the captain's news.
Thompson put a half-dollar in my hand and said softly--'For my share of the chromo.'
Rogers followed suit.
Yes, it was an astonishing thing to see the Mississippi rollingbetween unpeopled shores and straight over the spot where Iused to see a good big self-complacent town twenty years ago.
Town that was county-seat of a great and important county; town witha big United States marine hospital; town of innumerable fights--an inquest every day; town where I had used to know the prettiest girl,and the most accomplished in the whole Mississippi Valley;town where we were handed the first printed news of the 'Pennsylvania's'
mournful disaster a quarter of a century ago; a town no more--swallowed up, vanished, gone to feed the fishes; nothing left but afragment of a shanty and a crumbling brick chimney!
The Disposal of a Bonanza