IN regard to Island 74, which is situated not far from the former Napoleon,a freak of the river here has sorely perplexed the laws of men and madethem a vanity and a jest. When the State of Arkansas was chartered,she controlled 'to the center of the river'--a most unstable line. The Stateof Mississippi claimed 'to the channel'--another shifty and unstable line.
No. 74 belonged to Arkansas. By and by a cut-off threw this big island outof Arkansas, and yet not within Mississippi. 'Middle of the river' on oneside of it, 'channel' on the other. That is as I understand the problem.
Whether I have got the details right or wrong, this FACT remains:
that here is this big and exceedingly valuable island of four thousand acres,thrust out in the cold, and belonging to neither the one State nor the other;paying taxes to neither, owing allegiance to neither. One man ownsthe whole island, and of right is 'the man without a country.'
Island 92 belongs to Arkansas. The river moved it overand joined it to Mississippi. A chap established a whiskeyshop there, without a Mississippi license, and enrichedhimself upon Mississippi custom under Arkansas protection(where no license was in those days required).
We glided steadily down the river in the usual privacy--steamboat or other moving thing seldom seen. Scenery as always:
stretch upon stretch of almost unbroken forest, on both sidesof the river; soundless solitude. Here and there a cabin or two,standing in small openings on the gray and grassless banks--cabins which had formerly stood a quarter or half-mile fartherto the front, and gradually been pulled farther and farther backas the shores caved in. As at Pilcher's Point, for instance,where the cabins had been moved back three hundred yardsin three months, so we were told; but the caving banks hadalready caught up with them, and they were being conveyedrearward once more.
Napoleon had but small opinion of Greenville, Mississippi, in the old times;but behold, Napoleon is gone to the cat-fishes, and here is Greenville fullof life and activity, and making a considerable flourish in the Valley;having three thousand inhabitants, it is said, and doing a gross trade of$2,500,000 annually. A growing town.
There was much talk on the boat about the Calhoun Land Company,an enterprise which is expected to work wholesome results.
Colonel Calhoun, a grandson of the statesman, went to Bostonand formed a syndicate which purchased a large tract of land onthe river, in Chicot County, Arkansas--some ten thousand acres--for cotton-growing. The purpose is to work on a cash basis:
buy at first hands, and handle their own product; supply their negrolaborers with provisions and necessaries at a trifling profit,say 8 or 10 per cent.; furnish them comfortable quarters,etc., and encourage them to save money and remain on the place.
If this proves a financial success, as seems quite certain,they propose to establish a banking-house in Greenville,and lend money at an unburdensome rate of interest--6 per cent.
is spoken of.
The trouble heretofore has been--I am quoting remarks of plantersand steamboatmen--that the planters, although owning the land,were without cash capital; had to hypothecate both land and cropto carry on the business. Consequently, the commission dealerwho furnishes the money takes some risk and demands big interest--usually 10 per cent., and 2 per cent. for negotiating the loan.
The planter has also to buy his supplies through the same dealer,paying commissions and profits. Then when he ships his crop,the dealer adds his commissions, insurance, etc. So, taking itby and large, and first and last, the dealer's share of that cropis about 25 per cent.'
where the people are under subjection to rates of interest rangingfrom 18 to 30 per cent., and are also under the necessity ofpurchasing their crops in advance even of planting, at these rates,for the privilege of purchasing all their supplies at 100 per cent.
profit?'--EDWARD ATKINSON.]>
A cotton-planter's estimate of the average margin of profiton planting, in his section: One man and mule will raise tenacres of cotton, giving ten bales cotton, worth, say, $500; costof producing, say $350; net profit, $150, or $15 per acre.
There is also a profit now from the cotton-seed, which formerlyhad little value--none where much transportation was necessary.
In sixteen hundred pounds crude cotton four hundred are lint,worth, say, ten cents a pound; and twelve hundred pounds of seed,worth $12 or $13 per ton. Maybe in future even the stems willnot be thrown away. Mr. Edward Atkinson says that for eachbale of cotton there are fifteen hundred pounds of stems,and that these are very rich in phosphate of lime and potash;that when ground and mixed with ensilage or cotton-seed meal(which is too rich for use as fodder in large quantities),the stem mixture makes a superior food, rich in all theelements needed for the production of milk, meat, and bone.
Heretofore the stems have been considered a nuisance.
Complaint is made that the planter remains grouty toward the former slave,since the war; will have nothing but a chill business relation with him,no sentiment permitted to intrude, will not keep a 'store' himself,and supply the negro's wants and thus protect the negro's pocketand make him able and willing to stay on the place and an advantageto him to do it, but lets that privilege to some thrifty Israelite,who encourages the thoughtless negro and wife to buy all sortsof things which they could do without--buy on credit, at big prices,month after month, credit based on the negro's share of the growing crop;and at the end of the season, the negro's share belongs to the Israelite,'
the negro is in debt besides, is discouraged, dissatisfied, restless, and bothhe and the planter are injured; for he will take steamboat and migrate,and the planter must get a stranger in his place who does not know him,does not care for him, will fatten the Israelite a season, and follow hispredecessor per steamboat.
It is hoped that the Calhoun Company will show, by itshumane and protective treatment of its laborers, that itsmethod is the most profitable for both planter and negro;and it is believed that a general adoption of that methodwill then follow.
And where so many are saying their say, shall not thebarkeeper testify? He is thoughtful, observant, never drinks;endeavors to earn his salary, and WOULD earn it if therewere custom enough. He says the people along here inMississippi and Louisiana will send up the river to buyvegetables rather than raise them, and they will comeaboard at the landings and buy fruits of the barkeeper.
Thinks they 'don't know anything but cotton;' believes theydon't know how to raise vegetables and fruit--'at least the mostof them.' Says 'a nigger will go to H for a watermelon'
('H' is all I find in the stenographer's report--means Halifax probably, though that seems a good way to gofor a watermelon). Barkeeper buys watermelons for five centsup the river, brings them down and sells them for fifty.
'Why does he mix such elaborate and picturesque drinks for thenigger hands on the boat?' Because they won't have any other.
'They want a big drink; don't make any difference whatyou make it of, they want the worth of their money.
You give a nigger a plain gill of half-a-dollar brandy forfive cents--will he touch it? No. Ain't size enough to it.
But you put up a pint of all kinds of worthless rubbish, and heavein some red stuff to make it beautiful--red's the main thing--and he wouldn't put down that glass to go to a circus.'
All the bars on this Anchor Line are rented and ownedby one firm. They furnish the liquors from theirown establishment, and hire the barkeepers 'on salary.'
Good liquors? Yes, on some of the boats, where there arethe kind of passengers that want it and can pay for it.
On the other boats? No. Nobody but the deck hands and firemento drink it. 'Brandy? Yes, I've got brandy, plenty of it;but you don't want any of it unless you've made your will.'
It isn't as it used to be in the old times. Then everybody traveledby steamboat, everybody drank, and everybody treated everybody else.
'Now most everybody goes by railroad, and the rest don't drink.'
In the old times the barkeeper owned the bar himself, 'and wasgay and smarty and talky and all jeweled up, and was the toniestaristocrat on the boat; used to make $2,000 on a trip.
A father who left his son a steamboat bar, left him a fortune.
Now he leaves him board and lodging; yes, and washing,if a shirt a trip will do. Yes, indeedy, times are changed.
Why, do you know, on the principal line of boats onthe Upper Mississippi, they don't have any bar at all!
Sounds like poetry, but it's the petrified truth.'
Refreshments and Ethics
STACK ISLAND. I remembered Stack Island; also Lake Providence,Louisiana--which is the first distinctly Southern-looking townyou come to, downward-bound; lies level and low, shade-trees hungwith venerable gray beards of Spanish moss; 'restful, pensive,Sunday aspect about the place,' comments Uncle Mumford, with feeling--also with truth.
A Mr. H. furnished some minor details of fact concerning thisregion which I would have hesitated to believe if I had notknown him to be a steamboat mate. He was a passenger of ours,a resident of Arkansas City, and bound to Vicksburg to join his boat,a little Sunflower packet. He was an austere man, and hadthe reputation of being singularly unworldly, for a river man.
Among other things, he said that Arkansas had been injured and keptback by generations of exaggerations concerning the mosquitoes here.
One may smile, said he, and turn the matter off as being a small thing;but when you come to look at the effects produced, in the wayof discouragement of immigration, and diminished values of property,it was quite the opposite of a small thing, or thing in any wiseto be coughed down or sneered at. These mosquitoes had beenpersistently represented as being formidable and lawless;whereas 'the truth is, they are feeble, insignificant in size,diffident to a fault, sensitive'--and so on, and so on; you wouldhave supposed he was talking about his family. But if he was softon the Arkansas mosquitoes, he was hard enough on the mosquitoesof Lake Providence to make up for it--'those Lake Providence colossi,'
as he finely called them. He said that two of them could whip a dog,and that four of them could hold a man down; and except help come,they would kill him--'butcher him,' as he expressed it.
Referred in a sort of casual way--and yet significant way--to 'the fact that the life policy in its simplest form is unknownin Lake Providence--they take out a mosquito policy besides.'
He told many remarkable things about those lawless insects.
Among others, said he had seen them try to vote. Noticing thatthis statement seemed to be a good deal of a strain on us,he modified it a little: said he might have been mistaken,as to that particular, but knew he had seen them aroundthe polls 'canvassing.'
There was another passenger--friend of H.'s--who backed up the harshevidence against those mosquitoes, and detailed some stirring adventureswhich he had had with them. The stories were pretty sizable,merely pretty sizable; yet Mr. H. was continually interrupting witha cold, inexorable 'Wait--knock off twenty-five per cent. of that;now go on;' or, 'Wait--you are getting that too strong; cut it down,cut it down--you get a leetle too much costumery on to your statements:
always dress a fact in tights, never in an ulster;' or, 'Pardon, once more:
if you are going to load anything more on to that statement, you wantto get a couple of lighters and tow the rest, because it's drawingall the water there is in the river already; stick to facts--just stickto the cold facts; what these gentlemen want for a book is the frozen truth--ain't that so, gentlemen?' He explained privately that it was necessaryto watch this man all the time, and keep him within bounds; it wouldnot do to neglect this precaution, as he, Mr. H., 'knew to his sorrow.'
Said he, 'I will not deceive you; he told me such a monstrous lie once,that it swelled my left ear up, and spread it so that I was actually not ableto see out around it; it remained so for months, and people came miles to seeme fan myself with it.'
Tough Yarns
WE used to plow past the lofty hill-city, Vicksburg, down-stream;but we cannot do that now. A cut-off has made a country town of it,like Osceola, St. Genevieve, and several others. There iscurrentless water--also a big island--in front of Vicksburg now.
You come down the river the other side of the island,then turn and come up to the town; that is, in high water:
in low water you can't come up, but must land some distance below it.
Signs and scars still remain, as reminders of Vicksburg'stremendous war experiences; earthworks, trees crippled bythe cannon balls, cave-refuges in the clay precipices, etc.
The caves did good service during the six weeks'
bombardment of the city--May 8 to July 4, 1863. They wereused by the non-combatants--mainly by the women and children;not to live in constantly, but to fly to for safety on occasion.
They were mere holes, tunnels, driven into the perpendicularclay bank, then branched Y shape, within the hill.
Life in Vicksburg, during the six weeks was perhaps--but wait;here are some materials out of which to reproduce it:--Population, twenty-seven thousand soldiers and threethousand non-combatants; the city utterly cut off from the world--walled solidly in, the frontage by gunboats, the rear by soldiersand batteries; hence, no buying and selling with the outside;no passing to and fro; no God-speeding a parting guest,no welcoming a coming one; no printed acres of world-wide newsto be read at breakfast, mornings--a tedious dull absence ofsuch matter, instead; hence, also, no running to see steamboatssmoking into view in the distance up or down, and plowing towardthe town--for none came, the river lay vacant and undisturbed;no rush and turmoil around the railway station, no strugglingover bewildered swarms of passengers by noisy mobs of hackmen--all quiet there; flour two hundred dollars a barrel, sugar thirty,corn ten dollars a bushel, bacon five dollars a pound,rum a hundred dollars a gallon; other things in proportion:
consequently, no roar and racket of drays and carriages tearingalong the streets; nothing for them to do, among that handfulof non-combatants of exhausted means; at three o'clock inthe morning, silence; silence so dead that the measured trampof a sentinel can be heard a seemingly impossible distance; out ofhearing of this lonely sound, perhaps the stillness is absolute:
all in a moment come ground-shaking thunder-crashes of artillery,the sky is cobwebbed with the crisscrossing red lines streamingfrom soaring bomb-shells, and a rain of iron fragmentsdescends upon the city; descends upon the empty streets:
streets which are not empty a moment later, but mottled with dimfigures of frantic women and children scurrying from home and bedtoward the cave dungeons--encouraged by the humorous grim soldiery,who shout 'Rats, to your holes!' and laugh.
The cannon-thunder rages, shells scream and crash overhead, the ironrain pours down, one hour, two hours, three, possibly six, then stops;silence follows, but the streets are still empty; the silence continues;by-and-bye a head projects from a cave here and there and yonder,and reconnoitres, cautiously; the silence still continuing,bodies follow heads, and jaded, half smothered creatures groupthemselves about, stretch their cramped limbs, draw in deep draughtsof the grateful fresh air, gossip with the neighbors from the next cave;maybe straggle off home presently, or take a lounge through the town,if the stillness continues; and will scurry to the holes again,by-and-bye, when the war-tempest breaks forth once more.
There being but three thousand of these cave-dwellers--merely the population of a village--would they not cometo know each other, after a week or two, and familiarly;insomuch that the fortunate or unfortunate experiences of onewould be of interest to all?
Those are the materials furnished by history. From them might not almostanybody reproduce for himself the life of that time in Vicksburg?
Could you, who did not experience it, come nearer to reproducing itto the imagination of another non-participant than could a Vicksburgerwho did experience it? It seems impossible; and yet there are reasonswhy it might not really be. When one makes his first voyage in a ship,it is an experience which multitudinously bristles with striking novelties;novelties which are in such sharp contrast with all this person's formerexperiences that they take a seemingly deathless grip upon his imaginationand memory. By tongue or pen he can make a landsman live that strangeand stirring voyage over with him; make him see it all and feel it all.
But if he wait? If he make ten voyages in succession--what then?
Why, the thing has lost color, snap, surprise; and has become commonplace.
The man would have nothing to tell that would quicken a landsman's pulse.
Years ago, I talked with a couple of the Vicksburg non-combatants--a man and his wife. Left to tell their story in their own way,those people told it without fire, almost without interest.
A week of their wonderful life there would have made their tongues eloquentfor ever perhaps; but they had six weeks of it, and that wore the noveltyall out; they got used to being bomb-shelled out of home and into the ground;the matter became commonplace. After that, the possibility of theirever being startlingly interesting in their talks about it was gone.
What the man said was to this effect:--'It got to be Sunday all the time. Seven Sundays in the week--to us, anyway.
We hadn't anything to do, and time hung heavy. Seven Sundays, and allof them broken up at one time or another, in the day or in the night,by a few hours of the awful storm of fire and thunder and iron. At firstwe used to shin for the holes a good deal faster than we did afterwards.
The first time, I forgot the children, and Maria fetched them both along.
When she was all safe in the cave she fainted. Two or three weeks afterwards,when she was running for the holes, one morning, through a shell-shower, a bigshell burst near her, and covered her all over with dirt, and a piece ofthe iron carried away her game-bag of false hair from the back of her head.
Well, she stopped to get that game-bag before she shoved along again!
Was getting used to things already, you see. We all got so that we couldtell a good deal about shells; and after that we didn't always go undershelter if it was a light shower. Us men would loaf around and talk;and a man would say, 'There she goes!' and name the kind of shell it was fromthe sound of it, and go on talking--if there wasn't any danger from it.
If a shell was bursting close over us, we stopped talking and stood still;--uncomfortable, yes, but it wasn't safe to move. When it let go, we wenton talking again, if nobody hurt--maybe saying, 'That was a ripper!'
or some such commonplace comment before we resumed; or, maybe, we wouldsee a shell poising itself away high in the air overhead. In that case,every fellow just whipped out a sudden, 'See you again, gents!' and shoved.
Often and often I saw gangs of ladies promenading the streets, looking ascheerful as you please, and keeping an eye canted up watching the shells;and I've seen them stop still when they were uncertain about what ashell was going to do, and wait and make certain; and after that theysa'ntered along again, or lit out for shelter, according to the verdict.
Streets in some towns have a litter of pieces of paper, and odds and endsof one sort or another lying around. Ours hadn't; they had IRON litter.
Sometimes a man would gather up all the iron fragments and unburstedshells in his neighborhood, and pile them into a kind of monumentin his front yard--a ton of it, sometimes. No glass left;glass couldn't stand such a bombardment; it was all shivered out.
Windows of the houses vacant--looked like eye-holes in a skull.
WHOLE panes were as scarce as news.
'We had church Sundays. Not many there, along at first; but by-and-byepretty good turnouts. I've seen service stop a minute, and everybodysit quiet--no voice heard, pretty funeral-like then--and all the moreso on account of the awful boom and crash going on outside and overhead;and pretty soon, when a body could be heard, service would go on again.
Organs and church-music mixed up with a bombardment is a powerfulqueer combination--along at first. Coming out of church, one morning,we had an accident--the only one that happened around me on a Sunday.
I was just having a hearty handshake with a friend I hadn't seen fora while, and saying, 'drop into our cave to-night, after bombardment;we've got hold of a pint of prime wh--.' Whiskey, I was going to say,you know, but a shell interrupted. A chunk of it cut the man's arm off,and left it dangling in my hand. And do you know the thing that isgoing to stick the longest in my memory, and outlast everything else,little and big, I reckon, is the mean thought I had then? It was 'thewhiskey IS SAVED.' And yet, don't you know, it was kind of excusable;because it was as scarce as diamonds, and we had only just that little;never had another taste during the siege.
'Sometimes the caves were desperately crowded, and always hot and close.
Sometimes a cave had twenty or twenty-five people packed into it;no turning-room for anybody; air so foul, sometimes, you couldn't have madea candle burn in it. A child was born in one of those caves one night,Think of that; why, it was like having it born in a trunk.
'Twice we had sixteen people in our cave; and a number of times wehad a dozen. Pretty suffocating in there. We always had eight;eight belonged there. Hunger and misery and sickness and frightand sorrow, and I don't know what all, got so loaded into them thatnone of them were ever rightly their old selves after the siege.
They all died but three of us within a couple of years.
One night a shell burst in front of the hole and caved it in andstopped it up. It was lively times, for a while, digging out.
Some of us came near smothering. After that we made two openings--ought to have thought of it at first.
'Mule meat. No, we only got down to that the last day or two.
Of course it was good; anything is good when you are starving.
This man had kept a diary during--six weeks? No, only the first six days.
The first day, eight close pages; the second, five; the third, one--loosely written; the fourth, three or four lines; a line or two the fifthand sixth days; seventh day, diary abandoned; life in terrific Vicksburghaving now become commonplace and matter of course.
The war history of Vicksburg has more about it to interest the generalreader than that of any other of the river-towns. It is full of variety,full of incident, full of the picturesque. Vicksburg held out longerthan any other important river-town, and saw warfare in all its phases,both land and water--the siege, the mine, the assault, the repulse,the bombardment, sickness, captivity, famine.
The most beautiful of all the national cemeteries is here.
Over the great gateway is this inscription:--"HERE REST IN PEACE 16,600 WHO DIED FOR THEIRCOUNTRY IN THE YEARS 1861 TO 1865"The grounds are nobly situated; being very high and commanding a wideprospect of land and river. They are tastefully laid out in broad terraces,with winding roads and paths; and there is profuse adornment in the wayof semi-tropical shrubs and flowers,' and in one part is a piece of nativewild-wood, left just as it grew, and, therefore, perfect in its charm.
Everything about this cemetery suggests the hand of the national Government.
The Government's work is always conspicuous for excellence, solidity,thoroughness, neatness. The Government does its work well in the first place,and then takes care of it.
By winding-roads--which were often cut to so great a depth betweenperpendicular walls that they were mere roofless tunnels--we droveout a mile or two and visited the monument which stands upon the sceneof the surrender of Vicksburg to General Grant by General Pemberton.
Its metal will preserve it from the hackings and chippings whichso defaced its predecessor, which was of marble; but the brickfoundations are crumbling, and it will tumble down by-and-bye. Itoverlooks a picturesque region of wooded hills and ravines; and isnot unpicturesque itself, being well smothered in flowering weeds.
The battered remnant of the marble monument has been removed tothe National Cemetery.
On the road, a quarter of a mile townward, an aged colored man showed us,with pride, an unexploded bomb-shell which has lain in his yard since the dayit fell there during the siege.
'I was a-stannin' heah, an' de dog was a-stannin' heah; de doghe went for de shell, gwine to pick a fuss wid it; but I didn't;I says, "Jes' make you'seff at home heah; lay still whah you is,or bust up de place, jes' as you's a mind to, but I's got businessout in de woods, I has!"'
Vicksburg is a town of substantial business streets and pleasant residences;it commands the commerce of the Yazoo and Sunflower Rivers; is pushingrailways in several directions, through rich agricultural regions,and has a promising future of prosperity and importance.
Apparently, nearly all the river towns, big and little, have madeup their minds that they must look mainly to railroads for wealthand upbuilding, henceforth. They are acting upon this idea.
The signs are, that the next twenty years will bring about somenoteworthy changes in the Valley, in the direction of increasedpopulation and wealth, and in the intellectual advancementand the liberalizing of opinion which go naturally with these.
And yet, if one may judge by the past, the river towns will manage to findand use a chance, here and there, to cripple and retard their progress.
They kept themselves back in the days of steamboating supremacy,by a system of wharfage-dues so stupidly graded as to prohibitwhat may be called small RETAIL traffic in freights and passengers.
Boats were charged such heavy wharfage that they could not affordto land for one or two passengers or a light lot of freight.
Instead of encouraging the bringing of trade to their doors, the townsdiligently and effectively discouraged it. They could have had manyboats and low rates; but their policy rendered few boats and highrates compulsory. It was a policy which extended--and extends--from New Orleans to St. Paul.
We had a strong desire to make a trip up the Yazoo and the Sunflower--an interesting region at any time, but additionally interesting at this time,because up there the great inundation was still to be seen in force--but we were nearly sure to have to wait a day or more for a New Orleans boaton our return; so we were obliged to give up the project.
Here is a story which I picked up on board the boat that night.
I insert it in this place merely because it is a good story,not because it belongs here--for it doesn't. It was told by a passenger--a college professor--and was called to the surface in the courseof a general conversation which began with talk about horses,drifted into talk about astronomy, then into talk about the lynchingof the gamblers in Vicksburg half a century ago, then into talkabout dreams and superstitions; and ended, after midnight,in a dispute over free trade and protection.
Vicksburg During the Trouble
IT was in the early days. I was not a college professor then.
I was a humble-minded young land-surveyor, with the world before me--to survey, in case anybody wanted it done. I had a contract to surveya route for a great mining-ditch in California, and I was on my way thither,by sea--a three or four weeks' voyage. There were a good many passengers,but I had very little to say to them; reading and dreaming were my passions,and I avoided conversation in order to indulge these appetites.
There were three professional gamblers on board--rough, repulsive fellows.
I never had any talk with them, yet I could not help seeing themwith some frequency, for they gambled in an upper-deck stateroom everyday and night, and in my promenades I often had glimpses of themthrough their door, which stood a little ajar to let out the surplustobacco smoke and profanity. They were an evil and hateful presence,but I had to put up with it, of course,There was one other passenger who fell under my eye a good deal,for he seemed determined to be friendly with me, and I could not havegotten rid of him without running some chance of hurting his feelings,and I was far from wishing to do that. Besides, there was something engagingin his countrified simplicity and his beaming good-nature. The first timeI saw this Mr. John Backus, I guessed, from his clothes and his looks,that he was a grazier or farmer from the backwoods of some western State--doubtless Ohio--and afterward when he dropped into his personal historyand I discovered that he WAS a cattle-raiser from interior Ohio,I was so pleased with my own penetration that I warmed toward him forverifying my instinct.
He got to dropping alongside me every day, after breakfast,to help me make my promenade; and so, in the course of time,his easy-working jaw had told me everything about his business,his prospects, his family, his relatives, his politics--in fact everything that concerned a Backus, living or dead.
And meantime I think he had managed to get out of me everythingI knew about my trade, my tribe, my purposes, my prospects,and myself. He was a gentle and persuasive genius, and this thingshowed it; for I was not given to talking about my matters.
I said something about triangulation, once; the stately wordpleased his ear; he inquired what it meant; I explained;after that he quietly and inoffensively ignored my name,and always called me Triangle.
What an enthusiast he was in cattle! At the bare name of a bull or a cow,his eye would light and his eloquent tongue would turn itself loose. As longas I would walk and listen, he would walk and talk; he knew all breeds,he loved all breeds, he caressed them all with his affectionate tongue.
I tramped along in voiceless misery whilst the cattle question was up;when I could endure it no longer, I used to deftly insert a scientific topicinto the conversation; then my eye fired and his faded; my tongue fluttered,his stopped; life was a joy to me, and a sadness to him.
One day he said, a little hesitatingly, and with somewhat of diffidence--'Triangle, would you mind coming down to my stateroom a minute,and have a little talk on a certain matter?'
I went with him at once. Arrived there, he put his head out, glanced upand down the saloon warily, then closed the door and locked it.
He sat down on the sofa, and he said--'I'm a-going to make a little proposition to you, and if it strikesyou favorable, it'll be a middling good thing for both of us.
You ain't a-going out to Californy for fun, nuther am I--it's business, ain't that so? Well, you can do me a good turn,and so can I you, if we see fit. I've raked and scraped and saved,a considerable many years, and I've got it all here.'
He unlocked an old hair trunk, tumbled a chaos of shabbyclothes aside, and drew a short stout bag into view for a moment,then buried it again and relocked the trunk. Dropping his voiceto a cautious low tone, he continued, 'She's all there--a roundten thousand dollars in yellow-boys; now this is my little idea:
What I don't know about raising cattle, ain't worth knowing.
There's mints of money in it, in Californy. Well, I know,and you know, that all along a line that 's being surveyed,there 's little dabs of land that they call "gores," that fallto the surveyor free gratis for nothing. All you've got to do,on your side, is to survey in such a way that the "gores" will fallon good fat land, then you turn 'em over to me, I stock 'em with cattle,in rolls the cash, I plank out your share of the dollars regular,right along, and--'
I was sorry to wither his blooming enthusiasm, but it could not be helped.
I interrupted, and said severely--'I am not that kind of a surveyor. Let us change the subject, Mr. Backus.'
It was pitiful to see his confusion and hear his awkwardand shamefaced apologies. I was as much distressed as he was--especially as he seemed so far from having suspectedthat there was anything improper in his proposition.
So I hastened to console him and lead him on to forget hismishap in a conversational orgy about cattle and butchery.
We were lying at Acapulco; and, as we went on deck, it happenedluckily that the crew were just beginning to hoist some beevesaboard in slings. Backus's melancholy vanished instantly,and with it the memory of his late mistake.
'Now only look at that!' cried he; 'My goodness, Triangle, what WOULD they sayto it in OHIO. Wouldn't their eyes bug out, to see 'em handled like that?--wouldn't they, though?'
All the passengers were on deck to look--even the gamblers--and Backus knew them all, and had afflicted them all with his pet topic.
As I moved away, I saw one of the gamblers approach and accost him;then another of them; then the third. I halted; waited; watched;the conversation continued between the four men; it grew earnest;Backus drew gradually away; the gamblers followed, and kept at his elbow.
I was uncomfortable. However, as they passed me presently, I heardBackus say, with a tone of persecuted annoyance--'But it ain't any use, gentlemen; I tell you again, as I'vetold you a half a dozen times before, I warn't raised to it,and I ain't a-going to resk it.'
I felt relieved. 'His level head will be his sufficient protection,'
I said to myself.
During the fortnight's run from Acapulco to San Francisco Iseveral times saw the gamblers talking earnestly with Backus,and once I threw out a gentle warning to him. He chuckledcomfortably and said--'Oh, yes! they tag around after me considerable--want me to playa little, just for amusement, they say--but laws-a-me, if my folkshave told me once to look out for that sort of live-stock, they'vetold me a thousand times, I reckon.'
By-and-bye, in due course, we were approaching San Francisco.
It was an ugly black night, with a strong wind blowing, but therewas not much sea. I was on deck, alone. Toward ten I started below.
A figure issued from the gamblers' den, and disappeared in the darkness.
I experienced a shock, for I was sure it was Backus.
I flew down the companion-way, looked about for him, could notfind him, then returned to the deck just in time to catch a glimpseof him as he re-entered that confounded nest of rascality.
Had he yielded at last? I feared it. What had he gone below for?--His bag of coin? Possibly. I drew near the door, full of bodings.
It was a-crack, and I glanced in and saw a sight that mademe bitterly wish I had given my attention to saving my poorcattle-friend, instead of reading and dreaming my foolish time away.
He was gambling. Worse still, he was being plied with champagne,and was already showing some effect from it. He praised the 'cider,'
as he called it, and said now that he had got a taste of ithe almost believed he would drink it if it was spirits, it wasso good and so ahead of anything he had ever run across before.
Surreptitious smiles, at this, passed from one rascal to another,and they filled all the glasses, and whilst Backus honestly drainedhis to the bottom they pretended to do the same, but threw the wineover their shoulders.
I could not bear the scene, so I wandered forward and triedto interest myself in the sea and the voices of the wind.
But no, my uneasy spirit kept dragging me back atquarter-hour intervals; and always I saw Backus drinking his wine--fairly and squarely, and the others throwing theirs away.
It was the painfullest night I ever spent.
The only hope I had was that we might reach our anchoragewith speed--that would break up the game. I helped the shipalong all I could with my prayers. At last we went boomingthrough the Golden Gate, and my pulses leaped for joy.
I hurried back to that door and glanced in. Alas, there wassmall room for hope--Backus's eyes were heavy and bloodshot,his sweaty face was crimson, his speech maudlin and thick,his body sawed drunkenly about with the weaving motion of the ship.
He drained another glass to the dregs, whilst the cardswere being dealt.
He took his hand, glanced at it, and his dull eyes lit up for a moment.
The gamblers observed it, and showed their gratification byhardly perceptible signs.
'How many cards?'
'None! ' said Backus.
One villain--named Hank Wiley--discarded one card, the others three each.
The betting began. Heretofore the bets had been trifling--a dollar or two; but Backus started off with an eagle now,Wiley hesitated a moment, then 'saw it' and 'went ten dollars better.'
The other two threw up their hands.
Backus went twenty better. Wiley said--'I see that, and go you a hundred better!' then smiled and reachedfor the money.
'Let it alone,' said Backus, with drunken gravity.
'What! you mean to say you're going to cover it?'
'Cover it? Well, I reckon I am--and lay another hundred on topof it, too.'
He reached down inside his overcoat and produced the required sum.
'Oh, that's your little game, is it? I see your raise,and raise it five hundred!' said Wiley.
'Five hundred better.' said the foolish bull-driver,and pulled out the amount and showered it on the pile.
The three conspirators hardly tried to conceal their exultation.
All diplomacy and pretense were dropped now, and the sharp exclamationscame thick and fast, and the yellow pyramid grew higher and higher.
At last ten thousand dollars lay in view. Wiley cast a bag of coin onthe table, and said with mocking gentleness--'Five thousand dollars better, my friend from the rural districts--what do you say NOW?'
'I CALL you!' said Backus, heaving his golden shot-bag on the pile.
'What have you got?'
'Four kings, you d--d fool!' and Wiley threw down his cards and surroundedthe stakes with his arms.
'Four ACES, you ass!' thundered Backus, covering his manwith a cocked revolver. 'I'M A PROFESSIONAL GAMBLER MYSELF,AND I'VE BEEN LAYING FOR YOU DUFFERS ALL THIS VOYAGE!'
Down went the anchor, rumbledy-dum-dum! and the long trip was ended.
Well--well, it is a sad world. One of the three gamblers was Backus's 'pal.'
It was he that dealt the fateful hands. According to an understanding withthe two victims, he was to have given Backus four queens, but alas, he didn't.
A week later, I stumbled upon Backus--arrayed in the height of fashion--in Montgomery Street. He said, cheerily, as we were parting--'Ah, by-the-way, you needn't mind about those gores. I don't reallyknow anything about cattle, except what I was able to pick upin a week's apprenticeship over in Jersey just before we sailed.
My cattle-culture and cattle-enthusiasm have served their turn--I shan't need them any more.'
Next day we reluctantly parted from the 'Gold Dust' and her officers,hoping to see that boat and all those officers again, some day.
A thing which the fates were to render tragically impossible!
The Professor's Yarn
FOR, three months later, August 8, while I was writing one of theseforegoing chapters, the New York papers brought this telegram--A TERRIBLE DISASTER.
SEVENTEEN PERSONS KILLED BY AN EXPLOSION ON THE STEAMER 'GOLD DUST.'
'NASHVILLE, Aug. 7.--A despatch from Hickman, Ky., says--'The steamer "Gold Dust" exploded her boilers atthree o'clock to-day, just after leaving Hickman.
Forty-seven persons were scalded and seventeen are missing.
The boat was landed in the eddy just above the town,and through the exertions of the citizens the cabin passengers,officers, and part of the crew and deck passengers weretaken ashore and removed to the hotels and residences.
Twenty-four of the injured were lying in Holcomb's dry-goodsstore at one time, where they received every attention beforebeing removed to more comfortable places.'
A list of the names followed, whereby it appeared that of the seventeen dead,one was the barkeeper; and among the forty-seven wounded, were the captain,chief mate, second mate, and second and third clerks; also Mr. Lem S. Gray,pilot, and several members of the crew.
In answer to a private telegram, we learned that none of these wasseverely hurt, except Mr. Gray. Letters received afterward confirmedthis news, and said that Mr. Gray was improving and would get well.
Later letters spoke less hopefully of his case; and finally came oneannouncing his death. A good man, a most companionable and manly man,and worthy of a kindlier fate.
The End of the 'Gold Dust'
WE took passage in a Cincinnati boat for New Orleans; or on a Cincinnati boat--either is correct; the former is the eastern form of putting it,the latter the western.
Mr. Dickens declined to agree that the Mississippi steamboatswere 'magnificent,' or that they were 'floating palaces,'--terms which had always been applied to them; terms which did notover-express the admiration with which the people viewed them.
Mr. Dickens's position was unassailable, possibly; the people'sposition was certainly unassailable. If Mr. Dickens wascomparing these boats with the crown jewels; or with the Taj,or with the Matterhorn; or with some other priceless or wonderfulthing which he had seen, they were not magnificent--he was right.
The people compared them with what they had seen; and, thus measured,thus judged, the boats were magnificent--the term was the correct one,it was not at all too strong. The people were as right as wasMr. Dickens. The steamboats were finer than anything on shore.
Compared with superior dwelling-houses and first-class hotels inthe Valley, they were indubitably magnificent, they were 'palaces.'
To a few people living in New Orleans and St. Louis, they werenot magnificent, perhaps; not palaces; but to the great majorityof those populations, and to the entire populations spread overboth banks between Baton Rouge and St. Louis, they were palaces;they tallied with the citizen's dream of what magnificence was,and satisfied it.
Every town and village along that vast stretch of doubleriver-frontage had a best dwelling, finest dwelling, mansion,--the home of its wealthiest and most conspicuous citizen.
It is easy to describe it: large grassy yard, with palingfence painted white--in fair repair; brick walk from gateto door; big, square, two-story 'frame' house, painted whiteand porticoed like a Grecian temple--with this difference,that the imposing fluted columns and Corinthian capitalswere a pathetic sham, being made of white pine, and painted;iron knocker; brass door knob--discolored, for lackof polishing. Within, an uncarpeted hall, of planed boards;opening out of it, a parlor, fifteen feet by fifteen--in some instances five or ten feet larger; ingrain carpet;mahogany center-table; lamp on it, with green-paper shade--standing on a gridiron, so to speak, made of high-colored yarns,by the young ladies of the house, and called a lamp-mat;several books, piled and disposed, with cast-iron exactness,according to an inherited and unchangeable plan; among them,Tupper, much penciled; also, 'Friendship's Offering,'
and 'Affection's Wreath,' with their sappy inanities illustratedin die-away mezzotints; also, Ossian; 'Alonzo and Melissa:'
maybe 'Ivanhoe:' also 'Album,' full of original 'poetry'
of the Thou-hast-wounded-the-spirit-that-loved-thee breed;two or three goody-goody works--'Shepherd of Salisbury Plain,'
etc.; current number of the chaste and innocuous Godey's'Lady's Book,' with painted fashion-plate of wax-figurewomen with mouths all alike--lips and eyelids the same size--each five-foot woman with a two-inch wedge sticking fromunder her dress and letting-on to be half of her foot.
Polished air-tight stove (new and deadly invention), withpipe passing through a board which closes up the discardedgood old fireplace. On each end of the wooden mantel,over the fireplace, a large basket of peaches and other fruits,natural size, all done in plaster, rudely, or in wax,and painted to resemble the originals--which they don't. Overmiddle of mantel, engraving--Washington Crossing the Delaware;on the wall by the door, copy of it done in thunder-and-lightningcrewels by one of the young ladies--work of art which wouldhave made Washington hesitate about crossing, if he couldhave foreseen what advantage was going to be taken of it.
Piano--kettle in disguise--with music, bound and unbound,piled on it, and on a stand near by: Battle of Prague;Bird Waltz; Arkansas Traveler; Rosin the Bow; Marseilles Hymn;On a Lone Barren Isle (St. Helena); The Last Link is Broken;She wore a Wreath of Roses the Night when last we met;Go, forget me, Why should Sorrow o'er that Brow a Shadow fling;Hours there were to Memory Dearer; Long, Long Ago; Days of Absence;A Life on the Ocean Wave, a Home on the Rolling Deep; Bird at Sea;and spread open on the rack, where the plaintive singer has left it,RO-holl on, silver MOO-hoon, guide the TRAV-el-lerr his WAY, etc.
Tilted pensively against the piano, a guitar--guitar capableof playing the Spanish Fandango by itself, if you give it a start.
Frantic work of art on the wall--pious motto, done on the premises,sometimes in colored yarns, sometimes in faded grasses:
progenitor of the 'God Bless Our Home' of modern commerce.
Framed in black moldings on the wall, other works of arts,conceived and committed on the premises, by the young ladies;being grim black-and-white crayons; landscapes, mostly:
lake, solitary sail-boat, petrified clouds, pre-geological treeson shore, anthracite precipice; name of criminal conspicuousin the corner. Lithograph, Napoleon Crossing the Alps.
Lithograph, The Grave at St. Helena. Steel-plates, Trumbull'sBattle of Bunker Hill, and the Sally from Gibraltar.
Copper-plates, Moses Smiting the Rock, and Return of theProdigal Son. In big gilt frame, slander of the family in oil:
papa holding a book ('Constitution of the United States');guitar leaning against mamma, blue ribbons fluttering from its neck;the young ladies, as children, in slippers and scalloped pantelettes,one embracing toy horse, the other beguiling kitten with ballof yarn, and both simpering up at mamma, who simpers back.
These persons all fresh, raw, and red--apparently skinned.
Opposite, in gilt frame, grandpa and grandma, at thirty andtwenty-two, stiff, old-fashioned, high-collared, puff-sleeved,glaring pallidly out from a background of solid Egyptian night.
Under a glass French clock dome, large bouquet of stiffflowers done in corpsy-white wax. Pyramidal what-notin the corner, the shelves occupied chiefly with bric-a-bracof the period, disposed with an eye to best effect:
shell, with the Lord's Prayer carved on it; another shell--of the long-oval sort, narrow, straight orifice, three inches long,running from end to end--portrait of Washington carved on it;not well done; the shell had Washington's mouth, originally--artist should have built to that. These two are memorials ofthe long-ago bridal trip to New Orleans and the French Market.
Other bric-a-brac: Californian 'specimens'--quartz,with gold wart adhering; old Guinea-gold locket, with circletof ancestral hair in it; Indian arrow-heads, of flint;pair of bead moccasins, from uncle who crossed the Plains;three 'alum' baskets of various colors--being skeleton-frame of wire,clothed-on with cubes of crystallized alum in the rock-candy style--works of art which were achieved by the young ladies; their doublesand duplicates to be found upon all what-nots in the land;convention of desiccated bugs and butterflies pinned to a card;painted toy-dog, seated upon bellows-attachment--drops itsunder jaw and squeaks when pressed upon; sugar-candy rabbit--limbs and features merged together, not strongly defined;pewter presidential-campaign medal; miniature card-board wood-sawyer,to be attached to the stove-pipe and operated by the heat;small Napoleon, done in wax; spread-open daguerreotypesof dim children, parents, cousins, aunts, and friends,in all attitudes but customary ones; no templed portico at back,and manufactured landscape stretching away in the distance--that came in later, with the photograph; all these vague figureslavishly chained and ringed--metal indicated and securedfrom doubt by stripes and splashes of vivid gold bronze;all of them too much combed, too much fixed up; and all of themuncomfortable in inflexible Sunday-clothes of a pattern whichthe spectator cannot realize could ever have been in fashion;husband and wife generally grouped together--husband sitting,wife standing, with hand on his shoulder--and both preserving,all these fading years, some traceable effect of the daguerreotypist'sbrisk 'Now smile, if you please!' Bracketed over what-not--place of special sacredness--an outrage in water-color, doneby the young niece that came on a visit long ago, and died.
Pity, too; for she might have repented of this in time.
Horse-hair chairs, horse-hair sofa which keeps sliding fromunder you. Window shades, of oil stuff, with milk-maidsand ruined castles stenciled on them in fierce colors.
Lambrequins dependent from gaudy boxings of beaten tin, gilded.
Bedrooms with rag carpets; bedsteads of the 'corded' sort,with a sag in the middle, the cords needing tightening;snuffy feather-bed--not aired often enough; cane-seat chairs,splint-bottomed rocker; looking-glass on wall, school-slate size,veneered frame; inherited bureau; wash-bowl and pitcher, possibly--but not certainly; brass candlestick, tallow candle, snuffers.
Nothing else in the room. Not a bathroom in the house;and no visitor likely to come along who has ever seenone.
That was the residence of the principal citizen, all the way fromthe suburbs of New Orleans to the edge of St. Louis. When he steppedaboard a big fine steamboat, he entered a new and marvelous world:
chimney-tops cut to counterfeit a spraying crown of plumes--and maybe painted red; pilot-house, hurricane deck, boiler-deck guards,all garnished with white wooden filigree work of fanciful patterns;gilt acorns topping the derricks; gilt deer-horns over the big bell;gaudy symbolical picture on the paddle-box, possibly; big roomyboiler-deck, painted blue, and furnished with Windsor armchairs;inside, a far-receding snow-white 'cabin;' porcelain knob and oil-pictureon every stateroom door; curving patterns of filigree-work touchedup with gilding, stretching overhead all down the converging vista;big chandeliers every little way, each an April shower ofglittering glass-drops; lovely rainbow-light falling everywherefrom the colored glazing of the skylights; the whole a long-drawn,resplendent tunnel, a bewildering and soul-satisfying spectacle!
In the ladies' cabin a pink and white Wilton carpet, as soft as mush,and glorified with a ravishing pattern of gigantic flowers.
Then the Bridal Chamber--the animal that invented that idea was stillalive and unhanged, at that day--Bridal Chamber whose pretentiousflummery was necessarily overawing to the now tottering intellectof that hosannahing citizen. Every state-room had its coupleof cozy clean bunks, and perhaps a looking-glass and a snug closet;and sometimes there was even a washbowl and pitcher, and partof a towel which could be told from mosquito netting by an expert--though generally these things were absent, and the shirt-sleevedpassengers cleansed themselves at a long row of stationary bowlsin the barber shop, where were also public towels, public combs,and public soap.
Take the steamboat which I have just described, and you have herin her highest and finest, and most pleasing, and comfortable,and satisfactory estate. Now cake her over with a layerof ancient and obdurate dirt, and you have the Cincinnatisteamer awhile ago referred to. Not all over--only inside;for she was ably officered in all departments except the steward's.
But wash that boat and repaint her, and she would be about thecounterpart of the most complimented boat of the old flush times:
for the steamboat architecture of the West has undergone no change;neither has steamboat furniture and ornamentation undergone any.
The House Beautiful
WHERE the river, in the Vicksburg region, used to be corkscrewed,it is now comparatively straight--made so by cut-off;a former distance of seventy miles is reduced to thirty-five. Itis a change which threw Vicksburg's neighbor, Delta, Louisiana,out into the country and ended its career as a river town.
Its whole river-frontage is now occupied by a vast sand-bar,thickly covered with young trees--a growth which will magnifyitself into a dense forest by-and-bye, and completely hidethe exiled town.
In due time we passed Grand Gulf and Rodney, of war fame, and reached Natchez,the last of the beautiful hill-cities--for Baton Rouge, yet to come,is not on a hill, but only on high ground. Famous Natchez-under-the-hillhas not changed notably in twenty years; in outward aspect--judging by the descriptions of the ancient procession of foreign tourists--it has not changed in sixty; for it is still small, straggling, and shabby.
It had a desperate reputation, morally, in the old keel-boating andearly steamboating times--plenty of drinking, carousing, fisticuffing,and killing there, among the riff-raff of the river, in those days.
But Natchez-on-top-of-the-hill is attractive; has always been attractive.
Even Mrs. Trollope (1827) had to confess its charms:
'At one or two points the wearisome level line is relievedby bluffs, as they call the short intervals of high ground.
The town of Natchez is beautifully situated on one of those high spots.
The contrast that its bright green hill forms with the dismal line of blackforest that stretches on every side, the abundant growth of the pawpaw,palmetto and orange, the copious variety of sweet-scented flowersthat flourish there, all make it appear like an oasis in the desert.
Natchez is the furthest point to the north at which orangesripen in the open air, or endure the winter without shelter.
With the exception of this sweet spot, I thought all the little townsand villages we passed wretched-looking in the extreme.'
Natchez, like her near and far river neighbors, has railways now,and is adding to them--pushing them hither and thither into allrich outlying regions that are naturally tributary to her.
And like Vicksburg and New Orleans, she has her ice-factory:
she makes thirty tons of ice a day. In Vicksburg and Natchez,in my time, ice was jewelry; none but the rich could wear it.
But anybody and everybody can have it now. I visited one ofthe ice-factories in New Orleans, to see what the polar regionsmight look like when lugged into the edge of the tropics.
But there was nothing striking in the aspect of the place.
It was merely a spacious house, with some innocent steam machineryin one end of it and some big porcelain pipes running here and there.
No, not porcelain--they merely seemed to be; they were iron,but the ammonia which was being breathed through them had coatedthem to the thickness of your hand with solid milk-white ice.
It ought to have melted; for one did not require winter clothingin that atmosphere: but it did not melt; the inside of the pipewas too cold.
Sunk into the floor were numberless tin boxes, a foot square and twofeet long, and open at the top end. These were full of clear water;and around each box, salt and other proper stuff was packed; also, the ammoniagases were applied to the water in some way which will always remaina secret to me, because I was not able to understand the process.
While the water in the boxes gradually froze, men gave it a stir ortwo with a stick occasionally--to liberate the air-bubbles, I think.
Other men were continually lifting out boxes whose contents had becomehard frozen. They gave the box a single dip into a vat of boiling water,to melt the block of ice free from its tin coffin, then they shotthe block out upon a platform car, and it was ready for market.
These big blocks were hard, solid, and crystal-clear. In certain of them,big bouquets of fresh and brilliant tropical flowers had been frozen-in;in others, beautiful silken-clad French dolls, and other pretty objects.
These blocks were to be set on end in a platter, in the center ofdinner-tables, to cool the tropical air; and also to be ornamental,for the flowers and things imprisoned in them could be seen as throughplate glass. I was told that this factory could retail its ice, by wagon,throughout New Orleans, in the humblest dwelling-house quantities,at six or seven dollars a ton, and make a sufficient profit.
This being the case, there is business for ice-factories in the North;for we get ice on no such terms there, if one take less than three hundredand fifty pounds at a delivery.
The Rosalie Yarn Mill, of Natchez, has a capacity of 6,000 spindles and160 looms, and employs 100 hands. The Natchez Cotton Mills Company beganoperations four years ago in a two-story building of 50 x 190 feet, with 4,000spindles and 128 looms; capital $105,000, all subscribed in the town.
Two years later, the same stockholders increased their capital to $225,000;added a third story to the mill, increased its length to 317 feet;added machinery to increase the capacity to 10,300 spindles and 304 looms.
The company now employ 250 operatives, many of whom are citizens of Natchez.
'The mill works 5,000 bales of cotton annually and manufacturesthe best standard quality of brown shirtings and sheetings and drills,turning out 5,000,000 yards of these goods per year.'
Orleans Times-Democrat, 26 Aug, 1882.]> A close corporation--stock heldat $5,000 per share, but none in the market.
The changes in the Mississippi River are great and strange,yet were to be expected; but I was not expecting to live to seeNatchez and these other river towns become manufacturingstrongholds and railway centers.
Speaking of manufactures reminds me of a talk upon that topicwhich I heard--which I overheard--on board the Cincinnati boat.
I awoke out of a fretted sleep, with a dull confusion of voices in my ears.
I listened--two men were talking; subject, apparently, the great inundation.
I looked out through the open transom. The two men were eatinga late breakfast; sitting opposite each other; nobody else around.
They closed up the inundation with a few words--having used it,evidently, as a mere ice-breaker and acquaintanceship-breeder--then they dropped into business. It soon transpired that theywere drummers--one belonging in Cincinnati, the other in New Orleans.
Brisk men, energetic of movement and speech; the dollar their god,how to get it their religion.
'Now as to this article,' said Cincinnati, slashing into the ostensiblebutter and holding forward a slab of it on his knife-blade,'it's from our house; look at it--smell of it--taste it.
Put any test on it you want to. Take your own time--no hurry--make it thorough. There now--what do you say? butter, ain't it.
Not by a thundering sight--it's oleomargarine! Yes, sir, that's whatit is--oleomargarine. You can't tell it from butter; by George,an EXPERT can't. It's from our house. We supply most of the boatsin the West; there's hardly a pound of butter on one of them.
We are crawling right along--JUMPING right along is the word.
We are going to have that entire trade. Yes, and the hotel trade, too.
You are going to see the day, pretty soon, when you can't findan ounce of butter to bless yourself with, in any hotel inthe Mississippi and Ohio Valleys, outside of the biggest cities.
Why, we are turning out oleomargarine NOW by the thousands of tons.
And we can sell it so dirt-cheap that the whole country hasGOT to take it--can't get around it you see. Butter don'tstand any show--there ain't any chance for competition.
Butter's had its DAY--and from this out, butter goes to the wall.
There's more money in oleomargarine than--why, you can'timagine the business we do. I've stopped in every town fromCincinnati to Natchez; and I've sent home big orders from everyone of them.'
And so-forth and so-on, for ten minutes longer, in the same fervid strain.
Then New Orleans piped up and said--Yes, it's a first-rate imitation, that's a certainty;but it ain't the only one around that's first-rate. For instance,they make olive-oil out of cotton-seed oil, nowadays, so that youcan't tell them apart.'
'Yes, that's so,' responded Cincinnati, 'and it was a tip-topbusiness for a while. They sent it over and brought it back fromFrance and Italy, with the United States custom-house mark on itto indorse it for genuine, and there was no end of cash in it;but France and Italy broke up the game--of course they naturally would.
Cracked on such a rattling impost that cotton-seed olive-oil couldn'tstand the raise; had to hang up and quit.'
'Oh, it DID, did it? You wait here a minute.'
Goes to his state-room, brings back a couple of long bottles,and takes out the corks--says:
'There now, smell them, taste them, examine the bottles, inspect the labels.
One of 'm's from Europe, the other's never been out of this country.
One's European olive-oil, the other's American cotton-seed olive-oil.
Tell 'm apart? 'Course you can't. Nobody can. People that want to,can go to the expense and trouble of shipping their oils to Europe and back--it's their privilege; but our firm knows a trick worth six of that.
We turn out the whole thing--clean from the word go--in our factoryin New Orleans: labels, bottles, oil, everything. Well, no, not labels:
been buying them abroad--get them dirt-cheap there. You see,there's just one little wee speck, essence, or whatever it is,in a gallon of cotton-seed oil, that give it a smell, or a flavor,or something--get that out, and you're all right--perfectly easy thento turn the oil into any kind of oil you want to, and there ain't anybodythat can detect the true from the false. Well, we know how to getthat one little particle out--and we're the only firm that does.
And we turn out an olive-oil that is just simply perfect--undetectable!
We are doing a ripping trade, too--as I could easily show you by myorder-book for this trip. Maybe you'll butter everybody's bread pretty soon,but we'll cotton-seed his salad for him from the Gulf to Canada, and that'sa dead-certain thing.'
Cincinnati glowed and flashed with admiration.
The two scoundrels exchanged business-cards, and rose.
As they left the table, Cincinnati said--'But you have to have custom-house marks, don't you?
How do you manage that?'
I did not catch the answer.
We passed Port Hudson, scene of two of the most terrific episodes of the war--the night-battle there between Farragut's fleet and the Confederateland batteries, April 14th, 1863; and the memorable land battle,two months later, which lasted eight hours--eight hours of exceptionallyfierce and stubborn fighting--and ended, finally, in the repulseof the union forces with great slaughter.
Manufactures and Miscreants
BATON ROUGE was clothed in flowers, like a bride--no, much more so;like a greenhouse. For we were in the absolute South now--no modifications, no compromises, no half-way measures.
The magnolia-trees in the Capitol grounds were lovely and fragrant,with their dense rich foliage and huge snow-ball blossoms.
The scent of the flower is very sweet, but you want distance on it,because it is so powerful. They are not good bedroom blossoms--they might suffocate one in his sleep. We were certainly in the Southat last; for here the sugar region begins, and the plantations--vast green levels, with sugar-mill and negro quarters clustered togetherin the middle distance--were in view. And there was a tropical sunoverhead and a tropical swelter in the air.
And at this point, also, begins the pilot's paradise:
a wide river hence to New Orleans, abundance of water from shoreto shore, and no bars, snags, sawyers, or wrecks in his road.
Sir Walter Scott is probably responsible for the Capitol building;for it is not conceivable that this little sham castle wouldever have been built if he had not run the people mad, a coupleof generations ago, with his medieval romances. The South hasnot yet recovered from the debilitating influence of his books.
Admiration of his fantastic heroes and their grotesque'chivalry' doings and romantic juvenilities still survives here,in an atmosphere in which is already perceptible the wholesomeand practical nineteenth-century smell of cotton-factoriesand locomotives; and traces of its inflated language and otherwindy humbuggeries survive along with it. It is pathetic enough,that a whitewashed castle, with turrets and things--materials allungenuine within and without, pretending to be what they are not--should ever have been built in this otherwise honorable place;but it is much more pathetic to see this architectural falsehoodundergoing restoration and perpetuation in our day, when itwould have been so easy to let dynamite finish what a charitablefire began, and then devote this restoration-money to the buildingof something genuine.
Baton Rouge has no patent on imitation castles, however, and no monopolyof them. Here is a picture from the advertisement of the 'Female Institute'
of Columbia; Tennessee. The following remark is from the same advertisement--'The Institute building has long been famed as a model of strikingand beautiful architecture. Visitors are charmed with its resemblanceto the old castles of song and story, with its towers, turreted walls,and ivy-mantled porches.'
Keeping school in a castle is a romantic thing; as romantic as keepinghotel in a castle.
By itself the imitation castle is doubtless harmless, and well enough;but as a symbol and breeder and sustainer of maudlin Middle-Age romanticismhere in the midst of the plainest and sturdiest and infinitely greatestand worthiest of all the centuries the world has seen, it is necessarilya hurtful thing and a mistake.
Here is an extract from the prospectus of a Kentucky 'Female College.'
Female college sounds well enough; but since the phrasing it inthat unjustifiable way was done purely in the interest of brevity,it seems to me that she-college would have been still better--because shorter, and means the same thing: that is, if either phrasemeans anything at all--'The president is southern by birth, by rearing, by education,and by sentiment; the teachers are all southern in sentiment,and with the exception of those born in Europe were born and raisedin the south. Believing the southern to be the highest type ofcivilization this continent has seen,' the young[Illustrations of it thoughtlessly omitted by the advertiser:
KNOXVILLE, Tenn., October 19.--This morning a few minutesafter ten o'clock, General Joseph A. Mabry, Thomas O'Connor,and Joseph A. Mabry, Jr., were killed in a shooting affray.
The difficulty began yesterday afternoon by General Mabryattacking Major O'Connor and threatening to kill him.
This was at the fair grounds, and O'Connor told Mabrythat it was not the place to settle their difficulties.
Mabry then told O'Connor he should not live.
It seems that Mabry was armed and O'Connor was not.
The cause of the difficulty was an old feud about the transferof some property from Mabry to O'Connor. Later in the afternoonMabry sent word to O'Connor that he would kill him on sight.
This morning Major O'Connor was standing in the door ofthe Mechanics' National Bank, of which he was president.
General Mabry and another gentleman walked down Gay Street onthe opposite side from the bank. O'Connor stepped into the bank,got a shot gun, took deliberate aim at General Mabry and fired.
Mabry fell dead, being shot in the left side. As he fellO'Connor fired again, the shot taking effect in Mabry's thigh.
O'Connor then reached into the bank and got another shot gun.
About this time Joseph A. Mabry, Jr., son of General Mabry,came rushing down the street, unseen by O'Connor until withinforty feet, when the young man fired a pistol, the shot takingeffect in O'Connor's right breast, passing through the body nearthe heart. The instant Mabry shot, O'Connor turned and fired,the load taking effect in young Mabry's right breast and side.
Mabry fell pierced with twenty buckshot, and almost instantlyO'Connor fell dead without a struggle. Mabry tried to rise,but fell back dead. The whole tragedy occurred withintwo minutes, and neither of the three spoke after he was shot.
General Mabry had about thirty buckshot in his body.
A bystander was painfully wounded in the thigh with a buckshot,and another was wounded in the arm. Four other men had theirclothing pierced by buckshot. The affair caused great excitement,and Gay Street was thronged with thousands of people.
General Mabry and his son Joe were acquitted only a fewdays ago of the murder of Moses Lusby and Don Lusby,father and son, whom they killed a few weeks ago.
Will Mabry was killed by Don Lusby last Christmas. Major ThomasO'Connor was President of the Mechanics' National Bank here,and was the wealthiest man in the State.--ASSOCIATED PRESSTELEGRAM.
One day last month, Professor Sharpe, of the Somerville,Tenn., Female College, 'a quiet and gentlemanly man,' was told thathis brother-in-law, a Captain Burton, had threatened to kill him.
Burton, t seems, had already killed one man and driven his knifeinto another. The Professor armed himself with a double-barreledshot gun, started out in search of his brother-in-law, foundhim playing billiards in a saloon, and blew his brains out.
The 'Memphis Avalanche' reports that the Professor's course metwith pretty general approval in the community; knowing that the lawwas powerless, in the actual condition of public sentiment,to protect him, he protected himself.
About the same time, two young men in North Carolina quarreledabout a girl, and 'hostile messages' were exchanged.
Friends tried to reconcile them, but had their labor for their pains.
On the 24th the young men met in the public highway.
One of them had a heavy club in his hand, the other an ax.
The man with the club fought desperately for his life, but itwas a hopeless fight from the first. A well-directed blowsent his club whirling out of his grasp, and the next momenthe was a dead man.
About the same time, two 'highly connected' young Virginians,clerks in a hardware store at Charlottesville, while 'skylarking,'
came to blows. Peter Dick threw pepper in Charles Roads's eyes;Roads demanded an apology; Dick refused to give it, and itwas agreed that a duel was inevitable, but a difficulty arose;the parties had no pistols, and it was too late at nightto procure them. One of them suggested that butcher-kniveswould answer the purpose, and the other accepted the suggestion;the result was that Roads fell to the floor with a gashin his abdomen that may or may not prove fatal.
If Dick has been arrested, the news has not reached us.
He 'expressed deep regret,' and we are told by a Stauntoncorrespondent of the PHILADELPHIA PRESS that 'every effort hasbeen made to hush the matter up.'--EXTRACTS FROM THE PUBLICJOURNALS.]> ladies are trained according to the southern ideasof delicacy, refinement, womanhood, religion, and propriety;hence we offer a first-class female college for the south andsolicit southern patronage.'
What, warder, ho! the man that can blow so complacent a blast as that,probably blows it from a castle.
From Baton Rouge to New Orleans, the great sugar plantations borderboth sides of the river all the way, and stretch their league-widelevels back to the dim forest-walls of bearded cypress in the rear.
Shores lonely no longer. Plenty of dwellings all the way,on both banks--standing so close together, for long distances,that the broad river lying between the two rows, becomes a sortof spacious street. A most home-like and happy-looking region.
And now and then you see a pillared and porticoed great manor-house,embowered in trees. Here is testimony of one or two of the processionof foreign tourists that filed along here half a century ago.
Mrs. Trollope says--'The unbroken flatness of the banks of the Mississippi continued unvariedfor many miles above New Orleans; but the graceful and luxuriant palmetto,the dark and noble ilex, and the bright orange, were everywhere to be seen,and it was many days before we were weary of looking at them.'
Captain Basil Hall--'The district of country which lies adjacent to the Mississippi,in the lower parts of Louisiana, is everywhere thicklypeopled by sugar planters, whose showy houses, gay piazzas,trig gardens, and numerous slave-villages, all clean and neat,gave an exceedingly thriving air to the river scenery.
All the procession paint the attractive picture in the same way.
The descriptions of fifty years ago do not need to have a wordchanged in order to exactly describe the same region as itappears to-day--except as to the 'trigness' of the houses.
The whitewash is gone from the negro cabins now; and many,possibly most, of the big mansions, once so shining white,have worn out their paint and have a decayed, neglected look.
It is the blight of the war. Twenty-one years ago everything wastrim and trig and bright along the 'coast,' just as it had beenin 1827, as described by those tourists.
Unfortunate tourists! People humbugged them with stupid and silly lies,and then laughed at them for believing and printing the same.
They told Mrs. Trollope that the alligators--or crocodiles, as she calls them--were terrible creatures; and backed up the statement with a blood-curdlingaccount of how one of these slandered reptiles crept into a squattercabin one night, and ate up a woman and five children. The woman,by herself, would have satisfied any ordinarily-impossible alligator;but no, these liars must make him gorge the five children besides.
One would not imagine that jokers of this robust breed would be sensitive--but they were. It is difficult, at this day, to understand,and impossible to justify, the reception which the book of the grave,honest, intelligent, gentle, manly, charitable, well-meaning Capt. BasilHall got. Mrs. Trollope's account of it may perhaps entertain the reader;therefore I have put it in the Appendix.
Castles and Culture