They give me an opportunity of introducing one of the Mississippi'soddest peculiarities,--that of shortening its length from time to time.
If you will throw a long, pliant apple-paring over your shoulder,it will pretty fairly shape itself into an average sectionof the Mississippi River; that is, the nine or ten hundred milesstretching from Cairo, Illinois, southward to New Orleans,the same being wonderfully crooked, with a brief straight bithere and there at wide intervals. The two hundred-mile stretchfrom Cairo northward to St. Louis is by no means so crooked,that being a rocky country which the river cannot cut much.
The water cuts the alluvial banks of the 'lower' river into deephorseshoe curves; so deep, indeed, that in some places if you were to getashore at one extremity of the horseshoe and walk across the neck,half or three quarters of a mile, you could sit down and rest a coupleof hours while your steamer was coming around the long elbow,at a speed of ten miles an hour, to take you aboard again.
When the river is rising fast, some scoundrel whose plantationis back in the country, and therefore of inferior value,has only to watch his chance, cut a little gutter across the narrowneck of land some dark night, and turn the water into it,and in a wonderfully short time a miracle has happened: to wit,the whole Mississippi has taken possession of that little ditch,and placed the countryman's plantation on its bank (quadrupling itsvalue), and that other party's formerly valuable plantation findsitself away out yonder on a big island; the old watercourse aroundit will soon shoal up, boats cannot approach within ten milesof it, and down goes its value to a fourth of its former worth.
Watches are kept on those narrow necks, at needful times,and if a man happens to be caught cutting a ditch across them,the chances are all against his ever having another opportunity tocut a ditch.
Pray observe some of the effects of this ditching business.
Once there was a neck opposite Port Hudson, Louisiana, which was onlyhalf a mile across, in its narrowest place. You could walk acrossthere in fifteen minutes; but if you made the journey around the capeon a raft, you traveled thirty-five miles to accomplish the same thing.
In 1722 the river darted through that neck, deserted its old bed,and thus shortened itself thirty-five miles. In the same way itshortened itself twenty-five miles at Black Hawk Point in 1699.
Below Red River Landing, Raccourci cut-off was made (forty or fiftyyears ago, I think). This shortened the river twenty-eight miles.
In our day, if you travel by river from the southernmost of thesethree cut-offs to the northernmost, you go only seventy miles.
To do the same thing a hundred and seventy-six years ago, one hadto go a hundred and fifty-eight miles!--shortening of eighty-eightmiles in that trifling distance. At some forgotten time in the past,cut-offs were made above Vidalia, Louisiana; at island 92; at island 84;and at Hale's Point. These shortened the river, in the aggregate,seventy-seven miles.
Since my own day on the Mississippi, cut-offs have been made atHurricane Island; at island 100; at Napoleon, Arkansas; at Walnut Bend;and at Council Bend. These shortened the river, in the aggregate,sixty-seven miles. In my own time a cut-off was made at American Bend,which shortened the river ten miles or more.
Therefore, the Mississippi between Cairo and New Orleans was twelvehundred and fifteen miles long one hundred and seventy-six years ago.
It was eleven hundred and eighty after the cut-off of 1722.
It was one thousand and forty after the American Bend cut-off. It haslost sixty-seven miles since. Consequently its length is only ninehundred and seventy-three miles at present.
Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and 'let on'
to prove what had occurred in the remote past by what had occurredin a given time in the recent past, or what will occur in the far futureby what has occurred in late years, what an opportunity is here!
Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact data to argue from!
Nor 'development of species,' either! Glacial epochs are great things,but they are vague--vague. Please observe:--In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the LowerMississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles.
That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year.
Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic,can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period,' just a millionyears ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwardsof one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck outover the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same tokenany person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from nowthe Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long,and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together,and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutualboard of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science.
One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a triflinginvestment of fact.
When the water begins to flow through one of those ditches Ihave been speaking of, it is time for the people thereaboutsto move. The water cleaves the banks away like a knife.
By the time the ditch has become twelve or fifteen feet wide,the calamity is as good as accomplished, for no power on earthcan stop it now. When the width has reached a hundred yards,the banks begin to peel off in slices half an acre wide.
The current flowing around the bend traveled formerlyonly five miles an hour; now it is tremendously increasedby the shortening of the distance. I was on board the firstboat that tried to go through the cut-off at American Bend,but we did not get through. It was toward midnight, and a wildnight it was--thunder, lightning, and torrents of rain.
It was estimated that the current in the cut-off was makingabout fifteen or twenty miles an hour; twelve or thirteenwas the best our boat could do, even in tolerably slack water,therefore perhaps we were foolish to try the cut-off. However,Mr. Brown was ambitious, and he kept on trying.
The eddy running up the bank, under the 'point,' was aboutas swift as the current out in the middle; so we wouldgo flying up the shore like a lightning express train,get on a big head of steam, and 'stand by for a surge'
when we struck the current that was whirling by the point.
But all our preparations were useless. The instant the current hitus it spun us around like a top, the water deluged the forecastle,and the boat careened so far over that one could hardly keephis feet. The next instant we were away down the river,clawing with might and main to keep out of the woods.
We tried the experiment four times. I stood on the forecastlecompanion way to see. It was astonishing to observe howsuddenly the boat would spin around and turn tail the momentshe emerged from the eddy and the current struck her nose.
The sounding concussion and the quivering would have beenabout the same if she had come full speed against a sand-bank.
Under the lightning flashes one could see the plantation cabinsand the goodly acres tumble into the river; and the crash theymade was not a bad effort at thunder. Once, when we spun around,we only missed a house about twenty feet, that had a light burningin the window; and in the same instant that house went overboard.
Nobody could stay on our forecastle; the water swept acrossit in a torrent every time we plunged athwart the current.
At the end of our fourth effort we brought up in the woods two milesbelow the cut-off; all the country there was overflowed, of course.
A day or two later the cut-off was three-quarters of a mile wide,and boats passed up through it without much difficulty, and sosaved ten miles.
The old Raccourci cut-off reduced the river's length twenty-eight miles.
There used to be a tradition connected with it. It was said that a boatcame along there in the night and went around the enormous elbowthe usual way, the pilots not knowing that the cut-off had been made.
It was a grisly, hideous night, and all shapes were vague and distorted.
The old bend had already begun to fill up, and the boat got torunning away from mysterious reefs, and occasionally hitting one.
The perplexed pilots fell to swearing, and finally uttered the entirelyunnecessary wish that they might never get out of that place.
As always happens in such cases, that particular prayer was answered,and the others neglected. So to this day that phantom steamer is stillbutting around in that deserted river, trying to find her way out.
More than one grave watchman has sworn to me that on drizzly,dismal nights, he has glanced fearfully down that forgotten riveras he passed the head of the island, and seen the faint glowof the specter steamer's lights drifting through the distant gloom,and heard the muffled cough of her 'scape-pipes and the plaintive cryof her leadsmen.
In the absence of further statistics, I beg to close this chapterwith one more reminiscence of 'Stephen.'
Most of the captains and pilots held Stephen's note forborrowed sums, ranging from two hundred and fifty dollars upward.
Stephen never paid one of these notes, but he was very promptand very zealous about renewing them every twelve months.
Of course there came a time, at last, when Stephen couldno longer borrow of his ancient creditors; so he wasobliged to lie in wait for new men who did not know him.
Such a victim was good-hearted, simple natured young Yates(I use a fictitious name, but the real name began, as thisone does, with a Y). Young Yates graduated as a pilot,got a berth, and when the month was ended and he steppedup to the clerk's office and received his two hundredand fifty dollars in crisp new bills, Stephen was there!
His silvery tongue began to wag, and in a very little whileYates's two hundred and fifty dollars had changed hands.
The fact was soon known at pilot headquarters, and the amusementand satisfaction of the old creditors were large and generous.
But innocent Yates never suspected that Stephen's promiseto pay promptly at the end of the week was a worthless one.
Yates called for his money at the stipulated time;Stephen sweetened him up and put him off a week. He called then,according to agreement, and came away sugar-coated again,but suffering under another postponement. So the thing went on.
Yates haunted Stephen week after week, to no purpose, and at lastgave it up. And then straightway Stephen began to haunt Yates!
Wherever Yates appeared, there was the inevitable Stephen.
And not only there, but beaming with affection and gushingwith apologies for not being able to pay. By and by,whenever poor Yates saw him coming, he would turn and fly,and drag his company with him, if he had company; but itwas of no use; his debtor would run him down and corner him.
Panting and red-faced, Stephen would come, with outstretched handsand eager eyes, invade the conversation, shake both of Yates'sarms loose in their sockets, and begin--'My, what a race I've had! I saw you didn't see me,and so I clapped on all steam for fear I'd miss you entirely.
And here you are! there, just stand so, and let melook at you! just the same old noble countenance.'
[To Yates's friend:] 'Just look at him! LOOK at him!
Ain't it just GOOD to look at him! AIN'T it now? Ain't he justa picture! SOME call him a picture; I call him a panorama!
That's what he is--an entire panorama. And now I'm reminded!
How I do wish I could have seen you an hour earlier!
For twenty-four hours I've been saving up that two hundredand fifty dollars for you; been looking for you everywhere.
I waited at the Planter's from six yesterday evening till two o'clockthis morning, without rest or food; my wife says, "Where have youbeen all night?" I said, "This debt lies heavy on my mind."She says, "In all my days I never saw a man take a debt to heartthe way you do." I said, "It's my nature; how can I change it?"She says, "Well, do go to bed and get some rest." I said,"Not till that poor, noble young man has got his money."So I set up all night, and this morning out I shot, and the firstman I struck told me you had shipped on the "Grand Turk"and gone to New Orleans. Well, sir, I had to lean up againsta building and cry. So help me goodness, I couldn't help it.
The man that owned the place come out cleaning up with a rag,and said he didn't like to have people cry against his building,and then it seemed to me that the whole world had turnedagainst me, and it wasn't any use to live any more; and comingalong an hour ago, suffering no man knows what agony, I met JimWilson and paid him the two hundred and fifty dollars on account;and to think that here you are, now, and I haven't got a cent!
But as sure as I am standing here on this ground on thisparticular brick,--there, I've scratched a mark on the brickto remember it by,--I'll borrow that money and pay it overto you at twelve o'clock sharp, tomorrow! Now, stand so;let me look at you just once more.'
And so on. Yates's life became a burden to him. He could not escape hisdebtor and his debtor's awful sufferings on account of not being able to pay.
He dreaded to show himself in the street, lest he should find Stephen lyingin wait for him at the comer.
Bogart's billiard saloon was a great resort for pilots in those days.
They met there about as much to exchange river news as to play.
One morning Yates was there; Stephen was there, too, but kept outof sight. But by and by, when about all the pilots had arrivedwho were in town, Stephen suddenly appeared in the midst, and rushedfor Yates as for a long-lost brother.
'OH, I am so glad to see you! Oh my soul, the sight of you issuch a comfort to my eyes! Gentlemen, I owe all of you money;among you I owe probably forty thousand dollars. I want to pay it;I intend to pay it every last cent of it. You all know,without my telling you, what sorrow it has cost me to remain so longunder such deep obligations to such patient and generous friends;but the sharpest pang I suffer--by far the sharpest--is fromthe debt I owe to this noble young man here; and I have come to thisplace this morning especially to make the announcement that Ihave at last found a method whereby I can pay off all my debts!
And most especially I wanted HIM to be here when I announced it.
Yes, my faithful friend,--my benefactor, I've found the method!
I've found the method to pay off all my debts, and you'll get your money!'
Hope dawned in Yates's eye; then Stephen, beaming benignantly,and placing his hand upon Yates's head, added, 'I am going to pay themoff in alphabetical order!'
Then he turned and disappeared. The full significance of Stephen's 'method'
did not dawn upon the perplexed and musing crowd for some two minutes;and then Yates murmured with a sigh--'Well, the Y's stand a gaudy chance. He won't get any further than the C'sin THIS world, and I reckon that after a good deal of eternity has wastedaway in the next one, I'll still be referred to up there as "that poor,ragged pilot that came here from St. Louis in the early days!"
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