There are wide intervals between boats, these days.
I wanted to begin with the interesting old French settlementsof St. Genevieve and Kaskaskia, sixty miles below St. Louis.
There was only one boat advertised for that section--a Grand Tower packet. Still, one boat was enough; so we wentdown to look at her. She was a venerable rack-heap, and a fraudto boot; for she was playing herself for personal property,whereas the good honest dirt was so thickly caked all overher that she was righteously taxable as real estate.
There are places in New England where her hurricane deckwould be worth a hundred and fifty dollars an acre.
The soil on her forecastle was quite good--the new crop of wheatwas already springing from the cracks in protected places.
The companionway was of a dry sandy character, and wouldhave been well suited for grapes, with a southern exposureand a little subsoiling. The soil of the boiler deckwas thin and rocky, but good enough for grazing purposes.
A colored boy was on watch here--nobody else visible.
We gathered from him that this calm craft would go, as advertised,'if she got her trip;' if she didn't get it, she would waitfor it.
'Has she got any of her trip?'
'Bless you, no, boss. She ain't unloadened, yit. She only comein dis mawnin'.'
He was uncertain as to when she might get her trip, but thought itmight be to-morrow or maybe next day. This would not answer at all;so we had to give up the novelty of sailing down the river on a farm.
We had one more arrow in our quiver: a Vicksburg packet, the 'Gold Dust,'
was to leave at 5 P.M. We took passage in her for Memphis, and gaveup the idea of stopping off here and there, as being impracticable.
She was neat, clean, and comfortable. We camped on the boiler deck,and bought some cheap literature to kill time with. The vender was avenerable Irishman with a benevolent face and a tongue that worked easilyin the socket, and from him we learned that he had lived in St. Louisthirty-four years and had never been across the river during that period.
Then he wandered into a very flowing lecture, filled with classic namesand allusions, which was quite wonderful for fluency until the fact becamerather apparent that this was not the first time, nor perhaps the fiftieth,that the speech had been delivered. He was a good deal of a character,and much better company than the sappy literature he was selling.
A random remark, connecting Irishmen and beer, brought this nugget ofinformation out of him--They don't drink it, sir. They can't drink it, sir.
Give an Irishman lager for a month, and he's a dead man.
An Irishman is lined with copper, and the beer corrodes it.
But whiskey polishes the copper and is the saving of him, sir.'
At eight o'clock, promptly, we backed out and crossed the river.
As we crept toward the shore, in the thick darkness, a blindingglory of white electric light burst suddenly from our forecastle,and lit up the water and the warehouses as with a noon-day glare.
Another big change, this--no more flickering, smoky, pitch-dripping,ineffectual torch-baskets, now: their day is past. Next, instead ofcalling out a score of hands to man the stage, a couple of men and ahatful of steam lowered it from the derrick where it was suspended,launched it, deposited it in just the right spot, and the whole thingwas over and done with before a mate in the olden time could havegot his profanity-mill adjusted to begin the preparatory services.
Why this new and simple method of handling the stages was not thoughtof when the first steamboat was built, is a mystery which helps one torealize what a dull-witted slug the average human being is.
We finally got away at two in the morning, and when I turned outat six, we were rounding to at a rocky point where there was an oldstone warehouse--at any rate, the ruins of it; two or three decayeddwelling-houses were near by, in the shelter of the leafy hills;but there were no evidences of human or other animal life to be seen.
I wondered if I had forgotten the river; for I had no recollection whateverof this place; the shape of the river, too, was unfamiliar; there wasnothing in sight, anywhere, that I could remember ever having seen before.
I was surprised, disappointed, and annoyed.
We put ashore a well-dressed lady and gentleman, and two well-dressed,lady-like young girls, together with sundry Russia-leather bags.
A strange place for such folk! No carriage was waiting.
The party moved off as if they had not expected any, and struckdown a winding country road afoot.
But the mystery was explained when we got under way again;for these people were evidently bound for a large town which layshut in behind a tow-head (i.e., new island) a couple of milesbelow this landing. I couldn't remember that town; I couldn'tplace it, couldn't call its name. So I lost part of my temper.
I suspected that it might be St. Genevieve--and so it provedto be. Observe what this eccentric river had been about:
it had built up this huge useless tow-head directlyin front of this town, cut off its river communications,fenced it away completely, and made a 'country' town of it.
It is a fine old place, too, and deserved a better fate.
It was settled by the French, and is a relic of a time when onecould travel from the mouths of the Mississippi to Quebec and beon French territory and under French rule all the way.
Presently I ascended to the hurricane deck and cast a longingglance toward the pilot-house.
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