A melancholy picture, and a continuous one;--hundreds of miles of it.
Sometimes the beacon lights stood in water three feet deep,in the edge of dense forests which extended for miles without farm,wood-yard, clearing, or break of any kind; which meant thatthe keeper of the light must come in a skiff a great distanceto discharge his trust,--and often in desperate weather.
Yet I was told that the work is faithfully performed,in all weathers; and not always by men, sometimes by women,if the man is sick or absent. The Government furnishes oil,and pays ten or fifteen dollars a month for the lighting and tending.
A Government boat distributes oil and pays wages once a month.
The Ship Island region was as woodsy and tenantless as ever.
The island has ceased to be an island; has joined itself compactlyto the main shore, and wagons travel, now, where the steamboats usedto navigate. No signs left of the wreck of the 'Pennsylvania.'
Some farmer will turn up her bones with his plow one day, no doubt,and be surprised.
We were getting down now into the migrating negro region.
These poor people could never travel when they were slaves;so they make up for the privation now. They stay on a plantation tillthe desire to travel seizes them; then they pack up, hail a steamboat,and clear out. Not for any particular place; no, nearly anyplace will answer; they only want to be moving. The amountof money on hand will answer the rest of the conundrum for them.
If it will take them fifty miles, very well; let it be fifty.
If not, a shorter flight will do.
During a couple of days, we frequently answered these hails.
Sometimes there was a group of high-water-stained, tumble-down cabins,populous with colored folk, and no whites visible; with grasslesspatches of dry ground here and there; a few felled trees,with skeleton cattle, mules, and horses, eating the leaves andgnawing the bark--no other food for them in the flood-wasted land.
Sometimes there was a single lonely landing-cabin; near itthe colored family that had hailed us; little and big, old and young,roosting on the scant pile of household goods; these consistingof a rusty gun, some bed-ticks, chests, tinware, stools, a crippledlooking-glass, a venerable arm-chair, and six or eight base-bornand spiritless yellow curs, attached to the family by strings.
They must have their dogs; can't go without their dogs.
Yet the dogs are never willing; they always object; so, one after another,in ridiculous procession, they are dragged aboard; all four feetbraced and sliding along the stage, head likely to be pulled off;but the tugger marching determinedly forward, bending to his work,with the rope over his shoulder for better purchase.
Sometimes a child is forgotten and left on the bank; but nevera dog.
The usual river-gossip going on in the pilot-house. Island No. 63--an island with a lovely 'chute,' or passage, behind it in the former times.
They said Jesse Jamieson, in the 'Skylark,' had a visiting pilotwith him one trip--a poor old broken-down, superannuated fellow--left him at the wheel, at the foot of 63, to run off the watch.
The ancient mariner went up through the chute, and down the river outside;and up the chute and down the river again; and yet again and again;and handed the boat over to the relieving pilot, at the end of threehours of honest endeavor, at the same old foot of the island wherehe had originally taken the wheel! A darkey on shore who had observedthe boat go by, about thirteen times, said, ' 'clar to gracious,I wouldn't be s'prised if dey's a whole line o' dem Sk'ylarks! '
Anecdote illustrative of influence of reputation in the changingof opinion. The 'Eclipse' was renowned for her swiftness.
One day she passed along; an old darkey on shore, absorbed inhis own matters, did not notice what steamer it was.
Presently someone asked--'Any boat gone up?'
'Yes, sah.'
'Was she going fast?'
'Oh, so-so--loafin' along.'
'Now, do you know what boat that was?'
'No, sah.'
'Why, uncle, that was the "Eclipse." '
'No! Is dat so? Well, I bet it was--cause she jes' went by here a-SPARKLIN'!'
Piece of history illustrative of the violent style of some of the peopledown along here, During the early weeks of high water, A's fence railswashed down on B's ground, and B's rails washed up in the eddy and landedon A's ground. A said, 'Let the thing remain so; I will use your rails,and you use mine.' But B objected--wouldn't have it so. One day,A came down on B's ground to get his rails. B said, 'I'll kill you!'
and proceeded for him with his revolver. A said, 'I'm not armed.'
So B, who wished to do only what was right, threw down his revolver;then pulled a knife, and cut A's throat all around, but gave hisprincipal attention to the front, and so failed to sever the jugular.
Struggling around, A managed to get his hands on the discarded revolver,and shot B dead with it--and recovered from his own injuries.
Further gossip;--after which, everybody went below to getafternoon coffee, and left me at the wheel, alone,Something presently reminded me of our last hour in St. Louis,part of which I spent on this boat's hurricane deck, aft.
I was joined there by a stranger, who dropped into conversationwith me--a brisk young fellow, who said he was born in a townin the interior of Wisconsin, and had never seen a steamboatuntil a week before. Also said that on the way down from LaCrosse he had inspected and examined his boat so diligentlyand with such passionate interest that he had mastered the wholething from stem to rudder-blade. Asked me where I was from.
I answered, New England. 'Oh, a Yank!' said he; and wentchatting straight along, without waiting for assent or denial.
He immediately proposed to take me all over the boat and tellme the names of her different parts, and teach me their uses.
Before I could enter protest or excuse, he was alreadyrattling glibly away at his benevolent work; and when Iperceived that he was misnaming the things, and inhospitablyamusing himself at the expense of an innocent stranger froma far country, I held my peace, and let him have his way.
He gave me a world of misinformation; and the further he went,the wider his imagination expanded, and the more he enjoyedhis cruel work of deceit. Sometimes, after palming offa particularly fantastic and outrageous lie upon me, he wasso 'full of laugh' that he had to step aside for a minute,upon one pretext or another, to keep me from suspecting.
I staid faithfully by him until his comedy was finished.
Then he remarked that he had undertaken to 'learn' meall about a steamboat, and had done it; but that if he hadoverlooked anything, just ask him and he would supply the lack.
'Anything about this boat that you don't know the nameof or the purpose of, you come to me and I'll tell you.'
I said I would, and took my departure; disappeared, and approachedhim from another quarter, whence he could not see me.
There he sat, all alone, doubling himself up and writhingthis way and that, in the throes of unappeasable laughter.
He must have made himself sick; for he was not publicly visibleafterward for several days. Meantime, the episode dropped outof my mind.
The thing that reminded me of it now, when I was alone at the wheel,was the spectacle of this young fellow standing in the pilot-house door,with the knob in his hand, silently and severely inspecting me.
I don't know when I have seen anybody look so injured as he did.
He did not say anything--simply stood there and looked;reproachfully looked and pondered. Finally he shut the door,and started away; halted on the texas a minute; came slowly backand stood in the door again, with that grieved look in his face;gazed upon me awhile in meek rebuke, then said--'You let me learn you all about a steamboat, didn't you?'
'Yes,' I confessed.
'Yes, you did--DIDN'T you?'
'Yes.'
' You are the feller that--that-- --'
Language failed. Pause--impotent struggle for further words--then he gave it up, choked out a deep, strong oath, and departed for good.
Afterward I saw him several times below during the trip; but he was cold--would not look at me. Idiot, if he had not been in such a sweatto play his witless practical joke upon me, in the beginning,I would have persuaded his thoughts into some other direction,and saved him from committing that wanton and silly impoliteness.
I had myself called with the four o'clock watch, mornings,for one cannot see too many summer sunrises on the Mississippi.
They are enchanting. First, there is the eloquence of silence;for a deep hush broods everywhere. Next, there is the hauntingsense of loneliness, isolation, remoteness from the worryand bustle of the world. The dawn creeps in stealthily;the solid walls of black forest soften to gray, and vaststretches of the river open up and reveal themselves; the wateris glass-smooth, gives off spectral little wreaths of white mist,there is not the faintest breath of wind, nor stir of leaf;the tranquillity is profound and infinitely satisfying.
Then a bird pipes up, another follows, and soon the pipingsdevelop into a jubilant riot of music. You see none of the birds;you simply move through an atmosphere of song which seemsto sing itself. When the light has become a little stronger,you have one of the fairest and softest pictures imaginable.
You have the intense green of the massed and crowded foliagenear by; you see it paling shade by shade in front of you;upon the next projecting cape, a mile off or more, the tinthas lightened to the tender young green of spring; the capebeyond that one has almost lost color, and the furthest one,miles away under the horizon, sleeps upon the water a meredim vapor, and hardly separable from the sky above itand about it. And all this stretch of river is a mirror,and you have the shadowy reflections of the leafage andthe curving shores and the receding capes pictured in it.
Well, that is all beautiful; soft and rich and beautiful;and when the sun gets well up, and distributes a pink flushhere and a powder of gold yonder and a purple haze where it willyield the best effect, you grant that you have seen somethingthat is worth remembering.
We had the Kentucky Bend country in the early morning--scene of a strange and tragic accident in the old times,Captain Poe had a small stern-wheel boat, for years the homeof himself and his wife. One night the boat struck a snag inthe head of Kentucky Bend, and sank with astonishing suddenness;water already well above the cabin floor when the captain got aft.
So he cut into his wife's state-room from above with an ax;she was asleep in the upper berth, the roof a flimsier one thanwas supposed; the first blow crashed down through the rottenboards and clove her skull.
This bend is all filled up now--result of a cut-off; and the sameagent has taken the great and once much-frequented Walnut Bend,and set it away back in a solitude far from the accustomed trackof passing steamers.
Helena we visited, and also a town I had not heard of before, it beingof recent birth--Arkansas City. It was born of a railway; the Little Rock,Mississippi River and Texas Railroad touches the river there.
We asked a passenger who belonged there what sort of a place it was.
'Well,' said he, after considering, and with the air of one whowishes to take time and be accurate, 'It's a hell of a place.'
A description which was photographic for exactness. There wereseveral rows and clusters of shabby frame-houses, and a supply of mudsufficient to insure the town against a famine in that articlefor a hundred years; for the overflow had but lately subsided.
There were stagnant ponds in the streets, here and there, and a dozenrude scows were scattered about, lying aground wherever they happenedto have been when the waters drained off and people could do theirvisiting and shopping on foot once more. Still, it is a thriving place,with a rich country behind it, an elevator in front of it,and also a fine big mill for the manufacture of cotton-seed oil.
I had never seen this kind of a mill before.
Cotton-seed was comparatively valueless in my time; but itis worth $12 or $13 a ton now, and none of it is thrown away.
The oil made from it is colorless, tasteless, and almost if notentirely odorless. It is claimed that it can, by proper manipulation,be made to resemble and perform the office of any and all oils,and be produced at a cheaper rate than the cheapest of the originals.
Sagacious people shipped it to Italy, doctored it, labeled it,and brought it back as olive oil. This trade grew to be so formidablethat Italy was obliged to put a prohibitory impost upon it to keep itfrom working serious injury to her oil industry.
Helena occupies one of the prettiest situations on the Mississippi.
Her perch is the last, the southernmost group of hills which one seeson that side of the river. In its normal condition it is a pretty town;but the flood (or possibly the seepage) had lately been ravaging it;whole streets of houses had been invaded by the muddy water,and the outsides of the buildings were still belted with a broad stainextending upwards from the foundations. Stranded and discarded scows layall about; plank sidewalks on stilts four feet high were still standing;the board sidewalks on the ground level were loose and ruinous,--a couple of men trotting along them could make a blind man thinka cavalry charge was coming; everywhere the mud was black and deep,and in many places malarious pools of stagnant water were standing.
A Mississippi inundation is the next most wasting and desolatinginfliction to a fire.
We had an enjoyable time here, on this sunny Sunday:
two full hours' liberty ashore while the boat discharged freight.
In the back streets but few white people were visible,but there were plenty of colored folk--mainly women and girls;and almost without exception upholstered in bright new clothesof swell and elaborate style and cut--a glaring and hilariouscontrast to the mournful mud and the pensive puddles.
Helena is the second town in Arkansas, in point of population--which is placed at five thousand. The country about it isexceptionally productive. Helena has a good cotton trade;handles from forty to sixty thousand bales annually; she hasa large lumber and grain commerce; has a foundry, oil mills,machine shops and wagon factories--in brief has $1,000,000invested in manufacturing industries. She has two railways,and is the commercial center of a broad and prosperous region.
Her gross receipts of money, annually, from all sources, are placed bythe New Orleans 'Times-Democrat' at $4,000,000.
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |