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
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