Chapter 1 The River and Its History
　　THE Mississippi is well worth reading about. It is not acommonplace river, but on the contrary is in all ways remarkable.

Considering the Missouri its main branch, it is the longestriver in the world--four thousand three hundred miles.

It seems safe to say that it is also the crookedest river in the world,since in one part of its journey it uses up one thousand three hundredmiles to cover the same ground that the crow would fly over in sixhundred and seventy-five. It discharges three times as much wateras the St. Lawrence, twenty-five times as much as the Rhine,and three hundred and thirty-eight times as much as the Thames.

No other river has so vast a drainage-basin: it draws its watersupply from twenty-eight States and Territories; from Delaware,on the Atlantic seaboard, and from all the country between that and Idahoon the Pacific slope--a spread of forty-five degrees of longitude.

The Mississippi receives and carries to the Gulf water fromfifty-four subordinate rivers that are navigable by steamboats,and from some hundreds that are navigable by flats and keels.

The area of its drainage-basin is as great as the combined areasof England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany,Austria, Italy, and Turkey; and almost all this wide region is fertile;the Mississippi valley, proper, is exceptionally so.

It is a remarkable river in this: that instead of widening toward its mouth,it grows narrower; grows narrower and deeper. From the junction of the Ohioto a point half way down to the sea, the width averages a mile in high water:

thence to the sea the width steadily diminishes, until, at the 'Passes,' abovethe mouth, it is but little over half a mile. At the junction of the Ohiothe Mississippi's depth is eighty-seven feet; the depth increases gradually,reaching one hundred and twenty-nine just above the mouth.

The difference in rise and fall is also remarkable--not in the upper,but in the lower river. The rise is tolerably uniform down to Natchez(three hundred and sixty miles above the mouth)--about fifty feet.

But at Bayou La Fourche the river rises only twenty-four feet;at New Orleans only fifteen, and just above the mouth only twoand one half.

An article in the New Orleans 'Times-Democrat,' based upon reportsof able engineers, states that the river annually empties four hundredand six million tons of mud into the Gulf of Mexico--which brings to mindCaptain Marryat's rude name for the Mississippi--'the Great Sewer.'

This mud, solidified, would make a mass a mile square and two hundredand forty-one feet high.

The mud deposit gradually extends the land--but only gradually;it has extended it not quite a third of a mile in the two hundredyears which have elapsed since the river took its place in history.

The belief of the scientific people is, that the mouth used to beat Baton Rouge, where the hills cease, and that the two hundredmiles of land between there and the Gulf was built by the river.

This gives us the age of that piece of country, without anytrouble at all--one hundred and twenty thousand years.

Yet it is much the youthfullest batch of country that liesaround there anywhere.

The Mississippi is remarkable in still another way--its disposition to make prodigious jumps by cutting through narrownecks of land, and thus straightening and shortening itself.

More than once it has shortened itself thirty miles ata single jump! These cut-offs have had curious effects:

they have thrown several river towns out into the rural districts,and built up sand bars and forests in front of them.

The town of Delta used to be three miles below Vicksburg:

a recent cutoff has radically changed the position, and Delta is now TWOMILES ABOVE Vicksburg.

Both of these river towns have been retired to the country by thatcut-off. A cut-off plays havoc with boundary lines and jurisdictions:

for instance, a man is living in the State of Mississippi to-day,a cut-off occurs to-night, and to-morrow the man finds himselfand his land over on the other side of the river, within theboundaries and subject to the laws of the State of Louisiana!

Such a thing, happening in the upper river in the old times,could have transferred a slave from Missouri to Illinois and madea free man of him.

The Mississippi does not alter its locality by cut-offs alone:

it is always changing its habitat BODILY--is always moving bodily SIDEWISE.

At Hard Times, La., the river is two miles west of the region itused to occupy. As a result, the original SITE of that settlementis not now in Louisiana at all, but on the other side of the river,in the State of Mississippi. NEARLY THE WHOLE OF THAT ONE THOUSANDTHREE HUNDRED MILES OF OLD MISSISSIPPI RIVER WHICH LA SALLE FLOATED DOWNIN HIS CANOES, TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO, IS GOOD SOLID DRY GROUND NOW.

The river lies to the right of it, in places, and to the left of itin other places.

Although the Mississippi's mud builds land but slowly, down atthe mouth, where the Gulfs billows interfere with its work,it builds fast enough in better protected regions higher up:

for instance, Prophet's Island contained one thousand fivehundred acres of land thirty years ago; since then the river hasadded seven hundred acres to it.

But enough of these examples of the mighty stream's eccentricitiesfor the present--I will give a few more of them further alongin the book.

Let us drop the Mississippi's physical history, and say a wordabout its historical history--so to speak. We can glance brieflyat its slumbrous first epoch in a couple of short chapters;at its second and wider-awake epoch in a couple more; at itsflushest and widest-awake epoch in a good many succeeding chapters;and then talk about its comparatively tranquil present epochin what shall be left of the book.

The world and the books are so accustomed to use, and over-use,the word 'new' in connection with our country, that we early get andpermanently retain the impression that there is nothing old about it.

We do of course know that there are several comparatively old dates inAmerican history, but the mere figures convey to our minds no just idea,no distinct realization, of the stretch of time which they represent.

To say that De Soto, the first white man who ever saw the Mississippi River,saw it in 1542, is a remark which states a fact without interpreting it:

it is something like giving the dimensions of a sunset by astronomicalmeasurements, and cataloguing the colors by their scientific names;--as aresult, you get the bald fact of the sunset, but you don't see the sunset.

It would have been better to paint a picture of it.

The date 1542, standing by itself, means little or nothing to us;but when one groups a few neighboring historical dates and factsaround it, he adds perspective and color, and then realizes that thisis one of the American dates which is quite respectable for age.

For instance, when the Mississippi was first seen by a white man, less thana quarter of a century had elapsed since Francis I.'s defeat at Pavia;the death of Raphael; the death of Bayard, SANS PEUR ET SANS REPROCHE;the driving out of the Knights-Hospitallers from Rhodes by the Turks;and the placarding of the Ninety-Five Propositions,--the act whichbegan the Reformation. When De Soto took his glimpse of the river,Ignatius Loyola was an obscure name; the order of the Jesuits was notyet a year old; Michael Angelo's paint was not yet dry on the LastJudgment in the Sistine Chapel; Mary Queen of Scots was not yet born,but would be before the year closed. Catherine de Medici was a child;Elizabeth of England was not yet in her teens; Calvin, Benvenuto Cellini,and the Emperor Charles V. were at the top of their fame,and each was manufacturing history after his own peculiar fashion;Margaret of Navarre was writing the 'Heptameron' and some religious books,--the first survives, the others are forgotten, wit and indelicacybeing sometimes better literature preservers than holiness;lax court morals and the absurd chivalry business were in full feather,and the joust and the tournament were the frequent pastime of titled finegentlemen who could fight better than they could spell, while religionwas the passion of their ladies, and classifying their offspringinto children of full rank and children by brevet their pastime.

In fact, all around, religion was in a peculiarly blooming condition:

the Council of Trent was being called; the Spanish Inquisition was roasting,and racking, and burning, with a free hand; elsewhere on the continentthe nations were being persuaded to holy living by the sword and fire;in England, Henry VIII. had suppressed the monasteries, burnt Fisherand another bishop or two, and was getting his English reformationand his harem effectively started. When De Soto stood on the banksof the Mississippi, it was still two years before Luther's death;eleven years before the burning of Servetus; thirty years beforethe St. Bartholomew slaughter; Rabelais was not yet published;'Don Quixote' was not yet written; Shakespeare was not yet born;a hundred long years must still elapse before Englishmen would hear the nameof Oliver Cromwell.

Unquestionably the discovery of the Mississippi is a datablefact which considerably mellows and modifies the shiny newnessof our country, and gives her a most respectable outside-aspectof rustiness and antiquity.

De Soto merely glimpsed the river, then died and was buriedin it by his priests and soldiers. One would expect the priestsand the soldiers to multiply the river's dimensions by ten--the Spanish custom of the day--and thus move other adventurersto go at once and explore it. On the contrary, their narrativeswhen they reached home, did not excite that amount of curiosity.

The Mississippi was left unvisited by whites during a termof years which seems incredible in our energetic days.

One may 'sense' the interval to his mind, after a fashion,by dividing it up in this way: After De Soto glimpsed the river,a fraction short of a quarter of a century elapsed, and thenShakespeare was born; lived a trifle more than half a century,then died; and when he had been in his grave considerably morethan half a century, the SECOND white man saw the Mississippi.

In our day we don't allow a hundred and thirty years to elapsebetween glimpses of a marvel. If somebody should discovera creek in the county next to the one that the North Pole is in,Europe and America would start fifteen costly expeditions thither:

one to explore the creek, and the other fourteen to huntfor each other.

For more than a hundred and fifty years there had been whitesettlements on our Atlantic coasts. These people were in intimatecommunication with the Indians: in the south the Spaniardswere robbing, slaughtering, enslaving and converting them;higher up, the English were trading beads and blankets to themfor a consideration, and throwing in civilization and whiskey,'for lagniappe;' and in Canada the French were schooling themin a rudimentary way, missionarying among them, and drawing wholepopulations of them at a time to Quebec, and later to Montreal,to buy furs of them. Necessarily, then, these various clustersof whites must have heard of the great river of the far west;and indeed, they did hear of it vaguely,--so vaguely and indefinitely,that its course, proportions, and locality were hardly even guessable.

The mere mysteriousness of the matter ought to have firedcuriosity and compelled exploration; but this did not occur.

Apparently nobody happened to want such a river, nobody needed it,nobody was curious about it; so, for a century and a halfthe Mississippi remained out of the market and undisturbed.

When De Soto found it, he was not hunting for a river, and hadno present occasion for one; consequently he did not value itor even take any particular notice of it.

But at last La Salle the Frenchman conceived the idea ofseeking out that river and exploring it. It always happensthat when a man seizes upon a neglected and important idea,people inflamed with the same notion crop up all around.

It happened so in this instance.

Naturally the question suggests itself, Why did these people want the rivernow when nobody had wanted it in the five preceding generations?

Apparently it was because at this late day they thought theyhad discovered a way to make it useful; for it had come to bebelieved that the Mississippi emptied into the Gulf of California,and therefore afforded a short cut from Canada to China.

Previously the supposition had been that it emptied into the Atlantic,or Sea of Virginia.
Chapter 2 The River and Its Explorers
LA SALLE himself sued for certain high privileges, and theywere graciously accorded him by Louis XIV of inflated memory.

Chief among them was the privilege to explore, far and wide,and build forts, and stake out continents, and hand the same overto the king, and pay the expenses himself; receiving, in return,some little advantages of one sort or another; among themthe monopoly of buffalo hides. He spent several years andabout all of his money, in making perilous and painful tripsbetween Montreal and a fort which he had built on the Illinois,before he at last succeeded in getting his expedition in sucha shape that he could strike for the Mississippi.

And meantime other parties had had better fortune.

In 1673 Joliet the merchant, and Marquette the priest,crossed the country and reached the banks of the Mississippi.

They went by way of the Great Lakes; and from Green Bay,in canoes, by way of Fox River and the Wisconsin. Marquette hadsolemnly contracted, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception,that if the Virgin would permit him to discover the great river,he would name it Conception, in her honor. He kept his word.

In that day, all explorers traveled with an outfit of priests.

De Soto had twenty-four with him. La Salle had several, also.

The expeditions were often out of meat, and scant of clothes,but they always had the furniture and other requisites for the mass;they were always prepared, as one of the quaint chroniclers of the timephrased it, to 'explain hell to the salvages.'

On the 17th of June, 1673, the canoes of Joliet and Marquette and their fivesubordinates reached the junction of the Wisconsin with the Mississippi.

Mr. Parkman says: 'Before them a wide and rapid current coursed athwarttheir way, by the foot of lofty heights wrapped thick in forests.'

He continues: 'Turning southward, they paddled down the stream, through asolitude unrelieved by the faintest trace of man.'

A big cat-fish collided with Marquette's canoe, and startled him;and reasonably enough, for he had been warned by the Indians thathe was on a foolhardy journey, and even a fatal one, for the rivercontained a demon 'whose roar could be heard at a great distance,and who would engulf them in the abyss where he dwelt.'

I have seen a Mississippi cat-fish that was more than six feet long,and weighed two hundred and fifty pounds; and if Marquette's fishwas the fellow to that one, he had a fair right to think the river'sroaring demon was come.

'At length the buffalo began to appear, grazing in herds on the great prairieswhich then bordered the river; and Marquette describes the fierce and stupidlook of the old bulls as they stared at the intruders through the tangledmane which nearly blinded them.'

The voyagers moved cautiously: 'Landed at night and made a fireto cook their evening meal; then extinguished it, embarked again,paddled some way farther, and anchored in the stream, keeping a manon the watch till morning.'

They did this day after day and night after night;and at the end of two weeks they had not seen a human being.

The river was an awful solitude, then. And it is now, over mostof its stretch.

But at the close of the fortnight they one day came uponthe footprints of men in the mud of the western bank--a RobinsonCrusoe experience which carries an electric shiver with it yet,when one stumbles on it in print. They had been warned that theriver Indians were as ferocious and pitiless as the river demon,and destroyed all comers without waiting for provocation;but no matter, Joliet and Marquette struck into the countryto hunt up the proprietors of the tracks. They found them,by and by, and were hospitably received and well treated--if to be received by an Indian chief who has taken off his last ragin order to appear at his level best is to be received hospitably;and if to be treated abundantly to fish, porridge, and other game,including dog, and have these things forked into one's mouthby the ungloved fingers of Indians is to be well treated.

In the morning the chief and six hundred of his tribesmen escortedthe Frenchmen to the river and bade them a friendly farewell.

On the rocks above the present city of Alton they found somerude and fantastic Indian paintings, which they describe.

A short distance below 'a torrent of yellow mud rushed furiouslyathwart the calm blue current of the Mississippi, boiling and surgingand sweeping in its course logs, branches, and uprooted trees.'

This was the mouth of the Missouri, 'that savage river,'

which 'descending from its mad career through a vast unknownof barbarism, poured its turbid floods into the bosom ofits gentle sister.'

By and by they passed the mouth of the Ohio; they passed cane-brakes;they fought mosquitoes; they floated along, day after day,through the deep silence and loneliness of the river, drowsing inthe scant shade of makeshift awnings, and broiling with the heat;they encountered and exchanged civilities with another partyof Indians; and at last they reached the mouth of the Arkansas(about a month out from their starting-point), where a tribeof war-whooping savages swarmed out to meet and murder them;but they appealed to the Virgin for help; so in place of a fightthere was a feast, and plenty of pleasant palaver and fol-de-rol.

They had proved to their satisfaction, that the Mississippi didnot empty into the Gulf of California, or into the Atlantic.

They believed it emptied into the Gulf of Mexico.

They turned back, now, and carried their great news to Canada.

But belief is not proof. It was reserved for La Salle to furnish the proof.

He was provokingly delayed, by one misfortune after another, but at lastgot his expedition under way at the end of the year 1681. In the deadof winter he and Henri de Tonty, son of Lorenzo Tonty, who inventedthe tontine, his lieutenant, started down the Illinois, with a followingof eighteen Indians brought from New England, and twenty-three Frenchmen.

They moved in procession down the surface of the frozen river, on foot,and dragging their canoes after them on sledges.

At Peoria Lake they struck open water, and paddled thenceto the Mississippi and turned their prows southward.

They plowed through the fields of floating ice, past the mouthof the Missouri; past the mouth of the Ohio, by-and-by;'and, gliding by the wastes of bordering swamp, landed onthe 24th of February near the Third Chickasaw Bluffs,'

where they halted and built Fort Prudhomme.

'Again,' says Mr. Parkman, 'they embarked; and with every stage of theiradventurous progress, the mystery of this vast new world was moreand more unveiled. More and more they entered the realms of spring.

The hazy sunlight, the warm and drowsy air, the tender foliage,the opening flowers, betokened the reviving life of nature.'

Day by day they floated down the great bends, in the shadowof the dense forests, and in time arrived at the mouthof the Arkansas. First, they were greeted by the nativesof this locality as Marquette had before been greeted by them--with the booming of the war drum and the flourish of arms.

The Virgin composed the difficulty in Marquette's case;the pipe of peace did the same office for La Salle. The white manand the red man struck hands and entertained each other duringthree days. Then, to the admiration of the savages, La Salle setup a cross with the arms of France on it, and took possessionof the whole country for the king--the cool fashion of the time--while the priest piously consecrated the robbery with a hymn.

The priest explained the mysteries of the faith 'by signs,'

for the saving of the savages; thus compensating them withpossible possessions in Heaven for the certain ones on earthwhich they had just been robbed of. And also, by signs,La Salle drew from these simple children of the forestacknowledgments of fealty to Louis the Putrid, over the water.

Nobody smiled at these colossal ironies.

These performances took place on the site of the future town of Napoleon,Arkansas, and there the first confiscation-cross was raised on the banksof the great river. Marquette's and Joliet's voyage of discoveryended at the same spot--the site of the future town of Napoleon.

When De Soto took his fleeting glimpse of the river, away back in the dimearly days, he took it from that same spot--the site of the future townof Napoleon, Arkansas. Therefore, three out of the four memorableevents connected with the discovery and exploration of the mighty river,occurred, by accident, in one and the same place. It is a mostcurious distinction, when one comes to look at it and think about it.

France stole that vast country on that spot, the future Napoleon;and by and by Napoleon himself was to give the country back again!--make restitution, not to the owners, but to their white American heirs.

The voyagers journeyed on, touching here and there; 'passed the sites,since become historic, of Vicksburg and Grand Gulf,'

and visited an imposing Indian monarch in the Teche country,whose capital city was a substantial one of sun-baked bricksmixed with straw--better houses than many that exist there now.

The chiefs house contained an audience room forty feet square;and there he received Tonty in State, surrounded by sixty oldmen clothed in white cloaks. There was a temple in the town,with a mud wall about it ornamented with skulls of enemies sacrificedto the sun.

The voyagers visited the Natchez Indians, near the site of the presentcity of that name, where they found a 'religious and political despotism,a privileged class descended from the sun, a temple and a sacred fire.'

It must have been like getting home again; it was home with an advantage,in fact, for it lacked Louis XIV.

A few more days swept swiftly by, and La Salle stood in the shadowof his confiscating cross, at the meeting of the waters from Delaware,and from Itaska, and from the mountain ranges close upon the Pacific, with thewaters of the Gulf of Mexico, his task finished, his prodigy achieved.

Mr. Parkman, in closing his fascinating narrative, thus sums up:

'On that day, the realm of France received on parchmenta stupendous accession. The fertile plains of Texas;the vast basin of the Mississippi, from its frozen northernsprings to the sultry borders of the Gulf; from the woody ridgesof the Alleghanies to the bare peaks of the Rocky Mountains--a region of savannas and forests, sun-cracked deserts andgrassy prairies, watered by a thousand rivers, ranged by athousand warlike tribes, passed beneath the scepter of the Sultanof Versailles; and all by virtue of a feeble human voice,inaudible at half a mile.'
Chapter 3 Frescoes from the Past
APPARENTLY the river was ready for business, now. But no,the distribution of a population along its banks was as calmand deliberate and time-devouring a process as the discoveryand exploration had been.

Seventy years elapsed, after the exploration, before theriver's borders had a white population worth considering;and nearly fifty more before the river had a commerce.

Between La Salle's opening of the river and the time when itmay be said to have become the vehicle of anything like a regularand active commerce, seven sovereigns had occupied the throneof England, America had become an independent nation, Louis XIV.

and Louis XV. had rotted and died, the French monarchy had gonedown in the red tempest of the revolution, and Napoleon was a namethat was beginning to be talked about. Truly, there were snailsin those days.

The river's earliest commerce was in great barges--keelboats, broadhorns.

They floated and sailed from the upper rivers to New Orleans,changed cargoes there, and were tediously warped and poled backby hand. A voyage down and back sometimes occupied nine months.

In time this commerce increased until it gave employment to hordesof rough and hardy men; rude, uneducated, brave, suffering terrifichardships with sailor-like stoicism; heavy drinkers, coarse frolickersin moral sties like the Natchez-under-the-hill of that day,heavy fighters, reckless fellows, every one, elephantinely jolly,foul-witted, profane; prodigal of their money, bankrupt at the endof the trip, fond of barbaric finery, prodigious braggarts;yet, in the main, honest, trustworthy, faithful to promises and duty,and often picturesquely magnanimous.

By and by the steamboat intruded. Then for fifteen or twenty years,these men continued to run their keelboats down-stream, and the steamersdid all of the upstream business, the keelboatmen selling their boatsin New Orleans, and returning home as deck passengers in the steamers.

But after a while the steamboats so increased in number andin speed that they were able to absorb the entire commerce;and then keelboating died a permanent death. The keelboatmanbecame a deck hand, or a mate, or a pilot on the steamer;and when steamer-berths were not open to him, he took a berthon a Pittsburgh coal-flat, or on a pine-raft constructedin the forests up toward the sources of the Mississippi.

In the heyday of the steamboating prosperity, the river from endto end was flaked with coal-fleets and timber rafts, all managedby hand, and employing hosts of the rough characters whom Ihave been trying to describe. I remember the annual processionsof mighty rafts that used to glide by Hannibal when I was a boy,--an acre or so of white, sweet-smelling boards in each raft,a crew of two dozen men or more, three or four wigwams scatteredabout the raft's vast level space for storm-quarters,--and Iremember the rude ways and the tremendous talk of their big crews,the ex-keelboatmen and their admiringly patterning successors;for we used to swim out a quarter or third of a mile and get onthese rafts and have a ride.

By way of illustrating keelboat talk and manners, and thatnow-departed and hardly-remembered raft-life, I will throw in,in this place, a chapter from a book which I have been working at,by fits and starts, during the past five or six years,and may possibly finish in the course of five or six more.

The book is a story which details some passages in the lifeof an ignorant village boy, Huck Finn, son of the towndrunkard of my time out west, there. He has run away fromhis persecuting father, and from a persecuting good widow whowishes to make a nice, truth-telling, respectable boy of him;and with him a slave of the widow's has also escaped.

They have found a fragment of a lumber raft (it is highwater and dead summer time), and are floating down the riverby night, and hiding in the willows by day,--bound for Cairo,--whence the negro will seek freedom in the heart of the free States.

But in a fog, they pass Cairo without knowing it.

By and by they begin to suspect the truth, and Huck Finn ispersuaded to end the dismal suspense by swimming down to a hugeraft which they have seen in the distance ahead of them,creeping aboard under cover of the darkness, and gatheringthe needed information by eavesdropping:--But you know a young person can't wait very well when he isimpatient to find a thing out. We talked it over, and by and byJim said it was such a black night, now, that it wouldn't be norisk to swim down to the big raft and crawl aboard and listen--they would talk about Cairo, because they would be calculatingto go ashore there for a spree, maybe, or anyway they wouldsend boats ashore to buy whiskey or fresh meat or something.

Jim had a wonderful level head, for a nigger: he could most alwaysstart a good plan when you wanted one.

I stood up and shook my rags off and jumped into the river,and struck out for the raft's light. By and by, when I gotdown nearly to her, I eased up and went slow and cautious.

But everything was all right--nobody at the sweeps.

So I swum down along the raft till I was most abreast the campfire in the middle, then I crawled aboard and inched along and gotin amongst some bundles of shingles on the weather side of the fire.

There was thirteen men there--they was the watch on deck of course.

And a mighty rough-looking lot, too. They had a jug, and tin cups,and they kept the jug moving. One man was singing--roaring, you may say;and it wasn't a nice song--for a parlor anyway. He roared throughhis nose, and strung out the last word of every line very long.

When he was done they all fetched a kind of Injun war-whoop, and thenanother was sung. It begun:--'There was a woman in our towdn,In our towdn did dwed'l (dwell,)She loved her husband dear-i-lee,But another man twyste as wed'l.

Singing too, riloo, riloo, riloo,Ri-too, riloo, rilay - - - e,She loved her husband dear-i-lee,But another man twyste as wed'l.

And so on--fourteen verses. It was kind of poor, and when he wasgoing to start on the next verse one of them said it was the tunethe old cow died on; and another one said, 'Oh, give us a rest.'

And another one told him to take a walk. They made fun of himtill he got mad and jumped up and begun to cuss the crowd,and said he could lame any thief in the lot.

They was all about to make a break for him, but the biggest manthere jumped up and says--'Set whar you are, gentlemen. Leave him to me; he's my meat.'

Then he jumped up in the air three times and cracked his heelstogether every time. He flung off a buckskin coat that was all hungwith fringes, and says, 'You lay thar tell the chawin-up's done;'

and flung his hat down, which was all over ribbons, and says,'You lay thar tell his sufferin's is over.'

Then he jumped up in the air and cracked his heels together againand shouted out--'Whoo-oop! I'm the old original iron-jawed, brass-mounted,copper-bellied corpse-maker from the wilds of Arkansaw!--Look at me!

I'm the man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation!

Sired by a hurricane, dam'd by an earthquake, half-brother tothe cholera, nearly related to the small-pox on the mother's side!

Look at me! I take nineteen alligators and a bar'l of whiskeyfor breakfast when I'm in robust health, and a bushel of rattlesnakesand a dead body when I'm ailing! I split the everlastingrocks with my glance, and I squench the thunder when I speak!

Whoo-oop! Stand back and give me room according to my strength!

Blood's my natural drink, and the wails of the dying is music to my ear!

Cast your eye on me, gentlemen!--and lay low and hold your breath,for I'm bout to turn myself loose!'

All the time he was getting this off, he was shaking his headand looking fierce, and kind of swelling around in a little circle,tucking up his wrist-bands, and now and then straightening up andbeating his breast with his fist, saying, 'Look at me, gentlemen!'

When he got through, he jumped up and cracked his heels togetherthree times, and let off a roaring 'Whoo-oop! I'm the bloodiest sonof a wildcat that lives!'

Then the man that had started the row tilted his old slouchhat down over his right eye; then he bent stooping forward,with his back sagged and his south end sticking out far,and his fists a-shoving out and drawing in in front of him,and so went around in a little circle about three times,swelling himself up and breathing hard. Then he straightened,and jumped up and cracked his heels together three times,before he lit again (that made them cheer), and he begun toshout like this--'Whoo-oop! bow your neck and spread, for the kingdom of sorrow'sa-coming! Hold me down to the earth, for I feel my powersa-working! whoo-oop! I'm a child of sin, don't let me get a start!

Smoked glass, here, for all! Don't attempt to look at mewith the naked eye, gentlemen! When I'm playful I usethe meridians of longitude and parallels of latitude for a seine,and drag the Atlantic Ocean for whales! I scratch my headwith the lightning, and purr myself to sleep with the thunder!

When I'm cold, I bile the Gulf of Mexico and bathe in it;when I'm hot I fan myself with an equinoctial storm;when I'm thirsty I reach up and suck a cloud dry like a sponge;when I range the earth hungry, famine follows in my tracks!

Whoo-oop! Bow your neck and spread! I put my hand on the sun'sface and make it night in the earth; I bite a piece out of the moonand hurry the seasons; I shake myself and crumble the mountains!

Contemplate me through leather--don't use the naked eye!

I'm the man with a petrified heart and biler-iron bowels!

The massacre of isolated communities is the pastime of my idle moments,the destruction of nationalities the serious business of my life!

The boundless vastness of the great American desert is myenclosed property, and I bury my dead on my own premises!'

He jumped up and cracked his heels together three times before he lit(they cheered him again), and as he come down he shouted out:

'Whoo-oop! bow your neck and spread, for the pet child ofcalamity's a-coming! '

Then the other one went to swelling around and blowing again--the first one--the one they called Bob; next, the Child of Calamity chipped in again,bigger than ever; then they both got at it at the same time, swelling roundand round each other and punching their fists most into each other's faces,and whooping and jawing like Injuns; then Bob called the Child names,and the Child called him names back again: next, Bob called him a heaprougher names and the Child come back at him with the very worst kindof language; next, Bob knocked the Child's hat off, and the Child picked itup and kicked Bob's ribbony hat about six foot; Bob went and got it and saidnever mind, this warn't going to be the last of this thing, because he wasa man that never forgot and never forgive, and so the Child better look out,for there was a time a-coming, just as sure as he was a living man,that he would have to answer to him with the best blood in his body.

The Child said no man was willinger than he was for that time to come,and he would give Bob fair warning, now, never to cross his path again,for he could never rest till he had waded in his blood, for such washis nature, though he was sparing him now on account of his family,if he had one.

Both of them was edging away in different directions, growling andshaking their heads and going on about what they was going to do;but a little black-whiskered chap skipped up and says--'Come back here, you couple of chicken-livered cowards,and I'll thrash the two of ye!'

And he done it, too. He snatched them, he jerked them this way and that,he booted them around, he knocked them sprawling faster than they couldget up. Why, it warn't two minutes till they begged like dogs--and howthe other lot did yell and laugh and clap their hands all the way through,and shout 'Sail in, Corpse-Maker!' 'Hi! at him again, Child of Calamity!'

'Bully for you, little Davy!' Well, it was a perfect pow-wow for a while.

Bob and the Child had red noses and black eyes when they got through.

Little Davy made them own up that they were sneaks and cowards and not fitto eat with a dog or drink with a nigger; then Bob and the Child shookhands with each other, very solemn, and said they had always respectedeach other and was willing to let bygones be bygones. So then they washedtheir faces in the river; and just then there was a loud order to standby for a crossing, and some of them went forward to man the sweeps there,and the rest went aft to handle the after-sweeps.

I laid still and waited for fifteen minutes, and had a smoke out of a pipethat one of them left in reach; then the crossing was finished, and theystumped back and had a drink around and went to talking and singing again.

Next they got out an old fiddle, and one played and another patted juba,and the rest turned themselves loose on a regular old-fashioned keel-boatbreak-down. They couldn't keep that up very long without getting winded,so by and by they settled around the jug again.

They sung 'jolly, jolly raftman's the life for me,' with amusing chorus, and then they got to talking about differencesbetwixt hogs, and their different kind of habits; and next aboutwomen and their different ways: and next about the best waysto put out houses that was afire; and next about what oughtto be done with the Injuns; and next about what a king had to do,and how much he got; and next about how to make cats fight;and next about what to do when a man has fits; and next aboutdifferences betwixt clear-water rivers and muddy-water ones.

The man they called Ed said the muddy Mississippi waterwas wholesomer to drink than the clear water of the Ohio;he said if you let a pint of this yaller Mississippi water settle,you would have about a half to three-quarters of an inchof mud in the bottom, according to the stage of the river,and then it warn't no better than Ohio water--what you wantedto do was to keep it stirred up--and when the river was low,keep mud on hand to put in and thicken the water up the way itought to be.

The Child of Calamity said that was so; he said there was nutritiousnessin the mud, and a man that drunk Mississippi water could grow corn in hisstomach if he wanted to. He says--'You look at the graveyards; that tells the tale. Trees won'tgrow worth chucks in a Cincinnati graveyard, but in a SentLouis graveyard they grow upwards of eight hundred foot high.

It's all on account of the water the people drunk before they laid up.

A Cincinnati corpse don't richen a soil any.'

And they talked about how Ohio water didn't like to mix withMississippi water. Ed said if you take the Mississippi on a risewhen the Ohio is low, you'll find a wide band of clear water all the waydown the east side of the Mississippi for a hundred mile or more,and the minute you get out a quarter of a mile from shore and passthe line, it is all thick and yaller the rest of the way across.

Then they talked about how to keep tobacco from getting moldy,and from that they went into ghosts and told about a lot that otherfolks had seen; but Ed says--'Why don't you tell something that you've seen yourselves?

Now let me have a say. Five years ago I was on a raft as bigas this, and right along here it was a bright moonshiny night,and I was on watch and boss of the stabboard oar forrard, and oneof my pards was a man named Dick Allbright, and he come alongto where I was sitting, forrard--gaping and stretching, he was--and stooped down on the edge of the raft and washed his facein the river, and come and set down by me and got out his pipe,and had just got it filled, when he looks up and says--' "Why looky-here," he says, "ain't that Buck Miller's place,over yander in the bend."' "Yes," says I, "it is--why." He laid his pipe down and leanthis head on his hand, and says--' "I thought we'd be furder down." I says--' "I thought it too, when I went off watch"--we was standingsix hours on and six off--"but the boys told me," I says,"that the raft didn't seem to hardly move, for the last hour,"says I, "though she's a slipping along all right, now," says I. Hegive a kind of a groan, and says--' "I've seed a raft act so before, along here," he says, " 'pearsto me the current has most quit above the head of this bend durin'

the last two years," he says.

'Well, he raised up two or three times, and looked away offand around on the water. That started me at it, too. A body isalways doing what he sees somebody else doing, though there mayn'tbe no sense in it. Pretty soon I see a black something floatingon the water away off to stabboard and quartering behind us.

I see he was looking at it, too. I says--' "What's that?' He says, sort of pettish,--' "Tain't nothing but an old empty bar'l.

' "An empty bar'l!" says I, "why," says I, "a spy-glass is a foolto your eyes. How can you tell it's an empty bar'l?" He says--' "I don't know; I reckon it ain't a bar'l, but I thought itmight be," says he.

' "Yes," I says, "so it might be, and it might be anything else, too; a bodycan't tell nothing about it, such a distance as that," I says.

'We hadn't nothing else to do, so we kept on watching it.

By and by I says--' "Why looky-here, Dick Allbright, that thing's a-gaining on us,I believe."'He never said nothing. The thing gained and gained,and I judged it must be a dog that was about tired out.

Well, we swung down into the crossing, and the thing floatedacross the bright streak of the moonshine, and, by George,it was bar'l. Says I--' "Dick Allbright, what made you think that thing was a bar'l,when it was a half a mile off," says I. Says he--' "I don't know." Says I--' "You tell me, Dick Allbright." He says--' "Well, I knowed it was a bar'l; I've seen it before; lots has seen it;they says it's a haunted bar'l."'I called the rest of the watch, and they come and stood there,and I told them what Dick said. It floated right along abreast,now, and didn't gain any more. It was about twenty foot off.

Some was for having it aboard, but the rest didn't want to.

Dick Allbright said rafts that had fooled with it had got bad luckby it. The captain of the watch said he didn't believe in it.

He said he reckoned the bar'l gained on us because it was in a littlebetter current than what we was. He said it would leave by and by.

'So then we went to talking about other things, and we had a song,and then a breakdown; and after that the captain of the watch calledfor another song; but it was clouding up, now, and the bar'l stuck rightthar in the same place, and the song didn't seem to have much warm-upto it, somehow, and so they didn't finish it, and there warn't any cheers,but it sort of dropped flat, and nobody said anything for a minute.

Then everybody tried to talk at once, and one chap got off a joke,but it warn't no use, they didn't laugh, and even the chapthat made the joke didn't laugh at it, which ain't usual.

We all just settled down glum, and watched the bar'l, and was oneasyand oncomfortable. Well, sir, it shut down black and still,and then the wind begin to moan around, and next the lightning beginto play and the thunder to grumble. And pretty soon there wasa regular storm, and in the middle of it a man that was running aftstumbled and fell and sprained his ankle so that he had to lay up.

This made the boys shake their heads. And every time the lightning come,there was that bar'l with the blue lights winking around it.

We was always on the look-out for it. But by and by, towards dawn,she was gone. When the day come we couldn't see her anywhere, and wewarn't sorry, neither.

'But next night about half-past nine, when there was songs and highjinks going on, here she comes again, and took her old roost on thestabboard side. There warn't no more high jinks. Everybody got solemn;nobody talked; you couldn't get anybody to do anything but setaround moody and look at the bar'l. It begun to cloud up again.

When the watch changed, the off watch stayed up, 'stead of turning in.

The storm ripped and roared around all night, and in the middle of itanother man tripped and sprained his ankle, and had to knock off.

The bar'l left towards day, and nobody see it go.

'Everybody was sober and down in the mouth all day. I don't meanthe kind of sober that comes of leaving liquor alone--not that.

They was quiet, but they all drunk more than usual--not together--but each man sidled off and took it private, by himself.

'After dark the off watch didn't turn in; nobody sung,nobody talked; the boys didn't scatter around, neither; they sortof huddled together, forrard; and for two hours they set there,perfectly still, looking steady in the one direction, and heavinga sigh once in a while. And then, here comes the bar'l again.

She took up her old place. She staid there all night;nobody turned in. The storm come on again, after midnight.

It got awful dark; the rain poured down; hail, too; the thunderboomed and roared and bellowed; the wind blowed a hurricane;and the lightning spread over everything in big sheets of glare,and showed the whole raft as plain as day; and the riverlashed up white as milk as far as you could see for miles,and there was that bar'l jiggering along, same as ever.

The captain ordered the watch to man the after sweeps for a crossing,and nobody would go--no more sprained ankles for them, they said.

They wouldn't even walk aft. Well then, just then the sky splitwide open, with a crash, and the lightning killed two men of theafter watch, and crippled two more. Crippled them how, says you?

Why, sprained their ankles'The bar'l left in the dark betwixt lightnings, towards dawn.

Well, not a body eat a bite at breakfast that morning.

After that the men loafed around, in twos and threes, and talkedlow together. But none of them herded with Dick Allbright.

They all give him the cold shake. If he come aroundwhere any of the men was, they split up and sidled away.

They wouldn't man the sweeps with him. The captain had allthe skiffs hauled up on the raft, alongside of his wigwam,and wouldn't let the dead men be took ashore to be planted;he didn't believe a man that got ashore would come back;and he was right.

'After night come, you could see pretty plain that there was going to betrouble if that bar'l come again; there was such a muttering going on.

A good many wanted to kill Dick Allbright, because he'd seen the bar'lon other trips, and that had an ugly look. Some wanted to put him ashore.

Some said, let's all go ashore in a pile, if the bar'l comes again.

'This kind of whispers was still going on, the men being bunchedtogether forrard watching for the bar'l, when, lo and behold you,here she comes again. Down she comes, slow and steady,and settles into her old tracks. You could a heard a pin drop.

Then up comes the captain, and says:--' "Boys, don't be a pack of children and fools; I don'twant this bar'l to be dogging us all the way to Orleans,and YOU don't; well, then, how's the best way to stop it?

Burn it up,--that's the way. I'm going to fetch it aboard," he says.

And before anybody could say a word, in he went.

'He swum to it, and as he come pushing it to the raft, the men spreadto one side. But the old man got it aboard and busted in the head,and there was a baby in it! Yes, sir, a stark naked baby.

It was Dick Allbright's baby; he owned up and said so.

' "Yes," he says, a-leaning over it, "yes, it is my ownlamented darling, my poor lost Charles William Allbright deceased,"says he,--for he could curl his tongue around the bulliestwords in the language when he was a mind to, and lay thembefore you without a jint started, anywheres. Yes, he saidhe used to live up at the head of this bend, and one nighthe choked his child, which was crying, not intending tokill it,--which was prob'ly a lie,--and then he was scared,and buried it in a bar'l, before his wife got home, and offhe went, and struck the northern trail and went to rafting;and this was the third year that the bar'l had chased him.

He said the bad luck always begun light, and lasted till four menwas killed, and then the bar'l didn't come any more after that.

He said if the men would stand it one more night,--and was a-going on like that,--but the men had got enough.

They started to get out a boat to take him ashore and lynch him,but he grabbed the little child all of a sudden and jumpedoverboard with it hugged up to his breast and shedding tears,and we never see him again in this life, poor old suffering soul,nor Charles William neither.'

'WHO was shedding tears?' says Bob; 'was it Allbright or the baby?'

'Why, Allbright, of course; didn't I tell you the baby was dead.

Been dead three years--how could it cry?'

'Well, never mind how it could cry--how could it KEEP all that time?'

says Davy. 'You answer me that.'

'I don't know how it done it,' says Ed. 'It done it though--that's all I know about it.'

'Say--what did they do with the bar'l?' says the Child of Calamity.

'Why, they hove it overboard, and it sunk like a chunk of lead.'

'Edward, did the child look like it was choked?' says one.

'Did it have its hair parted?' says another.

'What was the brand on that bar'l, Eddy?' says a fellow they called Bill.

'Have you got the papers for them statistics, Edmund?' says Jimmy.

'Say, Edwin, was you one of the men that was killed by the lightning.'

says Davy.

'Him? O, no, he was both of 'em,' says Bob. Then they all haw-hawed.

'Say, Edward, don't you reckon you'd better take a pill?

You look bad--don't you feel pale?' says the Child of Calamity.

'O, come, now, Eddy,' says Jimmy, 'show up; you must a kept part of that bar'lto prove the thing by. Show us the bunghole--do--and we'll all believe you.'

'Say, boys,' says Bill, 'less divide it up. Thar's thirteen of us.

I can swaller a thirteenth of the yarn, if you can worry down the rest.'

Ed got up mad and said they could all go to some place which he rippedout pretty savage, and then walked off aft cussing to himself,and they yelling and jeering at him, and roaring and laughing so youcould hear them a mile.

'Boys, we'll split a watermelon on that,' says the Child of Calamity;and he come rummaging around in the dark amongst the shingle bundleswhere I was, and put his hand on me. I was warm and soft and naked;so he says 'Ouch!' and jumped back.

'Fetch a lantern or a chunk of fire here, boys--there's a snakehere as big as a cow!'

So they run there with a lantern and crowded up and looked in on me.

'Come out of that, you beggar!' says one.

'Who are you?' says another.

'What are you after here? Speak up prompt, or overboard you go.

'Snake him out, boys. Snatch him out by the heels.'

I began to beg, and crept out amongst them trembling.

They looked me over, wondering, and the Child of Calamity says--'A cussed thief! Lend a hand and less heave him overboard!'

'No,' says Big Bob, 'less get out the paint-pot and paint him a skyblue all over from head to heel, and then heave him over! '

'Good, that 's it. Go for the paint, Jimmy.'

When the paint come, and Bob took the brush and was just going to begin,the others laughing and rubbing their hands, I begun to cry, and that sortof worked on Davy, and he says--' 'Vast there! He 's nothing but a cub. 'I'll paint the manthat tetches him!'

So I looked around on them, and some of them grumbled and growled,and Bob put down the paint, and the others didn't take it up.

'Come here to the fire, and less see what you're up to here,'

says Davy. 'Now set down there and give an account of yourself.

How long have you been aboard here?'

'Not over a quarter of a minute, sir,' says I.

'How did you get dry so quick?'

'I don't know, sir. I'm always that way, mostly.'

'Oh, you are, are you. What's your name?'

I warn't going to tell my name. I didn't know what to say,so I just says--'Charles William Allbright, sir.'

Then they roared--the whole crowd; and I was mighty glad I said that,because maybe laughing would get them in a better humor.

When they got done laughing, Davy says--'It won't hardly do, Charles William. You couldn't have growed thismuch in five year, and you was a baby when you come out of the bar'l,you know, and dead at that. Come, now, tell a straight story,and nobody'll hurt you, if you ain't up to anything wrong.

What is your name.?'

'Aleck Hopkins, sir. Aleck James Hopkins.'

'Well, Aleck, where did you come from, here.?'

'From a trading scow. She lays up the bend yonder.

I was born on her. Pap has traded up and down here all his life;and he told me to swim off here, because when you went by he saidhe would like to get some of you to speak to a Mr. Jonas Turner,in Cairo, and tell him--'

'Oh, come!'

'Yes, sir; it's as true as the world; Pap he says--'

'Oh, your grandmother!'

They all laughed, and I tried again to talk, hut they broke in on meand stopped me.

'Now, looky-here,' says Davy; 'you're scared, and so you talk wild.

Honest, now, do you live in a scow, or is it a lie?'

'Yes, sir, in a trading scow. She lays up at the head of the bend.

But I warn't born in her. It's our first trip.'

'Now you're talking! What did you come aboard here, for? To steal?'

'No, sir, I didn't.--It was only to get a ride on the raft.

All boys does that.'

'Well, I know that. But what did you hide for?'

'Sometimes they drive the boys off.'

'So they do. They might steal. Looky-here; if we let you off this time,will you keep out of these kind of scrapes hereafter?'

''Deed I will, boss. You try me.'

'All right, then. You ain't but little ways from shore.

Overboard with you, and don't you make a fool of yourselfanother time this way.--Blast it, boy, some raftsmen wouldrawhide you till you were black and blue!'

I didn't wait to kiss good-bye, but went overboard and broke for shore.

When Jim come along by and by, the big raft was away out of sight aroundthe point. I swum out and got aboard, and was mighty glad to see home again.

The boy did not get the information he was after, but his adventurehas furnished the glimpse of the departed raftsman and keelboatmanwhich I desire to offer in this place.

I now come to a phase of the Mississippi River life of the flushtimes of steamboating, which seems to me to warrant full examination--the marvelous science of piloting, as displayed there.

I believe there has been nothing like it elsewhere in the world.
Chapter 4 The Boys' Ambition
WHEN I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among mycomrades in our village on the westbank of the Mississippi River. That was, to be a steamboatman.

We had transient ambitions of other sorts, but they were only transient.

When a circus came and went, it left us all burning to become clowns;the first negro minstrel show that came to our section left usall suffering to try that kind of life; now and then we had a hopethat if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.

These ambitions faded out, each in its turn; but the ambition to be asteamboatman always remained.

Once a day a cheap, gaudy packet arrived upward from St. Louis,and another downward from Keokuk. Before these events, the daywas glorious with expectancy; after them, the day was a dead andempty thing. Not only the boys, but the whole village, felt this.

After all these years I can picture that old time to myself now,just as it was then: the white town drowsing in the sunshineof a summer's morning; the streets empty, or pretty nearly so;one or two clerks sitting in front of the Water Street stores,with their splint-bottomed chairs tilted back against the wall,chins on breasts, hats slouched over their faces, asleep--with shingle-shavings enough around to show what broke them down;a sow and a litter of pigs loafing along the sidewalk,doing a good business in watermelon rinds and seeds; two orthree lonely little freight piles scattered about the 'levee;'

a pile of 'skids' on the slope of the stone-paved wharf,and the fragrant town drunkard asleep in the shadow of them;two or three wood flats at the head of the wharf, but nobodyto listen to the peaceful lapping of the wavelets against them;the great Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi,rolling its mile-wide tide along, shining in the sun; the denseforest away on the other side; the 'point' above the town,and the 'point' below, bounding the river-glimpse and turningit into a sort of sea, and withal a very still and brilliantand lonely one. Presently a film of dark smoke appears aboveone of those remote 'points;' instantly a negro drayman,famous for his quick eye and prodigious voice, lifts upthe cry, 'S-t-e-a-m-boat a-comin'!' and the scene changes!

The town drunkard stirs, the clerks wake up, a furiousclatter of drays follows, every house and store poursout a human contribution, and all in a twinkling the deadtown is alive and moving. Drays, carts, men, boys, all gohurrying from many quarters to a common center, the wharf.

Assembled there, the people fasten their eyes upon the comingboat as upon a wonder they are seeing for the first time.

And the boat IS rather a handsome sight, too. She is long and sharpand trim and pretty; she has two tall, fancy-topped chimneys,with a gilded device of some kind swung between them;a fanciful pilot-house, a glass and 'gingerbread', perched on topof the 'texas' deck behind them; the paddle-boxes are gorgeouswith a picture or with gilded rays above the boat's name;the boiler deck, the hurricane deck, and the texas deckare fenced and ornamented with clean white railings;there is a flag gallantly flying from the jack-staff;the furnace doors are open and the fires glaring bravely;the upper decks are black with passengers; the captain standsby the big bell, calm, imposing, the envy of all; great volumesof the blackest smoke are rolling and tumbling out of the chimneys--a husbanded grandeur created with a bit of pitch pine just beforearriving at a town; the crew are grouped on the forecastle;the broad stage is run far out over the port bow, and an envieddeckhand stands picturesquely on the end of it with a coilof rope in his hand; the pent steam is screaming throughthe gauge-cocks, the captain lifts his hand, a bell rings,the wheels stop; then they turn back, churning the water to foam,and the steamer is at rest. Then such a scramble as thereis to get aboard, and to get ashore, and to take in freightand to discharge freight, all at one and the same time;and such a yelling and cursing as the mates facilitate it all with!

Ten minutes later the steamer is under way again, with no flagon the jack-staff and no black smoke issuing from the chimneys.

After ten more minutes the town is dead again, and the towndrunkard asleep by the skids once more.

My father was a justice of the peace, and I supposed he possessedthe power of life and death over all men and could hang anybody thatoffended him. This was distinction enough for me as a general thing;but the desire to be a steamboatman kept intruding, nevertheless.

I first wanted to be a cabin-boy, so that I could come out with a whiteapron on and shake a tablecloth over the side, where all my old comradescould see me; later I thought I would rather be the deckhand who stoodon the end of the stage-plank with the coil of rope in his hand,because he was particularly conspicuous. But these were only day-dreams,--they were too heavenly to be contemplated as real possibilities.

By and by one of our boys went away. He was not heard of for a long time.

At last he turned up as apprentice engineer or 'striker' on a steamboat.

This thing shook the bottom out of all my Sunday-school teachings.

That boy had been notoriously worldly, and I just the reverse;yet he was exalted to this eminence, and I left in obscurity and misery.

There was nothing generous about this fellow in his greatness.

He would always manage to have a rusty bolt to scrub while his boattarried at our town, and he would sit on the inside guard andscrub it, where we could all see him and envy him and loathe him.

And whenever his boat was laid up he would come home and swell aroundthe town in his blackest and greasiest clothes, so that nobody couldhelp remembering that he was a steamboatman; and he used all sortsof steamboat technicalities in his talk, as if he were so usedto them that he forgot common people could not understand them.

He would speak of the 'labboard' side of a horse in an easy, natural waythat would make one wish he was dead. And he was always talking about'St. Looy' like an old citizen; he would refer casually to occasionswhen he 'was coming down Fourth Street,' or when he was 'passingby the Planter's House,' or when there was a fire and he took a turnon the brakes of 'the old Big Missouri;' and then he would go on and lieabout how many towns the size of ours were burned down there that day.

Two or three of the boys had long been persons of consideration amongus because they had been to St. Louis once and had a vague generalknowledge of its wonders, but the day of their glory was over now.

They lapsed into a humble silence, and learned to disappear when the ruthless'cub'-engineer approached. This fellow had money, too, and hair oil.

Also an ignorant silver watch and a showy brass watch chain.

He wore a leather belt and used no suspenders. If ever a youthwas cordially admired and hated by his comrades, this one was.

No girl could withstand his charms. He 'cut out' every boy in the village.

When his boat blew up at last, it diffused a tranquil contentmentamong us such as we had not known for months. But when he camehome the next week, alive, renowned, and appeared in church allbattered up and bandaged, a shining hero, stared at and wonderedover by everybody, it seemed to us that the partiality of Providencefor an undeserving reptile had reached a point where it was open tocriticism.

This creature's career could produce but one result, and itspeedily followed. Boy after boy managed to get on the river.

The minister's son became an engineer. The doctor's and thepost-master's sons became 'mud clerks;' the wholesale liquordealer's son became a barkeeper on a boat; four sons of thechief merchant, and two sons of the county judge, became pilots.

Pilot was the grandest position of all. The pilot, even in those daysof trivial wages, had a princely salary--from a hundred and fiftyto two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and no board to pay.

Two months of his wages would pay a preacher's salary for a year.

Now some of us were left disconsolate. We could not get on the river--at least our parents would not let us.

So by and by I ran away. I said I never would come home again till Iwas a plot and could come in glory. But somehow I could not manage it.

I went meekly aboard a few of the boats that lay packed together like sardinesat the long St. Louis wharf, and very humbly inquired for the pilots,but got only a cold shoulder and short words from mates and clerks.

I had to make the best of this sort of treatment for the time being,but I had comforting daydreams of a future when I should be a great andhonored pilot, with plenty of money, and could kill some of these matesand clerks and pay for them.
Chapter 5 I Want to be a Cub-pilot
MONTHS afterward the hope within me struggled to a reluctant death,and I found myself without an ambition. But I was ashamed to go home.

I was in Cincinnati, and I set to work to map out a new career.

I had been reading about the recent exploration of the river Amazonby an expedition sent out by our government. It was said thatthe expedition, owing to difficulties, had not thoroughly explored a partof the country lying about the head-waters, some four thousand milesfrom the mouth of the river. It was only about fifteen hundred milesfrom Cincinnati to New Orleans, where I could doubtless get a ship.

I had thirty dollars left; I would go and complete the explorationof the Amazon. This was all the thought I gave to the subject.

I never was great in matters of detail. I packed my valise, and tookpassage on an ancient tub called the 'Paul Jones,' for New Orleans.

For the sum of sixteen dollars I had the scarred and tarnished splendorsof 'her' main saloon principally to myself, for she was not a creature toattract the eye of wiser travelers.

When we presently got under way and went poking down the broad Ohio,I became a new being, and the subject of my own admiration.

I was a traveler! A word never had tasted so good in my mouth before.

I had an exultant sense of being bound for mysterious lands and distantclimes which I never have felt in so uplifting a degree since.

I was in such a glorified condition that all ignoble feelings departedout of me, and I was able to look down and pity the untraveledwith a compassion that had hardly a trace of contempt in it.

Still, when we stopped at villages and wood-yards, I could not helplolling carelessly upon the railings of the boiler deck to enjoythe envy of the country boys on the bank. If they did not seemto discover me, I presently sneezed to attract their attention,or moved to a position where they could not help seeing me.

And as soon as I knew they saw me I gaped and stretched, and gave othersigns of being mightily bored with traveling.

I kept my hat off all the time, and stayed where the windand the sun could strike me, because I wanted to getthe bronzed and weather-beaten look of an old traveler.

Before the second day was half gone I experienced a joywhich filled me with the purest gratitude; for I saw thatthe skin had begun to blister and peel off my face and neck.

I wished that the boys and girls at home could see me now.

We reached Louisville in time--at least the neighborhood of it.

We stuck hard and fast on the rocks in the middle of the river,and lay there four days. I was now beginning to feel a strongsense of being a part of the boat's family, a sort of infantson to the captain and younger brother to the officers.

There is no estimating the pride I took in this grandeur,or the affection that began to swell and grow in me forthose people. I could not know how the lordly steamboatmanscorns that sort of presumption in a mere landsman.

I particularly longed to acquire the least trifle of noticefrom the big stormy mate, and I was on the alert for anopportunity to do him a service to that end. It came at last.

The riotous powwow of setting a spar was going on down onthe forecastle, and I went down there and stood around in the way--or mostly skipping out of it--till the mate suddenly roareda general order for somebody to bring him a capstan bar.

I sprang to his side and said: 'Tell me where it is--I'll fetch it!'

If a rag-picker had offered to do a diplomatic service for the Emperorof Russia, the monarch could not have been more astounded than the mate was.

He even stopped swearing. He stood and stared down at me.

It took him ten seconds to scrape his disjointed remains together again.

Then he said impressively: 'Well, if this don't beat hell!'

and turned to his work with the air of a man who had been confrontedwith a problem too abstruse for solution.

I crept away, and courted solitude for the rest of the day.

I did not go to dinner; I stayed away from supper until everybody elsehad finished. I did not feel so much like a member of the boat'sfamily now as before. However, my spirits returned, in installments,as we pursued our way down the river. I was sorry I hated the mate so,because it was not in (young) human nature not to admire him.

He was huge and muscular, his face was bearded and whiskered all over;he had a red woman and a blue woman tattooed on his right arm,--one on each side of a blue anchor with a red rope to it;and in the matter of profanity he was sublime. When he was gettingout cargo at a landing, I was always where I could see and hear.

He felt all the majesty of his great position, and made the worldfeel it, too. When he gave even the simplest order, he dischargedit like a blast of lightning, and sent a long, reverberating pealof profanity thundering after it. I could not help contrastingthe way in which the average landsman would give an order,with the mate's way of doing it. If the landsman should wishthe gang-plank moved a foot farther forward, he would probably say:

'James, or William, one of you push that plank forward, please;' but putthe mate in his place and he would roar out: 'Here, now, start thatgang-plank for'ard! Lively, now! WHAT're you about! Snatch it!

SNATCH it! There! there! Aft again! aft again! don't you hear me.

Dash it to dash! are you going to SLEEP over it! 'VAST heaving.

'Vast heaving, I tell you! Going to heave it clear astern?

WHERE're you going with that barrel! FOR'ARD with it 'fore I makeyou swallow it, you dash-dash-dash-DASHED split between a tiredmud-turtle and a crippled hearse-horse!'

I wished I could talk like that.

When the soreness of my adventure with the mate had somewhat worn off,I began timidly to make up to the humblest official connectedwith the boat--the night watchman. He snubbed my advancesat first, but I presently ventured to offer him a new chalk pipe;and that softened him. So he allowed me to sit with him by the bigbell on the hurricane deck, and in time he melted into conversation.

He could not well have helped it, I hung with such homage on hiswords and so plainly showed that I felt honored by his notice.

He told me the names of dim capes and shadowy islands as we glidedby them in the solemnity of the night, under the winking stars,and by and by got to talking about himself. He seemedover-sentimental for a man whose salary was six dollars a week--or rather he might have seemed so to an older person than I. ButI drank in his words hungrily, and with a faith that mighthave moved mountains if it had been applied judiciously.

What was it to me that he was soiled and seedy and fragrant with gin.

What was it to me that his grammar was bad, his construction worse,and his profanity so void of art that it was an element of weaknessrather than strength in his conversation? He was a wronged man,a man who had seen trouble, and that was enough for me.

As he mellowed into his plaintive history his tears drippedupon the lantern in his lap, and I cried, too, from sympathy.

He said he was the son of an English nobleman--either an earlor an alderman, he could not remember which, but believed was both;his father, the nobleman, loved him, but his mother hated himfrom the cradle; and so while he was still a little boy he was sentto 'one of them old, ancient colleges'--he couldn't remember which;and by and by his father died and his mother seized the propertyand 'shook' him as he phrased it. After his mother shook him,members of the nobility with whom he was acquainted used theirinfluence to get him the position of 'loblolly-boy in a ship;'

and from that point my watchman threw off all trammels of dateand locality and branched out into a narrative that bristled allalong with incredible adventures; a narrative that was so reekingwith bloodshed and so crammed with hair-breadth escapes and the mostengaging and unconscious personal villainies, that I sat speechless,enjoying, shuddering, wondering, worshipping.

It was a sore blight to find out afterwards that he wasa low, vulgar, ignorant, sentimental, half-witted humbug,an untraveled native of the wilds of Illinois, who hadabsorbed wildcat literature and appropriated its marvels,until in time he had woven odds and ends of the mess intothis yarn, and then gone on telling it to fledglings like me,until he had come to believe it himself.
Chapter 6 A Cub-pilot's Experience
WHAT with lying on the rocks four days at Louisville, and someother delays, the poor old 'Paul Jones' fooled away about twoweeks in making the voyage from Cincinnati to New Orleans.

This gave me a chance to get acquainted with one of the pilots,and he taught me how to steer the boat, and thus made the fascinationof river life more potent than ever for me.

It also gave me a chance to get acquainted with a youth who had takendeck passage--more's the pity; for he easily borrowed six dollars of meon a promise to return to the boat and pay it back to me the day afterwe should arrive. But he probably died or forgot, for he never came.

It was doubtless the former, since he had said his parents were wealthy,and he only traveled deck passage because it was cooler.

'Deck' Passage, i.e. steerage passage.]>

I soon discovered two things. One was that a vessel would not belikely to sail for the mouth of the Amazon under ten or twelve years;and the other was that the nine or ten dollars still leftin my pocket would not suffice for so imposing an explorationas I had planned, even if I could afford to wait for a ship.

Therefore it followed that I must contrive a new career.

The 'Paul Jones' was now bound for St. Louis. I planned a siegeagainst my pilot, and at the end of three hard days he surrendered.

He agreed to teach me the Mississippi River from New Orleansto St. Louis for five hundred dollars, payable out of the firstwages I should receive after graduating. I entered upon the smallenterprise of 'learning' twelve or thirteen hundred miles of the greatMississippi River with the easy confidence of my time of life.

If I had really known what I was about to require of my faculties,I should not have had the courage to begin. I supposedthat all a pilot had to do was to keep his boat in the river,and I did not consider that that could be much of a trick,since it was so wide.

The boat backed out from New Orleans at four in the afternoon,and it was 'our watch' until eight. Mr. Bixby, my chief,'straightened her up,' plowed her along past the sterns of the otherboats that lay at the Levee, and then said, 'Here, take her;shave those steamships as close as you'd peel an apple.'

I took the wheel, and my heart-beat fluttered up intothe hundreds; for it seemed to me that we were about to scrapethe side off every ship in the line, we were so close.

I held my breath and began to claw the boat away from the danger;and I had my own opinion of the pilot who had known no betterthan to get us into such peril, but I was too wise to express it.

In half a minute I had a wide margin of safety interveningbetween the 'Paul Jones' and the ships; and within ten secondsmore I was set aside in disgrace, and Mr. Bixby was going intodanger again and flaying me alive with abuse of my cowardice.

I was stung, but I was obliged to admire the easy confidence withwhich my chief loafed from side to side of his wheel, and trimmedthe ships so closely that disaster seemed ceaselessly imminent.

When he had cooled a little he told me that the easy waterwas close ashore and the current outside, and therefore we musthug the bank, up-stream, to get the benefit of the former,and stay well out, down-stream, to take advantage of the latter.

In my own mind I resolved to be a down-stream pilot and leavethe up-streaming to people dead to prudence.

Now and then Mr. Bixby called my attention to certain things.

Said he, 'This is Six-Mile Point.' I assented. It was pleasantenough information, but I could not see the bearing of it.

I was not conscious that it was a matter of any interest to me.

Another time he said, 'This is Nine-Mile Point.'

Later he said, 'This is Twelve-Mile Point.' They wereall about level with the water's edge; they all lookedabout alike to me; they were monotonously unpicturesque.

I hoped Mr. Bixby would change the subject. But no; he wouldcrowd up around a point, hugging the shore with affection,and then say: 'The slack water ends here, abreast this bunchof China-trees; now we cross over.' So he crossed over.

He gave me the wheel once or twice, but I had no luck.

I either came near chipping off the edge of a sugar plantation,or I yawed too far from shore, and so dropped back into disgrace againand got abused.

The watch was ended at last, and we took supper and went to bed.

At midnight the glare of a lantern shone in my eyes, and thenight watchman said--'Come! turn out!'

And then he left. I could not understand this extraordinary procedure;so I presently gave up trying to, and dozed off to sleep.

Pretty soon the watchman was back again, and this time he was gruff.

I was annoyed. I said:--'What do you want to come bothering around here in the middle ofthe night for. Now as like as not I'll not get to sleep again to-night.'

The watchman said--'Well, if this an't good, I'm blest.'

The 'off-watch' was just turning in, and I heard some brutallaughter from them, and such remarks as 'Hello, watchman!

an't the new cub turned out yet? He's delicate, likely.

Give him some sugar in a rag and send for the chambermaid to singrock-a-by-baby to him.'

About this time Mr. Bixby appeared on the scene.

Something like a minute later I was climbing the pilot-housesteps with some of my clothes on and the rest in my arms.

Mr. Bixby was close behind, commenting. Here was something fresh--this thing of getting up in the middle of the night to go to work.

It was a detail in piloting that had never occurred to me at all.

I knew that boats ran all night, but somehow I had never happenedto reflect that somebody had to get up out of a warm bed to run them.

I began to fear that piloting was not quite so romantic as Ihad imagined it was; there was something very real and work-likeabout this new phase of it.

It was a rather dingy night, although a fair number of stars were out.

The big mate was at the wheel, and he had the old tub pointed ata star and was holding her straight up the middle of the river.

The shores on either hand were not much more than half a mile apart,but they seemed wonderfully far away and ever so vague and indistinct.

The mate said:--'We've got to land at Jones's plantation, sir.'

The vengeful spirit in me exulted. I said to myself,I wish you joy of your job, Mr. Bixby; you'll have a goodtime finding Mr. Jones's plantation such a night as this;and I hope you never WILL find it as long as you live.

Mr. Bixby said to the mate:--'Upper end of the plantation, or the lower.?'

'Upper.'

'I can't do it. The stumps there are out of water at this stage:

It's no great distance to the lower, and you'll have to getalong with that.'

'All right, sir. If Jones don't like it he'll have to lump it,I reckon.'

And then the mate left. My exultation began to cool and my wonderto come up. Here was a man who not only proposed to find thisplantation on such a night, but to find either end of it you preferred.

I dreadfully wanted to ask a question, but I was carrying about as manyshort answers as my cargo-room would admit of, so I held my peace.

All I desired to ask Mr. Bixby was the simple question whether he wasass enough to really imagine he was going to find that plantation ona night when all plantations were exactly alike and all the same color.

But I held in. I used to have fine inspirations of prudencein those days.

Mr. Bixby made for the shore and soon was scraping it, just the same as if ithad been daylight. And not only that, but singing--'Father in heaven, the day is declining,' etc."It seemed to me that I had put my life in the keeping of a peculiarlyreckless outcast. Presently he turned on me and said:--'What's the name of the first point above New Orleans?'

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did.

I said I didn't know.

'Don't KNOW?'

This manner jolted me. I was down at the foot again, in a moment.

But I had to say just what I had said before.

'Well, you're a smart one,' said Mr. Bixby. 'What's the nameof the NEXT point?'

Once more I didn't know.

'Well, this beats anything. Tell me the name of ANY point or placeI told you.'

I studied a while and decided that I couldn't.

'Look here! What do you start out from, above Twelve-Mile Point,to cross over?'

'I--I-- don't know.'

'You--you--don't know?' mimicking my drawling manner of speech.

'What DO you know?'

'I--I-- nothing, for certain.'

'By the great Caesar's ghost, I believe you! You're the stupidestdunderhead I ever saw or ever heard of, so help me Moses!

The idea of you being a pilot--you! Why, you don't know enoughto pilot a cow down a lane.'

Oh, but his wrath was up! He was a nervous man, and he shuffledfrom one side of his wheel to the other as if the floor was hot.

He would boil a while to himself, and then overflow and scald me again.

'Look here! What do you suppose I told you the names of those points for?'

I tremblingly considered a moment, and then the devil of temptationprovoked me to say:--'Well--to--to--be entertaining, I thought.'

This was a red rag to the bull. He raged and stormed so (he wascrossing the river at the time) that I judge it made him blind,because he ran over the steering-oar of a trading-scow. Ofcourse the traders sent up a volley of red-hot profanity.

Never was a man so grateful as Mr. Bixby was:

because he was brim full, and here were subjects who wouldTALK BACK. He threw open a window, thrust his head out,and such an irruption followed as I never had heard before.

The fainter and farther away the scowmen's curses drifted,the higher Mr. Bixby lifted his voice and the weightier hisadjectives grew. When he closed the window he was empty.

You could have drawn a seine through his system and not caught cursesenough to disturb your mother with. Presently he said to me inthe gentlest way--'My boy, you must get a little memorandum book, and every time Itell you a thing, put it down right away. There's only one wayto be a pilot, and that is to get this entire river by heart.

You have to know it just like A B C.'

That was a dismal revelation to me; for my memory was neverloaded with anything but blank cartridges. However, I didnot feel discouraged long. I judged that it was best to makesome allowances, for doubtless Mr. Bixby was 'stretching.'

Presently he pulled a rope and struck a few strokes on the big bell.

The stars were all gone now, and the night was as black as ink.

I could hear the wheels churn along the bank, but I was not entirelycertain that I could see the shore. The voice of the invisiblewatchman called up from the hurricane deck--'What's this, sir?'

'Jones's plantation.'

I said to myself, I wish I might venture to offer a small betthat it isn't. But I did not chirp. I only waited to see.

Mr. Bixby handled the engine bells, and in due time the boat'snose came to the land, a torch glowed from the forecastle,a man skipped ashore, a darky's voice on the bank said,'Gimme de k'yarpet-bag, Mars' Jones,' and the next moment wewere standing up the river again, all serene. I reflecteddeeply awhile, and then said--but not aloud--'Well, the findingof that plantation was the luckiest accident that ever happened;but it couldn't happen again in a hundred years.' And I fullybelieved it was an accident, too.

By the time we had gone seven or eight hundred miles up the river,I had learned to be a tolerably plucky up-stream steersman,in daylight, and before we reached St. Louis I had madea trifle of progress in night-work, but only a trifle.

I had a note-book that fairly bristled with the names of towns,'points,' bars, islands, bends, reaches, etc.; but the informationwas to be found only in the notebook--none of it was in my head.

It made my heart ache to think I had only got half of the riverset down; for as our watch was four hours off and four hours on,day and night, there was a long four-hour gap in my book for everytime I had slept since the voyage began.

My chief was presently hired to go on a big New Orleans boat, and I packedmy satchel and went with him. She was a grand affair. When I stoodin her pilot-house I was so far above the water that I seemed perched ona mountain; and her decks stretched so far away, fore and aft, below me,that I wondered how I could ever have considered the little 'Paul Jones'

a large craft. There were other differences, too. The 'Paul Jones's'

pilot-house was a cheap, dingy, battered rattle-trap, cramped for room:

but here was a sumptuous glass temple; room enough to have a dance in;showy red and gold window-curtains; an imposing sofa; leather cushionsand a back to the high bench where visiting pilots sit, to spin yarnsand 'look at the river;' bright, fanciful 'cuspadores' instead of abroad wooden box filled with sawdust; nice new oil-cloth on the floor;a hospitable big stove for winter; a wheel as high as my head,costly with inlaid work; a wire tiller-rope; bright brass knobsfor the bells; and a tidy, white-aproned, black 'texas-tender,' tobring up tarts and ices and coffee during mid-watch, day and night.

Now this was 'something like,' and so I began to take heart once moreto believe that piloting was a romantic sort of occupation after all.

The moment we were under way I began to prowl about the great steamerand fill myself with joy. She was as clean and as dainty as a drawing-room;when I looked down her long, gilded saloon, it was like gazing througha splendid tunnel; she had an oil-picture, by some gifted sign-painter,on every stateroom door; she glittered with no end of prism-fringedchandeliers; the clerk's office was elegant, the bar was marvelous,and the bar-keeper had been barbered and upholstered at incredible cost.

The boiler deck (i.e. the second story of the boat, so to speak)was as spacious as a church, it seemed to me; so with the forecastle;and there was no pitiful handful of deckhands, firemen, and roustaboutsdown there, but a whole battalion of men. The fires were fiercely glaringfrom a long row of furnaces, and over them were eight huge boilers!

This was unutterable pomp. The mighty engines--but enough of this.

I had never felt so fine before. And when I found that the regimentof natty servants respectfully 'sir'd' me, my satisfaction was complete.
Chapter 7 A Daring Deed
WHEN I returned to the pilot-house St. Louis was gone and I was lost.

Here was a piece of river which was all down in my book,but I could make neither head nor tail of it: you understand,it was turned around. I had seen it when coming up-stream, but Ihad never faced about to see how it looked when it was behind me.

My heart broke again, for it was plain that I had got to learn thistroublesome river BOTH WAYS.

The pilot-house was full of pilots, going down to 'look at the river.'

What is called the 'upper river' (the two hundred miles between St. Louisand Cairo, where the Ohio comes in) was low; and the Mississippi changesits channel so constantly that the pilots used to always find itnecessary to run down to Cairo to take a fresh look, when their boatswere to lie in port a week; that is, when the water was at a low stage.

A deal of this 'looking at the river' was done by poor fellows who seldomhad a berth, and whose only hope of getting one lay in their beingalways freshly posted and therefore ready to drop into the shoesof some reputable pilot, for a single trip, on account of such pilot'ssudden illness, or some other necessity. And a good many of themconstantly ran up and down inspecting the river, not because they everreally hoped to get a berth, but because (they being guests of the boat)it was cheaper to 'look at the river' than stay ashore and pay board.

In time these fellows grew dainty in their tastes, and only infestedboats that had an established reputation for setting good tables.

All visiting pilots were useful, for they were always ready and willing,winter or summer, night or day, to go out in the yawl and help buoythe channel or assist the boat's pilots in any way they could.

They were likewise welcome because all pilots are tireless talkers,when gathered together, and as they talk only about the river theyare always understood and are always interesting. Your true pilotcares nothing about anything on earth but the river, and his pridein his occupation surpasses the pride of kings.

We had a fine company of these river-inspectors along, this trip.

There were eight or ten; and there was abundance of room for them in ourgreat pilot-house. Two or three of them wore polished silk hats, elaborateshirt-fronts, diamond breast-pins, kid gloves, and patent-leather boots.

They were choice in their English, and bore themselves with a dignityproper to men of solid means and prodigious reputation as pilots.

The others were more or less loosely clad, and wore upon their heads tallfelt cones that were suggestive of the days of the Commonwealth.

I was a cipher in this august company, and felt subdued, not to say torpid.

I was not even of sufficient consequence to assist at the wheel when itwas necessary to put the tiller hard down in a hurry; the guest that stoodnearest did that when occasion required--and this was pretty much allthe time, because of the crookedness of the channel and the scant water.

I stood in a corner; and the talk I listened to took the hope all out of me.

One visitor said to another--'Jim, how did you run Plum Point, coming up?'

'It was in the night, there, and I ran it the way one of the boyson the "Diana" told me; started out about fifty yards abovethe wood pile on the false point, and held on the cabinunder Plum Point till I raised the reef--quarter less twain--then straightened up for the middle bar till I got well abreastthe old one-limbed cotton-wood in the bend, then got my sternon the cotton-wood and head on the low place above the point,and came through a-booming--nine and a half.'

'Pretty square crossing, an't it.?'

'Yes, but the upper bar 's working down fast.'

Another pilot spoke up and said--'I had better water than that, and ran it lower down;started out from the false point--mark twain--raised the secondreef abreast the big snag in the bend, and had quarter less twain.'

One of the gorgeous ones remarked--'I don't want to find fault with your leadsmen, but that's a good dealof water for Plum Point, it seems to me.'

There was an approving nod all around as this quiet snub dropped onthe boaster and 'settled' him. And so they went on talk-talk talking.

Meantime, the thing that was running in my mind was, 'Now if my earshear aright, I have not only to get the names of all the towns and islandsand bends, and so on, by heart, but I must even get up a warm personalacquaintanceship with every old snag and one-limbed cotton-wood and obscurewood pile that ornaments the banks of this river for twelve hundred miles;and more than that, I must actually know where these things are in the dark,unless these guests are gifted with eyes that can pierce through two milesof solid blackness; I wish the piloting business was in Jericho and I hadnever thought of it.'

At dusk Mr. Bixby tapped the big bell three times (the signalto land), and the captain emerged from his drawing-roomin the forward end of the texas, and looked up inquiringly.

Mr. Bixby said--'We will lay up here all night, captain.'

'Very well, sir.'

That was all. The boat came to shore and was tied up for the night.

It seemed to me a fine thing that the pilot could do as he pleased,without asking so grand a captain's permission. I took my supper and wentimmediately to bed, discouraged by my day's observations and experiences.

My late voyage's note-booking was but a confusion of meaningless names.

It had tangled me all up in a knot every time I had looked at it inthe daytime. I now hoped for respite in sleep; but no, it reveled allthrough my head till sunrise again, a frantic and tireless nightmare.

Next morning I felt pretty rusty and low-spirited. We went booming along,taking a good many chances, for we were anxious to 'get out of the river'

(as getting out to Cairo was called) before night should overtake us.

But Mr. Bixby's partner, the other pilot, presently grounded the boat,and we lost so much time in getting her off that it was plain thatdarkness would overtake us a good long way above the mouth. This was agreat misfortune, especially to certain of our visiting pilots, whose boatswould have to wait for their return, no matter how long that might be.

It sobered the pilot-house talk a good deal. Coming up-stream, pilots didnot mind low water or any kind of darkness; nothing stopped them but fog.

But down-stream work was different; a boat was too nearly helpless,with a stiff current pushing behind her; so it was not customary to rundown-stream at night in low water.

There seemed to be one small hope, however: if we could get throughthe intricate and dangerous Hat Island crossing before night, we couldventure the rest, for we would have plainer sailing and better water.

But it would be insanity to attempt Hat Island at night.

So there was a deal of looking at watches all the rest of the day,and a constant ciphering upon the speed we were making; Hat Islandwas the eternal subject; sometimes hope was high and sometimeswe were delayed in a bad crossing, and down it went again.

For hours all hands lay under the burden of this suppressed excitement;it was even communicated to me, and I got to feeling sosolicitous about Hat Island, and under such an awful pressureof responsibility, that I wished I might have five minutes on shoreto draw a good, full, relieving breath, and start over again.

We were standing no regular watches. Each of our pilots ransuch portions of the river as he had run when coming up-stream,because of his greater familiarity with it; but both remained inthe pilot house constantly.

An hour before sunset, Mr. Bixby took the wheel and Mr. W----stepped aside. For the next thirty minutes every man heldhis watch in his hand and was restless, silent, and uneasy.

At last somebody said, with a doomful sigh--'Well, yonder's Hat Island--and we can't make it.'

All the watches closed with a snap, everybody sighedand muttered something about its being 'too bad, too bad--ah, if we could only have got here half an hour sooner!'

and the place was thick with the atmosphere of disappointment.

Some started to go out, but loitered, hearing no bell-tap to land.

The sun dipped behind the horizon, the boat went on.

Inquiring looks passed from one guest to another;and one who had his hand on the door-knob and hadturned it, waited, then presently took away his hand and letthe knob turn back again. We bore steadily down the bend.

More looks were exchanged, and nods of surprised admiration--but no words. Insensibly the men drew together behind Mr. Bixby,as the sky darkened and one or two dim stars came out.

The dead silence and sense of waiting became oppressive.

Mr. Bixby pulled the cord, and two deep, mellow notesfrom the big bell floated off on the night. Then a pause,and one more note was struck. The watchman's voice followed,from the hurricane deck--'Labboard lead, there! Stabboard lead!'

The cries of the leadsmen began to rise out of the distance,and were gruffly repeated by the word-passers on the hurricane deck.

'M-a-r-k three!.... M-a-r-k three!.... Quarter-less three! .... Halftwain! .... Quarter twain! .... M-a-r-k twain! .... Quarter-less--'

Mr. Bixby pulled two bell-ropes, and was answered by faintjinglings far below in the engine room, and our speed slackened.

The steam began to whistle through the gauge-cocks. The cries ofthe leadsmen went on--and it is a weird sound, always, in the night.

Every pilot in the lot was watching now, with fixed eyes, and talkingunder his breath. Nobody was calm and easy but Mr. Bixby.

He would put his wheel down and stand on a spoke, and as the steamerswung into her (to me) utterly invisible marks--for we seemed to be inthe midst of a wide and gloomy sea--he would meet and fasten her there.

Out of the murmur of half-audible talk, one caught a coherent sentencenow and then--such as--'There; she's over the first reef all right!'

After a pause, another subdued voice--'Her stern's coming down just exactly right, by George!'

'Now she's in the marks; over she goes!'

Somebody else muttered--'Oh, it was done beautiful--BEAUTIFUL!'

Now the engines were stopped altogether, and we driftedwith the current. Not that I could see the boat drift,for I could not, the stars being all gone by this time.

This drifting was the dismalest work; it held one's heart still.

Presently I discovered a blacker gloom than that which surrounded us.

It was the head of the island. We were closing right down upon it.

We entered its deeper shadow, and so imminent seemed the perilthat I was likely to suffocate; and I had the strongestimpulse to do SOMETHING, anything, to save the vessel.

But still Mr. Bixby stood by his wheel, silent, intent as a cat,and all the pilots stood shoulder to shoulder at his back.

'She'll not make it!' somebody whispered.

The water grew shoaler and shoaler, by the leadsman's cries,till it was down to--'Eight-and-a-half!.... E-i-g-h-t feet!.... E-i-g-h-t feet!.... Seven-and--'

Mr. Bixby said warningly through his speaking tube to the engineer--'Stand by, now!'

'Aye-aye, sir!'

'Seven-and-a-half! Seven feet! Six-and--'

We touched bottom! Instantly Mr. Bixby set a lot of bells ringing,shouted through the tube, 'NOW, let her have it--every ounce you've got!'

then to his partner, 'Put her hard down! snatch her! snatch her!'

The boat rasped and ground her way through the sand, hung upon the apexof disaster a single tremendous instant, and then over she went!

And such a shout as went up at Mr. Bixby's back never loosened the roof ofa pilot-house before!

There was no more trouble after that. Mr. Bixby was a hero that night;and it was some little time, too, before his exploit ceased to be talkedabout by river men.

Fully to realize the marvelous precision required in layingthe great steamer in her marks in that murky waste of water,one should know that not only must she pick her intricateway through snags and blind reefs, and then shave the headof the island so closely as to brush the overhanging foliagewith her stern, but at one place she must pass almost withinarm's reach of a sunken and invisible wreck that would snatchthe hull timbers from under her if she should strike it,and destroy a quarter of a million dollars' worth of steam-boatand cargo in five minutes, and maybe a hundred and fifty humanlives into the bargain.

The last remark I heard that night was a compliment to Mr. Bixby,uttered in soliloquy and with unction by one of our guests. He said--'By the Shadow of Death, but he's a lightning pilot!'
Chapter 8 Perplexing Lessons
At the end of what seemed a tedious while, I had managed to pack my headfull of islands, towns, bars, 'points,' and bends; and a curiouslyinanimate mass of lumber it was, too. However, inasmuch as Icould shut my eyes and reel off a good long string of these nameswithout leaving out more than ten miles of river in every fifty,I began to feel that I could take a boat down to New Orleans if Icould make her skip those little gaps. But of course my complacencycould hardly get start enough to lift my nose a trifle into the air,before Mr. Bixby would think of something to fetch it down again.

One day he turned on me suddenly with this settler--'What is the shape of Walnut Bend?'

He might as well have asked me my grandmother's opinion of protoplasm.

I reflected respectfully, and then said I didn't know it had anyparticular shape. My gunpowdery chief went off with a bang, of course,and then went on loading and firing until he was out of adjectives.

I had learned long ago that he only carried just so many roundsof ammunition, and was sure to subside into a very placable andeven remorseful old smooth-bore as soon as they were all gone.

That word 'old' is merely affectionate; he was not more thanthirty-four. I waited. By and by he said--'My boy, you've got to know the SHAPE of the river perfectly.

It is all there is left to steer by on a very dark night.

Everything else is blotted out and gone. But mind you, it hasn'tthe same shape in the night that it has in the day-time.'

'How on earth am I ever going to learn it, then?'

'How do you follow a hall at home in the dark. Because you knowthe shape of it. You can't see it.'

'Do you mean to say that I've got to know all the million trifling variationsof shape in the banks of this interminable river as well as I know the shapeof the front hall at home?'

'On my honor, you've got to know them BETTER than any man everdid know the shapes of the halls in his own house.'

'I wish I was dead!'

'Now I don't want to discourage you, but----'

'Well, pile it on me; I might as well have it now as another time.'

'You see, this has got to be learned; there isn't any gettingaround it. A clear starlight night throws such heavy shadowsthat if you didn't know the shape of a shore perfectly you wouldclaw away from every bunch of timber, because you would takethe black shadow of it for a solid cape; and you see you wouldbe getting scared to death every fifteen minutes by the watch.

You would be fifty yards from shore all the time when youought to be within fifty feet of it. You can't see a snagin one of those shadows, but you know exactly where it is,and the shape of the river tells you when you are coming to it.

Then there's your pitch-dark night; the river is a very differentshape on a pitch-dark night from what it is on a starlight night.

All shores seem to be straight lines, then, and mighty dim ones, too;and you'd RUN them for straight lines only you know better.

You boldly drive your boat right into what seems to be a solid,straight wall (you knowing very well that in reality there isa curve there), and that wall falls back and makes way for you.

Then there's your gray mist. You take a night when there's oneof these grisly, drizzly, gray mists, and then there isn't anyparticular shape to a shore. A gray mist would tangle the headof the oldest man that ever lived. Well, then, different kindsof MOONLIGHT change the shape of the river in different ways.

You see----'

'Oh, don't say any more, please! Have I got to learn the shape of the riveraccording to all these five hundred thousand different ways? If I triedto carry all that cargo in my head it would make me stoop-shouldered.'

'NO! you only learn THE shape of the river, and you learn it with suchabsolute certainty that you can always steer by the shape that's IN YOUR HEAD,and never mind the one that's before your eyes.'

'Very well, I'll try it; but after I have learned it can I depend on it.

Will it keep the same form and not go fooling around?'

Before Mr. Bixby could answer, Mr. W---- came in to take the watch,and he said--'Bixby, you'll have to look out for President's Island and allthat country clear away up above he Old Hen and Chickens.

The banks are caving and the shape of the shores changinglike everything. Why, you wouldn't know the point above 40.

You can go up inside the old sycamore-snag, now.

It may not be necessary, but still it can do no harm to explainthat 'inside' means between the snag and the shore.--M.T.]>

So that question was answered. Here were leagues of shore changing shape.

My spirits were down in the mud again. Two things seemed pretty apparentto me. One was, that in order to be a pilot a man had got to learn more thanany one man ought to be allowed to know; and the other was, that he must learnit all over again in a different way every twenty-four hours.

That night we had the watch until twelve. Now it was an ancient rivercustom for the two pilots to chat a bit when the watch changed.

While the relieving pilot put on his gloves and lit his cigar,his partner, the retiring pilot, would say something like this--'I judge the upper bar is making down a little at Hale's Point;had quarter twain with the lower lead and mark twain'Quarter twain' is two-and-a-quarter fathoms, thirteen-and-a-half feet.

'Mark three' is three fathoms.]> with the other.'

'Yes, I thought it was making down a little, last trip.

Meet any boats?'

'Met one abreast the head of 21, but she was away over hugging the bar,and I couldn't make her out entirely. I took her for the "Sunny South"--hadn't any skylights forward of the chimneys.'

And so on. And as the relieving pilot took the wheel hispartnerpilot'.]> would mention that we were in such-and-such a bend,and say we were abreast of such-and-such a man's wood-yardor plantation. This was courtesy; I supposed it was necessity.

But Mr. W---- came on watch full twelve minutes late onthis particular night,--a tremendous breach of etiquette;in fact, it is the unpardonable sin among pilots.

So Mr. Bixby gave him no greeting whatever, but simply surrenderedthe wheel and marched out of the pilot-house without a word.

I was appalled; it was a villainous night for blackness,we were in a particularly wide and blind part of the river,where there was no shape or substance to anything, and itseemed incredible that Mr. Bixby should have left that poorfellow to kill the boat trying to find out where he was.

But I resolved that I would stand by him any way.

He should find that he was not wholly friendless.

So I stood around, and waited to be asked where we were.

But Mr. W---- plunged on serenely through the solid firmament of blackcats that stood for an atmosphere, and never opened his mouth.

Here is a proud devil, thought I; here is a limb of Satan thatwould rather send us all to destruction than put himself underobligations to me, because I am not yet one of the salt of the earthand privileged to snub captains and lord it over everything deadand alive in a steamboat. I presently climbed up on the bench;I did not think it was safe to go to sleep while this lunaticwas on watch.

However, I must have gone to sleep in the course of time,because the next thing I was aware of was the fact that daywas breaking, Mr. W---- gone, and Mr. Bixby at the wheel again.

So it was four o'clock and all well--but me; I felt like a skinfulof dry bones and all of them trying to ache at once.

Mr. Bixby asked me what I had stayed up there for. I confessedthat it was to do Mr. W---- a benevolence,--tell him where he was.

It took five minutes for the entire preposterousness of the thingto filter into Mr. Bixby's system, and then I judge it filledhim nearly up to the chin; because he paid me a compliment--and not much of a one either. He said,'Well, taking you by-and-large, you do seem to be moredifferent kinds of an ass than any creature I ever saw before.

What did you suppose he wanted to know for?'

I said I thought it might be a convenience to him.

'Convenience D-nation! Didn't I tell you that a man's got to know the riverin the night the same as he'd know his own front hall?'

'Well, I can follow the front hall in the dark if I know it IS the front hall;but suppose you set me down in the middle of it in the dark and not tell mewhich hall it is; how am I to know?'

'Well you've GOT to, on the river!'

'All right. Then I'm glad I never said anything to Mr. W----'

'I should say so. Why, he'd have slammed you through the window and utterlyruined a hundred dollars' worth of window-sash and stuff.'

I was glad this damage had been saved, for it would have mademe unpopular with the owners. They always hated anybodywho had the name of being careless, and injuring things.

I went to work now to learn the shape of the river; and of all the eludingand ungraspable objects that ever I tried to get mind or hands on,that was the chief. I would fasten my eyes upon a sharp, wooded point thatprojected far into the river some miles ahead of me, and go to laboriouslyphotographing its shape upon my brain; and just as I was beginning tosucceed to my satisfaction, we would draw up toward it and the exasperatingthing would begin to melt away and fold back into the bank! If therehad been a conspicuous dead tree standing upon the very point of the cape,I would find that tree inconspicuously merged into the general forest,and occupying the middle of a straight shore, when I got abreast of it!

No prominent hill would stick to its shape long enough for me to make upmy mind what its form really was, but it was as dissolving and changefulas if it had been a mountain of butter in the hottest corner of the tropics.

Nothing ever had the same shape when I was coming downstream that it hadborne when I went up. I mentioned these little difficulties to Mr. Bixby.

He said--'That's the very main virtue of the thing. If the shapesdidn't change every three seconds they wouldn't be of any use.

Take this place where we are now, for instance.

As long as that hill over yonder is only one hill, I can boomright along the way I'm going; but the moment it splits atthe top and forms a V, I know I've got to scratch to starboardin a hurry, or I'll bang this boat's brains out against a rock;and then the moment one of the prongs of the V swings behindthe other, I've got to waltz to larboard again, or I'll havea misunderstanding with a snag that would snatch the keelson outof this steamboat as neatly as if it were a sliver in your hand.

If that hill didn't change its shape on bad nights therewould be an awful steamboat grave-yard around here insideof a year.'

It was plain that I had got to learn the shape of the riverin all the different ways that could be thought of,--upside down,wrong end first, inside out, fore-and-aft, and 'thortships,'--and thenknow what to do on gray nights when it hadn't any shape at all.

So I set about it. In the course of time I began to get the best of thisknotty lesson, and my self-complacency moved to the front once more.

Mr. Bixby was all fixed, and ready to start it to the rear again.

He opened on me after this fashion--'How much water did we have in the middle crossing at Hole-in-the-Wall,trip before last?'

I considered this an outrage. I said--'Every trip, down and up, the leadsmen are singing throughthat tangled place for three-quarters of an hour on a stretch.

How do you reckon I can remember such a mess as that?'

'My boy, you've got to remember it. You've got to rememberthe exact spot and the exact marks the boat lay in when we hadthe shoalest water, in everyone of the five hundred shoal placesbetween St. Louis and New Orleans; and you mustn't get the shoalsoundings and marks of one trip mixed up with the shoal soundingsand marks of another, either, for they're not often twice alike.

You must keep them separate.'

When I came to myself again, I said--'When I get so that I can do that, I'll be able to raise the dead,and then I won't have to pilot a steamboat to make a living.

I want to retire from this business. I want a slush-bucket and a brush;I'm only fit for a roustabout. I haven't got brains enough to be a pilot;and if I had I wouldn't have strength enough to carry them around,unless I went on crutches.'

'Now drop that! When I say I'll learnnot in the river vocabulary.]> a man the river, I mean it.

And you can depend on it, I'll learn him or kill him.'
Chapter 9 Continued Perplexities
THERE was no use in arguing with a person like this. I promptlyput such a strain on my memory that by and by even the shoalwater and the countless crossing-marks began to stay with me.

But the result was just the same. I never could more than getone knotty thing learned before another presented itself.

Now I had often seen pilots gazing at the water and pretending to readit as if it were a book; but it was a book that told me nothing.

A time came at last, however, when Mr. Bixby seemed to think me farenough advanced to bear a lesson on water-reading. So he began--'Do you see that long slanting line on the face of the water Now,that's a reef. Moreover, it's a bluff reef. There is a solid sand-barunder it that is nearly as straight up and down as the side of a house.

There is plenty of water close up to it, but mighty little on top of it.

If you were to hit it you would knock the boat's brains out.

Do you see where the line fringes out at the upper end and begins tofade away '

'Yes, sir.'

'Well, that is a low place; that is the head of the reef.

You can climb over there, and not hurt anything. Cross over,now, and follow along close under the reef--easy water there--not much current.'

I followed the reef along till I approached the fringed end.

Then Mr. Bixby said--'Now get ready. Wait till I give the word. She won't want to mount the reef;a boat hates shoal water. Stand by--wait--WAIT--keep her well in hand.

NOW cramp her down! Snatch her! snatch her!'

He seized the other side of the wheel and helped to spinit around until it was hard down, and then we held it so.

The boat resisted, and refused to answer for a while, and next shecame surging to starboard, mounted the reef, and sent a long,angry ridge of water foaming away from her bows.

'Now watch her; watch her like a cat, or she'll get away from you.

When she fights strong and the tiller slips a little,in a jerky, greasy sort of way, let up on her a trifle;it is the way she tells you at night that the water is too shoal;but keep edging her up, little by little, toward the point.

You are well up on the bar, now; there is a bar under every point,because the water that comes down around it forms an eddyand allows the sediment to sink. Do you see those fine lineson the face of the water that branch out like the ribs of a fan.

Well, those are little reefs; you want to just miss the endsof them, but run them pretty close. Now look out--look out!

Don't you crowd that slick, greasy-looking place; there ain'tnine feet there; she won't stand it. She begins to smell it;look sharp, I tell you! Oh blazes, there you go!

Stop the starboard wheel! Quick! Ship up to back!

Set her back!

The engine bells jingled and the engines answered promptly,shooting white columns of steam far aloft out of the 'scape pipes,but it was too late. The boat had 'smelt' the bar in good earnest;the foamy ridges that radiated from her bows suddenly disappeared,a great dead swell came rolling forward and swept ahead of her,she careened far over to larboard, and went tearing awaytoward the other shore as if she were about scared to death.

We were a good mile from where we ought to have been, when wefinally got the upper hand of her again.

During the afternoon watch the next day, Mr. Bixby asked me if Iknew how to run the next few miles. I said--'Go inside the first snag above the point, outside the next one,start out from the lower end of Higgins's wood-yard, makea square crossing and----'

'That's all right. I'll be back before you close up on the next point.'

But he wasn't. He was still below when I rounded it and entered upona piece of river which I had some misgivings about. I did not knowthat he was hiding behind a chimney to see how I would perform.

I went gaily along, getting prouder and prouder, for he had neverleft the boat in my sole charge such a length of time before.

I even got to 'setting' her and letting the wheel go, entirely, while Ivaingloriously turned my back and inspected the stem marks and hummed a tune,a sort of easy indifference which I had prodigiously admired in Bixbyand other great pilots. Once I inspected rather long, and when I facedto the front again my heart flew into my mouth so suddenly that if I hadn'tclapped my teeth together I should have lost it. One of those frightfulbluff reefs was stretching its deadly length right across our bows!

My head was gone in a moment; I did not know which end I stood on;I gasped and could not get my breath; I spun the wheel down with suchrapidity that it wove itself together like a spider's web; the boatanswered and turned square away from the reef, but the reef followed her!

I fled, and still it followed, still it kept--right across my bows!

I never looked to see where I was going, I only fled.

The awful crash was imminent--why didn't that villain come!

If I committed the crime of ringing a bell, I might get thrown overboard.

But better that than kill the boat. So in blind desperation I startedsuch a rattling 'shivaree' down below as never had astounded an engineerin this world before, I fancy. Amidst the frenzy of the bells the enginesbegan to back and fill in a furious way, and my reason forsook its throne--we were about to crash into the woods on the other side of the river.

Just then Mr. Bixby stepped calmly into view on the hurricane deck.

My soul went out to him in gratitude. My distress vanished; I would havefelt safe on the brink of Niagara, with Mr. Bixby on the hurricane deck.

He blandly and sweetly took his tooth-pick out of his mouth betweenhis fingers, as if it were a cigar--we were just in the act of climbingan overhanging big tree, and the passengers were scudding astern like rats--and lifted up these commands to me ever so gently--'Stop the starboard. Stop the larboard. Set her back on both.'

The boat hesitated, halted, pressed her nose among the boughsa critical instant, then reluctantly began to back away.

'Stop the larboard. Come ahead on it. Stop the starboard.

Come ahead on it. Point her for the bar.'

I sailed away as serenely as a summer's morning Mr. Bixby came in and said,with mock simplicity--'When you have a hail, my boy, you ought to tap the big bell three timesbefore you land, so that the engineers can get ready.'

I blushed under the sarcasm, and said I hadn't had any hail.

'Ah! Then it was for wood, I suppose. The officer of the watchwill tell you when he wants to wood up.'

I went on consuming and said I wasn't after wood.

'Indeed? Why, what could you want over here in the bend, then?

Did you ever know of a boat following a bend up-stream at thisstage of the river?'

'No sir,--and I wasn't trying to follow it. I was getting awayfrom a bluff reef.'

'No, it wasn't a bluff reef; there isn't one within three milesof where you were.'

'But I saw it. It was as bluff as that one yonder.'

'Just about. Run over it!'

'Do you give it as an order?'

'Yes. Run over it.'

'If I don't, I wish I may die.'

'All right; I am taking the responsibility.' I was just asanxious to kill the boat, now, as I had been to save her before.

I impressed my orders upon my memory, to be used at the inquest,and made a straight break for the reef. As it disappeared underour bows I held my breath; but we slid over it like oil.

'Now don't you see the difference? It wasn't anything but a WIND reef.

The wind does that.'

'So I see. But it is exactly like a bluff reef.

How am I ever going to tell them apart?'

'I can't tell you. It is an instinct. By and by you will just naturallyKNOW one from the other, but you never will be able to explain why or how youknow them apart'

It turned out to be true. The face of the water, in time,became a wonderful book--a book that was a dead language to theuneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve,delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it utteredthem with a voice. And it was not a book to be read onceand thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.

Throughout the long twelve hundred miles there was never a pagethat was void of interest, never one that you could leaveunread without loss, never one that you would want to skip,thinking you could find higher enjoyment in some other thing.

There never was so wonderful a book written by man; never onewhose interest was so absorbing, so unflagging, so sparkinglyrenewed with every re-perusal. The passenger who could not read itwas charmed with a peculiar sort of faint dimple on its surface(on the rare occasions when he did not overlook it altogether);but to the pilot that was an ITALICIZED passage; indeed, it wasmore than that, it was a legend of the largest capitals,with a string of shouting exclamation points at the end of it;for it meant that a wreck or a rock was buried there that couldtear the life out of the strongest vessel that ever floated.

It is the faintest and simplest expression the water ever makes,and the most hideous to a pilot's eye. In truth, the passengerwho could not read this book saw nothing but all manner of prettypictures in it painted by the sun and shaded by the clouds,whereas to the trained eye these were not pictures at all,but the grimmest and most dead-earnest of reading-matter.

Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to knowevery trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as Iknew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition.

But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could neverbe restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetryhad gone out of the majestic river! I still keep in mind a certainwonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me.

A broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distancethe red hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came floating,black and conspicuous; in one place a long, slanting mark lay sparkling uponthe water; in another the surface was broken by boiling, tumbling rings,that were as many-tinted as an opal; where the ruddy flush was faintest,was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful circles and radiating lines,ever so delicately traced; the shore on our left was densely wooded,and the somber shadow that fell from this forest was broken in one placeby a long, ruffled trail that shone like silver; and high above the forestwall a clean-stemmed dead tree waved a single leafy bough that glowedlike a flame in the unobstructed splendor that was flowing from the sun.

There were graceful curves, reflected images, woody heights, soft distances;and over the whole scene, far and near, the dissolving lights driftedsteadily, enriching it, every passing moment, with new marvels of coloring.

I stood like one bewitched. I drank it in, in a speechless rapture.

The world was new to me, and I had never seen anything like this at home.

But as I have said, a day came when I began to cease from noting the gloriesand the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight wrought uponthe river's face; another day came when I ceased altogether to note them.

Then, if that sunset scene had been repeated, I should have looked uponit without rapture, and should have commented upon it, inwardly, afterthis fashion: This sun means that we are going to have wind to-morrow;that floating log means that the river is rising, small thanks to it;that slanting mark on the water refers to a bluff reef which is goingto kill somebody's steamboat one of these nights, if it keeps on stretchingout like that; those tumbling 'boils' show a dissolving bar and a changingchannel there; the lines and circles in the slick water over yonderare a warning that that troublesome place is shoaling up dangerously;that silver streak in the shadow of the forest is the 'break' from a new snag,and he has located himself in the very best place he could have foundto fish for steamboats; that tall dead tree, with a single living branch,is not going to last long, and then how is a body ever going to get throughthis blind place at night without the friendly old landmark.

No, the romance and the beauty were all gone from the river.

All the value any feature of it had for me now was the amountof usefulness it could furnish toward compassing the safe pilotingof a steamboat. Since those days, I have pitied doctors from my heart.

What does the lovely flush in a beauty's cheek mean to a doctorbut a 'break' that ripples above some deadly disease.

Are not all her visible charms sown thick with what are to himthe signs and symbols of hidden decay? Does he ever see herbeauty at all, or doesn't he simply view her professionally,and comment upon her unwholesome condition all to himself?

And doesn't he sometimes wonder whether he has gained most or lostmost by learning his trade?
Chapter 10 Completing My Education
WHOSOEVER has done me the courtesy to read my chapters which have precededthis may possibly wonder that I deal so minutely with piloting as a science.

It was the prime purpose of those chapters; and I am not quite done yet.

I wish to show, in the most patient and painstaking way, what a wonderfulscience it is. Ship channels are buoyed and lighted, and therefore it isa comparatively easy undertaking to learn to run them; clear-water rivers,with gravel bottoms, change their channels very gradually, and thereforeone needs to learn them but once; but piloting becomes another matterwhen you apply it to vast streams like the Mississippi and the Missouri,whose alluvial banks cave and change constantly, whose snags are alwayshunting up new quarters, whose sand-bars are never at rest, whose channelsare for ever dodging and shirking, and whose obstructions must beconfronted in all nights and all weathers without the aid of a singlelight-house or a single buoy; for there is neither light nor buoy to befound anywhere in all this three or four thousand miles of villainousriver. Ifeel justified in enlarging upon this great science for the reason that Ifeel sure no one has ever yet written a paragraph about it who had piloteda steamboat himself, and so had a practical knowledge of the subject.

If the theme were hackneyed, I should be obliged to deal gently withthe reader; but since it is wholly new, I have felt at liberty to take upa considerable degree of room with it.

When I had learned the name and position of every visiblefeature of the river; when I had so mastered its shape that Icould shut my eyes and trace it from St. Louis to New Orleans;when I had learned to read the face of the water as one wouldcull the news from the morning paper; and finally, when Ihad trained my dull memory to treasure up an endless arrayof soundings and crossing-marks, and keep fast hold of them,I judged that my education was complete: so I got to tiltingmy cap to the side of my head, and wearing a tooth-pick in mymouth at the wheel. Mr. Bixby had his eye on these airs.

One day he said--'What is the height of that bank yonder, at Burgess's?'

'How can I tell, sir. It is three-quarters of a mile away.'

'Very poor eye--very poor. Take the glass.'

I took the glass, and presently said--'I can't tell.

I suppose that that bank is about a foot and a half high.'

'Foot and a half! That's a six-foot bank. How high was the bankalong here last trip?'

'I don't know; I never noticed.'

'You didn't? Well, you must always do it hereafter.'

'Why?'

'Because you'll have to know a good many things that it tells you.

For one thing, it tells you the stage of the river--tells you whetherthere's more water or less in the river along here than therewas last trip.'

'The leads tell me that.' I rather thought I had the advantageof him there.

'Yes, but suppose the leads lie? The bank would tell you so,and then you'd stir those leadsmen up a bit. There was a ten-footbank here last trip, and there is only a six-foot bank now.

What does that signify?'

'That the river is four feet higher than it was last trip.'

'Very good. Is the river rising or falling?'

'Rising.'

'No it ain't.'

'I guess I am right, sir. Yonder is some drift-wood floatingdown the stream.'

'A rise starts the drift-wood, but then it keeps on floating a while afterthe river is done rising. Now the bank will tell you about this. Wait tillyou come to a place where it shelves a little. Now here; do you see thisnarrow belt of fine sediment That was deposited while the water was higher.

You see the driftwood begins to strand, too. The bank helps in other ways.

Do you see that stump on the false point?'

'Ay, ay, sir.'

'Well, the water is just up to the roots of it.

You must make a note of that.'

'Why?'

'Because that means that there's seven feet in the chute of 103.'

'But 103 is a long way up the river yet.'

'That's where the benefit of the bank comes in. There is waterenough in 103 NOW, yet there may not be by the time we get there;but the bank will keep us posted all along. You don't run closechutes on a falling river, up-stream, and there are precious fewof them that you are allowed to run at all down-stream. There'sa law of the United States against it. The river may be risingby the time we get to 103, and in that case we'll run it.

We are drawing--how much?'

'Six feet aft,--six and a half forward.'

'Well, you do seem to know something.'

'But what I particularly want to know is, if I have got to keep up aneverlasting measuring of the banks of this river, twelve hundred miles,month in and month out?'

'Of course!'

My emotions were too deep for words for a while.

Presently I said--'

And how about these chutes. Are there many of them?'

'I should say so. I fancy we shan't run any of the river this tripas you've ever seen it run before--so to speak. If the river beginsto rise again, we'll go up behind bars that you've always seenstanding out of the river, high and dry like the roof of a house;we'll cut across low places that you've never noticed at all,right through the middle of bars that cover three hundred acres of river;we'll creep through cracks where you've always thought was solid land;we'll dart through the woods and leave twenty-five miles of riveroff to one side; we'll see the hind-side of every island between NewOrleans and Cairo.'

'Then I've got to go to work and learn just as much more riveras I already know.'

'Just about twice as much more, as near as you can come at it.'

'Well, one lives to find out. I think I was a fool when I wentinto this business.'

'Yes, that is true. And you are yet. But you'll not bewhen you've learned it.'

'Ah, I never can learn it.'

'I will see that you DO.'

By and by I ventured again--'Have I got to learn all this thing just as I know the rest of the river--shapes and all--and so I can run it at night?'

'Yes. And you've got to have good fair marks from one endof the river to the other, that will help the bank tell youwhen there is water enough in each of these countless places--like that stump, you know. When the river first beginsto rise, you can run half a dozen of the deepest of them;when it rises a foot more you can run another dozen;the next foot will add a couple of dozen, and so on:

so you see you have to know your banks and marks to a deadmoral certainty, and never get them mixed; for when you startthrough one of those cracks, there's no backing out again,as there is in the big river; you've got to go through,or stay there six months if you get caught on a falling river.

There are about fifty of these cracks which you can't run at allexcept when the river is brim full and over the banks.'

'This new lesson is a cheerful prospect.'

'Cheerful enough. And mind what I've just told you; when youstart into one of those places you've got to go through.

They are too narrow to turn around in, too crooked to back out of,and the shoal water is always up at the head; never elsewhere.

And the head of them is always likely to be filling up, little by little,so that the marks you reckon their depth by, this season, may notanswer for next.'

'Learn a new set, then, every year?'

'Exactly. Cramp her up to the bar! What are you standing upthrough the middle of the river for?'

The next few months showed me strange things. On the same day that we heldthe conversation above narrated, we met a great rise coming down the river.

The whole vast face of the stream was black with drifting dead logs,broken boughs, and great trees that had caved in and been washed away.

It required the nicest steering to pick one's way through thisrushing raft, even in the day-time, when crossing from point to point;and at night the difficulty was mightily increased; every now and thena huge log, lying deep in the water, would suddenly appear rightunder our bows, coming head-on; no use to try to avoid it then;we could only stop the engines, and one wheel would walk over that logfrom one end to the other, keeping up a thundering racket and careeningthe boat in a way that was very uncomfortable to passengers.

Now and then we would hit one of these sunken logs a rattling bang,dead in the center, with a full head of steam, and it would stun the boatas if she had hit a continent. Sometimes this log would lodge, and stayright across our nose, and back the Mississippi up before it; we wouldhave to do a little craw-fishing, then, to get away from the obstruction.

We often hit WHITE logs, in the dark, for we could not see them till wewere right on them; but a black log is a pretty distinct object at night.

A white snag is an ugly customer when the daylight is gone.

Of course, on the great rise, down came a swarm of prodigioustimber-rafts from the head waters of the Mississippi,coal barges from Pittsburgh, little trading scows from everywhere,and broad-horns from 'Posey County,' Indiana, freighted with 'fruitand furniture'--the usual term for describing it, though in plainEnglish the freight thus aggrandized was hoop-poles and pumpkins.

Pilots bore a mortal hatred to these craft; and it was returnedwith usury. The law required all such helpless traders to keepa light burning, but it was a law that was often broken.

All of a sudden, on a murky night, a light would hop up,right under our bows, almost, and an agonized voice,with the backwoods 'whang' to it, would wail out--'Whar'n the ---- you goin' to! Cain't you see nothin', you dash-dashedaig-suckin', sheep-stealin', one-eyed son of a stuffed monkey!'

Then for an instant, as we whistled by, the red glare from our furnaceswould reveal the scow and the form of the gesticulating oratoras if under a lightning-flash, and in that instant our firemen anddeck-hands would send and receive a tempest of missiles and profanity,one of our wheels would walk off with the crashing fragmentsof a steering-oar, and down the dead blackness would shut again.

And that flatboatman would be sure to go into New Orleans and sueour boat, swearing stoutly that he had a light burning all the time,when in truth his gang had the lantern down below to sing and lieand drink and gamble by, and no watch on deck. Once, at night, in oneof those forest-bordered crevices (behind an island) which steamboatmenintensely describe with the phrase 'as dark as the inside of a cow,'

we should have eaten up a Posey County family, fruit, furniture, and all,but that they happened to be fiddling down below, and we just caughtthe sound of the music in time to sheer off, doing no serious damage,unfortunately, but coming so near it that we had good hopes for a moment.

These people brought up their lantern, then, of course; and as we backedand filled to get away, the precious family stood in the light of it--both sexes and various ages--and cursed us till everything turned blue.

Once a coalboatman sent a bullet through our pilot-house, when we borrowed asteering oar of him in a very narrow place.
Chapter 11 The River Rises
DURING this big rise these small-fry craft were an intolerable nuisance.

We were running chute after chute,--a new world to me,--and if there wasa particularly cramped place in a chute, we would be pretty sure to meeta broad-horn there; and if he failed to be there, we would find him in astill worse locality, namely, the head of the chute, on the shoal water.

And then there would be no end of profane cordialities exchanged.

Sometimes, in the big river, when we would be feeling our waycautiously along through a fog, the deep hush would suddenlybe broken by yells and a clamor of tin pans, and all in instanta log raft would appear vaguely through the webby veil,close upon us; and then we did not wait to swap knives,but snatched our engine bells out by the roots and piledon all the steam we had, to scramble out of the way!

One doesn't hit a rock or a solid log craft with a steamboatwhen he can get excused.

You will hardly believe it, but many steamboat clerks alwayscarried a large assortment of religious tracts with themin those old departed steamboating days. Indeed they did.

Twenty times a day we would be cramping up around a bar,while a string of these small-fry rascals were drifting down intothe head of the bend away above and beyond us a couple of miles.

Now a skiff would dart away from one of them, and come fightingits laborious way across the desert of water. It would 'ease all,'

in the shadow of our forecastle, and the panting oarsmen would shout,'Gimme a pa-a-per!' as the skiff drifted swiftly astern.

The clerk would throw over a file of New Orleans journals.

If these were picked up without comment, you might notice that now a dozenother skiffs had been drifting down upon us without saying anything.

You understand, they had been waiting to see how No. 1 was going to fare.

No. 1 making no comment, all the rest would bend to their oarsand come on, now; and as fast as they came the clerk wouldheave over neat bundles of religious tracts, tied to shingles.

The amount of hard swearing which twelve packages of religious literaturewill command when impartially divided up among twelve raftsmen's crews,who have pulled a heavy skiff two miles on a hot day to get them,is simply incredible.

As I have said, the big rise brought a new world under my vision.

By the time the river was over its banks we had forsaken our old paths andwere hourly climbing over bars that had stood ten feet out of water before;we were shaving stumpy shores, like that at the foot of Madrid Bend, which Ihad always seen avoided before; we were clattering through chutes like thatof 82, where the opening at the foot was an unbroken wall of timber till ournose was almost at the very spot. Some of these chutes were utter solitudes.

The dense, untouched forest overhung both banks of the crooked little crack,and one could believe that human creatures had never intruded there before.

The swinging grape-vines, the grassy nooks and vistas glimpsed as we swept by,the flowering creepers waving their red blossoms from the tops of dead trunks,and all the spendthrift richness of the forest foliage, were wasted and thrownaway there. The chutes were lovely places to steer in; they were deep,except at the head; the current was gentle; under the 'points' the waterwas absolutely dead, and the invisible banks so bluff that where the tenderwillow thickets projected you could bury your boat's broadside in them as youtore along, and then you seemed fairly to fly.

Behind other islands we found wretched little farms, and wretchederlittle log-cabins; there were crazy rail fences sticking a footor two above the water, with one or two jeans-clad, chills-racked,yellow-faced male miserables roosting on the top-rail, elbowson knees, jaws in hands, grinding tobacco and dischargingthe result at floating chips through crevices left by lost teeth;while the rest of the family and the few farm-animals were huddledtogether in an empty wood-flat riding at her moorings close at hand.

In this flat-boat the family would have to cook and eatand sleep for a lesser or greater number of days (or possiblyweeks), until the river should fall two or three feet and letthem get back to their log-cabin and their chills again--chills being a merciful provision of an all-wise Providenceto enable them to take exercise without exertion.

And this sort of watery camping out was a thing which these peoplewere rather liable to be treated to a couple of times a year:

by the December rise out of the Ohio, and the June rise outof the Mississippi. And yet these were kindly dispensations,for they at least enabled the poor things to rise from the deadnow and then, and look upon life when a steamboat went by.

They appreciated the blessing, too, for they spread their mouthsand eyes wide open and made the most of these occasions.

Now what could these banished creatures find to do to keep from dyingof the blues during the low-water season!'

Once, in one of these lovely island chutes, we foundour course completely bridged by a great fallen tree.

This will serve to show how narrow some of the chutes were.

The passengers had an hour's recreation in a virgin wilderness,while the boat-hands chopped the bridge away; for there was no suchthing as turning back, you comprehend.

From Cairo to Baton Rouge, when the river is over its banks, you haveno particular trouble in the night, for the thousand-mile wall of denseforest that guards the two banks all the way is only gapped with a farmor wood-yard opening at intervals, and so you can't 'get out of the river'

much easier than you could get out of a fenced lane; but from BatonRouge to New Orleans it is a different matter. The river is more thana mile wide, and very deep--as much as two hundred feet, in places.

Both banks, for a good deal over a hundred miles, are shorn of their timberand bordered by continuous sugar plantations, with only here and therea scattering sapling or row of ornamental China-trees. The timber isshorn off clear to the rear of the plantations, from two to four miles.

When the first frost threatens to come, the planters snatch offtheir crops in a hurry. When they have finished grinding the cane,they form the refuse of the stalks (which they call BAGASSE)into great piles and set fire to them, though in other sugar countriesthe bagasse is used for fuel in the furnaces of the sugar mills.

Now the piles of damp bagasse burn slowly, and smoke like Satan's own kitchen.

An embankment ten or fifteen feet high guards both banks of the Mississippiall the way down that lower end of the river, and this embankment is setback from the edge of the shore from ten to perhaps a hundred feet,according to circumstances; say thirty or forty feet, as a general thing.

Fill that whole region with an impenetrable gloom of smoke from a hundredmiles of burning bagasse piles, when the river is over the banks, and turna steamboat loose along there at midnight and see how she will feel.

And see how you will feel, too! You find yourself away out in the midstof a vague dim sea that is shoreless, that fades out and loses itselfin the murky distances; for you cannot discern the thin rib of embankment,and you are always imagining you see a straggling tree when you don't. Theplantations themselves are transformed by the smoke, and look like a partof the sea. All through your watch you are tortured with the exquisite miseryof uncertainty. You hope you are keeping in the river, but you do not know.

All that you are sure about is that you are likely to be within six feet ofthe bank and destruction, when you think you are a good half-mile from shore.

And you are sure, also, that if you chance suddenly to fetch up againstthe embankment and topple your chimneys overboard, you will have the smallcomfort of knowing that it is about what you were expecting to do.

One of the great Vicksburg packets darted out into a sugar plantationone night, at such a time, and had to stay there a week. But there was nonovelty about it; it had often been done before.

I thought I had finished this chapter, but I wishto add a curious thing, while it is in my mind.

It is only relevant in that it is connected with piloting.

There used to be an excellent pilot on the river, a Mr. X.,who was a somnambulist. It was said that if his mind wastroubled about a bad piece of river, he was pretty sureto get up and walk in his sleep and do strange things.

He was once fellow-pilot for a trip or two with George Ealer,on a great New Orleans passenger packet. During a considerablepart of the first trip George was uneasy, but got over itby and by, as X. seemed content to stay in his bed when asleep.

Late one night the boat was approaching Helena, Arkansas; the waterwas low, and the crossing above the town in a very blind andtangled condition. X. had seen the crossing since Ealer had,and as the night was particularly drizzly, sullen, and dark,Ealer was considering whether he had not better have X. called toassist in running the place, when the door opened and X. walked in.

Now on very dark nights, light is a deadly enemy to piloting;you are aware that if you stand in a lighted room, on sucha night, you cannot see things in the street to any purpose;but if you put out the lights and stand in the gloom you can makeout objects in the street pretty well. So, on very dark nights,pilots do not smoke; they allow no fire in the pilot-housestove if there is a crack which can allow the least rayto escape; they order the furnaces to be curtained with hugetarpaulins and the sky-lights to be closely blinded.

Then no light whatever issues from the boat. The undefinableshape that now entered the pilot-house had Mr. X.'s voice.

This said--Let me take her, George; I've seen this place since you have,and it is so crooked that I reckon I can run it myself easierthan I could tell you how to do it.'

'It is kind of you, and I swear I am willing.

I haven't got another drop of perspiration left in me.

I have been spinning around and around the wheel like a squirrel.

It is so dark I can't tell which way she is swinging till she iscoming around like a whirligig.'

So Ealer took a seat on the bench, panting and breathless.

The black phantom assumed the wheel without saying anything,steadied the waltzing steamer with a turn or two, and then stoodat ease, coaxing her a little to this side and then to that,as gently and as sweetly as if the time had been noonday.

When Ealer observed this marvel of steering, he wished he hadnot confessed! He stared, and wondered, and finally said--'

Well, I thought I knew how to steer a steamboat, but that wasanother mistake of mine.'

X. said nothing, but went serenely on with his work. He rang for the leads;he rang to slow down the steam; he worked the boat carefully and neatlyinto invisible marks, then stood at the center of the wheel and peeredblandly out into the blackness, fore and aft, to verify his position;as the leads shoaled more and more, he stopped the engines entirely,and the dead silence and suspense of 'drifting' followed when the shoalestwater was struck, he cracked on the steam, carried her handsomely over,and then began to work her warily into the next system of shoal marks;the same patient, heedful use of leads and engines followed, the boatslipped through without touching bottom, and entered upon the third andlast intricacy of the crossing; imperceptibly she moved through the gloom,crept by inches into her marks, drifted tediously till the shoalest waterwas cried, and then, under a tremendous head of steam, went swinging overthe reef and away into deep water and safety!

Ealer let his long-pent breath pour out in a great, relieving sigh, and said--'That's the sweetest piece of piloting that was ever done onthe Mississippi River! I wouldn't believed it could be done,if I hadn't seen it.'

There was no reply, and he added--'Just hold her five minutes longer, partner, and let me run down and geta cup of coffee.'

A minute later Ealer was biting into a pie, down in the 'texas,'

and comforting himself with coffee. Just then the night watchmanhappened in, and was about to happen out again, when he noticedEaler and exclaimed--'Who is at the wheel, sir?'

'X.'

'Dart for the pilot-house, quicker than lightning!'

The next moment both men were flying up the pilot-house companion way,three steps at a jump! Nobody there! The great steamer waswhistling down the middle of the river at her own sweet will!

The watchman shot out of the place again; Ealer seized the wheel,set an engine back with power, and held his breath while the boatreluctantly swung away from a 'towhead' which she was about to knockinto the middle of the Gulf of Mexico!

By and by the watchman came back and said--'Didn't that lunatic tell you he was asleep, when he first came up here?'

'NO.'

'Well, he was. I found him walking along on top of the railingsjust as unconcerned as another man would walk a pavement;and I put him to bed; now just this minute there he was again,away astern, going through that sort of tight-rope deviltrythe same as before.'

'Well, I think I'll stay by, next time he has one of those fits.

But I hope he'll have them often. You just ought to have seen him takethis boat through Helena crossing. I never saw anything so gaudy before.

And if he can do such gold-leaf, kid-glove, diamond-breastpin pilotingwhen he is sound asleep, what COULDN'T he do if he was dead!'
Chapter 12 Sounding
WHEN the river is very low, and one's steamboat is 'drawing all the water'

there is in the channel,--or a few inches more, as was often the casein the old times,--one must be painfully circumspect in his piloting.

We used to have to 'sound' a number of particularly bad places almost everytrip when the river was at a very low stage.

Sounding is done in this way. The boat ties up at the shore, just abovethe shoal crossing; the pilot not on watch takes his 'cub' or steersmanand a picked crew of men (sometimes an officer also), and goes outin the yawl--provided the boat has not that rare and sumptuous luxury,a regularly-devised 'sounding-boat'--and proceeds to hunt for the best water,the pilot on duty watching his movements through a spy-glass, meantime,and in some instances assisting by signals of the boat's whistle,signifying 'try higher up' or 'try lower down;' for the surface ofthe water, like an oil-painting, is more expressive and intelligiblewhen inspected from a little distance than very close at hand.

The whistle signals are seldom necessary, however; never, perhaps, except whenthe wind confuses the significant ripples upon the water's surface.

When the yawl has reached the shoal place, the speed is slackened,the pilot begins to sound the depth with a pole ten or twelve feet long,and the steersman at the tiller obeys the order to 'hold her upto starboard;' or, 'let her fall off to larboard;'

term 'larboard' is never used at seam now, to signify the left hand;but was always used on the river in my time]> or 'steady--steadyas you go.'

When the measurements indicate that the yawl is approachingthe shoalest part of the reef, the command is given to 'ease all!'

Then the men stop rowing and the yawl drifts with the current.

The next order is, 'Stand by with the buoy!' The momentthe shallowest point is reached, the pilot delivers the order,'Let go the buoy!' and over she goes. If the pilot isnot satisfied, he sounds the place again; if he finds better waterhigher up or lower down, he removes the buoy to that place.

Being finally satisfied, he gives the order, and all the menstand their oars straight up in the air, in line; a blast fromthe boat's whistle indicates that the signal has been seen;then the men 'give way' on their oars and lay the yawlalongside the buoy; the steamer comes creeping carefully down,is pointed straight at the buoy, husbands her power forthe coming struggle, and presently, at the critical moment,turns on all her steam and goes grinding and wallowing overthe buoy and the sand, and gains the deep water beyond.

Or maybe she doesn't; maybe she 'strikes and swings.'

Then she has to while away several hours (or days)sparring herself off.

Sometimes a buoy is not laid at all, but the yawl goes ahead,hunting the best water, and the steamer follows along in its wake.

Often there is a deal of fun and excitement about sounding,especially if it is a glorious summer day, or a blustering night.

But in winter the cold and the peril take most of the fun out of it.

A buoy is nothing but a board four or five feet long,with one end turned up; it is a reversed school-house bench,with one of the supports left and the other removed.

It is anchored on the shoalest part of the reef by arope with a heavy stone made fast to the end of it.

But for the resistance of the turned-up end of the reversed bench,the current would pull the buoy under water. At night, a paperlantern with a candle in it is fastened on top of the buoy,and this can be seen a mile or more, a little glimmering spark inthe waste of blackness.

Nothing delights a cub so much as an opportunity to go out sounding.

There is such an air of adventure about it; often there is danger;it is so gaudy and man-of-war-like to sit up in the stern-sheets and steera swift yawl; there is something fine about the exultant spring of the boatwhen an experienced old sailor crew throw their souls into the oars;it is lovely to see the white foam stream away from the bows; there ismusic in the rush of the water; it is deliciously exhilarating, in summer,to go speeding over the breezy expanses of the river when the worldof wavelets is dancing in the sun. It is such grandeur, too, to the cub,to get a chance to give an order; for often the pilot will simply say,'Let her go about!' and leave the rest to the cub, who instantly cries,in his sternest tone of command, 'Ease starboard! Strong on the larboard!

Starboard give way! With a will, men!' The cub enjoys soundingfor the further reason that the eyes of the passengers are watching allthe yawl's movements with absorbing interest if the time be daylight;and if it be night he knows that those same wondering eyes are fastenedupon the yawl's lantern as it glides out into the gloom and dims awayin the remote distance.

One trip a pretty girl of sixteen spent her time in our pilot-housewith her uncle and aunt, every day and all day long. I fell in lovewith her. So did Mr. Thornburg's cub, Tom G----. Tom and I had beenbosom friends until this time; but now a coolness began to arise.

I told the girl a good many of my river adventures, and mademyself out a good deal of a hero; Tom tried to make himself appearto be a hero, too, and succeeded to some extent, but then he alwayshad a way of embroidering. However, virtue is its own reward,so I was a barely perceptible trifle ahead in the contest.

About this time something happened which promised handsomely for me:

the pilots decided to sound the crossing at the head of 21.

This would occur about nine or ten o'clock at night, when thepassengers would be still up; it would be Mr. Thornburg's watch,therefore my chief would have to do the sounding. We had a perfectlove of a sounding-boat--long, trim, graceful, and as fleet asa greyhound; her thwarts were cushioned; she carried twelve oarsmen;one of the mates was always sent in her to transmit orders to her crew,for ours was a steamer where no end of 'style' was put on.

We tied up at the shore above 21, and got ready. It was a foul night,and the river was so wide, there, that a landsman's uneducatedeyes could discern no opposite shore through such a gloom.

The passengers were alert and interested; everything was satisfactory.

As I hurried through the engine-room, picturesquely gotten upin storm toggery, I met Tom, and could not forbear deliveringmyself of a mean speech--'Ain't you glad YOU don't have to go out sounding?'

Tom was passing on, but he quickly turned, and said--'Now just for that, you can go and get the sounding-pole yourself.

I was going after it, but I'd see you in Halifax, now, before I'd do it.'

'Who wants you to get it? I don't. It's in the sounding-boat.'

'It ain't, either. It's been new-painted; and it's been up on the ladies'

cabin guards two days, drying.

I flew back, and shortly arrived among the crowd of watchingand wondering ladies just in time to hear the command:

'Give way, men!'

I looked over, and there was the gallant sounding-boat booming away,the unprincipled Tom presiding at the tiller, and my chief sitting by himwith the sounding-pole which I had been sent on a fool's errand to fetch.

Then that young girl said to me--'Oh, how awful to have to go out in that little boat on such a night!

Do you think there is any danger?'

I would rather have been stabbed. I went off, full of venom,to help in the pilot-house. By and by the boat's lantern disappeared,and after an interval a wee spark glimmered upon the face of the watera mile away. Mr. Thornburg blew the whistle, in acknowledgment,backed the steamer out, and made for it. We flew along for a while,then slackened steam and went cautiously gliding toward the spark.

Presently Mr. Thornburg exclaimed--'Hello, the buoy-lantern's out!'

He stopped the engines. A moment or two later he said--'Why, there it is again!'

So he came ahead on the engines once more, and rang for the leads.

Gradually the water shoaled up, and then began to deepen again!

Mr. Thornburg muttered--'Well, I don't understand this. I believe that buoy has driftedoff the reef. Seems to be a little too far to the left.

No matter, it is safest to run over it anyhow.'

So, in that solid world of darkness we went creeping down on the light.

Just as our bows were in the act of plowing over it, Mr. Thornburg seizedthe bell-ropes, rang a startling peal, and exclaimed--'My soul, it's the sounding-boat!'

A sudden chorus of wild alarms burst out far below--a pause--and then the sound of grinding and crashing followed.

Mr. Thornburg exclaimed--'There! the paddle-wheel has ground the sounding-boatto lucifer matches! Run! See who is killed!'

I was on the main deck in the twinkling of an eye. My chief and the thirdmate and nearly all the men were safe. They had discovered their dangerwhen it was too late to pull out of the way; then, when the great guardsovershadowed them a moment later, they were prepared and knew what to do;at my chiefs order they sprang at the right instant, seized the guard,and were hauled aboard. The next moment the sounding-yawl swept aftto the wheel and was struck and splintered to atoms. Two of the men andthe cub Tom, were missing--a fact which spread like wildfire over the boat.

The passengers came flocking to the forward gangway, ladies and all,anxious-eyed, white-faced, and talked in awed voices of the dreadful thing.

And often and again I heard them say, 'Poor fellows! poor boy, poor boy!'

By this time the boat's yawl was manned and away, to searchfor the missing. Now a faint call was heard, off to the left.

The yawl had disappeared in the other direction. Half the peoplerushed to one side to encourage the swimmer with their shouts;the other half rushed the other way to shriek to the yawl to turn about.

By the callings, the swimmer was approaching, but some said the soundshowed failing strength. The crowd massed themselves againstthe boiler-deck railings, leaning over and staring into the gloom;and every faint and fainter cry wrung from them such words as,'Ah, poor fellow, poor fellow! is there no way to save him?'

But still the cries held out, and drew nearer, and presentlythe voice said pluckily--'I can make it! Stand by with a rope!'

What a rousing cheer they gave him! The chief mate took his standin the glare of a torch-basket, a coil of rope in his hand,and his men grouped about him. The next moment the swimmer's faceappeared in the circle of light, and in another one the owner of itwas hauled aboard, limp and drenched, while cheer on cheer went up.

It was that devil Tom.

The yawl crew searched everywhere, but found no sign of the two men.

They probably failed to catch the guard, tumbled back, and were struckby the wheel and killed. Tom had never jumped for the guard at all,but had plunged head-first into the river and dived under the wheel.

It was nothing; I could have done it easy enough, and I said so;but everybody went on just the same, making a wonderful to do over that ass,as if he had done something great. That girl couldn't seem to haveenough of that pitiful 'hero' the rest of the trip; but little I cared;I loathed her, any way.

The way we came to mistake the sounding-boat's lantern for thebuoy-light was this. My chief said that after laying the buoyhe fell away and watched it till it seemed to be secure; then he tookup a position a hundred yards below it and a little to one side ofthe steamer's course, headed the sounding-boat up-stream, and waited.

Having to wait some time, he and the officer got to talking;he looked up when he judged that the steamer was about on the reef;saw that the buoy was gone, but supposed that the steamer had alreadyrun over it; he went on with his talk; he noticed that the steamerwas getting very close on him, but that was the correct thing;it was her business to shave him closely, for convenience in takinghim aboard; he was expecting her to sheer off, until the last moment;then it flashed upon him that she was trying to run him down,mistaking his lantern for the buoy-light; so he sang out,'Stand by to spring for the guard, men!' and the next instant thejump was made.
Chapter 13 A Pilot's Needs
BUT I am wandering from what I was intending to do, that is,make plainer than perhaps appears in the previous chapters,some of the peculiar requirements of the science of piloting.

First of all, there is one faculty which a pilot must incessantlycultivate until he has brought it to absolute perfection.

Nothing short of perfection will do. That faculty is memory.

He cannot stop with merely thinking a thing is so and so;he must know it; for this is eminently one of the 'exact' sciences.

With what scorn a pilot was looked upon, in the old times,if he ever ventured to deal in that feeble phrase 'I think,'

instead of the vigorous one 'I know!' One cannot easily realizewhat a tremendous thing it is to know every trivial detail of twelvehundred miles of river and know it with absolute exactness.

If you will take the longest street in New York, and travel upand down it, conning its features patiently until you know everyhouse and window and door and lamp-post and big and little signby heart, and know them so accurately that you can instantlyname the one you are abreast of when you are set down at randomin that street in the middle of an inky black night, you will thenhave a tolerable notion of the amount and the exactness of apilot's knowledge who carries the Mississippi River in his head.

And then if you will go on until you know every street crossing,the character, size, and position of the crossing-stones,and the varying depth of mud in each of those numberless places,you will have some idea of what the pilot must know in orderto keep a Mississippi steamer out of trouble. Next, if youwill take half of the signs in that long street, and CHANGE THEIRPLACES once a month, and still manage to know their new positionsaccurately on dark nights, and keep up with these repeated changeswithout making any mistakes, you will understand what is requiredof a pilot's peerless memory by the fickle Mississippi.

I think a pilot's memory is about the most wonderful thingin the world. To know the Old and New Testaments by heart,and be able to recite them glibly, forward or backward,or begin at random anywhere in the book and recite both waysand never trip or make a mistake, is no extravagant massof knowledge, and no marvelous facility, compared to a pilot'smassed knowledge of the Mississippi and his marvelous facilityin the handling of it. I make this comparison deliberately,and believe I am not expanding the truth when I do it.

Many will think my figure too strong, but pilots will not.

And how easily and comfortably the pilot's memory does its work;how placidly effortless is its way; how UNCONSCIOUSLY it lays upits vast stores, hour by hour, day by day, and never loses ormislays a single valuable package of them all! Take an instance.

Let a leadsman cry, 'Half twain! half twain! half twain! half twain!

half twain!' until it become as monotonous as the ticking of a clock;let conversation be going on all the time, and the pilot be doinghis share of the talking, and no longer consciously listeningto the leadsman; and in the midst of this endless string of halftwains let a single 'quarter twain!' be interjected, without emphasis,and then the half twain cry go on again, just as before:

two or three weeks later that pilot can describe with precisionthe boat's position in the river when that quarter twainwas uttered, and give you such a lot of head-marks, stern-marks,and side-marks to guide you, that you ought to be able to takethe boat there and put her in that same spot again yourself!

The cry of 'quarter twain' did not really take his mind from his talk,but his trained faculties instantly photographed the bearings,noted the change of depth, and laid up the important details for futurereference without requiring any assistance from him in the matter.

If you were walking and talking with a friend, and another friendat your side kept up a monotonous repetition of the vowel sound A,for a couple of blocks, and then in the midst interjected an R,thus, A, A, A, A, A, R, A, A, A, etc., and gave the R no emphasis,you would not be able to state, two or three weeks afterward,that the R had been put in, nor be able to tell what objects youwere passing at the moment it was done. But you could if yourmemory had been patiently and laboriously trained to do that sortof thing mechanically.

Give a man a tolerably fair memory to start with, and pilotingwill develop it into a very colossus of capability.

But ONLY IN THE MATTERS IT IS DAILY DRILLED IN.

A time would come when the man's faculties could not helpnoticing landmarks and soundings, and his memory could nothelp holding on to them with the grip of a vise; but if youasked that same man at noon what he had had for breakfast,it would be ten chances to one that he could not tell you.

Astonishing things can be done with the human memory if you willdevote it faithfully to one particular line of business.

At the time that wages soared so high on the Missouri River, my chief,Mr. Bixby, went up there and learned more than a thousand milesof that stream with an ease and rapidity that were astonishing.

When he had seen each division once in the daytime and once at night,his education was so nearly complete that he took out a 'daylight' license;a few trips later he took out a full license, and went to piloting dayand night--and he ranked A 1, too.

Mr. Bixby placed me as steersman for a while under a pilot whose featsof memory were a constant marvel to me. However, his memory was bornin him, I think, not built. For instance, somebody would mention a name.

Instantly Mr. Brown would break in--'Oh, I knew HIM. Sallow-faced, red-headed fellow, with alittle scar on the side of his throat, like a splinter underthe flesh. He was only in the Southern trade six months.

That was thirteen years ago. I made a trip with him.

There was five feet in the upper river then; the "Henry Blake"grounded at the foot of Tower Island drawing four and a half;the "George Elliott" unshipped her rudder on the wreckof the "Sunflower"----'

'Why, the "Sunflower" didn't sink until----'

'I know when she sunk; it was three years before that, on the 2nd of December;Asa Hardy was captain of her, and his brother John was first clerk;and it was his first trip in her, too; Tom Jones told me these thingsa week afterward in New Orleans; he was first mate of the "Sunflower."Captain Hardy stuck a nail in his foot the 6th of July of the next year,and died of the lockjaw on the 15th. His brother died two years after3rd of March,--erysipelas. I never saw either of the Hardys,--they wereAlleghany River men,--but people who knew them told me all these things.

And they said Captain Hardy wore yarn socks winter and summer just the same,and his first wife's name was Jane Shook--she was from New England--and his second one died in a lunatic asylum. It was in the blood.

She was from Lexington, Kentucky. Name was Horton before she was married.'

And so on, by the hour, the man's tongue would go.

He could NOT forget any thing. It was simply impossible.

The most trivial details remained as distinct and luminous in his head,after they had lain there for years, as the most memorable events.

His was not simply a pilot's memory; its grasp was universal.

If he were talking about a trifling letter he had received sevenyears before, he was pretty sure to deliver you the entire screedfrom memory. And then without observing that he was departingfrom the true line of his talk, he was more than likely to hurlin a long-drawn parenthetical biography of the writer of that letter;and you were lucky indeed if he did not take up that writer's relatives,one by one, and give you their biographies, too.

Such a memory as that is a great misfortune. To it, all occurrencesare of the same size. Its possessor cannot distinguish an interestingcircumstance from an uninteresting one. As a talker, he is boundto clog his narrative with tiresome details and make himselfan insufferable bore. Moreover, he cannot stick to his subject.

He picks up every little grain of memory he discerns in his way,and so is led aside. Mr. Brown would start out with the honestintention of telling you a vastly funny anecdote about a dog.

He would be 'so full of laugh' that he could hardly begin; then hismemory would start with the dog's breed and personal appearance;drift into a history of his owner; of his owner's family,with descriptions of weddings and burials that had occurred in it,together with recitals of congratulatory verses and obituary poetryprovoked by the same: then this memory would recollect that oneof these events occurred during the celebrated 'hard winter'

of such and such a year, and a minute description of that winterwould follow, along with the names of people who were frozen to death,and statistics showing the high figures which pork and hay went up to.

Pork and hay would suggest corn and fodder; corn and fodder wouldsuggest cows and horses; cows and horses would suggest the circusand certain celebrated bare-back riders; the transition fromthe circus to the menagerie was easy and natural; from the elephantto equatorial Africa was but a step; then of course the heathensavages would suggest religion; and at the end of three or four hours'

tedious jaw, the watch would change, and Brown would go outof the pilot-house muttering extracts from sermons he had heardyears before about the efficacy of prayer as a means of grace.

And the original first mention would be all you had learned about that dog,after all this waiting and hungering.

A pilot must have a memory; but there are two higher qualitieswhich he must also have. He must have good and quick judgmentand decision, and a cool, calm courage that no peril can shake.

Give a man the merest trifle of pluck to start with, and by the timehe has become a pilot he cannot be unmanned by any danger a steamboatcan get into; but one cannot quite say the same for judgment.

Judgment is a matter of brains, and a man must START with a goodstock of that article or he will never succeed as a pilot.

The growth of courage in the pilot-house is steady all the time,but it does not reach a high and satisfactory condition untilsome time after the young pilot has been 'standing his own watch,'

alone and under the staggering weight of all the responsibilitiesconnected with the position. When an apprentice has become prettythoroughly acquainted with the river, he goes clattering alongso fearlessly with his steamboat, night or day, that he presentlybegins to imagine that it is HIS courage that animates him;but the first time the pilot steps out and leaves him to hisown devices he finds out it was the other man's. He discoversthat the article has been left out of his own cargo altogether.

The whole river is bristling with exigencies in a moment;he is not prepared for them; he does not know how to meet them;all his knowledge forsakes him; and within fifteen minuteshe is as white as a sheet and scared almost to death.

Therefore pilots wisely train these cubs by various strategictricks to look danger in the face a little more calmly.

A favorite way of theirs is to play a friendly swindle uponthe candidate.

Mr. Bixby served me in this fashion once, and for years afterwardI used to blush even in my sleep when I thought of it.

I had become a good steersman; so good, indeed, that I had allthe work to do on our watch, night and day; Mr. Bixby seldommade a suggestion to me; all he ever did was to take the wheelon particularly bad nights or in particularly bad crossings,land the boat when she needed to be landed, play gentlemanof leisure nine-tenths of the watch, and collect the wages.

The lower river was about bank-full, and if anybody had questionedmy ability to run any crossing between Cairo and New Orleanswithout help or instruction, I should have felt irreparably hurt.

The idea of being afraid of any crossing in the lot,in the DAY-TIME, was a thing too preposterous for contemplation.

Well, one matchless summer's day I was bowling down the bendabove island 66, brimful of self-conceit and carrying my noseas high as a giraffe's, when Mr. Bixby said--'I am going below a while. I suppose you know the next crossing?'

This was almost an affront. It was about the plainest and simplest crossingin the whole river. One couldn't come to any harm, whether he ran itright or not; and as for depth, there never had been any bottom there.

I knew all this, perfectly well.

'Know how to RUN it? Why, I can run it with my eyes shut.'

'How much water is there in it?'

'Well, that is an odd question. I couldn't get bottom therewith a church steeple.'

'You think so, do you?'

The very tone of the question shook my confidence.

That was what Mr. Bixby was expecting. He left, without sayinganything more. I began to imagine all sorts of things.

Mr. Bixby, unknown to me, of course, sent somebody down tothe forecastle with some mysterious instructions to the leadsmen,another messenger was sent to whisper among the officers,and then Mr. Bixby went into hiding behind a smoke-stack wherehe could observe results. Presently the captain stepped out onthe hurricane deck; next the chief mate appeared; then a clerk.

Every moment or two a straggler was added to my audience;and before I got to the head of the island I had fifteenor twenty people assembled down there under my nose.

I began to wonder what the trouble was. As I started across,the captain glanced aloft at me and said, with a sham uneasinessin his voice--'Where is Mr. Bixby?'

'Gone below, sir.'

But that did the business for me. My imagination began to constructdangers out of nothing, and they multiplied faster than I could keepthe run of them. All at once I imagined I saw shoal water ahead!

The wave of coward agony that surged through me then came near dislocatingevery joint in me. All my confidence in that crossing vanished.

I seized the bell-rope; dropped it, ashamed; seized it again;dropped it once more; clutched it tremblingly one again,and pulled it so feebly that I could hardly hear the stroke myself.

Captain and mate sang out instantly, and both together--'Starboard lead there! and quick about it!'

This was another shock. I began to climb the wheel like a squirrel;but I would hardly get the boat started to port before I would see newdangers on that side, and away I would spin to the other; only to findperils accumulating to starboard, and be crazy to get to port again.

Then came the leadsman's sepulchral cry--'D-e-e-p four!'

Deep four in a bottomless crossing! The terror of it took my breath away.

'M-a-r-k three!... M-a-r-k three... Quarter less three!...

Half twain!'

This was frightful! I seized the bell-ropes and stopped the engines.

'Quarter twain! Quarter twain! MARK twain!'

I was helpless. I did not know what in the world to do.

I was quaking from head to foot, and I could have hung my hat onmy eyes, they stuck out so far.

'Quarter LESS twain! Nine and a HALF!'

We were DRAWING nine! My hands were in a nerveless flutter.

I could not ring a bell intelligibly with them. I flew to thespeaking-tube and shouted to the engineer--'Oh, Ben, if you love me, BACK her! Quick, Ben! Oh, back the immortalSOUL out of her! '

I heard the door close gently. I looked around, and there stoodMr. Bixby, smiling a bland, sweet smile. Then the audience onthe hurricane deck sent up a thundergust of humiliating laughter.

I saw it all, now, and I felt meaner than the meanest man inhuman history. I laid in the lead, set the boat in her marks,came ahead on the engines, and said--'It was a fine trick to play on an orphan, WASN'T it?

I suppose I'll never hear the last of how I was ass enough to heavethe lead at the head of 66.'

'Well, no, you won't, maybe. In fact I hope you won't;for I want you to learn something by that experience.

Didn't you KNOW there was no bottom in that crossing?'

'Yes, sir, I did.'

'Very well, then. You shouldn't have allowed me or anybody elseto shake your confidence in that knowledge. Try to remember that.

And another thing: when you get into a dangerous place, don't turn coward.

That isn't going to help matters any.'

It was a good enough lesson, but pretty hardly learned.

Yet about the hardest part of it was that for months I so often hadto hear a phrase which I had conceived a particular distaste for.

It was, 'Oh, Ben, if you love me, back her!'
Chapter 14 Rank and Dignity of Piloting
IN my preceding chapters I have tried, by going into the minutiaeof the science of piloting, to carry the reader step by stepto a comprehension of what the science consists of; and atthe same time I have tried to show him that it is a very curiousand wonderful science, too, and very worthy of his attention.

If I have seemed to love my subject, it is no surprising thing,for I loved the profession far better than any I have followed since,and I took a measureless pride in it. The reason is plain:

a pilot, in those days, was the only unfettered andentirely independent human being that lived in the earth.

Kings are but the hampered servants of parliament and people;parliaments sit in chains forged by their constituency;the editor of a newspaper cannot be independent, but mustwork with one hand tied behind him by party and patrons,and be content to utter only half or two-thirds of his mind;no clergyman is a free man and may speak the whole truth,regardless of his parish's opinions; writers of all kinds aremanacled servants of the public. We write frankly and fearlessly,but then we 'modify' before we print. In truth, every man andwoman and child has a master, and worries and frets in servitude;but in the day I write of, the Mississippi pilot had none.

The captain could stand upon the hurricane deck, in the pompof a very brief authority, and give him five or six orders whilethe vessel backed into the stream, and then that skipper's reignwas over. The moment that the boat was under way in the river,she was under the sole and unquestioned control of the pilot.

He could do with her exactly as he pleased, run her when and whitherhe chose, and tie her up to the bank whenever his judgment saidthat that course was best. His movements were entirely free;he consulted no one, he received commands from nobody,he promptly resented even the merest suggestions. Indeed, the lawof the United States forbade him to listen to commandsor suggestions, rightly considering that the pilot necessarilyknew better how to handle the boat than anybody could tell him.

So here was the novelty of a king without a keeper, an absolute monarchwho was absolute in sober truth and not by a fiction of words.

I have seen a boy of eighteen taking a great steamer serenelyinto what seemed almost certain destruction, and the aged captainstanding mutely by, filled with apprehension but powerlessto interfere. His interference, in that particular instance,might have been an excellent thing, but to permit it wouldhave been to establish a most pernicious precedent. It willeasily be guessed, considering the pilot's boundless authority,that he was a great personage in the old steamboating days.

He was treated with marked courtesy by the captain and with markeddeference by all the officers and servants; and this deferentialspirit was quickly communicated to the passengers, too. I thinkpilots were about the only people I ever knew who failed to show,in some degree, embarrassment in the presence of travelingforeign princes. But then, people in one's own grade of lifeare not usually embarrassing objects.

By long habit, pilots came to put all their wishes in the form of commands.

It 'gravels' me, to this day, to put my will in the weak shape ofa request, instead of launching it in the crisp language of an order.

In those old days, to load a steamboat at St. Louis, take her to NewOrleans and back, and discharge cargo, consumed about twenty-five days,on an average. Seven or eight of these days the boat spent at the wharvesof St. Louis and New Orleans, and every soul on board was hard at work,except the two pilots; they did nothing but play gentleman up town,and receive the same wages for it as if they had been on duty.

The moment the boat touched the wharf at either city, they were ashore;and they were not likely to be seen again till the last bell was ringing andeverything in readiness for another voyage.

When a captain got hold of a pilot of particularly high reputation,he took pains to keep him. When wages were four hundred dollarsa month on the Upper Mississippi, I have known a captainto keep such a pilot in idleness, under full pay, three monthsat a time, while the river was frozen up. And one must rememberthat in those cheap times four hundred dollars was a salaryof almost inconceivable splendor. Few men on shore got such payas that, and when they did they were mightily looked up to.

When pilots from either end of the river wandered into our smallMissouri village, they were sought by the best and the fairest,and treated with exalted respect. Lying in port under wageswas a thing which many pilots greatly enjoyed and appreciated;especially if they belonged in the Missouri River in the heydayof that trade (Kansas times), and got nine hundred dollars a trip,which was equivalent to about eighteen hundred dollars a month.

Here is a conversation of that day. A chap out of the Illinois River,with a little stern-wheel tub, accosts a couple of ornate and gildedMissouri River pilots--'Gentlemen, I've got a pretty good trip for the upcountry,and shall want you about a month. How much will it be?'

'Eighteen hundred dollars apiece.'

'Heavens and earth! You take my boat, let me have your wages,and I'll divide!'

I will remark, in passing, that Mississippi steamboatmen wereimportant in landsmen's eyes (and in their own, too, in a degree)according to the dignity of the boat they were on.

For instance, it was a proud thing to be of the crew of suchstately craft as the 'Aleck Scott' or the 'Grand Turk.'

Negro firemen, deck hands, and barbers belonging to those boatswere distinguished personages in their grade of life, and they werewell aware of that fact too. A stalwart darkey once gave offenseat a negro ball in New Orleans by putting on a good many airs.

Finally one of the managers bustled up to him and said--'Who IS you, any way? Who is you? dat's what Iwants to know!'

The offender was not disconcerted in the least, but swelled himself upand threw that into his voice which showed that he knew he was not puttingon all those airs on a stinted capital.

'Who IS I? Who IS I? I let you know mighty quick who I is!

I want you niggers to understan' dat I fires de middle do'

[Door]> on de "Aleck Scott! " '

That was sufficient.

The barber of the 'Grand Turk' was a spruce young negro,who aired his importance with balmy complacency,and was greatly courted by the circle in which he moved.

The young colored population of New Orleans were much givento flirting, at twilight, on the banquettes of the back streets.

Somebody saw and heard something like the following,one evening, in one of those localities. A middle-aged negrowoman projected her head through a broken pane and shouted(very willing that the neighbors should hear and envy), 'YouMary Ann, come in de house dis minute! Stannin' out dah foolin'

'long wid dat low trash, an' heah's de barber offn de "Gran' Turk"wants to conwerse wid you! '

My reference, a moment ago, to the fact that a pilot's peculiarofficial position placed him out of the reach of criticism or command,brings Stephen W---- naturally to my mind. He was a gifted pilot,a good fellow, a tireless talker, and had both wit and humor in him.

He had a most irreverent independence, too, and was deliciouslyeasy-going and comfortable in the presence of age, official dignity,and even the most august wealth. He always had work, he neversaved a penny, he was a most persuasive borrower, he was in debtto every pilot on the river, and to the majority of the captains.

He could throw a sort of splendor around a bit of harum-scarum,devil-may-care piloting, that made it almost fascinating--but not to everybody. He made a trip with good old Captain Y----once, and was 'relieved' from duty when the boat got to New Orleans.

Somebody expressed surprise at the discharge. Captain Y----shuddered at the mere mention of Stephen. Then his poor, thin oldvoice piped out something like this:--'Why, bless me! I wouldn't have such a wild creature on my boatfor the world--not for the whole world! He swears, he sings,he whistles, he yells--I never saw such an Injun to yell.

All times of the night--it never made any difference to him.

He would just yell that way, not for anything in particular,but merely on account of a kind of devilish comfort he got out of it.

I never could get into a sound sleep but he would fetch meout of bed, all in a cold sweat, with one of those dreadfulwar-whoops. A queer being--very queer being; no respectfor anything or anybody. Sometimes he called me "Johnny."And he kept a fiddle, and a cat. He played execrably.

This seemed to distress the cat, and so the cat would howl.

Nobody could sleep where that man--and his family--was.

And reckless. There never was anything like it.

Now you may believe it or not, but as sure as I am sitting here,he brought my boat a-tilting down through those awful snagsat Chicot under a rattling head of steam, and the wind a-blowinglike the very nation, at that! My officers will tell you so.

They saw it. And, sir, while he was a-tearing right downthrough those snags, and I a-shaking in my shoes and praying,I wish I may never speak again if he didn't pucker up his mouthand go to WHISTLING! Yes, sir; whistling "Buffalo gals,can't you come out tonight, can't you come out to-night,can't you come out to-night;" and doing it as calmly as if wewere attending a funeral and weren't related to the corpse.

And when I remonstrated with him about it, he smiled down on meas if I was his child, and told me to run in the house and tryto be good, and not be meddling with my superiors!"Once a pretty mean captain caught Stephen in New Orleans out of workand as usual out of money. He laid steady siege to Stephen, who wasin a very 'close place,' and finally persuaded him to hire with himat one hundred and twenty-five dollars per month, just half wages,the captain agreeing not to divulge the secret and so bring down the contemptof all the guild upon the poor fellow. But the boat was not more thana day out of New Orleans before Stephen discovered that the captainwas boasting of his exploit, and that all the officers had been told.

Stephen winced, but said nothing. About the middle of the afternoonthe captain stepped out on the hurricane deck, cast his eye around,and looked a good deal surprised. He glanced inquiringly aloft at Stephen,but Stephen was whistling placidly, and attending to business.

The captain stood around a while in evident discomfort, and once or twiceseemed about to make a suggestion; but the etiquette of the river taughthim to avoid that sort of rashness, and so he managed to hold his peace.

He chafed and puzzled a few minutes longer, then retired to his apartments.

But soon he was out again, and apparently more perplexed than ever.

Presently he ventured to remark, with deference--'Pretty good stage of the river now, ain't it, sir?'

'Well, I should say so! Bank-full IS a pretty liberal stage.'

'Seems to be a good deal of current here.'

'Good deal don't describe it! It's worse than a mill-race.'

'Isn't it easier in toward shore than it is out here in the middle?'

'Yes, I reckon it is; but a body can't be too careful with a steamboat.

It's pretty safe out here; can't strike any bottom here, you candepend on that.'

The captain departed, looking rueful enough. At this rate,he would probably die of old age before his boat got to St. Louis.

Next day he appeared on deck and again found Stephen faithfullystanding up the middle of the river, fighting the whole vastforce of the Mississippi, and whistling the same placid tune.

This thing was becoming serious. In by the shore was a slower boatclipping along in the easy water and gaining steadily; she beganto make for an island chute; Stephen stuck to the middle of the river.

Speech was WRUNG from the captain. He said--'Mr. W----, don't that chute cut off a good deal of distance?'

'I think it does, but I don't know.'

'Don't know! Well, isn't there water enough in it now to go through?'

'I expect there is, but I am not certain.'

'Upon my word this is odd! Why, those pilots on that boat yonder are goingto try it. Do you mean to say that you don't know as much as they do?'

'THEY! Why, THEY are two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar pilots!

But don't you be uneasy; I know as much as any man can affordto know for a hundred and twenty-five!'

The captain surrendered.

Five minutes later Stephen was bowling through the chute and showingthe rival boat a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar pair of heels.
Chapter 15 The Pilots' Monopoly
ONE day, on board the 'Aleck Scott,' my chief, Mr. Bixby,was crawling carefully through a close place at Cat Island,both leads going, and everybody holding his breath. The captain,a nervous, apprehensive man, kept still as long as he could,but finally broke down and shouted from the hurricane deck--'For gracious' sake, give her steam, Mr. Bixby! give her steam!

She'll never raise the reef on this headway!'

For all the effect that was produced upon Mr. Bixby, one would have supposedthat no remark had been made. But five minutes later, when the dangerwas past and the leads laid in, he burst instantly into a consuming fury,and gave the captain the most admirable cursing I ever listened to.

No bloodshed ensued; but that was because the captain's cause was weak;for ordinarily he was not a man to take correction quietly.

Having now set forth in detail the nature of the science of piloting,and likewise described the rank which the pilot held among the fraternityof steamboatmen, this seems a fitting place to say a few words about anorganization which the pilots once formed for the protection of their guild.

It was curious and noteworthy in this, that it was perhaps the compactest,the completest, and the strongest commercial organization everformed among men.

For a long time wages had been two hundred and fifty dollars a month;but curiously enough, as steamboats multiplied and business increased,the wages began to fall little by little. It was easy to discoverthe reason of this. Too many pilots were being 'made.' It was niceto have a 'cub,' a steersman, to do all the hard work for a coupleof years, gratis, while his master sat on a high bench and smoked;all pilots and captains had sons or nephews who wanted to be pilots. By andby it came to pass that nearly every pilot on the river had a steersman.

When a steersman had made an amount of progress that was satisfactoryto any two pilots in the trade, they could get a pilot's license for himby signing an application directed to the United States Inspector.

Nothing further was needed; usually no questions were asked, no proofsof capacity required.

Very well, this growing swarm of new pilots presentlybegan to undermine the wages, in order to get berths.

Too late--apparently--the knights of the tiller perceivedtheir mistake. Plainly, something had to be done, and quickly;but what was to be the needful thing. A close organization.

Nothing else would answer. To compass this seemed an impossibility;so it was talked, and talked, and then dropped.

It was too likely to ruin whoever ventured to movein the matter. But at last about a dozen of the boldest--and some of them the best--pilots on the river launchedthemselves into the enterprise and took all the chances.

They got a special charter from the legislature, with large powers,under the name of the Pilots' Benevolent Association;elected their officers, completed their organization,contributed capital, put 'association' wages up to two hundredand fifty dollars at once--and then retired to their homes,for they were promptly discharged from employment.

But there were two or three unnoticed trifles in their by-lawswhich had the seeds of propagation in them. For instance,all idle members of the association, in good standing,were entitled to a pension of twenty-five dollars per month.

This began to bring in one straggler after another from the ranksof the new-fledged pilots, in the dull (summer) season.

Better have twenty-five dollars than starve; the initiationfee was only twelve dollars, and no dues requiredfrom the unemployed.

Also, the widows of deceased members in good standing coulddraw twenty-five dollars per month, and a certain sum for eachof their children. Also, the said deceased would be buriedat the association's expense. These things resurrected allthe superannuated and forgotten pilots in the Mississippi Valley.

They came from farms, they came from interior villages, they camefrom everywhere. They came on crutches, on drays, in ambulances,--any way, so they got there. They paid in their twelve dollars,and straightway began to draw out twenty-five dollars a month,and calculate their burial bills.

By and by, all the useless, helpless pilots, and a dozen first-class ones,were in the association, and nine-tenths of the best pilots out of itand laughing at it. It was the laughing-stock of the whole river.

Everybody joked about the by-law requiring members to pay ten per cent.

of their wages, every month, into the treasury for the supportof the association, whereas all the members were outcast and tabooed,and no one would employ them. Everybody was derisively gratefulto the association for taking all the worthless pilots out of the wayand leaving the whole field to the excellent and the deserving;and everybody was not only jocularly grateful for that, but for aresult which naturally followed, namely, the gradual advance of wagesas the busy season approached. Wages had gone up from the low figureof one hundred dollars a month to one hundred and twenty-five, and insome cases to one hundred and fifty; and it was great fun to enlargeupon the fact that this charming thing had been accomplished by a bodyof men not one of whom received a particle of benefit from it.

Some of the jokers used to call at the association rooms and havea good time chaffing the members and offering them the charityof taking them as steersmen for a trip, so that they could see whatthe forgotten river looked like. However, the association was content;or at least it gave no sign to the contrary. Now and then itcaptured a pilot who was 'out of luck,' and added him to its list;and these later additions were very valuable, for they were good pilots;the incompetent ones had all been absorbed before. As business freshened,wages climbed gradually up to two hundred and fifty dollars--the association figure--and became firmly fixed there; and stillwithout benefiting a member of that body, for no member was hired.

The hilarity at the association's expense burst all bounds, now.

There was no end to the fun which that poor martyr had toput up with.

However, it is a long lane that has no turning. Winter approached,business doubled and trebled, and an avalanche of Missouri,Illinois and Upper Mississippi River boats came pouring downto take a chance in the New Orleans trade. All of a suddenpilots were in great demand, and were correspondingly scarce.

The time for revenge was come. It was a bitter pill to have toaccept association pilots at last, yet captains and owners agreedthat there was no other way. But none of these outcasts offered!

So there was a still bitterer pill to be swallowed:

they must be sought out and asked for their services.

Captain ---- was the first man who found it necessary to takethe dose, and he had been the loudest derider of the organization.

He hunted up one of the best of the association pilots and said--'Well, you boys have rather got the best of us for alittle while, so I'll give in with as good a grace as I can.

I've come to hire you; get your trunk aboard right away.

I want to leave at twelve o'clock.'

'I don't know about that. Who is your other pilot?'

'I've got I. S----. Why?'

'I can't go with him. He don't belong to the association.'

'What!'

'It's so.'

'Do you mean to tell me that you won't turn a wheel with one of the very bestand oldest pilots on the river because he don't belong to your association?'

'Yes, I do.'

'Well, if this isn't putting on airs! I supposed I was doing youa benevolence; but I begin to think that I am the party that wantsa favor done. Are you acting under a law of the concern?'

'Yes.'

'Show it to me.'

So they stepped into the association rooms, and the secretarysoon satisfied the captain, who said--'Well, what am I to do? I have hired Mr. S---- for the entire season.'

'I will provide for you,' said the secretary. 'I will detail a pilotto go with you, and he shall be on board at twelve o'clock.'

'But if I discharge S----, he will come on me for the whole season's wages.'

'Of course that is a matter between you and Mr. S----, captain.

We cannot meddle in your private affairs.'

The captain stormed, but to no purpose. In the end he had to dischargeS----, pay him about a thousand dollars, and take an association pilotin his place. The laugh was beginning to turn the other way now.

Every day, thenceforward, a new victim fell; every day some outragedcaptain discharged a non-association pet, with tears and profanity,and installed a hated association man in his berth. In a verylittle while, idle non-associationists began to be pretty plenty,brisk as business was, and much as their services were desired.

The laugh was shifting to the other side of their mouths most palpably.

These victims, together with the captains and owners, presently ceasedto laugh altogether, and began to rage about the revenge they would takewhen the passing business 'spurt' was over.

Soon all the laughers that were left were the ownersand crews of boats that had two non-association pilots.

But their triumph was not very long-lived. For this reason:

It was a rigid rule of the association that its members should never,under any circumstances whatever, give information about the channelto any 'outsider.' By this time about half the boats had nonebut association pilots, and the other half had none but outsiders.

At the first glance one would suppose that when it cameto forbidding information about the river these two partiescould play equally at that game; but this was not so.

At every good-sized town from one end of the river to the other,there was a 'wharf-boat' to land at, instead of a wharf or a pier.

Freight was stored in it for transportation; waiting passengers sleptin its cabins. Upon each of these wharf-boats the association'sofficers placed a strong box fastened with a peculiar lock which wasused in no other service but one--the United States mail service.

It was the letter-bag lock, a sacred governmental thing.

By dint of much beseeching the government had beenpersuaded to allow the association to use this lock.

Every association man carried a key which would open these boxes.

That key, or rather a peculiar way of holding it in the handwhen its owner was asked for river information by a stranger--for the success of the St. Louis and New Orleans associationhad now bred tolerably thriving branches in a dozen neighboringsteamboat trades--was the association man's sign and diplomaof membership; and if the stranger did not respond by producinga similar key and holding it in a certain manner duly prescribed,his question was politely ignored. From the association's secretaryeach member received a package of more or less gorgeous blanks,printed like a billhead, on handsome paper, properly ruled in columns;a bill-head worded something like this--STEAMER GREAT REPUBLIC.

JOHN SMITH MASTERPILOTS, JOHN JONES AND THOMAS BROWN.

+-------------------------------------------------------------+| CROSSINGS. | SOUNDINGS. | MARKS. | REMARKS. |+-------------------------------------------------------------+These blanks were filled up, day by day, as the voyageprogressed, and deposited in the several wharf-boat boxes.

For instance, as soon as the first crossing, out from St. Louis,was completed, the items would be entered upon the blank,under the appropriate headings, thus--'St. Louis. Nine and a half (feet). Stern on court-house, headon dead cottonwood above wood-yard, until you raise the first reef,then pull up square.' Then under head of Remarks: 'Go just outsidethe wrecks; this is important. New snag just where you straighten down;go above it.'

The pilot who deposited that blank in the Cairo box (after addingto it the details of every crossing all the way down from St. Louis)took out and read half a dozen fresh reports (from upward-bound steamers)concerning the river between Cairo and Memphis, posted himself thoroughly,returned them to the box, and went back aboard his boat again so armedagainst accident that he could not possibly get his boat into troublewithout bringing the most ingenious carelessness to his aid.

Imagine the benefits of so admirable a system in a piece of river twelveor thirteen hundred miles long, whose channel was shifting every day!

The pilot who had formerly been obliged to put up with seeing a shoalplace once or possibly twice a month, had a hundred sharp eyes to watch itfor him, now, and bushels of intelligent brains to tell him how to run it.

His information about it was seldom twenty-four hours old. If the reportsin the last box chanced to leave any misgivings on his mind concerninga treacherous crossing, he had his remedy; he blew his steam-whistlein a peculiar way as soon as he saw a boat approaching; the signal wasanswered in a peculiar way if that boat's pilots were association men;and then the two steamers ranged alongside and all uncertainties were sweptaway by fresh information furnished to the inquirer by word of mouth andin minute detail.

The first thing a pilot did when he reached New Orleans or St. Louiswas to take his final and elaborate report to the association parlorsand hang it up there,--after which he was free to visit his family.

In these parlors a crowd was always gathered together, discussingchanges in the channel, and the moment there was a fresh arrival,everybody stopped talking till this witness had told the newest newsand settled the latest uncertainty. Other craftsmen can 'sink the shop,'

sometimes, and interest themselves in other matters. Not so with a pilot;he must devote himself wholly to his profession and talk of nothing else;for it would be small gain to be perfect one day and imperfect the next.

He has no time or words to waste if he would keep 'posted.'

But the outsiders had a hard time of it. No particular placeto meet and exchange information, no wharf-boat reports,none but chance and unsatisfactory ways of getting news.

The consequence was that a man sometimes had to run five hundredmiles of river on information that was a week or ten days old.

At a fair stage of the river that might have answered; but when thedead low water came it was destructive.

Now came another perfectly logical result. The outsiders beganto ground steamboats, sink them, and get into all sorts of trouble,whereas accidents seemed to keep entirely away from the association men.

Wherefore even the owners and captains of boats furnishedexclusively with outsiders, and previously considered to be whollyindependent of the association and free to comfort themselveswith brag and laughter, began to feel pretty uncomfortable.

Still, they made a show of keeping up the brag, until one black daywhen every captain of the lot was formally ordered to immediatelydischarge his outsiders and take association pilots in their stead.

And who was it that had the dashing presumption to do that? Alas, it camefrom a power behind the throne that was greater than the throne itself.

It was the underwriters!

It was no time to 'swap knives.' Every outsider had to take his trunkashore at once. Of course it was supposed that there was collusionbetween the association and the underwriters, but this was not so.

The latter had come to comprehend the excellence of the 'report' systemof the association and the safety it secured, and so they had made theirdecision among themselves and upon plain business principles.

There was weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth inthe camp of the outsiders now. But no matter, there wasbut one course for them to pursue, and they pursued it.

They came forward in couples and groups, and proffered theirtwelve dollars and asked for membership. They were surprisedto learn that several new by-laws had been long ago added.

For instance, the initiation fee had been raised to fifty dollars;that sum must be tendered, and also ten per cent.

of the wages which the applicant had received each and everymonth since the founding of the association. In many cases thisamounted to three or four hundred dollars. Still, the associationwould not entertain the application until the money was present.

Even then a single adverse vote killed the application.

Every member had to vote 'Yes' or 'No' in person and before witnesses;so it took weeks to decide a candidacy, because many pilotswere so long absent on voyages. However, the repentantsinners scraped their savings together, and one by one,by our tedious voting process, they were added to the fold.

A time came, at last, when only about ten remained outside.

They said they would starve before they would apply.

They remained idle a long while, because of course nobody could ventureto employ them.

By and by the association published the fact that upon a certaindate the wages would be raised to five hundred dollars per month.

All the branch associations had grown strong, now, and the RedRiver one had advanced wages to seven hundred dollars a month.

Reluctantly the ten outsiders yielded, in view of these things,and made application. There was another new by-law, by this time,which required them to pay dues not only on all the wages theyhad received since the association was born, but also on what theywould have received if they had continued at work up to the timeof their application, instead of going off to pout in idleness.

It turned out to be a difficult matter to elect them, but itwas accomplished at last. The most virulent sinner of thisbatch had stayed out and allowed 'dues' to accumulate againsthim so long that he had to send in six hundred and twenty-fivedollars with his application.

The association had a good bank account now, and was very strong.

There was no longer an outsider. A by-law was added forbiddingthe reception of any more cubs or apprentices for five years;after which time a limited number would be taken, not by individuals,but by the association, upon these terms: the applicant mustnot be less than eighteen years old, and of respectable familyand good character; he must pass an examination as to education,pay a thousand dollars in advance for the privilege of becomingan apprentice, and must remain under the commands of the associationuntil a great part of the membership (more than half, I think)should be willing to sign his application for a pilot's license.

All previously-articled apprentices were now taken away from theirmasters and adopted by the association. The president and secretarydetailed them for service on one boat or another, as they chose,and changed them from boat to boat according to certain rules.

If a pilot could show that he was in infirm health and needed assistance,one of the cubs would be ordered to go with him.

The widow and orphan list grew, but so did the association'sfinancial resources. The association attended its ownfunerals in state, and paid for them. When occasion demanded,it sent members down the river upon searches for the bodiesof brethren lost by steamboat accidents; a search of this kindsometimes cost a thousand dollars.

The association procured a charter and went into the insurancebusiness, also. It not only insured the lives of its members,but took risks on steamboats.

The organization seemed indestructible. It was the tightest monopolyin the world. By the United States law, no man could becomea pilot unless two duly licensed pilots signed his application;and now there was nobody outside of the association competentto sign. Consequently the making of pilots was at an end.

Every year some would die and others become incapacitated by ageand infirmity; there would be no new ones to take their places.

In time, the association could put wages up to any figure it chose;and as long as it should be wise enough not to carry the thingtoo far and provoke the national government into amendingthe licensing system, steamboat owners would have to submit,since there would be no help for it.

The owners and captains were the only obstruction that lay betweenthe association and absolute power; and at last this one was removed.

Incredible as it may seem, the owners and captains deliberatelydid it themselves. When the pilots' association announced,months beforehand, that on the first day of September, 1861,wages would be advanced to five hundred dollars per month, the ownersand captains instantly put freights up a few cents, and explainedto the farmers along the river the necessity of it, by calling theirattention to the burdensome rate of wages about to be established.

It was a rather slender argument, but the farmers did not seem to detect it.

It looked reasonable to them that to add five cents freight on a bushelof corn was justifiable under the circumstances, overlooking the factthat this advance on a cargo of forty thousand sacks was a good dealmore than necessary to cover the new wages.

So, straightway the captains and owners got up an associationof their own, and proposed to put captains' wages up to fivehundred dollars, too, and move for another advance in freights.

It was a novel idea, but of course an effect which had beenproduced once could be produced again. The new association decreed(for this was before all the outsiders had been takeninto the pilots' association) that if any captain employeda non-association pilot, he should be forced to discharge him,and also pay a fine of five hundred dollars. Several of theseheavy fines were paid before the captains' organization grewstrong enough to exercise full authority over its membership;but that all ceased, presently. The captains tried to get the pilotsto decree that no member of their corporation should serve undera non-association captain; but this proposition was declined.

The pilots saw that they would be backed up by the captains andthe underwriters anyhow, and so they wisely refrained from enteringinto entangling alliances.

As I have remarked, the pilots' association was now the compactestmonopoly in the world, perhaps, and seemed simply indestructible.

And yet the days of its glory were numbered. First, the newrailroad stretching up through Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky,to Northern railway centers, began to divert the passenger travelfrom the steamers; next the war came and almost entirely annihilatedthe steamboating industry during several years, leaving most ofthe pilots idle, and the cost of living advancing all the time;then the treasurer of the St. Louis association put his handinto the till and walked off with every dollar of the ample fund;and finally, the railroads intruding everywhere, there was littlefor steamers to do, when the war was over, but carry freights;so straightway some genius from the Atlantic coast introduced the planof towing a dozen steamer cargoes down to New Orleans at the tailof a vulgar little tug-boat; and behold, in the twinkling of an eye,as it were, the association and the noble science of piloting werethings of the dead and pathetic past!
Chapter 16 Racing Days
IT was always the custom for the boats to leave NewOrleans between four and five o'clock in the afternoon.

From three o'clock onward they would be burning rosin and pitch pine(the sign of preparation), and so one had the picturesque spectacleof a rank, some two or three miles long, of tall, ascending columnsof coal-black smoke; a colonnade which supported a sable roof ofthe same smoke blended together and spreading abroad over the city.

Every outward-bound boat had its flag flying at the jack-staff,and sometimes a duplicate on the verge staff astern.

Two or three miles of mates were commanding and swearing with morethan usual emphasis; countless processions of freight barrelsand boxes were spinning athwart the levee and flying aboardthe stage-planks, belated passengers were dodging and skippingamong these frantic things, hoping to reach the forecastlecompanion way alive, but having their doubts about it;women with reticules and bandboxes were trying to keep upwith husbands freighted with carpet-sacks and crying babies,and making a failure of it by losing their heads in the whirland roar and general distraction; drays and baggage-vans wereclattering hither and thither in a wild hurry, every now andthen getting blocked and jammed together, and then during tenseconds one could not see them for the profanity, except vaguelyand dimly; every windlass connected with every forehatch,from one end of that long array of steamboats to the other,was keeping up a deafening whiz and whir, lowering freightinto the hold, and the half-naked crews of perspiring negroesthat worked them were roaring such songs as 'De Las' Sack!

De Las' Sack!'--inspired to unimaginable exaltation by the chaosof turmoil and racket that was driving everybody else mad.

By this time the hurricane and boiler decks of the steamerswould be packed and black with passengers. The 'last bells'

would begin to clang, all down the line, and then the powwowseemed to double; in a moment or two the final warning came,--a simultaneous din of Chinese gongs, with the cry,'All dat ain't goin', please to git asho'! '--and behold,the powwow quadrupled! People came swarming ashore,overturning excited stragglers that were trying to swarm aboard.

One more moment later a long array of stage-planks was beinghauled in, each with its customary latest passenger clingingto the end of it with teeth, nails, and everything else,and the customary latest procrastinator making a wild springshoreward over his head.

Now a number of the boats slide backward into the stream,leaving wide gaps in the serried rank of steamers.

Citizens crowd the decks of boats that are not to go, in orderto see the sight. Steamer after steamer straightens herself up,gathers all her strength, and presently comes swinging by,under a tremendous head of steam, with flag flying,black smoke rolling, and her entire crew of firemen and deck-hands(usually swarthy negroes) massed together on the forecastle,the best 'voice' in the lot towering from the midst(being mounted on the capstan), waving his hat or a flag,and all roaring a mighty chorus, while the parting cannons boomand the multitudinous spectators swing their hats and huzza!

Steamer after steamer falls into line, and the stately procession goeswinging its flight up the river.

In the old times, whenever two fast boats started out on a race,with a big crowd of people looking on, it was inspiring to hearthe crews sing, especially if the time were night-fall, and the forecastlelit up with the red glare of the torch-baskets. Racing was royal fun.

The public always had an idea that racing was dangerous; whereas the oppositewas the case--that is, after the laws were passed which restrictedeach boat to just so many pounds of steam to the square inch.

No engineer was ever sleepy or careless when his heart was in a race.

He was constantly on the alert, trying gauge-cocks and watching things.

The dangerous place was on slow, plodding boats, where the engineers drowsedaround and allowed chips to get into the 'doctor' and shut off the watersupply from the boilers.

In the 'flush times' of steamboating, a race between two notoriouslyfleet steamers was an event of vast importance. The date was setfor it several weeks in advance, and from that time forward, the wholeMississippi Valley was in a state of consuming excitement. Politics andthe weather were dropped, and people talked only of the coming race.

As the time approached, the two steamers 'stripped' and got ready.

Every encumbrance that added weight, or exposed a resisting surfaceto wind or water, was removed, if the boat could possibly do without it.

The 'spars,' and sometimes even their supporting derricks, were sent ashore,and no means left to set the boat afloat in case she got aground.

When the 'Eclipse' and the 'A. L. Shotwell' ran their great race manyyears ago, it was said that pains were taken to scrape the gilding offthe fanciful device which hung between the 'Eclipse's' chimneys, and that forthat one trip the captain left off his kid gloves and had his head shaved.

But I always doubted these things.

If the boat was known to make her best speed when drawing five and a half feetforward and five feet aft, she was carefully loaded to that exact figure--she wouldn't enter a dose of homoeopathic pills on her manifest after that.

Hardly any passengers were taken, because they not only add weight but theynever will 'trim boat.' They always run to the side when there is anythingto see, whereas a conscientious and experienced steamboatman would stick tothe center of the boat and part his hair in the middle with a spirit level.

No way-freights and no way-passengers were allowed, for the racers wouldstop only at the largest towns, and then it would be only 'touch and go.'

Coal flats and wood flats were contracted for beforehand, and these werekept ready to hitch on to the flying steamers at a moment's warning.

Double crews were carried, so that all work could be quickly done.

The chosen date being come, and all things in readiness,the two great steamers back into the stream, and lie therejockeying a moment, and apparently watching each other'sslightest movement, like sentient creatures; flags drooping,the pent steam shrieking through safety-valves, the black smokerolling and tumbling from the chimneys and darkening all the air.

People, people everywhere; the shores, the house-tops,the steamboats, the ships, are packed with them, and you knowthat the borders of the broad Mississippi are going to befringed with humanity thence northward twelve hundred miles,to welcome these racers.

Presently tall columns of steam burst from the 'scape-pipesof both steamers, two guns boom a good-bye, two red-shirted heroesmounted on capstans wave their small flags above the massed crewson the forecastles, two plaintive solos linger on the air a fewwaiting seconds, two mighty choruses burst forth--and here they come!

Brass bands bray Hail Columbia, huzza after huzza thunders fromthe shores, and the stately creatures go whistling by like the wind.

Those boats will never halt a moment between New Orleans and St. Louis,except for a second or two at large towns, or to hitch thirty-cordwood-boats alongside. You should be on board when they take a coupleof those wood-boats in tow and turn a swarm of men into each;by the time you have wiped your glasses and put them on, you will bewondering what has become of that wood.

Two nicely matched steamers will stay in sight of each other day after day.

They might even stay side by side, but for the fact that pilots are notall alike, and the smartest pilots will win the race. If one of the boats hasa 'lightning' pilot, whose 'partner' is a trifle his inferior, you can tellwhich one is on watch by noting whether that boat has gained ground or lostsome during each four-hour stretch. The shrewdest pilot can delay a boatif he has not a fine genius for steering. Steering is a very high art.

One must not keep a rudder dragging across a boat's stem if he wants to get upthe river fast.

There is a great difference in boats, of course. For a long time I was ona boat that was so slow we used to forget what year it was we left port in.

But of course this was at rare intervals. Ferryboats used to losevaluable trips because their passengers grew old and died, waiting for usto get by. This was at still rarer intervals. I had the documentsfor these occurrences, but through carelessness they have been mislaid.

This boat, the 'John J. Roe,' was so slow that when she finally sunkin Madrid Bend, it was five years before the owners heard of it.

That was always a confusing fact to me, but it is according to the record,any way. She was dismally slow; still, we often had prettyexciting times racing with islands, and rafts, and such things.

One trip, however, we did rather well. We went to St. Louis in sixteen days.

But even at this rattling gait I think we changed watches three timesin Fort Adams reach, which is five miles long. A 'reach' is a pieceof straight river, and of course the current drives through such a placein a pretty lively way.

That trip we went to Grand Gulf, from New Orleans, in four days(three hundred and forty miles); the 'Eclipse' and 'Shotwell'

did it in one. We were nine days out, in the chute of 63(seven hundred miles); the 'Eclipse' and 'Shotwell' wentthere in two days. Something over a generation ago,a boat called the 'J. M. White' went from New Orleansto Cairo in three days, six hours, and forty-four minutes.

In 1853 the 'Eclipse' made the same trip in three days,three hours, and twenty minutes.

Some authorities add 1 hour and 16 minutes to this.]> In1870 the 'R. E. Lee' did it in three days and ONE hour.

This last is called the fastest trip on record.

I will try to show that it was not. For this reason:

the distance between New Orleans and Cairo, when the 'J. M. White'

ran it, was about eleven hundred and six miles; consequently heraverage speed was a trifle over fourteen miles per hour.

In the 'Eclipse's' day the distance between the two ports had becomereduced to one thousand and eighty miles; consequently her averagespeed was a shade under fourteen and three-eighths miles per hour.

In the 'R. E. Lee's' time the distance had diminishedto about one thousand and thirty miles; consequently heraverage was about fourteen and one-eighth miles per hour.

Therefore the 'Eclipse's' was conspicuously the fastest time that hasever been made.

THE RECORD OF SOME FAMOUSTRIPS(From Commodore Rollingpin's Almanack.)FAST TIME ON THE WESTERN WATERSFROM NEW ORLEANS TO NATCHEZ--268 MILESD. H. M.

1814 Orleans made the run in 6 6 401814 Comet " " 5 101815 Enterprise " " 4 11 201817 Washington " " 41817 Shelby " " 3 201818 Paragon " " 3 81828 Tecumseh " " 3 1 201834 Tuscarora " " 1 211838 Natchez " " 1 171840 Ed. Shippen " " 1 81842 Belle of the West " 1 181844 Sultana " " 19 451851 Magnolia " " 19 501853 A. L. Shotwell " " 19 491853 Southern Belle " " 20 31853 Princess (No. 4) " 20 261853 Eclipse " " 19 471855 Princess (New) " " 18 531855 Natchez (New) " " 17 301856 Princess (New) " " 17 301870 Natchez " " 17 171870 R. E. Lee " " 17 11FROM NEW ORLEANS TO CAIRO--1,024 MILESD. H. M.

1844 J. M. White made the run in 3 6 441852 Reindeer " " 3 12 451853 Eclipse " " 3 4 41853 A. L. Shotwell " " 3 3 401869 Dexter " " 3 6 201870 Natchez " " 3 4 341870 R. E. Lee " " 3 1FROM NEW ORLEANS TO LOUISVILLE--1,440 MILESD. H. M.

1815 Enterprise made the run in 25 2 401817 Washington " " 251817. Shelby " " 20 4 201818 Paragon " " 18 101828 Tecumseh " " 8 41834 Tuscarora " " 7 161837 Gen. Brown " " 6 221837 Randolph " " 6 221837 Empress " " 6 171837 Sultana " " 6 151840 Ed. Shippen " " 5 141842 Belle of the West " 6 141843 Duke of Orleans" " 5 231844 Sultana " " 5 121849 Bostona " " 5 81851 Belle Key " " 3 4 231852 Reindeer " " 4 20 451852 Eclipse " " 4 191853 A. L. Shotwell " " 4 10 201853 Eclipse " " 4 9 30FROM NEW ORLEANS TO DONALDSONVILLE--78 MILESH. M.

1852 A. L. Shotwell made the run in 5 421852 Eclipse " " 5 421854 Sultana " " 4 511860 Atlantic " " 5 111860 Gen. Quitman " " 5 61865 Ruth " " 4 431870 R. E. Lee " " 4 59FROM NEW ORLEANS TO ST. LOUIS--1,218 MILESD. H. M.

1844 J. M. White made the run in 3 23 91849 Missouri " " 4 191869 Dexter " " 4 91870 Natchez " " 3 21 581870 R. E. Lee " " 3 18 14FROM LOUISVILLE TO CINCINNATI--141 MILESD. H. M.

1819 Gen. Pike made the run in 1 161819 Paragon " " 1 14 201822 Wheeling Packet " " 1 101837 Moselle " " 121843 Duke of Orleans " " 121843 Congress " " 12 201846 Ben Franklin (No. 6) " 11 451852 Alleghaney " " 10 381852 Pittsburgh " " 10 231853 Telegraph No. 3 " " 9 52FROM LOUISVILLE TO ST. LOUIS-750--MILESD. H. M.

1843 Congress made the run in 2 11854 Pike " " 1 231854 Northerner " " 1 22 301855 Southemer " " 1 19FROM CINCINNATI TO PITTSBURGH--490 MILESD. H.

1850 Telegraph No. 2 made the run in 1 171851 Buckeye State " " 1 161852 Pittsburgh " " 1 15FROM ST. LOUIS TO ALTON--30 MILESD. H1853 Altona made the run in 1 351876 Golden Eagle " " 1 371876 War Eagle " " 1 37MISCELLANEOUS RUNSIn June, 1859, the St. Louis and Keokuk Packet, City of Louisiana,made the run from St. Louis to Keokuk (214 miles) in 16 hoursand 20 minutes, the best time on record.

In 1868 the steamer Hawkeye State, of the Northern Packet Company,made the run from St. Louis to St. Paul (800 miles) in 2 days and 20 hours.

Never was beaten.

In 1853 the steamer Polar Star made the run from St. Louis to St. Joseph,on the Missouri River, in 64 hours. In July, 1856, the steamer Jas.

H. Lucas, Andy Wineland, Master, made the same run in 60 hoursand 57 minutes. The distance between the ports is 600 miles,and when the difficulties of navigating the turbulent Missouriare taken into consideration, the performance of the Lucasdeserves especial mention.

THE RUN OF THE ROBERT E. LEEThe time made by the R. E. Lee from New Orleans to St. Louisin 1870, in her famous race with the Natchez, is the beston record, and, inasmuch as the race created a national interest,we give below her time table from port to port.

Left New Orleans, Thursday, June 30th, 1870, at 4 o'clockand 55 minutes, p.m.; reachedD. H. M.

Carrollton 27Harry Hills 1 00Red Church 1 39Bonnet Carre 2 38College Point 3 50Donaldsonville 4 59Plaquemine 7 05Baton Rouge 8 25Bayou Sara 10 26Red River 12 56Stamps 13 56Bryaro 15 51Hinderson's 16 29Natchez 17 11Cole's Creek 19 21Waterproof 18 53Rodney 20 45St. Joseph 21 02Grand Gulf 22 06Hard Times 22 18Half Mile below Warrenton 1Vicksburg 1 38Milliken's Bend 1 2 37Bailey's 1 3 48Lake Providence 1 5 47Greenville 1 10 55Napoleon 1 16 22White River 1 16 56Australia 1 19Helena 1 23 25Half Mile Below St. Francis 2Memphis 2 6 9Foot of Island 37 2 9Foot of Island 26 2 13 30Tow-head, Island 14 2 17 23New Madrid 2 19 50Dry Bar No. 10 2 20 37Foot of Island 8 2 21 25Upper Tow-head--Lucas Bend 3Cairo 3 1St. Louis 3 18 14The Lee landed at St. Louis at 11.25 A.M., on July 4th, 1870--6 hoursand 36 minutes ahead of the Natchez. The officers of the Natchez claimed7 hours and 1 minute stoppage on account of fog and repairing machinery.

The R. E. Lee was commanded by Captain John W. Cannon, and the Natchez was incharge of that veteran Southern boatman, Captain Thomas P. Leathers.
Chapter 17 Cut-offs and Stephen
THESE dry details are of importance in one particular.

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!"
Chapter 18 I Take a Few Extra Lessons
DURING the two or two and a half years of my apprenticeship,I served under many pilots, and had experience of manykinds of steamboatmen and many varieties of steamboats;for it was not always convenient for Mr. Bixby to have mewith him, and in such cases he sent me with somebody else.

I am to this day profiting somewhat by that experience;for in that brief, sharp schooling, I got personally and familiarlyacquainted with about all the different types of human naturethat are to be found in fiction, biography, or history.

The fact is daily borne in upon me, that the average shore-employmentrequires as much as forty years to equip a man with this sortof an education. When I say I am still profiting by this thing,I do not mean that it has constituted me a judge of men--no, it has not done that; for judges of men are born, not made.

My profit is various in kind and degree; but the feature of itwhich I value most is the zest which that early experience hasgiven to my later reading. When I find a well-drawn characterin fiction or biography, I generally take a warm personalinterest in him, for the reason that I have known him before--met him on the river.

The figure that comes before me oftenest, out of the shadows of thatvanished time, is that of Brown, of the steamer 'Pennsylvania'--the manreferred to in a former chapter, whose memory was so good and tiresome.

He was a middle-aged, long, slim, bony, smooth-shaven, horse-faced, ignorant,stingy, malicious, snarling, fault hunting, mote-magnifying tyrant.

I early got the habit of coming on watch with dread at my heart.

No matter how good a time I might have been having with the off-watch below,and no matter how high my spirits might be when I started aloft, my soulbecame lead in my body the moment I approached the pilot-house.

I still remember the first time I ever entered the presence of that man.

The boat had backed out from St. Louis and was 'straightening down;'

I ascended to the pilot-house in high feather, and very proudto be semi-officially a member of the executive family of so fastand famous a boat. Brown was at the wheel. I paused in the middleof the room, all fixed to make my bow, but Brown did not look around.

I thought he took a furtive glance at me out of the corner of his eye,but as not even this notice was repeated, I judged I had been mistaken.

By this time he was picking his way among some dangerous 'breaks' abreastthe woodyards; therefore it would not be proper to interrupt him; so Istepped softly to the high bench and took a seat.

There was silence for ten minutes; then my new boss turnedand inspected me deliberately and painstakingly from headto heel for about--as it seemed to me--a quarter of an hour.

After which he removed his countenance and I saw it no morefor some seconds; then it came around once more, and thisquestion greeted me--'Are you Horace Bigsby's cub?'

'Yes, sir.'

After this there was a pause and another inspection. Then--'What's your name?'

I told him. He repeated it after me. It was probably the onlything he ever forgot; for although I was with him many monthshe never addressed himself to me in any other way than 'Here!'

and then his command followed.

'Where was you born?'

'In Florida, Missouri.'

A pause. Then--'Dern sight better staid there!'

By means of a dozen or so of pretty direct questions, he pumpedmy family history out of me.

The leads were going now, in the first crossing. This interruptedthe inquest. When the leads had been laid in, he resumed--'How long you been on the river?'

I told him. After a pause--'Where'd you get them shoes?'

I gave him the information.

'Hold up your foot!'

I did so. He stepped back, examined the shoe minutely and contemptuously,scratching his head thoughtfully, tilting his high sugar-loaf hat well forwardto facilitate the operation, then ejaculated, 'Well, I'll be dod derned!'

and returned to his wheel.

What occasion there was to be dod derned about it is a thingwhich is still as much of a mystery to me now as it was then.

It must have been all of fifteen minutes--fifteen minutesof dull, homesick silence--before that long horse-faceswung round upon me again--and then, what a change!

It was as red as fire, and every muscle in it was working.

Now came this shriek--'Here!--You going to set there all day?'

I lit in the middle of the floor, shot there by the electricsuddenness of the surprise. As soon as I could get my voice I said,apologetically:--'I have had no orders, sir.'

'You've had no ORDERS! My, what a fine bird we are! We must have ORDERS!

Our father was a GENTLEMAN--owned slaves--and we've been to SCHOOL.

Yes, WE are a gentleman, TOO, and got to have ORDERS! ORDERS, is it?

ORDERS is what you want! Dod dern my skin, I'LL learn you to swell yourselfup and blow around here about your dod-derned ORDERS! G'way from the wheel!

(I had approached it without knowing it.)I moved back a step or two, and stood as in a dream, all my sensesstupefied by this frantic assault.

'What you standing there for? Take that ice-pitcher down tothe texas-tender-come, move along, and don't you be all day about it!'

The moment I got back to the pilot-house, Brown said--'Here! What was you doing down there all this time?'

'I couldn't find the texas-tender; I had to go all the way to the pantry.'

'Derned likely story! Fill up the stove.'

I proceeded to do so. He watched me like a cat.

Presently he shouted--'Put down that shovel? Deadest numskull I ever saw--ain't even got sense enough to load up a stove.

All through the watch this sort of thing went on. Yes, and thesubsequent watches were much like it, during a stretch of months.

As I have said, I soon got the habit of coming on duty with dread.

The moment I was in the presence, even in the darkest night,I could feel those yellow eyes upon me, and knew their ownerwas watching for a pretext to spit out some venom on me.

Preliminarily he would say-'Here! Take the wheel.'

Two minutes later--'WHERE in the nation you going to? Pull her down! pull her down!'

After another moment--'Say! You going to hold her all day? Let her go--meet her! meet her!'

Then he would jump from the bench, snatch the wheel from me,and meet her himself, pouring out wrath upon me all the time.

George Ritchie was the other pilot's cub. He was havinggood times now; for his boss, George Ealer, was as kindheartedas Brown wasn't. Ritchie had steeled for Brown the season before;consequently he knew exactly how to entertain himself and plague me,all by the one operation. Whenever I took the wheel for a momenton Ealer's watch, Ritchie would sit back on the bench and play Brown,with continual ejaculations of 'Snatch her! snatch her!

Derndest mud-cat I ever saw!' 'Here! Where you going NOW?

Going to run over that snag?' 'Pull her DOWN ! Don't you hear me?

Pull her DOWN!' 'There she goes! JUST as I expected!

I TOLD you not to cramp that reef G'way from the wheel!'

So I always had a rough time of it, no matter whose watch it was;and sometimes it seemed to me that Ritchie's good-natured badgeringwas pretty nearly as aggravating as Brown's dead-earnest nagging.

I often wanted to kill Brown, but this would not answer.

A cub had to take everything his boss gave, in the way ofvigorous comment and criticism; and we all believed that therewas a United States law making it a penitentiary offense tostrike or threaten a pilot who was on duty. However, I couldIMAGINE myself killing Brown; there was no law against that;and that was the thing I used always to do the moment I was abed.

Instead of going over my river in my mind as was my duty,I threw business aside for pleasure, and killed Brown.

I killed Brown every night for months; not in old, stale,commonplace ways, but in new and picturesque ones;--ways that weresometimes surprising for freshness of design and ghastliness ofsituation and environment.

Brown was ALWAYS watching for a pretext to find fault;and if he could find no plausible pretext, he would invent one.

He would scold you for shaving a shore, and for not shaving it;for hugging a bar, and for not hugging it; for 'pulling down'

when not invited, and for not pulling down when not invited;for firing up without orders, and for waiting FOR orders. In a word,it was his invariable rule to find fault with EVERYTHING you did;and another invariable rule of his was to throw all his remarks(to you) into the form of an insult.

One day we were approaching New Madrid, bound down and heavily laden.

Brown was at one side of the wheel, steering; I was at the other,standing by to 'pull down' or 'shove up.' He cast a furtive glance at meevery now and then. I had long ago learned what that meant; viz., he wastrying to invent a trap for me. I wondered what shape it was going to take.

By and by he stepped back from the wheel and said in his usual snarly way--'Here!--See if you've got gumption enough to round her to.'

This was simply BOUND to be a success; nothing could prevent it;for he had never allowed me to round the boat to before;consequently, no matter how I might do the thing, he couldfind free fault with it. He stood back there with his greedyeye on me, and the result was what might have been foreseen:

I lost my head in a quarter of a minute, and didn't know what Iwas about; I started too early to bring the boat around,but detected a green gleam of joy in Brown's eye, and correctedmy mistake; I started around once more while too high up,but corrected myself again in time; I made other false moves,and still managed to save myself; but at last I grew so confusedand anxious that I tumbled into the very worst blunder of all--I got too far down before beginning to fetch the boat around.

Brown's chance was come.

His face turned red with passion; he made one bound,hurled me across the house with a sweep of his arm,spun the wheel down, and began to pour out a stream ofvituperation upon me which lasted till he was out of breath.

In the course of this speech he called me all the differentkinds of hard names he could think of, and once or twice Ithought he was even going to swear--but he didn't this time.

'Dod dern' was the nearest he ventured to the luxury of swearing,for he had been brought up with a wholesome respect for futurefire and brimstone.

That was an uncomfortable hour; for there was a big audienceon the hurricane deck. When I went to bed that night,I killed Brown in seventeen different ways-all of them new.
Chapter 19 Brown and I Exchange Compliments
Two trips later, I got into serious trouble. Brown was steering;I was 'pulling down.' My younger brother appeared on the hurricane deck,and shouted to Brown to stop at some landing or other a mile or so below.

Brown gave no intimation that he had heard anything. But that washis way: he never condescended to take notice of an under clerk.

The wind was blowing; Brown was deaf (although he always pretendedhe wasn't), and I very much doubted if he had heard the order.

If I had two heads, I would have spoken; but as I had only one, it seemedjudicious to take care of it; so I kept still.

Presently, sure enough, we went sailing by that plantation.

Captain Klinefelter appeared on the deck, and said--'Let her come around, sir, let her come around.

Didn't Henry tell you to land here?'

'NO, sir!'

'I sent him up to do, it.'

'He did come up; and that's all the good it done, the dod-derned fool.

He never said anything.'

'Didn't YOU hear him?' asked the captain of me.

Of course I didn't want to be mixed up in this business,but there was no way to avoid it; so I said--'Yes, sir.'

I knew what Brown's next remark would be, before he uttered it; it was--'Shut your mouth! you never heard anything of the kind.'

I closed my mouth according to instructions. An hour later,Henry entered the pilot-house, unaware of what had been going on.

He was a thoroughly inoffensive boy, and I was sorry to seehim come, for I knew Brown would have no pity on him.

Brown began, straightway--'Here! why didn't you tell me we'd got to land at that plantation?'

'I did tell you, Mr. Brown.'

'It's a lie!'

I said--'You lie, yourself. He did tell you.'

Brown glared at me in unaffected surprise; and for as much as a momenthe was entirely speechless; then he shouted to me--'I'll attend to your case in half a minute!' then to Henry,'And you leave the pilot-house; out with you!'

It was pilot law, and must be obeyed. The boy started out,and even had his foot on the upper step outside the door, when Brown,with a sudden access of fury, picked up a ten-pound lump of coaland sprang after him; but I was between, with a heavy stool,and I hit Brown a good honest blow which stretched-him out.

I had committed the crime of crimes--I had lifted my hand againsta pilot on duty! I supposed I was booked for the penitentiary sure,and couldn't be booked any surer if I went on and squared my long accountwith this person while I had the chance; consequently I stuck to himand pounded him with my fists a considerable time--I do not know how long,the pleasure of it probably made it seem longer than it really was;--but in the end he struggled free and jumped up and sprang to the wheel:

a very natural solicitude, for, all this time, here was this steamboattearing down the river at the rate of fifteen miles an hour and nobody atthe helm! However, Eagle Bend was two miles wide at this bank-full stage,and correspondingly long and deep; and the boat was steering herselfstraight down the middle and taking no chances. Still, that was only luck--a body MIGHT have found her charging into the woods.

Perceiving, at a glance, that the 'Pennsylvania' was in no danger,Brown gathered up the big spy-glass, war-club fashion, and orderedme out of the pilot-house with more than Comanche bluster.

But I was not afraid of him now; so, instead of going, I tarried,and criticized his grammar; I reformed his ferocious speeches for him,and put them into good English, calling his attention to the advantageof pure English over the bastard dialect of the Pennsylvaniancollieries whence he was extracted. He could have done his partto admiration in a cross-fire of mere vituperation, of course;but he was not equipped for this species of controversy;so he presently laid aside his glass and took the wheel,muttering and shaking his head; and I retired to the bench.

The racket had brought everybody to the hurricane deck, and I trembledwhen I saw the old captain looking up from the midst of the crowd.

I said to myself, 'Now I AM done for!'--For although, as a rule,he was so fatherly and indulgent toward the boat's family,and so patient of minor shortcomings, he could be stern enough whenthe fault was worth it.

I tried to imagine what he WOULD do to a cub pilot who had been guiltyof such a crime as mine, committed on a boat guard-deep with costly freightand alive with passengers. Our watch was nearly ended. I thought I wouldgo and hide somewhere till I got a chance to slide ashore. So I slippedout of the pilot-house, and down the steps, and around to the texas door--and was in the act of gliding within, when the captain confronted me!

I dropped my head, and he stood over me in silence a moment or two,then said impressively--'Follow me.'

I dropped into his wake; he led the way to his parlor in the forwardend of the texas. We were alone, now. He closed the after door;then moved slowly to the forward one and closed that. He sat down;I stood before him. He looked at me some little time, then said--'So you have been fighting, Mr. Brown?'

I answered meekly--'Yes, sir.'

'Do you know that that is a very serious matter?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Are you aware that this boat was plowing down the river fullyfive minutes with no one at the wheel?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Did you strike him first?'

'Yes, sir.'

'What with?'

'A stool, sir.'

'Hard?'

'Middling, sir.'

'Did it knock him down?'

'He--he fell, sir.'

'Did you follow it up? Did you do anything further?'

'Yes, sir.'

'What did you do?'

'Pounded him, sir.'

'Pounded him?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Did you pound him much?--that is, severely?'

'One might call it that, sir, maybe.'

'I'm deuced glad of it! Hark ye, never mention that I said that.

You have been guilty of a great crime; and don't you ever beguilty of it again, on this boat. BUT--lay for him ashore!

Give him a good sound thrashing, do you hear? I'll pay the expenses.

Now go--and mind you, not a word of this to anybody. Clear out with you!--you've been guilty of a great crime, you whelp!'

I slid out, happy with the sense of a close shave and a mighty deliverance;and I heard him laughing to himself and slapping his fat thighs after I hadclosed his door.

When Brown came off watch he went straight to the captain,who was talking with some passengers on the boiler deck,and demanded that I be put ashore in New Orleans--and added--'I'll never turn a wheel on this boat again while that cub stays.'

The captain said--'But he needn't come round when you are on watch, Mr. Brown.

'I won't even stay on the same boat with him. One of us hasgot to go ashore.'

'Very well,' said the captain, 'let it be yourself;'

and resumed his talk with the passengers.

During the brief remainder of the trip, I knew how an emancipated slave feels;for I was an emancipated slave myself. While we lay at landings,I listened to George Ealer's flute; or to his readings from his two bibles,that is to say, Goldsmith and Shakespeare; or I played chess with him--and would have beaten him sometimes, only he always took back his last moveand ran the game out differently.
Chapter 20 A Catastrophe
WE lay three days in New Orleans, but the captain did not succeedin finding another pilot; so he proposed that I should standa daylight watch, and leave the night watches to George Ealer.

But I was afraid; I had never stood a watch of any sort by myself,and I believed I should be sure to get into trouble in the head ofsome chute, or ground the boat in a near cut through some bar or other.

Brown remained in his place; but he would not travel with me.

So the captain gave me an order on the captain of the 'A. T. Lacey,'

for a passage to St. Louis, and said he would find a newpilot there and my steersman's berth could then be resumed.

The 'Lacey' was to leave a couple of days after the 'Pennsylvania.'

The night before the 'Pennsylvania' left, Henry and I satchatting on a freight pile on the levee till midnight.

The subject of the chat, mainly, was one which I think wehad not exploited before--steamboat disasters. One was thenon its way to us, little as we suspected it; the water whichwas to make the steam which should cause it, was washing pastsome point fifteen hundred miles up the river while we talked;--but it would arrive at the right time and the right place.

We doubted if persons not clothed with authority were of muchuse in cases of disaster and attendant panic; still, they mightbe of SOME use; so we decided that if a disaster ever fellwithin our experience we would at least stick to the boat,and give such minor service as chance might throw in the way.

Henry remembered this, afterward, when the disaster came,and acted accordingly.

The 'Lacey' started up the river two days behind the 'Pennsylvania.'

We touched at Greenville, Mississippi, a couple of days out,and somebody shouted--'The "Pennsylvania" is blown up at Ship Island, and a hundredand fifty lives lost!'

At Napoleon, Arkansas, the same evening, we got an extra,issued by a Memphis paper, which gave some particulars.

It mentioned my brother, and said he was not hurt.

Further up the river we got a later extra. My brother wasagain mentioned; but this time as being hurt beyond help.

We did not get full details of the catastrophe until we reached Memphis.

This is the sorrowful story--It was six o'clock on a hot summer morning. The 'Pennsylvania'

was creeping along, north of Ship Island, about sixty miles belowMemphis on a half-head of steam, towing a wood-flat which was fastbeing emptied. George Ealer was in the pilot-house-alone, I think;the second engineer and a striker had the watch in the engine room;the second mate had the watch on deck; George Black, Mr. Wood,and my brother, clerks, were asleep, as were also Brown andthe head engineer, the carpenter, the chief mate, and one striker;Captain Klinefelter was in the barber's chair, and the barber waspreparing to shave him. There were a good many cabin passengers aboard,and three or four hundred deck passengers--so it was said at the time--and not very many of them were astir. The wood being nearly all outof the flat now, Ealer rang to 'come ahead' full steam, and the nextmoment four of the eight boilers exploded with a thunderous crash,and the whole forward third of the boat was hoisted toward the sky!

The main part of the mass, with the chimneys, dropped upon the boat again,a mountain of riddled and chaotic rubbish--and then, after a little,fire broke out.

Many people were flung to considerable distances, and fell in the river;among these were Mr. Wood and my brother, and the carpenter.

The carpenter was still stretched upon his mattress when he struckthe water seventy-five feet from the boat. Brown, the pilot,and George Black, chief clerk, were never seen or heard of afterthe explosion. The barber's chair, with Captain Klinefelterin it and unhurt, was left with its back overhanging vacancy--everything forward of it, floor and all, had disappeared;and the stupefied barber, who was also unhurt, stood with one toeprojecting over space, still stirring his lather unconsciously,and saying, not a word.

When George Ealer saw the chimneys plunging aloft in front of him,he knew what the matter was; so he muffled his face in the lapels ofhis coat, and pressed both hands there tightly to keep this protectionin its place so that no steam could get to his nose or mouth.

He had ample time to attend to these details while he was going upand returning. He presently landed on top of the unexploded boilers,forty feet below the former pilot-house, accompanied by his wheeland a rain of other stuff, and enveloped in a cloud of scalding steam.

All of the many who breathed that steam, died; none escaped.

But Ealer breathed none of it. He made his way to the free airas quickly as he could; and when the steam cleared away he returnedand climbed up on the boilers again, and patiently huntedout each and every one of his chessmen and the several jointsof his flute.

By this time the fire was beginning to threaten. Shrieks andgroans filled the air. A great many persons had been scalded,a great many crippled; the explosion had driven an iron crowbarthrough one man's body--I think they said he was a priest.

He did not die at once, and his sufferings were very dreadful.

A young French naval cadet, of fifteen, son of a French admiral,was fearfully scalded, but bore his tortures manfully.

Both mates were badly scalded, but they stood to theirposts, nevertheless. They drew the wood-boat aft, and theyand the captain fought back the frantic herd of frightenedimmigrants till the wounded could be brought there and placedin safety first.

When Mr. Wood and Henry fell in the water, they struck out for shore,which was only a few hundred yards away; but Henry presently saidhe believed he was not hurt (what an unaccountable error!), andtherefore would swim back to the boat and help save the wounded.

So they parted, and Henry returned.

By this time the fire was making fierce headway, and severalpersons who were imprisoned under the ruins were begging piteouslyfor help. All efforts to conquer the fire proved fruitless;so the buckets were presently thrown aside and the officersfell-to with axes and tried to cut the prisoners out.

A striker was one of the captives; he said he was not injured,but could not free himself; and when he saw that the fire waslikely to drive away the workers, he begged that some one wouldshoot him, and thus save him from the more dreadful death.

The fire did drive the axmen away, and they had to listen,helpless, to this poor fellow's supplications till the flamesended his miseries.

The fire drove all into the wood-flat that could be accommodated there;it was cut adrift, then, and it and the burning steamer floateddown the river toward Ship Island. They moored the flat at the headof the island, and there, unsheltered from the blazing sun,the half-naked occupants had to remain, without food or stimulants,or help for their hurts, during the rest of the day. A steamercame along, finally, and carried the unfortunates to Memphis,and there the most lavish assistance was at once forthcoming.

By this time Henry was insensible. The physicians examined hisinjuries and saw that they were fatal, and naturally turned theirmain attention to patients who could be saved.

Forty of the wounded were placed upon pallets on the floor of a greatpublic hall, and among these was Henry. There the ladies of Memphiscame every day, with flowers, fruits, and dainties and delicaciesof all kinds, and there they remained and nursed the wounded.

All the physicians stood watches there, and all the medical students;and the rest of the town furnished money, or whatever else was wanted.

And Memphis knew how to do all these things well; for many adisaster like the 'Pennsylvania's' had happened near her doors,and she was experienced, above all other cities on the river,in the gracious office of the Good Samaritan'

The sight I saw when I entered that large hall was new and strange to me.

Two long rows of prostrate forms--more than forty, in all--and every faceand head a shapeless wad of loose raw cotton. It was a gruesome spectacle.

I watched there six days and nights, and a very melancholy experience it was.

There was one daily incident which was peculiarly depressing:

this was the removal of the doomed to a chamber apart. It was donein order that the MORALE of the other patients might not be injuriouslyaffected by seeing one of their number in the death-agony. The fated onewas always carried out with as little stir as possible, and the stretcherwas always hidden from sight by a wall of assistants; but no matter:

everybody knew what that cluster of bent forms, with its muffledstep and its slow movement meant; and all eyes watched it wistfully,and a shudder went abreast of it like a wave.

I saw many poor fellows removed to the 'death-room,' and saw them nomore afterward. But I saw our chief mate carried thither more than once.

His hurts were frightful, especially his scalds. He was clothed inlinseed oil and raw cotton to his waist, and resembled nothing human.

He was often out of his mind; and then his pains would make him raveand shout and sometimes shriek. Then, after a period of dumb exhaustion,his disordered imagination would suddenly transform the great apartmentinto a forecastle, and the hurrying throng of nurses into the crew;and he would come to a sitting posture and shout, 'Hump yourselves,HUMP yourselves, you petrifactions, snail-bellies, pall-bearers! goingto be all DAY getting that hatful of freight out?' and supplementthis explosion with a firmament-obliterating irruption or profanitywhich nothing could stay or stop till his crater was empty. And nowand then while these frenzies possessed him, he would tear off handfulsof the cotton and expose his cooked flesh to view. It was horrible.

It was bad for the others, of course--this noise and these exhibitions;so the doctors tried to give him morphine to quiet him. But, in his mindor out of it, he would not take it. He said his wife had been killedby that treacherous drug, and he would die before he would take it.

He suspected that the doctors were concealing it in his ordinary medicinesand in his water--so he ceased from putting either to his lips.

Once, when he had been without water during two sweltering days,he took the dipper in his hand, and the sight of the limpid fluid,and the misery of his thirst, tempted him almost beyond his strength;but he mastered himself and threw it away, and after that he allowedno more to be brought near him. Three times I saw him carriedto the death-room, insensible and supposed to be dying; but each timehe revived, cursed his attendants, and demanded to be taken back.

He lived to be mate of a steamboat again.

But he was the only one who went to the death-room and returned alive.

Dr. Peyton, a principal physician, and rich in all the attributesthat go to constitute high and flawless character, did all thateducated judgment and trained skill could do for Henry; but, as thenewspapers had said in the beginning, his hurts were past help.

On the evening of the sixth day his wandering mind busied itself withmatters far away, and his nerveless fingers 'picked at his coverlet.'

His hour had struck; we bore him to the death-room, poor boy.
Chapter 21 A Section in My Biography
IN due course I got my license. I was a pilot now, full fledged.

I dropped into casual employments; no misfortunes resulting,intermittent work gave place to steady and protracted engagements.

Time drifted smoothly and prosperously on, and I supposed--and hoped--that I was going to follow the river the rest of my days, and dieat the wheel when my mission was ended. But by and by the war came,commerce was suspended, my occupation was gone.

I had to seek another livelihood. So I became a silver minerin Nevada; next, a newspaper reporter; next, a gold miner,in California; next, a reporter in San Francisco; next, a specialcorrespondent in the Sandwich Islands; next, a roving correspondentin Europe and the East; next, an instructional torch-bearer onthe lecture platform; and, finally, I became a scribbler of books,and an immovable fixture among the other rocks of New England.

In so few words have I disposed of the twenty-one slow-driftingyears that have come and gone since I last looked from the windowsof a pilot-house.

Let us resume, now.
Chapter 22 I Return to My Muttons
AFTER twenty-one years' absence, I felt a very strong desireto see the river again, and the steamboats, and such ofthe boys as might be left; so I resolved to go out there.

I enlisted a poet for company, and a stenographer to 'take him down,'

and started westward about the middle of April.

As I proposed to make notes, with a view to printing,I took some thought as to methods of procedure.

I reflected that if I were recognized, on the river, I shouldnot be as free to go and come, talk, inquire, and spy around,as I should be if unknown; I remembered that it was the customof steamboatmen in the old times to load up the confidingstranger with the most picturesque and admirable lies, and putthe sophisticated friend off with dull and ineffectual facts:

so I concluded, that, from a business point of view, it wouldbe an advantage to disguise our party with fictitious names.

The idea was certainly good, but it bred infinite bother;for although Smith, Jones, and Johnson are easy namesto remember when there is no occasion to remember them,it is next to impossible to recollect them when they are wanted.

How do criminals manage to keep a brand-new ALIAS in mind?

This is a great mystery. I was innocent; and yet was seldomable to lay my hand on my new name when it was needed;and it seemed to me that if I had had a crime on my conscienceto further confuse me, I could never have kept the name by meat all.

We left per Pennsylvania Railroad, at 8 A.M. April 18.

'EVENING. Speaking of dress. Grace and picturesqueness dropgradually out of it as one travels away from New York.'

I find that among my notes. It makes no differencewhich direction you take, the fact remains the same.

Whether you move north, south, east, or west, no matter:

you can get up in the morning and guess how far you have come,by noting what degree of grace and picturesqueness is bythat time lacking in the costumes of the new passengers,--I do not mean of the women alone, but of both sexes.

It may be that CARRIAGE is at the bottom of this thing;and I think it is; for there are plenty of ladies and gentlemenin the provincial cities whose garments are all made by the besttailors and dressmakers of New York; yet this has no perceptibleeffect upon the grand fact: the educated eye never mistakesthose people for New-Yorkers. No, there is a godless grace,and snap, and style about a born and bred New-Yorker which mereclothing cannot effect.

'APRIL 19. This morning, struck into the region of full goatees-sometimesaccompanied by a mustache, but only occasionally.'

It was odd to come upon this thick crop of an obsolete anduncomely fashion; it was like running suddenly across a forgottenacquaintance whom you had supposed dead for a generation.

The goatee extends over a wide extent of country; and is accompaniedby an iron-clad belief in Adam and the biblical history of creation,which has not suffered from the assaults of the scientists.

'AFTERNOON. At the railway stations the loafers carry BOTHhands in their breeches pockets; it was observable, heretofore,that one hand was sometimes out of doors,--here, never.

This is an important fact in geography.'

If the loafers determined the character of a country, it wouldbe still more important, of course.

'Heretofore, all along, the station-loafer has been often observed to scratchone shin with the other foot; here, these remains of activity are wanting.

This has an ominous look.'

By and by, we entered the tobacco-chewing region.

Fifty years ago, the tobacco-chewing region covered the union.

It is greatly restricted now.

Next, boots began to appear. Not in strong force, however.

Later--away down the Mississippi--they became the rule.

They disappeared from other sections of the union with the mud;no doubt they will disappear from the river villages, also,when proper pavements come in.

We reached St. Louis at ten o'clock at night. At the counterof the hotel I tendered a hurriedly-invented fictitious name,with a miserable attempt at careless ease. The clerk paused,and inspected me in the compassionate way in which one inspectsa respectable person who is found in doubtful circumstances;then he said--'It's all right; I know what sort of a room you want.

Used to clerk at the St. James, in New York.'

An unpromising beginning for a fraudulent career. We started tothe supper room, and met two other men whom I had known elsewhere.

How odd and unfair it is: wicked impostors go around lecturing undermy NOM DE GUERRE and nobody suspects them; but when an honest manattempts an imposture, he is exposed at once.

One thing seemed plain: we must start down the river the next day,if people who could not be deceived were going to crop up at this rate:

an unpalatable disappointment, for we had hoped to have a week in St. Louis.

The Southern was a good hotel, and we could have had a comfortabletime there. It is large, and well conducted, and its decorations donot make one cry, as do those of the vast Palmer House, in Chicago.

True, the billiard-tables were of the Old Silurian Period, and the cues andballs of the Post-Pliocene; but there was refreshment in this, not discomfort;for there is rest and healing in the contemplation of antiquities.

The most notable absence observable in the billiard-room, was theabsence of the river man. If he was there he had taken in his sign,he was in disguise. I saw there none of the swell airs and graces,and ostentatious displays of money, and pompous squanderings of it,which used to distinguish the steamboat crowd from the dry-land crowdin the bygone days, in the thronged billiard-rooms of St. Louis.

In those times, the principal saloons were always populous with river men;given fifty players present, thirty or thirty-five were likelyto be from the river. But I suspected that the ranks were thin now,and the steamboatmen no longer an aristocracy. Why, in my time theyused to call the 'barkeep' Bill, or Joe, or Tom, and slap him onthe shoulder; I watched for that. But none of these people did it.

Manifestly a glory that once was had dissolved and vanished away inthese twenty-one years.

When I went up to my room, I found there the young man called Rogers, crying.

Rogers was not his name; neither was Jones, Brown, Dexter, Ferguson, Bascom,nor Thompson; but he answered to either of these that a body found handyin an emergency; or to any other name, in fact, if he perceived that youmeant him. He said--'What is a person to do here when he wants a drink of water?--drink this slush?'

'Can't you drink it?'

'I could if I had some other water to wash it with.'

Here was a thing which had not changed; a score of years had not affectedthis water's mulatto complexion in the least; a score of centurieswould succeed no better, perhaps. It comes out of the turbulent,bank-caving Missouri, and every tumblerful of it holds nearly an acreof land in solution. I got this fact from the bishop of the diocese.

If you will let your glass stand half an hour, you can separatethe land from the water as easy as Genesis; and then you will findthem both good: the one good to eat, the other good to drink.

The land is very nourishing, the water is thoroughly wholesome.

The one appeases hunger; the other, thirst. But the nativesdo not take them separately, but together, as nature mixed them.

When they find an inch of mud in the bottom of a glass,they stir it up, and then take the draught as they would gruel.

It is difficult for a stranger to get used to this batter, but onceused to it he will prefer it to water. This is really the case.

It is good for steamboating, and good to drink; but it is worthlessfor all other purposes, except baptizing.

Next morning, we drove around town in the rain.

The city seemed but little changed. It WAS greatly changed,but it did not seem so; because in St. Louis, as in Londonand Pittsburgh, you can't persuade a new thing to look new;the coal smoke turns it into an antiquity the moment you takeyour hand off it. The place had just about doubled its size,since I was a resident of it, and was now become a cityof 400,000 inhabitants; still, in the solid business parts,it looked about as it had looked formerly. Yet I am sure thereis not as much smoke in St. Louis now as there used to be.

The smoke used to bank itself in a dense billowy black canopy overthe town, and hide the sky from view. This shelter is very muchthinner now; still, there is a sufficiency of smoke there, I think.

I heard no complaint.

However, on the outskirts changes were apparent enough; notably indwelling-house architecture. The fine new homes are noble and beautifuland modern. They stand by themselves, too, with green lawns around them;whereas the dwellings of a former day are packed together in blocks,and are all of one pattern, with windows all alike, set in an archedframe-work of twisted stone; a sort of house which was handsome enoughwhen it was rarer.

There was another change--the Forest Park. This was new to me.

It is beautiful and very extensive, and has the excellent meritof having been made mainly by nature. There are other parks,and fine ones, notably Tower Grove and the Botanical Gardens;for St. Louis interested herself in such improvements at an earlierday than did the most of our cities.

The first time I ever saw St. Louis, I could have bought it for sixmillion dollars, and it was the mistake of my life that I did not do it.

It was bitter now to look abroad over this domed and steepled metropolis,this solid expanse of bricks and mortar stretching away on every handinto dim, measure-defying distances, and remember that I had allowedthat opportunity to go by. Why I should have allowed it to go by seems,of course, foolish and inexplicable to-day, at a first glance; yet therewere reasons at the time to justify this course.

A Scotchman, Hon. Charles Augustus Murray, writing some forty-five or fiftyyears ago, said--'The streets are narrow, ill paved and ill lighted.'

Those streets are narrow still, of course; many of them are ill paved yet;but the reproach of ill lighting cannot be repeated, now. The 'CatholicNew Church' was the only notable building then, and Mr. Murray was confidentlycalled upon to admire it, with its 'species of Grecian portico, surmounted bya kind of steeple, much too diminutive in its proportions, and surmountedby sundry ornaments' which the unimaginative Scotchman found himself 'quiteunable to describe;' and therefore was grateful when a German tourist helpedhim out with the exclamation--'By ----, they look exactly like bed-posts!'

St. Louis is well equipped with stately and noble public buildings now,and the little church, which the people used to be so proud of, lost itsimportance a long time ago. Still, this would not surprise Mr. Murray,if he could come back; for he prophesied the coming greatness of St. Louiswith strong confidence.

The further we drove in our inspection-tour, the more sensibly Irealized how the city had grown since I had seen it last; changes indetail became steadily more apparent and frequent than at first, too:

changes uniformly evidencing progress, energy, prosperity.

But the change of changes was on the 'levee.' This time,a departure from the rule. Half a dozen sound-asleep steamboatswhere I used to see a solid mile of wide-awake ones!

This was melancholy, this was woeful. The absence of the pervadingand jocund steamboatman from the billiard-saloon was explained.

He was absent because he is no more. His occupation is gone,his power has passed away, he is absorbed into the common herd,he grinds at the mill, a shorn Samson and inconspicuous.

Half a dozen lifeless steamboats, a mile of empty wharves,a negro fatigued with whiskey stretched asleep, in a wide andsoundless vacancy, where the serried hosts of commerce used tocontend!

'St. Louis has 20,000 inhabitants. THE RIVER ABREAST OF THE TOWNIS CROWDED WITH STEAMBOATS, LYING IN TWO OR THREE TIERS.']> Herewas desolation, indeed.

'The old, old sea, as one in tears,Comes murmuring, with foamy lips,And knocking at the vacant piers,Calls for his long-lost multitude of ships.'

The towboat and the railroad had done their work, and done itwell and completely. The mighty bridge, stretching along overour heads, had done its share in the slaughter and spoliation.

Remains of former steamboatmen told me, with wan satisfaction,that the bridge doesn't pay. Still, it can be no sufficientcompensation to a corpse, to know that the dynamite that laid himout was not of as good quality as it had been supposed to be.

The pavements along the river front were bad: the sidewalkswere rather out of repair; there was a rich abundance of mud.

All this was familiar and satisfying; but the ancient armies of drays,and struggling throngs of men, and mountains of freight, were gone;and Sabbath reigned in their stead. The immemorial mile of cheapfoul doggeries remained, but business was dull with them;the multitudes of poison-swilling Irishmen had departed, and intheir places were a few scattering handfuls of ragged negroes,some drinking, some drunk, some nodding, others asleep.

St. Louis is a great and prosperous and advancing city;but the river-edge of it seems dead past resurrection.

Mississippi steamboating was born about 1812; at the end of thirty years,it had grown to mighty proportions; and in less than thirty more,it was dead! A strangely short life for so majestic a creature.

Of course it is not absolutely dead, neither is a crippled octogenarianwho could once jump twenty-two feet on level ground; but as contrastedwith what it was in its prime vigor, Mississippi steamboating maybe called dead.

It killed the old-fashioned keel-boating, by reducingthe freight-trip to New Orleans to less than a week.

The railroads have killed the steamboat passenger traffic by doingin two or three days what the steamboats consumed a week in doing;and the towing-fleets have killed the through-freight trafficby dragging six or seven steamer-loads of stuff down the riverat a time, at an expense so trivial that steamboat competitionwas out of the question.

Freight and passenger way-traffic remains to the steamers.

This is in the hands--along the two thousand miles of river betweenSt. Paul and New Orleans---of two or three close corporations wellfortified with capital; and by able and thoroughly business-likemanagement and system, these make a sufficiency of money outof what is left of the once prodigious steamboating industry.

I suppose that St. Louis and New Orleans have not suffered materiallyby the change, but alas for the wood-yard man!

He used to fringe the river all the way; his close-ranked merchandisestretched from the one city to the other, along the banks,and he sold uncountable cords of it every year for cash on the nail;but all the scattering boats that are left burn coal now,and the seldomest spectacle on the Mississippi to-day is a wood-pile.

Where now is the once wood-yard man?
Chapter 23 Traveling Incognito
MY idea was, to tarry a while in every town between St. Louisand New Orleans. To do this, it would be necessary to go from placeto place by the short packet lines. It was an easy plan to make,and would have been an easy one to follow, twenty years ago-but not now.

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.
Chapter 24 My Incognito is ExplodedChapter
AFTER a close study of the face of the pilot on watch, I was satisfied that Ihad never seen him before; so I went up there. The pilot inspected me;I re-inspected the pilot. These customary preliminaries over, I satdown on the high bench, and he faced about and went on with his work.

Every detail of the pilot-house was familiar to me, with one exception,--a large-mouthed tube under the breast-board. I puzzled over that thing aconsiderable time; then gave up and asked what it was for.

'To hear the engine-bells through.'

It was another good contrivance which ought to have been inventedhalf a century sooner. So I was thinking, when the pilot asked--'Do you know what this rope is for?'

I managed to get around this question, without committing myself.

'Is this the first time you were ever in a pilot-house?'

I crept under that one.

'Where are you from?'

'New England.'

'First time you have ever been West?'

I climbed over this one.

'If you take an interest in such things, I can tell you what allthese things are for.'

I said I should like it.

'This,' putting his hand on a backing-bell rope, 'is to sound the fire-alarm;this,' putting his hand on a go-ahead bell, 'is to call the texas-tender;this one,' indicating the whistle-lever, 'is to call the captain'--and so he went on, touching one object after another, and reeling offhis tranquil spool of lies.

I had never felt so like a passenger before.

I thanked him, with emotion, for each new fact, and wrote itdown in my note-book. The pilot warmed to his opportunity,and proceeded to load me up in the good old-fashioned way.

At times I was afraid he was going to rupture his invention;but it always stood the strain, and he pulled through all right.

He drifted, by easy stages, into revealments of the river'smarvelous eccentricities of one sort and another,and backed them up with some pretty gigantic illustrations.

For instance-'Do you see that little boulder sticking out of the water yonder? well,when I first came on the river, that was a solid ridge of rock,over sixty feet high and two miles long. All washed away but that.'

[This with a sigh.)I had a mighty impulse to destroy him, but it seemed to me that killing,in any ordinary way, would be too good for him.

Once, when an odd-looking craft, with a vast coal-scuttle slantingaloft on the end of a beam, was steaming by in the distance,he indifferently drew attention to it, as one might to an objectgrown wearisome through familiarity, and observed that it wasan 'alligator boat.'

'An alligator boat? What's it for?'

'To dredge out alligators with.'

'Are they so thick as to be troublesome?'

'Well, not now, because the Government keeps them down.

But they used to be. Not everywhere; but in favorite places,here and there, where the river is wide and shoal-like Plum Point,and Stack Island, and so on--places they call alligator beds.'

'Did they actually impede navigation?'

'Years ago, yes, in very low water; there was hardly a trip, then, that wedidn't get aground on alligators.'

It seemed to me that I should certainly have to get out my tomahawk.

However, I restrained myself and said--'It must have been dreadful.'

'Yes, it was one of the main difficulties about piloting.

It was so hard to tell anything about the water; the damnedthings shift around so--never lie still five minutes at a time.

You can tell a wind-reef, straight off, by the look of it;you can tell a break; you can tell a sand-reef--that's all easy;but an alligator reef doesn't show up, worth anything.

Nine times in ten you can't tell where the water is;and when you do see where it is, like as not it ain't therewhen YOU get there, the devils have swapped around so, meantime.

Of course there were some few pilots that could judge ofalligator water nearly as well as they could of any other kind,but they had to have natural talent for it; it wasn't a thinga body could learn, you had to be born with it. Let me see:

there was Ben Thornburg, and Beck Jolly, and Squire Bell,and Horace Bixby, and Major Downing, and John Stevenson,and Billy Gordon, and Jim Brady, and George Ealer,and Billy Youngblood--all A 1 alligator pilots. THEY could tellalligator water as far as another Christian could tell whiskey.

Read it?--Ah, COULDN'T they, though! I only wish I had as manydollars as they could read alligator water a mile and a half off.

Yes, and it paid them to do it, too. A good alligator pilot couldalways get fifteen hundred dollars a month. Nights, other peoplehad to lay up for alligators, but those fellows never laidup for alligators; they never laid up for anything but fog.

They could SMELL the best alligator water it was said;I don't know whether it was so or not, and I think a body's gothis hands full enough if he sticks to just what he knows himself,without going around backing up other people's say-so's,though there's a plenty that ain't backward about doing it,as long as they can roust out something wonderful to tell.

Which is not the style of Robert Styles, by as much asthree fathom--maybe quarter-LESS.'

[My! Was this Rob Styles?--This mustached and stately figure?-A slimenough cub, in my time. How he has improved in comeliness in five-and-twentyyear and in the noble art of inflating his facts.] After these musings,I said aloud-'I should think that dredging out the alligators wouldn't have done much good,because they could come back again right away.'

'If you had had as much experience of alligators as I have, you wouldn'ttalk like that. You dredge an alligator once and he's CONVINCED.

It's the last you hear of HIM. He wouldn't come back for pie.

If there's one thing that an alligator is more down on than another,it's being dredged. Besides, they were not simply shovedout of the way; the most of the scoopful were scooped aboard;they emptied them into the hold; and when they had got a trip,they took them to Orleans to the Government works.'

'What for?'

'Why, to make soldier-shoes out of their hides.

All the Government shoes are made of alligator hide.

It makes the best shoes in the world. They last five years,and they won't absorb water. The alligator fishery is aGovernment monopoly. All the alligators are Government property--just like the live-oaks. You cut down a live-oak, andGovernment fines you fifty dollars; you kill an alligator,and up you go for misprision of treason--lucky duck if theydon't hang you, too. And they will, if you're a Democrat.

The buzzard is the sacred bird of the South, and you can'ttouch him; the alligator is the sacred bird of the Government,and you've got to let him alone.'

'Do you ever get aground on the alligators now?'

'Oh, no! it hasn't happened for years.'

'Well, then, why do they still keep the alligator boats in service?'

'Just for police duty--nothing more. They merely go up and downnow and then. The present generation of alligators know themas easy as a burglar knows a roundsman; when they see one coming,they break camp and go for the woods.'

After rounding-out and finishing-up and polishing-off the alligator business,he dropped easily and comfortably into the historical vein, and told of sometremendous feats of half-a-dozen old-time steamboats of his acquaintance,dwelling at special length upon a certain extraordinary performance of hischief favorite among this distinguished fleet--and then adding--'That boat was the "Cyclone,"--last trip she ever made--she sunk,that very trip--captain was Tom Ballou, the most immortal liar that everI struck. He couldn't ever seem to tell the truth, in any kind of weather.

Why, he would make you fairly shudder. He WAS the most scandalous liar!

I left him, finally; I couldn't stand it. The proverb says, "like master,like man;" and if you stay with that kind of a man, you'll come undersuspicion by and by, just as sure as you live. He paid first-class wages;but said I, What's wages when your reputation's in danger? So I letthe wages go, and froze to my reputation. And I've never regretted it.

Reputation's worth everything, ain't it? That's the way I look at it.

He had more selfish organs than any seven men in the world--all packedin the stern-sheets of his skull, of course, where they belonged.

They weighed down the back of his head so that it made his nose tilt upin the air. People thought it was vanity, but it wasn't, it was malice.

If you only saw his foot, you'd take him to be nineteen feet high,but he wasn't; it was because his foot was out of drawing.

He was intended to be nineteen feet high, no doubt, if his footwas made first, but he didn't get there; he was only five feet ten.

That's what he was, and that's what he is. You take the lies out of him,and he'll shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice out of him,and he'll disappear. That "Cyclone" was a rattler to go, and the sweetestthing to steer that ever walked the waters. Set her amidships,in a big river, and just let her go; it was all you had to do.

She would hold herself on a star all night, if you let her alone.

You couldn't ever feel her rudder. It wasn't any more labor to steerher than it is to count the Republican vote in a South Carolina election.

One morning, just at daybreak, the last trip she ever made, they tookher rudder aboard to mend it; I didn't know anything about it; I backedher out from the wood-yard and went a-weaving down the river all serene.

When I had gone about twenty-three miles, and made four horribly crookedcrossings----'

'Without any rudder?'

'Yes--old Capt. Tom appeared on the roof and began to find faultwith me for running such a dark night--'

'Such a DARK NIGHT ?--Why, you said----'

'Never mind what I said,--'twas as dark as Egypt now, though prettysoon the moon began to rise, and----'

'You mean the SUN--because you started out just at break of---- look here!

Was this BEFORE you quitted the captain on account of his lying, or----'

'It was before--oh, a long time before. And as I was saying, he----'

'But was this the trip she sunk, or was----'

'Oh, no!--months afterward. And so the old man, he----'

'Then she made TWO last trips, because you said----'

He stepped back from the wheel, swabbing away his perspiration,and said--'Here!' (calling me by name), 'YOU take her and lie a while--you're handier at it than I am. Trying to play yourself for a strangerand an innocent!--why, I knew you before you had spoken seven words;and I made up my mind to find out what was your little game.

It was to DRAW ME OUT. Well, I let you, didn't I?

Now take the wheel and finish the watch; and next time play fair,and you won't have to work your passage.'

Thus ended the fictitious-name business. And not six hours outfrom St. Louis! but I had gained a privilege, any way, for I hadbeen itching to get my hands on the wheel, from the beginning.

I seemed to have forgotten the river, but I hadn't forgottenhow to steer a steamboat, nor how to enjoy it, either.
Chapter 25 From Cairo to Hickman
THE scenery, from St. Louis to Cairo--two hundred miles--is variedand beautiful. The hills were clothed in the fresh foliage of spring now,and were a gracious and worthy setting for the broad river flowing between.

Our trip began auspiciously, with a perfect day, as to breeze and sunshine,and our boat threw the miles out behind her with satisfactory despatch.

We found a railway intruding at Chester, Illinois; Chester hasalso a penitentiary now, and is otherwise marching on. At GrandTower, too, there was a railway; and another at Cape Girardeau.

The former town gets its name from a huge, squat pillar of rock,which stands up out of the water on the Missouri side of the river--a piece of nature's fanciful handiwork--and is one of themost picturesque features of the scenery of that region.

For nearer or remoter neighbors, the Tower has the Devil'sBake Oven--so called, perhaps, because it does not powerfullyresemble anybody else's bake oven; and the Devil's Tea Table--this latter a great smooth-surfaced mass of rock, with diminishingwine-glass stem, perched some fifty or sixty feet above the river,beside a beflowered and garlanded precipice, and sufficientlylike a tea-table to answer for anybody, Devil or Christian.

Away down the river we have the Devil's Elbow and the Devil'sRace-course, and lots of other property of his which I cannot nowcall to mind.

The Town of Grand Tower was evidently a busier place than ithad been in old times, but it seemed to need some repairshere and there, and a new coat of whitewash all over.

Still, it was pleasant to me to see the old coat once more.

'Uncle' Mumford, our second officer, said the place had beensuffering from high water, and consequently was not lookingits best now. But he said it was not strange that it didn'twaste white-wash on itself, for more lime was made there,and of a better quality, than anywhere in the West;and added--'On a dairy farm you never can get any milkfor your coffee, nor any sugar for it on a sugar plantation;and it is against sense to go to a lime town to hunt for white-wash.'

In my own experience I knew the first two items to be true;and also that people who sell candy don't care for candy;therefore there was plausibility in Uncle Mumford's final observationthat 'people who make lime run more to religion than whitewash.'

Uncle Mumford said, further, that Grand Tower was a great coalingcenter and a prospering place.

Cape Girardeau is situated on a hillside, and makes a handsome appearance.

There is a great Jesuit school for boys at the foot of the town by the river.

Uncle Mumford said it had as high a reputation for thoroughness as anysimilar institution in Missouri ' There was another college higher up onan airy summit--a bright new edifice, picturesquely and peculiarly toweredand pinnacled--a sort of gigantic casters, with the cruets all complete.

Uncle Mumford said that Cape Girardeau was the Athens of Missouri,and contained several colleges besides those already mentioned; and all ofthem on a religious basis of one kind or another. He directed my attentionto what he called the 'strong and pervasive religious look of the town,'

but I could not see that it looked more religious than the other hilltowns with the same slope and built of the same kind of bricks.

Partialities often make people see more than really exists.

Uncle Mumford has been thirty years a mate on the river.

He is a man of practical sense and a level head; has observed;has had much experience of one sort and another; has opinions;has, also, just a perceptible dash of poetry in his composition,an easy gift of speech, a thick growl in his voice, and an oathor two where he can get at them when the exigencies of hisoffice require a spiritual lift. He is a mate of the blessedold-time kind; and goes gravely damning around, when thereis work to the fore, in a way to mellow the ex-steamboatman'sheart with sweet soft longings for the vanished days that shallcome no more. 'GIT up there you! Going to be all day?

Why d'n't you SAY you was petrified in your hind legs,before you shipped!'

He is a steady man with his crew; kind and just, but firm;so they like him, and stay with him. He is still in the slouchygarb of the old generation of mates; but next trip the AnchorLine will have him in uniform--a natty blue naval uniform,with brass buttons, along with all the officers of the line--and then he will be a totally different style of scenery from whathe is now.

Uniforms on the Mississippi! It beats all the other changesput together, for surprise. Still, there is another surprise--that it was not made fifty years ago. It is so manifestly sensible,that it might have been thought of earlier, one would suppose.

During fifty years, out there, the innocent passenger in needof help and information, has been mistaking the mate forthe cook, and the captain for the barber--and being roughlyentertained for it, too. But his troubles are ended now.

And the greatly improved aspect of the boat's staff is anotheradvantage achieved by the dress-reform period.

Steered down the bend below Cape Girardeau. They used to call it'Steersman's Bend;' plain sailing and plenty of water in it, always;about the only place in the Upper River that a new cub was allowedto take a boat through, in low water.

Thebes, at the head of the Grand Chain, and Commerce at the footof it, were towns easily rememberable, as they had not undergoneconspicuous alteration. Nor the Chain, either--in the natureof things; for it is a chain of sunken rocks admirablyarranged to capture and kill steamboats on bad nights.

A good many steamboat corpses lie buried there, out of sight;among the rest my first friend the 'Paul Jones;' she knocked herbottom out, and went down like a pot, so the historian told me--Uncle Mumford. He said she had a gray mare aboard, and a preacher.

To me, this sufficiently accounted for the disaster; as it did,of course, to Mumford, who added--'But there are many ignorant people who would scoff at sucha matter, and call it superstition. But you will always noticethat they are people who have never traveled with a gray mareand a preacher. I went down the river once in such company.

We grounded at Bloody Island; we grounded at Hanging Dog;we grounded just below this same Commerce; we jolted BeaverDam Rock; we hit one of the worst breaks in the 'Graveyard'

behind Goose Island; we had a roustabout killed in a fight;we burnt a boiler; broke a shaft; collapsed a flue; and went intoCairo with nine feet of water in the hold--may have been more,may have been less. I remember it as if it were yesterday.

The men lost their heads with terror. They painted the mare blue,in sight of town, and threw the preacher overboard, or we shouldnot have arrived at all. The preacher was fished out and saved.

He acknowledged, himself, that he had been to blame.

I remember it all, as if it were yesterday.'

That this combination--of preacher and gray mare--should breed calamity,seems strange, and at first glance unbelievable; but the fact is fortifiedby so much unassailable proof that to doubt is to dishonor reason.

I myself remember a case where a captain was warned by numerous friendsagainst taking a gray mare and a preacher with him, but persisted in hispurpose in spite of all that could be said; and the same day--it may havebeen the next, and some say it was, though I think it was the same day--he got drunk and fell down the hatchway, and was borne to his home a corpse.

This is literally true.

No vestige of Hat Island is left now; every shred of it is washed away.

I do not even remember what part of the river it used to be in,except that it was between St. Louis and Cairo somewhere.

It was a bad region--all around and about Hat Island, in early days.

A farmer who lived on the Illinois shore there, said that twenty-ninesteamboats had left their bones strung along within sight from his house.

Between St. Louis and Cairo the steamboat wrecks average one to the mile;--two hundred wrecks, altogether.

I could recognize big changes from Commerce down. Beaver Dam Rock wasout in the middle of the river now, and throwing a prodigious 'break;'

it used to be close to the shore, and boats went down outside of it.

A big island that used to be away out in mid-river, has retiredto the Missouri shore, and boats do not go near it any more.

The island called Jacket Pattern is whittled down to a wedge now,and is booked for early destruction. Goose Island is all gonebut a little dab the size of a steamboat. The perilous 'Graveyard,'

among whose numberless wrecks we used to pick our way so slowlyand gingerly, is far away from the channel now, and a terror to nobody.

One of the islands formerly called the Two Sisters is gone entirely;the other, which used to lie close to the Illinois shore, is now onthe Missouri side, a mile away; it is joined solidly to the shore,and it takes a sharp eye to see where the seam is--but it isIllinois ground yet, and the people who live on it have to ferrythemselves over and work the Illinois roads and pay Illinois taxes:

singular state of things!

Near the mouth of the river several islands were missing--washed away.

Cairo was still there--easily visible across the long, flat point uponwhose further verge it stands; but we had to steam a long way aroundto get to it. Night fell as we were going out of the 'Upper River'

and meeting the floods of the Ohio. We dashed along without anxiety;for the hidden rock which used to lie right in the way has moved upstream a long distance out of the channel; or rather, about one countyhas gone into the river from the Missouri point, and the Cairo point has'made down' and added to its long tongue of territory correspondingly.

The Mississippi is a just and equitable river; it never tumbles one man's farmoverboard without building a new farm just like it for that man's neighbor.

This keeps down hard feelings.

Going into Cairo, we came near killing a steamboat which paidno attention to our whistle and then tried to cross our bows.

By doing some strong backing, we saved him; which was a great loss,for he would have made good literature.

Cairo is a brisk town now; and is substantially built, and has a citylook about it which is in noticeable contrast to its former estate,as per Mr. Dickens's portrait of it. However, it was alreadybuilding with bricks when I had seen it last--which was when Colonel(now General) Grant was drilling his first command there.

Uncle Mumford says the libraries and Sunday-schools havedone a good work in Cairo, as well as the brick masons.

Cairo has a heavy railroad and river trade, and her situation atthe junction of the two great rivers is so advantageous that shecannot well help prospering.

When I turned out, in the morning, we had passed Columbus, Kentucky,and were approaching Hickman, a pretty town, perched on a handsome hill.

Hickman is in a rich tobacco region, and formerly enjoyed a greatand lucrative trade in that staple, collecting it there in herwarehouses from a large area of country and shipping it by boat;but Uncle Mumford says she built a railway to facilitate this commercea little more, and he thinks it facilitated it the wrong way--took the bulk of the trade out of her hands by 'collaring it alongthe line without gathering it at her doors.'
Chapter 26 Under Fire
TALK began to run upon the war now, for we were getting downinto the upper edge of the former battle-stretch by this time.

Columbus was just behind us, so there was a good deal saidabout the famous battle of Belmont. Several of the boat'sofficers had seen active service in the Mississippi war-fleet. Igathered that they found themselves sadly out of their elementin that kind of business at first, but afterward got accustomedto it, reconciled to it, and more or less at home in it.

One of our pilots had his first war experience in the Belmontfight, as a pilot on a boat in the Confederate service.

I had often had a curiosity to know how a green hand might feel,in his maiden battle, perched all solitary and alone on highin a pilot house, a target for Tom, Dick and Harry, and nobody athis elbow to shame him from showing the white feather when mattersgrew hot and perilous around him; so, to me his story was valuable--it filled a gap for me which all histories had left tillthat time empty.

THE PILOT'S FIRST BATTLEHe said--It was the 7th of November. The fight began at seven in the morning.

I was on the 'R. H. W. Hill.' Took over a load of troops from Columbus.

Came back, and took over a battery of artillery. My partner said he was goingto see the fight; wanted me to go along. I said, no, I wasn't anxious,I would look at it from the pilot-house. He said I was a coward, and left.

That fight was an awful sight. General Cheatham made his men striptheir coats off and throw them in a pile, and said, 'Now follow meto hell or victory!' I heard him say that from the pilot-house;and then he galloped in, at the head of his troops. Old General Pillow,with his white hair, mounted on a white horse, sailed in, too, leading histroops as lively as a boy. By and by the Federals chased the rebels back,and here they came! tearing along, everybody for himself and Devil takethe hindmost! and down under the bank they scrambled, and took shelter.

I was sitting with my legs hanging out of the pilot-house window.

All at once I noticed a whizzing sound passing my ear.

Judged it was a bullet. I didn't stop to think about anything,I just tilted over backwards and landed on the floor, and staid there.

The balls came booming around. Three cannon-balls went through the chimney;one ball took off the corner of the pilot-house; shells were screamingand bursting all around. Mighty warm times--I wished I hadn't come.

I lay there on the pilot-house floor, while the shots came faster and faster.

I crept in behind the big stove, in the middle of the pilot-house.

Presently a minie-ball came through the stove, and just grazed my head,and cut my hat. I judged it was time to go away from there. The captainwas on the roof with a red-headed major from Memphis--a fine-looking man.

I heard him say he wanted to leave here, but 'that pilot is killed.'

I crept over to the starboard side to pull the bell to set her back;raised up and took a look, and I saw about fifteen shot holesthrough the window panes; had come so lively I hadn't noticed them.

I glanced out on the water, and the spattering shot were like a hailstorm.

I thought best to get out of that place. I went down the pilot-house guy,head first--not feet first but head first--slid down--before I struckthe deck, the captain said we must leave there. So I climbed up the guyand got on the floor again. About that time, they collared my partnerand were bringing him up to the pilot-house between two soldiers.

Somebody had said I was killed. He put his head in and saw me on the floorreaching for the backing bells. He said, 'Oh, hell, he ain't shot,'

and jerked away from the men who had him by the collar, and ran below.

We were there until three o'clock in the afternoon, and then got away allright.

The next time I saw my partner, I said, 'Now, come out, be honest,and tell me the truth. Where did you go when you went to see that battle?'

He says, 'I went down in the hold.'

All through that fight I was scared nearly to death.

I hardly knew anything, I was so frightened; but you see,nobody knew that but me. Next day General Polk sent for me,and praised me for my bravery and gallant conduct.

I never said anything, I let it go at that. I judged it wasn't so,but it was not for me to contradict a general officer.

Pretty soon after that I was sick, and used up, and had to gooff to the Hot Springs. When there, I got a good manyletters from commanders saying they wanted me to come back.

I declined, because I wasn't well enough or strong enough;but I kept still, and kept the reputation I had made.

A plain story, straightforwardly told; but Mumford told methat that pilot had 'gilded that scare of his, in spots;'

that his subsequent career in the war was proof of it.

We struck down through the chute of Island No. 8, and I went belowand fell into conversation with a passenger, a handsome man,with easy carriage and an intelligent face. We were approachingIsland No. 10, a place so celebrated during the war.

This gentleman's home was on the main shore in its neighborhood.

I had some talk with him about the war times; but presentlythe discourse fell upon 'feuds,' for in no part of the Southhas the vendetta flourished more briskly, or held out longerbetween warring families, than in this particular region.

This gentleman said--'There's been more than one feud around here, in old times, but Ireckon the worst one was between the Darnells and the Watsons.

Nobody don't know now what the first quarrel was about, it's so long ago;the Darnells and the Watsons don't know, if there's any of them living,which I don't think there is. Some says it was about a horse or a cow--anyway, it was a little matter; the money in it wasn't of no consequence--none in the world--both families was rich. The thing could have beenfixed up, easy enough; but no, that wouldn't do. Rough words had been passed;and so, nothing but blood could fix it up after that. That horseor cow, whichever it was, cost sixty years of killing and crippling!

Every year or so somebody was shot, on one side or the other; and as fastas one generation was laid out, their sons took up the feud and keptit a-going. And it's just as I say; they went on shooting each other,year in and year out--making a kind of a religion of it, you see--till they'd done forgot, long ago, what it was all about. Wherever aDarnell caught a Watson, or a Watson caught a Darnell, one of 'em was goingto get hurt--only question was, which of them got the drop on the other.

They'd shoot one another down, right in the presence of the family.

They didn't hunt for each other, but when they happened to meet,they puffed and begun. Men would shoot boys, boys would shoot men.

A man shot a boy twelve years old--happened on him in the woods,and didn't give him no chance. If he HAD 'a' given him a chance,the boy'd 'a' shot him. Both families belonged to the same church(everybody around here is religious); through all this fifty orsixty years' fuss, both tribes was there every Sunday, to worship.

They lived each side of the line, and the church was at a landingcalled Compromise. Half the church and half the aisle was in Kentucky,the other half in Tennessee. Sundays you'd see the families drive up,all in their Sunday clothes, men, women, and children, and file up the aisle,and set down, quiet and orderly, one lot on the Tennessee side of the churchand the other on the Kentucky side; and the men and boys would lean their gunsup against the wall, handy, and. then all hands would join in with the prayerand praise; though they say the man next the aisle didn't kneel down,along with the rest of the family; kind of stood guard. I don't know;never was at that church in my life; but I remember that that's what usedto be said.

'Twenty or twenty-five years ago, one of the feud familiescaught a young man of nineteen out and killed him.

Don't remember whether it was the Darnells and Watsons,or one of the other feuds; but anyway, this young man rode up--steamboat laying there at the time--and the first thinghe saw was a whole gang of the enemy. He jumped down behinda wood-pile, but they rode around and begun on him, he firing back,and they galloping and cavorting and yelling and banging awaywith all their might. Think he wounded a couple of them;but they closed in on him and chased him into the river;and as he swum along down stream, they followed along the bankand kept on shooting at him; and when he struck shore he was dead.

Windy Marshall told me about it. He saw it. He was captainof the boat.

'Years ago, the Darnells was so thinned out that the old manand his two sons concluded they'd leave the country. They startedto take steamboat just above No. 10; but the Watsons got wind of it;and they arrived just as the two young Darnells was walking upthe companion-way with their wives on their arms. The fightbegun then, and they never got no further--both of them killed.

After that, old Darnell got into trouble with the man that runthe ferry, and the ferry-man got the worst of it--and died.

But his friends shot old Darnell through and through--filled himfull of bullets, and ended him.'

The country gentleman who told me these things had been rearedin ease and comfort, was a man of good parts, and was college bred.

His loose grammar was the fruit of careless habit, not ignorance.

This habit among educated men in the West is not universal, but itis prevalent--prevalent in the towns, certainly, if not in the cities;and to a degree which one cannot help noticing, and marveling at.

I heard a Westerner who would be accounted a highly educated manin any country, say 'never mind, it DON'T MAKE NO DIFFERENCE, anyway.'

A life-long resident who was present heard it, but it made no impressionupon her. She was able to recall the fact afterward, when reminded of it;but she confessed that the words had not grated upon her ear at the time--a confession which suggests that if educated people can hear suchblasphemous grammar, from such a source, and be unconscious of the deed,the crime must be tolerably common--so common that the general ear hasbecome dulled by familiarity with it, and is no longer alert, no longersensitive to such affronts.

No one in the world speaks blemishless grammar; no one hasever written it--NO one, either in the world or out of it(taking the Scriptures for evidence on the latter point);therefore it would not be fair to exact grammatical perfectionfrom the peoples of the Valley; but they and all other peoplesmay justly be required to refrain from KNOWINGLY and PURPOSELYdebauching their grammar.

I found the river greatly changed at Island No. 10.

The island which I remembered was some three miles longand a quarter of a mile wide, heavily timbered, and laynear the Kentucky shore--within two hundred yards of it,I should say. Now, however, one had to hunt for it witha spy-glass. Nothing was left of it but an insignificantlittle tuft, and this was no longer near the Kentucky shore;it was clear over against the opposite shore, a mile away.

In war times the island had been an important place,for it commanded the situation; and, being heavily fortified,there was no getting by it. It lay between the upper and lowerdivisions of the union forces, and kept them separate, until ajunction was finally effected across the Missouri neck of land;but the island being itself joined to that neck now, the wide riveris without obstruction.

In this region the river passes from Kentucky into Tennessee,back into Missouri, then back into Kentucky, and thence into Tennessee again.

So a mile or two of Missouri sticks over into Tennessee.

The town of New Madrid was looking very unwell;but otherwise unchanged from its former condition and aspect.

Its blocks of frame-houses were still grouped in the sameold flat plain, and environed by the same old forests.

It was as tranquil as formerly, and apparently had neither grownnor diminished in size. It was said that the recent high waterhad invaded it and damaged its looks. This was surprising news;for in low water the river bank is very high there (fifty feet), andin my day an overflow had always been considered an impossibility.

This present flood of 1882 Will doubtless be celebratedin the river's history for several generations before a delugeof like magnitude shall be seen. It put all the unprotectedlow lands under water, from Cairo to the mouth; it broke downthe levees in a great many places, on both sides of the river;and in some regions south, when the flood was at its highest,the Mississippi was SEVENTY MILES wide! a number of liveswere lost, and the destruction of property was fearful.

The crops were destroyed, houses washed away, and shelterless menand cattle forced to take refuge on scattering elevations hereand there in field and forest, and wait in peril and sufferinguntil the boats put in commission by the national and localgovernments and by newspaper enterprise could come and rescue them.

The properties of multitudes of people were under water for months,and the poorer ones must have starved by the hundred if succorhad not been promptly afforded.

interesting description of the great flood, written on boardof the New Orleans TIMES-DEMOCRAT'S relief-boat, see AppendixA]> The water had been falling during a considerable time now,yet as a rule we found the banks still under water.
Chapter 27 Some Imported Articles
WE met two steamboats at New Madrid. Two steamboats in sightat once! an infrequent spectacle now in the lonesome Mississippi.

The loneliness of this solemn, stupendous flood is impressive--and depressing. League after league, and still league after league,it pours its chocolate tide along, between its solid forest walls,its almost untenanted shores, with seldom a sail or a movingobject of any kind to disturb the surface and break the monotonyof the blank, watery solitude; and so the day goes, the night comes,and again the day--and still the same, night after nightand day after day--majestic, unchanging sameness of serenity,repose, tranquillity, lethargy, vacancy--symbol of eternity,realization of the heaven pictured by priest and prophet,and longed for by the good and thoughtless!

Immediately after the war of 1812, tourists began to cometo America, from England; scattering ones at first, then a sortof procession of them--a procession which kept up its plodding,patient march through the land during many, many years.

Each tourist took notes, and went home and published a book--a book which was usually calm, truthful, reasonable, kind;but which seemed just the reverse to our tender-footed progenitors.

A glance at these tourist-books shows us that in certain of itsaspects the Mississippi has undergone no change since thosestrangers visited it, but remains to-day about as it was then.

The emotions produced in those foreign breasts by these aspectswere not all formed on one pattern, of course; they HADto be various, along at first, because the earlier touristswere obliged to originate their emotions, whereas in oldercountries one can always borrow emotions from one's predecessors.

And, mind you, emotions are among the toughest things inthe world to manufacture out of whole cloth; it is easier tomanufacture seven facts than one emotion. Captain Basil Hall.

R.N., writing fifty-five years ago, says--'Here I caught the first glimpse of the object I had so long wishedto behold, and felt myself amply repaid at that moment for allthe trouble I had experienced in coming so far; and stood looking atthe river flowing past till it was too dark to distinguish anything.

But it was not till I had visited the same spot a dozen times,that I came to a right comprehension of the grandeur of the scene.'

Following are Mrs. Trollope's emotions. She is writing a few months laterin the same year, 1827, and is coming in at the mouth of the Mississippi--'The first indication of our approach to land was the appearanceof this mighty river pouring forth its muddy mass of waters,and mingling with the deep blue of the Mexican Gulf. I never behelda scene so utterly desolate as this entrance of the Mississippi.

Had Dante seen it, he might have drawn images of another Bolgia fromits horrors. One only object rears itself above the eddying waters;this is the mast of a vessel long since wrecked in attempting to crossthe bar, and it still stands, a dismal witness of the destructionthat has been, and a boding prophet of that which is to come.'

Emotions of Hon. Charles Augustus Murray (near St. Louis), seven years later--'It is only when you ascend the mighty current for fifty or ahundred miles, and use the eye of imagination as well as thatof nature, that you begin to understand all his might and majesty.

You see him fertilizing a boundless valley, bearing along in his coursethe trophies of his thousand victories over the shattered forest--here carrying away large masses of soil with all their growth,and there forming islands, destined at some future period to bethe residence of man; and while indulging in this prospect,it is then time for reflection to suggest that the currentbefore you has flowed through two or three thousand miles, and hasyet to travel one thousand three hundred more before reachingits ocean destination.'

Receive, now, the emotions of Captain Marryat, R.N. author of the sea tales,writing in 1837, three years after Mr. Murray--'Never, perhaps, in the records of nations, was there an instance of acentury of such unvarying and unmitigated crime as is to be collectedfrom the history of the turbulent and blood-stained Mississippi.

The stream itself appears as if appropriate for the deeds which havebeen committed. It is not like most rivers, beautiful to the sight,bestowing fertility in its course; not one that the eye lovesto dwell upon as it sweeps along, nor can you wander uponits banks, or trust yourself without danger to its stream.

It is a furious, rapid, desolating torrent, loaded with alluvial soil;and few of those who are received into its waters ever rise again,in that day, that the Mississippi would neither buoy up a swimmer,nor permit a drowned person's body to rise to the surface.]> or cansupport themselves long upon its surface without assistance fromsome friendly log. It contains the coarsest and most uneatableof fish, such as the cat-fish and such genus, and as you descend,its banks are occupied with the fetid alligator, while the pantherbasks at its edge in the cane-brakes, almost impervious to man.

Pouring its impetuous waters through wild tracks covered withtrees of little value except for firewood, it sweeps down wholeforests in its course, which disappear in tumultuous confusion,whirled away by the stream now loaded with the masses of soilwhich nourished their roots, often blocking up and changingfor a time the channel of the river, which, as if in anger at itsbeing opposed, inundates and devastates the whole country round;and as soon as it forces its way through its former channel,plants in every direction the uprooted monarchs of the forest(upon whose branches the bird will never again perch, or the raccoon,the opossum, or the squirrel climb) as traps to the adventurousnavigators of its waters by steam, who, borne down upon these concealeddangers which pierce through the planks, very often have not timeto steer for and gain the shore before they sink to the bottom.

There are no pleasing associations connected with the great common sewerof the Western America, which pours out its mud into the Mexican Gulf,polluting the clear blue sea for many miles beyond its mouth.

It is a river of desolation; and instead of reminding you,like other beautiful rivers, of an angel which has descendedfor the benefit of man, you imagine it a devil, whose energieshave been only overcome by the wonderful power of steam.'

It is pretty crude literature for a man accustomed tohandling a pen; still, as a panorama of the emotions sentweltering through this noted visitor's breast by the aspectand traditions of the 'great common sewer,' it has a value.

A value, though marred in the matter of statistics by inaccuracies;for the catfish is a plenty good enough fish for anybody,and there are no panthers that are 'impervious to man.'

Later still comes Alexander Mackay, of the Middle Temple, Barrister at Law,with a better digestion, and no catfish dinner aboard, and feels as follows--'The Mississippi! It was with indescribable emotions that I first felt myselfafloat upon its waters. How often in my schoolboy dreams, and in my wakingvisions afterwards, had my imagination pictured to itself the lordly stream,rolling with tumultuous current through the boundless region to which ithas given its name, and gathering into itself, in its course to the ocean,the tributary waters of almost every latitude in the temperate zone!

Here it was then in its reality, and I, at length, steaming against its tide.

I looked upon it with that reverence with which everyone must regard a greatfeature of external nature.'

So much for the emotions. The tourists, one and all, remark uponthe deep, brooding loneliness and desolation of the vast river.

Captain Basil Hall, who saw it at flood-stage, says--'Sometimes we passed along distances of twenty or thirty miles withoutseeing a single habitation. An artist, in search of hints for a paintingof the deluge, would here have found them in abundance.'

The first shall be last, etc. just two hundred years ago,the old original first and gallantest of all the foreign tourists,pioneer, head of the procession, ended his weary and tediousdiscovery-voyage down the solemn stretches of the great river--La Salle, whose name will last as long as the river itself shall last.

We quote from Mr. Parkman-'And now they neared their journey's end. On the sixthof April, the river divided itself into three broad channels.

La Salle followed that of the west, and D'Autraythat of the east; while Tonty took the middle passage.

As he drifted down the turbid current, between the lowand marshy shores, the brackish water changed to brine,and the breeze grew fresh with the salt breath of the sea.

Then the broad bosom of the great Gulf opened on his sight,tossing its restless billows, limitless, voiceless, lonely as whenborn of chaos, without a sail, without a sign of life.'

Then, on a spot of solid ground, La Salle reared a column 'bearingthe arms of France; the Frenchmen were mustered under arms;and while the New England Indians and their squaws looked onin wondering silence, they chanted the TE DEUM, THE EXAUDIAT,and the DOMINE SALVUM FAC REGEM.'

Then, whilst the musketry volleyed and rejoicing shouts burst forth,the victorious discoverer planted the column, and made proclamationin a loud voice, taking formal possession of the river andthe vast countries watered by it, in the name of the King.

The column bore this inscription-LOUIS LE GRAND, ROY DE FRANCE ET DE NAVARRE, REGNE; LE NEUVIEME AVRIL,1682.

New Orleans intended to fittingly celebrate, this present year,the bicentennial anniversary of this illustrious event;but when the time came, all her energies and surplus money wererequired in other directions, for the flood was upon the land then,making havoc and devastation everywhere.
Chapter 28 Uncle Mumford Unloads
ALL day we swung along down the river, and had the stream almostwholly to ourselves. Formerly, at such a stage of the water,we should have passed acres of lumber rafts, and dozens of bigcoal barges; also occasional little trading-scows, peddlingalong from farm to farm, with the peddler's family on board;possibly, a random scow, bearing a humble Hamlet and Co.

on an itinerant dramatic trip. But these were all absent.

Far along in the day, we saw one steamboat; just one, and no more.

She was lying at rest in the shade, within the wooded mouthof the Obion River. The spy-glass revealed the fact that shewas named for me--or HE was named for me, whichever you prefer.

As this was the first time I had ever encountered this speciesof honor, it seems excusable to mention it, and at the same timecall the attention of the authorities to the tardiness of myrecognition of it.

Noted a big change in the river, at Island 21. It was a very large island,and used to be out toward mid-stream; but it is joined fast to the mainshore now, and has retired from business as an island.

As we approached famous and formidable Plum Point, darkness fell,but that was nothing to shudder about--in these modem times.

For now the national government has turned the Mississippiinto a sort of two-thousand-mile torchlight procession.

In the head of every crossing, and in the foot of everycrossing, the government has set up a clear-burning lamp.

You are never entirely in the dark, now; there is always a beaconin sight, either before you, or behind you, or abreast.

One might almost say that lamps have been squandered there.

Dozens of crossings are lighted which were not shoalwhen they were created, and have never been shoal since;crossings so plain, too, and also so straight, that a steamboatcan take herself through them without any help, after she has beenthrough once. Lamps in such places are of course not wasted;it is much more convenient and comfortable for a pilot to holdon them than on a spread of formless blackness that won'tstay still; and money is saved to the boat, at the same time,for she can of course make more miles with her rudderamidships than she can with it squared across her stern andholding her back.

But this thing has knocked the romance out of piloting, to a large extent.

It, and some other things together, have knocked all the romance out of it.

For instance, the peril from snags is not now what it once was.

The government's snag-boats go patrolling up and down, in thesematter-of-fact days, pulling the river's teeth; they have rooted outall the old clusters which made many localities so formidable; and theyallow no new ones to collect. Formerly, if your boat got away from you,on a black night, and broke for the woods, it was an anxious time with you;so was it also, when you were groping your way through solidifieddarkness in a narrow chute; but all that is changed now--you flash outyour electric light, transform night into day in the twinkling of an eye,and your perils and anxieties are at an end. Horace Bixby and GeorgeRitchie have charted the crossings and laid out the courses by compass;they have invented a lamp to go with the chart, and have patented the whole.

With these helps, one may run in the fog now, with considerable security,and with a confidence unknown in the old days.

With these abundant beacons, the banishment of snags, plenty ofdaylight in a box and ready to be turned on whenever needed,and a chart and compass to fight the fog with, piloting, at a goodstage of water, is now nearly as safe and simple as driving stage,and is hardly more than three times as romantic.

And now in these new days, these days of infinite change, the AnchorLine have raised the captain above the pilot by giving him the biggerwages of the two. This was going far, but they have not stopped there.

They have decreed that the pilot shall remain at his post, and stand hiswatch clear through, whether the boat be under way or tied up to the shore.

We, that were once the aristocrats of the river, can't go to bed now,as we used to do, and sleep while a hundred tons of freight arelugged aboard; no, we must sit in the pilot-house; and keep awake, too.

Verily we are being treated like a parcel of mates and engineers.

The Government has taken away the romance of our calling; the Company hastaken away its state and dignity.

Plum Point looked as it had always looked by night, with theexception that now there were beacons to mark the crossings,and also a lot of other lights on the Point and along its shore;these latter glinting from the fleet of the United StatesRiver Commission, and from a village which the officials have builton the land for offices and for the employes of the service.

The military engineers of the Commission have taken upontheir shoulders the job of making the Mississippi over again--a job transcended in size by only the original job of creating it.

They are building wing-dams here and there, to deflect the current;and dikes to confine it in narrower bounds; and other dikes to makeit stay there; and for unnumbered miles along the Mississippi,they are felling the timber-front for fifty yards back,with the purpose of shaving the bank down to low-water markwith the slant of a house roof, and ballasting it with stones;and in many places they have protected the wasting shores with rowsof piles. One who knows the Mississippi will promptly aver--not aloud, but to himself--that ten thousand River Commissions,with the mines of the world at their back, cannot tame thatlawless stream, cannot curb it or confine it, cannot say to it,Go here, or Go there, and make it obey; cannot save a shorewhich it has sentenced; cannot bar its path with an obstructionwhich it will not tear down, dance over, and laugh at.

But a discreet man will not put these things into spoken words;for the West Point engineers have not their superiors anywhere;they know all that can be known of their abstruse science;and so, since they conceive that they can fetter and handcuffthat river and boss him, it is but wisdom for the unscientific manto keep still, lie low, and wait till they do it. Captain Eads,with his jetties, has done a work at the mouth of the Mississippiwhich seemed clearly impossible; so we do not feel full confidencenow to prophesy against like impossibilities. Otherwise one wouldpipe out and say the Commission might as well bully the cometsin their courses and undertake to make them behave, as try to bullythe Mississippi into right and reasonable conduct.

I consulted Uncle Mumford concerning this and cognate matters;and I give here the result, stenographically reported, and thereforeto be relied on as being full and correct; except that I havehere and there left out remarks which were addressed to the men,such as 'where in blazes are you going with that barrel now?'

and which seemed to me to break the flow of the written statement,without compensating by adding to its information or its clearness.

Not that I have ventured to strike out all such interjections;I have removed only those which were obviously irrelevant;wherever one occurred which I felt any question about, I havejudged it safest to let it remain.

UNCLE MUMFORD'S IMPRESSIONSUncle Mumford said--'As long as I have been mate of a steamboat--thirty years--I have watched this river and studied it. Maybe I could have learntmore about it at West Point, but if I believe it I wish I may be WHATARE YOU SUCKING YOUR FINGERS THERE FOR ?--COLLAR THAT KAG OF NAILS!

Four years at West Point, and plenty of books and schooling, will learna man a good deal, I reckon, but it won't learn him the river.

You turn one of those little European rivers over to this Commission,with its hard bottom and clear water, and it would just be a holidayjob for them to wall it, and pile it, and dike it, and tame it down,and boss it around, and make it go wherever they wanted it to,and stay where they put it, and do just as they said, every time.

But this ain't that kind of a river. They have started in herewith big confidence, and the best intentions in the world;but they are going to get left. What does Ecclesiastes vii. 13 say?

Says enough to knock THEIR little game galley-west, don't it?

Now you look at their methods once. There at Devil's Island,in the Upper River, they wanted the water to go one way, the water wantedto go another. So they put up a stone wall. But what does the rivercare for a stone wall? When it got ready, it just bulged through it.

Maybe they can build another that will stay; that is, up there--but not down here they can't. Down here in the Lower River, they drivesome pegs to turn the water away from the shore and stop it from slicingoff the bank; very well, don't it go straight over and cut somebodyelse's bank? Certainly. Are they going to peg all the banks?

Why, they could buy ground and build a new Mississippi cheaper.

They are pegging Bulletin Tow-head now. It won't do any good.

If the river has got a mortgage on that island, it will foreclose,sure, pegs or no pegs. Away down yonder, they have driven two rowsof piles straight through the middle of a dry bar half a mile long,which is forty foot out of the water when the river is low.

What do you reckon that is for? If I know, I wish I may landin-HUMP YOURSELF, YOU SON OF AN UNDERTAKER!--OUT WITH THAT COAL-OIL, NOW,LIVELY, LIVELY! And just look at what they are trying to do downthere at Milliken's Bend. There's been a cut-off in that section,and Vicksburg is left out in the cold. It's a country town now.

The river strikes in below it; and a boat can't go up to the townexcept in high water. Well, they are going to build wing-dams inthe bend opposite the foot of 103, and throw the water over and cutoff the foot of the island and plow down into an old ditch wherethe river used to be in ancient times; and they think they can persuadethe water around that way, and get it to strike in above Vicksburg,as it used to do, and fetch the town back into the world again.

That is, they are going to take this whole Mississippi,and twist it around and make it run several miles UP STREAM.

Well you've got to admire men that deal in ideas of that size and cantote them around without crutches; but you haven't got to believethey can DO such miracles, have you! And yet you ain't absolutelyobliged to believe they can't. I reckon the safe way, where a mancan afford it, is to copper the operation, and at the same time buyenough property in Vicksburg to square you up in case they win.

Government is doing a deal for the Mississippi, now--spending loadsof money on her. When there used to be four thousand steamboatsand ten thousand acres of coal-barges, and rafts and trading scows,there wasn't a lantern from St. Paul to New Orleans, and the snagswere thicker than bristles on a hog's back; and now when there'sthree dozen steamboats and nary barge or raft, Government hassnatched out all the snags, and lit up the shores like Broadway,and a boat's as safe on the river as she'd be in heaven.

And I reckon that by the time there ain't any boats left at all,the Commission will have the old thing all reorganized, and dredged out,and fenced in, and tidied up, to a degree that will make navigationjust simply perfect, and absolutely safe and profitable; and allthe days will be Sundays, and all the mates will be Sunday-schoolsu-WHAT-IN-THE-NATION-YOU-FOOLING-AROUND-THERE-FOR, YOU SONSOF UNRIGHTEOUSNESS, HEIRS OF PERDITION ! GOING TO BE A YEAR GETTING THATHOGSHEAD ASHORE ?'

During our trip to New Orleans and back, we had many conversations withriver men, planters, journalists, and officers of the River Commission--with conflicting and confusing results. To wit:-1. Some believed in the Commission's scheme to arbitrarilyand permanently confine (and thus deepen) the channel,preserve threatened shores, etc.

2. Some believed that the Commission's money ought to be spentonly on building and repairing the great system of levees.

3. Some believed that the higher you build your levee,the higher the river's bottom will rise; and that consequentlythe levee system is a mistake.

4. Some believed in the scheme to relieve the river, in flood-time,by turning its surplus waters off into Lake Borgne, etc.

5. Some believed in the scheme of northern lake-reservoirs to replenishthe Mississippi in low-water seasons.

Wherever you find a man down there who believes in one of thesetheories you may turn to the next man and frame your talk uponthe hypothesis that he does not believe in that theory; and afteryou have had experience, you do not take this course doubtfully,or hesitatingly, but with the confidence of a dying murderer--converted one, I mean. For you will have come to know, with a deepand restful certainty, that you are not going to meet two peoplesick of the same theory, one right after the other. No, there willalways be one or two with the other diseases along between.

And as you proceed, you will find out one or two other things.

You will find out that there is no distemper of the lot butis contagious; and you cannot go where it is without catching it.

You may vaccinate yourself with deterrent facts as much as you please--it will do no good; it will seem to 'take,' but it doesn't;the moment you rub against any one of those theorists, make upyour mind that it is time to hang out your yellow flag.

Yes, you are his sure victim: yet his work is not all to your hurt--only part of it; for he is like your family physician, who comesand cures the mumps, and leaves the scarlet-fever behind.

If your man is a Lake-Borgne-relief theorist, for instance,he will exhale a cloud of deadly facts and statistics which will layyou out with that disease, sure; but at the same time he will cureyou of any other of the five theories that may have previously gotinto your system.

I have had all the five; and had them 'bad;' but ask me not,in mournful numbers, which one racked me hardest, or whichone numbered the biggest sick list, for I do not know.

In truth, no one can answer the latter question.

Mississippi Improvement is a mighty topic, down yonder.

Every man on the river banks, south of Cairo, talks about itevery day, during such moments as he is able to spare fromtalking about the war; and each of the several chief theorieshas its host of zealous partisans; but, as I have said,it is not possible to determine which cause numbersthe most recruits.

All were agreed upon one point, however: if Congress would makea sufficient appropriation, a colossal benefit would result.

Very well; since then the appropriation has been made--possibly a sufficient one, certainly not too large a one.

Let us hope that the prophecy will be amply fulfilled.

One thing will be easily granted by the reader; that an opinion fromMr. Edward Atkinson, upon any vast national commercial matter, comes as nearranking as authority, as can the opinion of any individual in the union.

What he has to say about Mississippi River Improvement will be foundin the Appendix.

Sometimes, half a dozen figures will reveal, as with a lightning-flash,the importance of a subject which ten thousand labored words,with the same purpose in view, had left at last but dim and uncertain.

Here is a case of the sort--paragraph from the 'Cincinnati Commercial'-'The towboat "Jos. B. Williams" is on her way to New Orleans witha tow of thirty-two barges, containing six hundred thousand bushels(seventy-six pounds to the bushel) of coal exclusive of her own fuel,being the largest tow ever taken to New Orleans or anywhere elsein the world. Her freight bill, at 3 cents a bushel, amounts to$18,000. It would take eighteen hundred cars, of three hundred andthirty-three bushels to the car, to transport this amount of coal.

At $10 per ton, or $100 per car, which would be a fair price forthe distance by rail, the freight bill would amount to $180,000,or $162,000 more by rail than by river. The tow will be takenfrom Pittsburg to New Orleans in fourteen or fifteen days.

It would take one hundred trains of eighteen cars to the trainto transport this one tow of six hundred thousand bushels of coal,and even if it made the usual speed of fast freight lines, it wouldtake one whole summer to put it through by rail.'

When a river in good condition can enable one to save $162,000 and a wholesummer's time, on a single cargo, the wisdom of taking measures to keepthe river in good condition is made plain to even the uncommercial mind.
Chapter 29 A Few Specimen Bricks
WE passed through the Plum Point region, turned Craighead's Point,and glided unchallenged by what was once the formidable Fort Pillow,memorable because of the massacre perpetrated there during the war.

Massacres are sprinkled with some frequency through the historiesof several Christian nations, but this is almost the only onethat can be found in American history; perhaps it is the only onewhich rises to a size correspondent to that huge and somber title.

We have the 'Boston Massacre,' where two or three people were killed;but we must bunch Anglo-Saxon history together to find the fellowto the Fort Pillow tragedy; and doubtless even then we must travelback to the days and the performances of Coeur de Lion, that fine'hero,' before we accomplish it.

More of the river's freaks. In times past, the channel usedto strike above Island 37, by Brandywine Bar, and down towardsIsland 39. Afterward, changed its course and went fromBrandywine down through Vogelman's chute in the Devil's Elbow,to Island 39--part of this course reversing the old order;the river running UP four or five miles, instead of down,and cutting off, throughout, some fifteen miles of distance.

This in 1876. All that region is now called Centennial Island.

There is a tradition that Island 37 was one of the principal abidingplaces of the once celebrated 'Murel's Gang.' This was a colossalcombination of robbers, horse-thieves, negro-stealers, and counterfeiters,engaged in business along the river some fifty or sixty years ago.

While our journey across the country towards St. Louis was inprogress we had had no end of Jesse James and his stirring history;for he had just been assassinated by an agent of the Governor of Missouri,and was in consequence occupying a good deal of space in the newspapers.

Cheap histories of him were for sale by train boys. According to these,he was the most marvelous creature of his kind that had ever existed.

It was a mistake. Murel was his equal in boldness; in pluck; in rapacity;in cruelty, brutality, heartlessness, treachery, and in general andcomprehensive vileness and shamelessness; and very much his superiorin some larger aspects. James was a retail rascal; Murel, wholesale.

James's modest genius dreamed of no loftier flight than the planningof raids upon cars, coaches, and country banks; Murel projectednegro insurrections and the capture of New Orleans; and furthermore,on occasion, this Murel could go into a pulpit and edify the congregation.

What are James and his half-dozen vulgar rascals compared with thisstately old-time criminal, with his sermons, his meditated insurrectionsand city-captures, and his majestic following of ten hundred men,sworn to do his evil will!

Here is a paragraph or two concerning this big operator,from a now forgotten book which was published half a century ago--He appears to have been a most dexterous as well as consummate villain.

When he traveled, his usual disguise was that of an itinerant preacher;and it is said that his discourses were very 'soul-moving'--interestingthe hearers so much that they forgot to look after their horses,which were carried away by his confederates while he was preaching.

But the stealing of horses in one State, and selling them in another,was but a small portion of their business; the most lucrativewas the enticing slaves to run away from their masters, that theymight sell them in another quarter. This was arranged as follows;they would tell a negro that if he would run away from his master,and allow them to sell him, he should receive a portion of the moneypaid for him, and that upon his return to them a second time they wouldsend him to a free State, where he would be safe. The poor wretchescomplied with this request, hoping to obtain money and freedom;they would be sold to another master, and run away again, to their employers;sometimes they would be sold in this manner three or four times,until they had realized three or four thousand dollars by them;but as, after this, there was fear of detection, the usual custom wasto get rid of the only witness that could be produced against them,which was the negro himself, by murdering him, and throwing his body intothe Mississippi. Even if it was established that they had stolen a negro,before he was murdered, they were always prepared to evade punishment;for they concealed the negro who had run away, until he was advertised,and a reward offered to any man who would catch him. An advertisementof this kind warrants the person to take the property, if found.

And then the negro becomes a property in trust, when, therefore,they sold the negro, it only became a breach of trust, not stealing;and for a breach of trust, the owner of the property can only have redressby a civil action, which was useless, as the damages were never paid.

It may be inquired, how it was that Murel escaped Lynch law undersuch circumstances This will be easily understood when it is statedthat he had MORE THAN A THOUSAND SWORN CONFEDERATES, all ready ata moment's notice to support any of the gang who might be in trouble.

The names of all the principal confederates of Murel were obtainedfrom himself, in a manner which I shall presently explain.

The gang was composed of two classes: the Heads or Council, as theywere called, who planned and concerted, but seldom acted; they amountedto about four hundred. The other class were the active agents,and were termed strikers, and amounted to about six hundred and fifty.

These were the tools in the hands of the others; they ran all the risk,and received but a small portion of the money; they were in the powerof the leaders of the gang, who would sacrifice them at any time by handingthem over to justice, or sinking their bodies in the Mississippi.

The general rendezvous of this gang of miscreants was on the Arkansasside of the river, where they concealed their negroes in the morasses andcane-brakes.

The depredations of this extensive combination were severely felt;but so well were their plans arranged, that although Murel,who was always active, was everywhere suspected, there was no proofto be obtained. It so happened, however, that a young man of the nameof Stewart, who was looking after two slaves which Murel had decoyedaway, fell in with him and obtained his confidence, took the oath,and was admitted into the gang as one of the General Council.

By this means all was discovered; for Stewart turned traitor,although he had taken the oath, and having obtained every information,exposed the whole concern, the names of all the parties, and finallysucceeded in bringing home sufficient evidence against Murel,to procure his conviction and sentence to the Penitentiary(Murel was sentenced to fourteen years' imprisonment); so manypeople who were supposed to be honest, and bore a respectablename in the different States, were found to be among the listof the Grand Council as published by Stewart, that every attemptwas made to throw discredit upon his assertions--his characterwas vilified, and more than one attempt was made to assassinate him.

He was obliged to quit the Southern States in consequence.

It is, however, now well ascertained to have been all true;and although some blame Mr. Stewart for having violated his oath,they no longer attempt to deny that his revelations were correct.

I will quote one or two portions of Murel's confessions toMr. Stewart, made to him when they were journeying together.

I ought to have observed, that the ultimate intentions of Mureland his associates were, by his own account, on a very extended scale;having no less an object in view than RAISING THE BLACKS AGAINSTTHE WHITES, TAKING POSSESSION OF, AND PLUNDERING NEW ORLEANS,AND MAKING THEMSELVES POSSESSORS OF THE TERRITORY. The following area few extracts:--'I collected all my friends about New Orleans at one of our friends'

houses in that place, and we sat in council three days before wegot all our plans to our notion; we then determined to undertakethe rebellion at every hazard, and make as many friends as wecould for that purpose. Every man's business being assigned him,I started to Natchez on foot, having sold my horse in New Orleans,--with the intention of stealing another after I started.

I walked four days, and no opportunity offered for me to get a horse.

The fifth day, about twelve, I had become tired, and stopped at a creekto get some water and rest a little. While I was sitting on a log,looking down the road the way that I had come, a man came in sightriding on a good-looking horse. The very moment I saw him, I wasdetermined to have his horse, if he was in the garb of a traveler.

He rode up, and I saw from his equipage that he was a traveler.

I arose and drew an elegant rifle pistol on him and ordered him to dismount.

He did so, and I took his horse by the bridle and pointed down the creek,and ordered him to walk before me. He went a few hundred yardsand stopped. I hitched his horse, and then made him undress himself,all to his shirt and drawers, and ordered him to turn his back to me.

He said, 'If you are determined to kill me, let me have time to praybefore I die,' I told him I had no time to hear him pray. He turned aroundand dropped on his knees, and I shot him through the back of the head.

I ripped open his belly and took out his entrails, and sunk him in the creek.

I then searched his pockets, and found four hundred dollars and thirty-sevencents, and a number of papers that I did not take time to examine.

I sunk the pocket-book and papers and his hat, in the creek.

His boots were brand-new, and fitted me genteelly; and I putthem on and sunk my old shoes in the creek, to atone for them.

I rolled up his clothes and put them into his portmanteau, as they werebrand-new cloth of the best quality. I mounted as fine a horse as everI straddled, and directed my course for Natchez in much better stylethan I had been for the last five days.

'Myself and a fellow by the name of Crenshaw gathered four goodhorses and started for Georgia. We got in company with a youngSouth Carolinian just before we got to Cumberland Mountain,and Crenshaw soon knew all about his business. He had beento Tennessee to buy a drove of hogs, but when he got there porkwas dearer than he calculated, and he declined purchasing.

We concluded he was a prize. Crenshaw winked at me; I understoodhis idea. Crenshaw had traveled the road before, but I never had;we had traveled several miles on the mountain, when he passednear a great precipice; just before we passed it Crenshaw askedme for my whip, which had a pound of lead in the butt; I handedit to him, and he rode up by the side of the South Carolinian,and gave him a blow on the side of the head and tumbled himfrom his horse; we lit from our horses and fingered his pockets;we got twelve hundred and sixty-two dollars. Crenshaw saidhe knew a place to hide him, and he gathered him under his arms,and I by his feet, and conveyed him to a deep crevice in the browof the precipice, and tumbled him into it, and he went out of sight;we then tumbled in his saddle, and took his horse with us, which wasworth two hundred dollars.

'We were detained a few days, and during that time our friend wentto a little village in the neighborhood and saw the negro advertised(a negro in our possession), and a description of the two men of whomhe had been purchased, and giving his suspicions of the men.

It was rather squally times, but any port in a storm:

we took the negro that night on the bank of a creek which runsby the farm of our friend, and Crenshaw shot him through the head.

We took out his entrails and sunk him in the creek.

'He had sold the other negro the third time on Arkansaw River for upwardsof five hundred dollars; and then stole him and delivered him into the handof his friend, who conducted him to a swamp, and veiled the tragic scene,and got the last gleanings and sacred pledge of secrecy; as a game of thatkind will not do unless it ends in a mystery to all but the fraternity.

He sold the negro, first and last, for nearly two thousand dollars,and then put him for ever out of the reach of all pursuers; and they cannever graze him unless they can find the negro; and that they cannot do,for his carcass has fed many a tortoise and catfish before this time,and the frogs have sung this many a long day to the silent reposeof his skeleton.'

We were approaching Memphis, in front of which city, and witnessed byits people, was fought the most famous of the river battles of the Civil War.

Two men whom I had served under, in my river days, took part in that fight:

Mr. Bixby, head pilot of the union fleet, and Montgomery, Commodore of theConfederate fleet. Both saw a great deal of active service during the war,and achieved high reputations for pluck and capacity.

As we neared Memphis, we began to cast about for an excuse to staywith the 'Gold Dust' to the end of her course--Vicksburg. We wereso pleasantly situated, that we did not wish to make a change.

I had an errand of considerable importance to do at Napoleon, Arkansas,but perhaps I could manage it without quitting the 'Gold Dust.'

I said as much; so we decided to stick to present quarters.

The boat was to tarry at Memphis till ten the next morning. It is abeautiful city, nobly situated on a commanding bluff overlooking the river.

The streets are straight and spacious, though not paved in a way to incitedistempered admiration. No, the admiration must be reserved for the town'ssewerage system, which is called perfect; a recent reform, however, for itwas just the other way, up to a few years ago--a reform resulting fromthe lesson taught by a desolating visitation of the yellow-fever. Inthose awful days the people were swept off by hundreds, by thousands;and so great was the reduction caused by flight and by death together,that the population was diminished three-fourths, and so remained for a time.

Business stood nearly still, and the streets bore an empty Sunday aspect.

Here is a picture of Memphis, at that disastrous time,drawn by a German tourist who seems to have been an eye-witnessof the scenes which he describes. It is from Chapter VII,of his book, just published, in Leipzig, 'Mississippi-Fahrten, vonErnst von Hesse-Wartegg.'--'In August the yellow-fever had reached its extremest height.

Daily, hundreds fell a sacrifice to the terrible epidemic.

The city was become a mighty graveyard, two-thirds of the populationhad deserted the place, and only the poor, the aged and the sick,remained behind, a sure prey for the insidious enemy.

The houses were closed: little lamps burned in front of many--a sign that here death had entered. Often, several laydead in a single house; from the windows hung black crape.

The stores were shut up, for their owners were gone away or dead.

'Fearful evil! In the briefest space it struck down and swept awayeven the most vigorous victim. A slight indisposition, then an hourof fever, then the hideous delirium, then--the Yellow Death !

On the street corners, and in the squares, lay sick men, suddenly overtakenby the disease; and even corpses, distorted and rigid. Food failed.

Meat spoiled in a few hours in the fetid and pestiferous air,and turned black.

'Fearful clamors issue from many houses; then after a seasonthey cease, and all is still: noble, self-sacrificing men comewith the coffin, nail it up, and carry it away, to the graveyard.

In the night stillness reigns. Only the physicians and thehearses hurry through the streets; and out of the distance,at intervals, comes the muffled thunder of the railway train,which with the speed of the wind, and as if hunted by furies,flies by the pest-ridden city without halting.'

But there is life enough there now. The population exceeds forty thousandand is augmenting, and trade is in a flourishing condition. We droveabout the city; visited the park and the sociable horde of squirrels there;saw the fine residences, rose-clad and in other ways enticing to the eye;and got a good breakfast at the hotel.

A thriving place is the Good Samaritan City of the Mississippi:

has a great wholesale jobbing trade; foundries, machine shops;and manufactories of wagons, carriages, and cotton-seed oil;and is shortly to have cotton mills and elevators.

Her cotton receipts reached five hundred thousand bales last year--an increase of sixty thousand over the year before. Out fromher healthy commercial heart issue five trunk lines of railway;and a sixth is being added.

This is a very different Memphis from the one which the vanishedand unremembered procession of foreign tourists used to putinto their books long time ago. In the days of the nowforgotten but once renowned and vigorously hated Mrs. Trollope,Memphis seems to have consisted mainly of one long street oflog-houses, with some outlying cabins sprinkled around rearwardtoward the woods; and now and then a pig, and no end of mud.

That was fifty-five years ago. She stopped at the hotel.

Plainly it was not the one which gave us our breakfast.

She says--'The table was laid for fifty persons, and was nearly full.

They ate in perfect silence, and with such astonishing rapiditythat their dinner was over literally before ours was begun;the only sounds heard were those produced by the knives and forks,with the unceasing chorus of coughing, ETC.'

'Coughing, etc.' The 'etc.' stands for an unpleasant word there,a word which she does not always charitably cover up, but sometimes prints.

You will find it in the following description of a steamboat dinnerwhich she ate in company with a lot of aristocratic planters;wealthy, well-born, ignorant swells they were, tinselled with the usualharmless military and judicial titles of that old day of cheap shamsand windy pretense--'The total want of all the usual courtesies of the table;the voracious rapidity with which the viands were seizedand devoured; the strange uncouth phrases and pronunciation;the loathsome spitting, from the contamination of which itwas absolutely impossible to protect our dresses; the frightfulmanner of feeding with their knives, till the whole bladeseemed to enter into the mouth; and the still more frightfulmanner of cleaning the teeth afterward with a pocket knife,soon forced us to feel that we were not surroundedby the generals, colonels, and majors of the old world;and that the dinner hour was to be anything rather than anhour of enjoyment.'
Chapter 30 Sketches by the Way
IT was a big river, below Memphis; banks brimming full, everywhere,and very frequently more than full, the waters pouring out overthe land, flooding the woods and fields for miles into the interior;and in places, to a depth of fifteen feet; signs, all about,of men's hard work gone to ruin, and all to be doneover again, with straitened means and a weakened courage.

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.
Chapter 31 A Thumb-print and What Came of It
WE were approaching Napoleon, Arkansas. So I began to thinkabout my errand there. Time, noonday; and bright and sunny.

This was bad--not best, anyway; for mine was not(preferably) a noonday kind of errand. The more I thought,the more that fact pushed itself upon me--now in one form,now in another. Finally, it took the form of a distinct question:

is it good common sense to do the errand in daytime, when, by alittle sacrifice of comfort and inclination, you can have nightfor it, and no inquisitive eyes around. This settled it.

Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road outof most perplexities.

I got my friends into my stateroom, and said I was sorry to createannoyance and disappointment, but that upon reflection it reallyseemed best that we put our luggage ashore and stop over at Napoleon.

Their disapproval was prompt and loud; their language mutinous.

Their main argument was one which has always been the first to cometo the surface, in such cases, since the beginning of time:

'But you decided and AGREED to stick to this boat, etc.; as if,having determined to do an unwise thing, one is thereby bound to go aheadand make TWO unwise things of it, by carrying out that determination.

I tried various mollifying tactics upon them, with reasonably good success:

under which encouragement, I increased my efforts; and, to show them that Ihad not created this annoying errand, and was in no way to blame for it,I presently drifted into its history--substantially as follows:

Toward the end of last year, I spent a few months in Munich, Bavaria.

In November I was living in Fraulein Dahlweiner's PENSION,1a, Karlstrasse; but my working quarters were a mile from there,in the house of a widow who supported herself by taking lodgers.

She and her two young children used to drop in every morning and talkGerman to me--by request. One day, during a ramble about the city,I visited one of the two establishments where the Government keeps andwatches corpses until the doctors decide that they are permanently dead,and not in a trance state. It was a grisly place, that spacious room.

There were thirty-six corpses of adults in sight, stretched on theirbacks on slightly slanted boards, in three long rows--all of themwith wax-white, rigid faces, and all of them wrapped in white shrouds.

Along the sides of the room were deep alcoves, like bay windows;and in each of these lay several marble-visaged babes, utterly hidden andburied under banks of fresh flowers, all but their faces and crossed hands.

Around a finger of each of these fifty still forms, both greatand small, was a ring; and from the ring a wire led to the ceiling,and thence to a bell in a watch-room yonder, where, day and night,a watchman sits always alert and ready to spring to the aid of anyof that pallid company who, waking out of death, shall make a movement--for any, even the slightest, movement will twitch the wire and ringthat fearful bell. I imagined myself a death-sentinel drowsingthere alone, far in the dragging watches of some wailing, gusty night,and having in a twinkling all my body stricken to quivering jelly bythe sudden clamor of that awful summons! So I inquired about this thing;asked what resulted usually? if the watchman died, and the restoredcorpse came and did what it could to make his last moments easy.

But I was rebuked for trying to feed an idle and frivolous curiosityin so solemn and so mournful a place; and went my way witha humbled crest.

Next morning I was telling the widow my adventure, when she exclaimed--'Come with me! I have a lodger who shall tell you all you want to know.

He has been a night-watchman there.'

He was a living man, but he did not look it. He was abed, and hadhis head propped high on pillows; his face was wasted and colorless,his deep-sunken eyes were shut; his hand, lying on his breast,was talon-like, it was so bony and long-fingered. The widowbegan her introduction of me. The man's eyes opened slowly,and glittered wickedly out from the twilight of their caverns;he frowned a black frown; he lifted his lean hand and waved usperemptorily away. But the widow kept straight on, till shehad got out the fact that I was a stranger and an American.

The man's face changed at once; brightened, became even eager--and the next moment he and I were alone together.

I opened up in cast-iron German; he responded in quite flexible English;thereafter we gave the German language a permanent rest.

This consumptive and I became good friends. I visited him every day, and wetalked about everything. At least, about everything but wives and children.

Let anybody's wife or anybody's child be mentioned, and three thingsalways followed: the most gracious and loving and tender light glimmeredin the man's eyes for a moment; faded out the next, and in its place camethat deadly look which had flamed there the first time I ever saw hislids unclose; thirdly, he ceased from speech, there and then for that day;lay silent, abstracted, and absorbed; apparently heard nothing that I said;took no notice of my good-byes, and plainly did not know, by either sightor hearing, when I left the room.

When I had been this Karl Ritter's daily and sole intimate during two months,he one day said, abruptly--'I will tell you my story.'

A DYING MAN S CONFESSIONThen he went on as follows:--I have never given up, until now. But now I have given up.

I am going to die. I made up my mind last night that itmust be, and very soon, too. You say you are going torevisit your river, by-and-bye, when you find opportunity.

Very well; that, together with a certain strange experiencewhich fell to my lot last night, determines me to tell youmy history--for you will see Napoleon, Arkansas; and for mysake you will stop there, and do a certain thing for me--a thing which you will willingly undertake after you shall haveheard my narrative.

Let us shorten the story wherever we can, for it will need it, being long.

You already know how I came to go to America, and how I came to settlein that lonely region in the South. But you do not know that I had a wife.

My wife was young, beautiful, loving, and oh, so divinely good andblameless and gentle! And our little girl was her mother in miniature.

It was the happiest of happy households.

One night--it was toward the close of the war--I woke upout of a sodden lethargy, and found myself bound and gagged,and the air tainted with chloroform! I saw two men in the room,and one was saying to the other, in a hoarse whisper, 'I toldher I would, if she made a noise, and as for the child--'

The other man interrupted in a low, half-crying voice--'You said we'd only gag them and rob them, not hurt them;or I wouldn't have come.'

'Shut up your whining; had to change the plan when they waked up;you done all you could to protect them, now let that satisfy you;come, help rummage.'

Both men were masked, and wore coarse, ragged 'nigger' clothes;they had a bull's-eye lantern, and by its light I noticedthat the gentler robber had no thumb on his right hand.

They rummaged around my poor cabin for a moment; the head banditthen said, in his stage whisper--'It's a waste of time--he shall tell where it's hid.

Undo his gag, and revive him up.'

The other said--'All right--provided no clubbing.'

'No clubbing it is, then--provided he keeps still.'

They approached me; just then there was a sound outside;a sound of voices and trampling hoofs; the robbers held theirbreath and listened; the sounds came slowly nearer and nearer;then came a shout--'HELLO, the house! Show a light, we want water.'

'The captain's voice, by G----!' said the stage-whispering ruffian,and both robbers fled by the way of the back door, shutting offtheir bull's-eye as they ran.

The strangers shouted several times more, then rode by--there seemed to be a dozen of the horses--and I heard nothing more.

I struggled, but could not free myself from my bonds.

I tried to speak, but the gag was effective; I could not make a sound.

I listened for my wife's voice and my child's--listened long and intently,but no sound came from the other end of the room where their bed was.

This silence became more and more awful, more and more ominous,every moment. Could you have endured an hour of it, do you think?

Pity me, then, who had to endure three. Three hours--? it was three ages!

Whenever the clock struck, it seemed as if years had gone by since Ihad heard it last. All this time I was struggling in my bonds;and at last, about dawn, I got myself free, and rose up and stretchedmy stiff limbs. I was able to distinguish details pretty well.

The floor was littered with things thrown there by the robbersduring their search for my savings. The first object that caughtmy particular attention was a document of mine which I had seenthe rougher of the two ruffians glance at and then cast away.

It had blood on it! I staggered to the other end of the room.

Oh, poor unoffending, helpless ones, there they lay, their troubles ended,mine begun!

Did I appeal to the law--I? Does it quench the pauper's thirst if the Kingdrink for him? Oh, no, no, no--I wanted no impertinent interference ofthe law. Laws and the gallows could not pay the debt that was owing to me!

Let the laws leave the matter in my hands, and have no fears: I wouldfind the debtor and collect the debt. How accomplish this, do you say?

How accomplish it, and feel so sure about it, when I had neither seenthe robbers' faces, nor heard their natural voices, nor had any ideawho they might be? Nevertheless, I WAS sure--quite sure, quite confident.

I had a clue--a clue which you would not have valued--a clue which wouldnot have greatly helped even a detective, since he would lack the secretof how to apply it. I shall come to that, presently--you shall see.

Let us go on, now, taking things in their due order. There was onecircumstance which gave me a slant in a definite direction to begin with:

Those two robbers were manifestly soldiers in tramp disguise; and notnew to military service, but old in it--regulars, perhaps; they didnot acquire their soldierly attitude, gestures, carriage, in a day,nor a month, nor yet in a year. So I thought, but said nothing.

And one of them had said, 'the captain's voice, by G----!'--the one whoselife I would have. Two miles away, several regiments were in camp,and two companies of U.S. cavalry. When I learned that Captain Blakely,of Company C had passed our way, that night, with an escort, I said nothing,but in that company I resolved to seek my man. In conversation I studiouslyand persistently described the robbers as tramps, camp followers;and among this class the people made useless search, none suspecting thesoldiers but me.

Working patiently, by night, in my desolated home, I madea disguise for myself out of various odds and ends of clothing;in the nearest village I bought a pair of blue goggles.

By-and-bye, when the military camp broke up, and Company C wasordered a hundred miles north, to Napoleon, I secreted my smallhoard of money in my belt, and took my departure in the night.

When Company C arrived in Napoleon, I was already there.

Yes, I was there, with a new trade--fortune-teller. Not to seem partial,I made friends and told fortunes among all the companiesgarrisoned there; but I gave Company C the great bulk of my attentions.

I made myself limitlessly obliging to these particular men;they could ask me no favor, put upon me no risk, which I would decline.

I became the willing butt of their jokes; this perfected my popularity;I became a favorite.

I early found a private who lacked a thumb--what joy it was to me!

And when I found that he alone, of all the company, had losta thumb, my last misgiving vanished; I was SURE I was onthe right track. This man's name was Kruger, a German.

There were nine Germans in the company. I watched, to see who mightbe his intimates; but he seemed to have no especial intimates.

But I was his intimate; and I took care to make the intimacy grow.

Sometimes I so hungered for my revenge that I could hardlyrestrain myself from going on my knees and begging him to pointout the man who had murdered my wife and child; but I managedto bridle my tongue. I bided my time, and went on telling fortunes,as opportunity offered.

My apparatus was simple: a little red paint and a bit of white paper.

I painted the ball of the client's thumb, took a print of it on the paper,studied it that night, and revealed his fortune to him next day.

What was my idea in this nonsense? It was this: When I was a youth,I knew an old Frenchman who had been a prison-keeper for thirty years,and he told me that there was one thing about a person which never changed,from the cradle to the grave--the lines in the ball of the thumb;and he said that these lines were never exactly alike in the thumbsof any two human beings. In these days, we photograph the new criminal,and hang his picture in the Rogues' Gallery for future reference;but that Frenchman, in his day, used to take a print of the ball of a newprisoner's thumb and put that away for future reference. He always saidthat pictures were no good--future disguises could make them useless;'The thumb's the only sure thing,' said he; 'you can't disguise that.'

And he used to prove his theory, too, on my friends and acquaintances;it always succeeded.

I went on telling fortunes. Every night I shut myself in, all alone,and studied the day's thumb-prints with a magnifying-glass. Imaginethe devouring eagerness with which I pored over those mazy red spirals,with that document by my side which bore the right-hand thumb-and-finger-marksof that unknown murderer, printed with the dearest blood--to me--that was ever shed on this earth! And many and many a time I had to repeatthe same old disappointed remark, 'will they NEVER correspond!'

But my reward came at last. It was the print of the thumb of the forty-thirdman of Company C whom I had experimented on--Private Franz Adler.

An hour before, I did not know the murderer's name, or voice,or figure, or face, or nationality; but now I knew all these things!

I believed I might feel sure; the Frenchman's repeated demonstrationsbeing so good a warranty. Still, there was a way to MAKE sure.

I had an impression of Kruger's left thumb. In the morning I took him asidewhen he was off duty; and when we were out of sight and hearing of witnesses,I said, impressively-'A part of your fortune is so grave, that I thought it would bebetter for you if I did not tell it in public. You and another man,whose fortune I was studying last night,--Private Adler,--have been murdering a woman and a child! You are being dogged:

within five days both of you will be assassinated.'

He dropped on his knees, frightened out of his wits;and for five minutes he kept pouring out the same set of words,like a demented person, and in the same half-crying way whichwas one of my memories of that murderous night in my cabin--'I didn't do it; upon my soul I didn't do it; and I triedto keep HIM from doing it; I did, as God is my witness.

He did it alone.'

This was all I wanted. And I tried to get rid of the fool; but no,he clung to me, imploring me to save him from the assassin. He said--'I have money--ten thousand dollars--hid away, the fruit of lootand thievery; save me--tell me what to do, and you shallhave it, every penny. Two-thirds of it is my cousin Adler's;but you can take it all. We hid it when we first came here.

But I hid it in a new place yesterday, and have not told him--shall not tell him. I was going to desert, and get away with it all.

It is gold, and too heavy to carry when one is running and dodging;but a woman who has been gone over the river two days to preparemy way for me is going to follow me with it; and if I got no chanceto describe the hiding-place to her I was going to slip my silverwatch into her hand, or send it to her, and she would understand.

There's a piece of paper in the back of the case, which tells it all.

Here, take the watch--tell me what to do!'

He was trying to press his watch upon me, and was exposing the paperand explaining it to me, when Adler appeared on the scene,about a dozen yards away. I said to poor Kruger--'Put up your watch, I don't want it. You shan't cometo any harm. Go, now; I must tell Adler his fortune.

Presently I will tell you how to escape the assassin;meantime I shall have to examine your thumbmark again.

Say nothing to Adler about this thing--say nothing to anybody.'

He went away filled with fright and gratitude, poor devil.

I told Adler a long fortune--purposely so long that I couldnot finish it; promised to come to him on guard, that night,and tell him the really important part of it--the tragicalpart of it, I said--so must be out of reach of eavesdroppers.

They always kept a picket-watch outside the town--mere disciplineand ceremony--no occasion for it, no enemy around.

Toward midnight I set out, equipped with the countersign,and picked my way toward the lonely region where Adler wasto keep his watch. It was so dark that I stumbled right ona dim figure almost before I could get out a protecting word.

The sentinel hailed and I answered, both at the same moment.

I added, 'It's only me--the fortune-teller.' Then I slipped to the poordevil's side, and without a word I drove my dirk into his heart!

YA WOHL, laughed I, it WAS the tragedy part of his fortune, indeed!

As he fell from his horse, he clutched at me, and my blue gogglesremained in his hand; and away plunged the beast dragging him,with his foot in the stirrup.

I fled through the woods, and made good my escape, leaving the accusinggoggles behind me in that dead man's hand.

This was fifteen or sixteen years ago. Since then I have wanderedaimlessly about the earth, sometimes at work, sometimes idle;sometimes with money, sometimes with none; but always tired of life,and wishing it was done, for my mission here was finished, with the actof that night; and the only pleasure, solace, satisfaction I had,in all those tedious years, was in the daily reflection,'I have killed him!'

Four years ago, my health began to fail. I had wandered into Munich,in my purposeless way. Being out of money, I sought work,and got it; did my duty faithfully about a year, and was thengiven the berth of night watchman yonder in that dead-housewhich you visited lately. The place suited my mood. I liked it.

I liked being with the dead--liked being alone with them.

I used to wander among those rigid corpses, and peer intotheir austere faces, by the hour. The later the time,the more impressive it was; I preferred the late time.

Sometimes I turned the lights low: this gave perspective, you see;and the imagination could play; always, the dim receding ranksof the dead inspired one with weird and fascinating fancies.

Two years ago--I had been there a year then--I was sitting all alonein the watch-room, one gusty winter's night, chilled, numb, comfortless;drowsing gradually into unconsciousness; the sobbing of the windand the slamming of distant shutters falling fainter and fainterupon my dulling ear each moment, when sharp and suddenlythat dead-bell rang out a blood-curdling alarum over my head!

The shock of it nearly paralyzed me; for it was the first time I hadever heard it.

I gathered myself together and flew to the corpse-room. About midwaydown the outside rank, a shrouded figure was sitting upright,wagging its head slowly from one side to the other--a grisly spectacle!

Its side was toward me. I hurried to it and peered into its face.

Heavens, it was Adler!

Can you divine what my first thought was? Put into words,it was this: 'It seems, then, you escaped me once:

there will be a different result this time!'

Evidently this creature was suffering unimaginable terrors.

Think what it must have been to wake up in the midst of thatvoiceless hush, and, look out over that grim congregationof the dead! What gratitude shone in his skinny white facewhen he saw a living form before him! And how the fervencyof this mute gratitude was augmented when his eyes fellupon the life-giving cordials which I carried in my hands!

Then imagine the horror which came into this pinched face when Iput the cordials behind me, and said mockingly--'Speak up, Franz Adler--call upon these dead. Doubtless they will listenand have pity; but here there is none else that will.'

He tried to speak, but that part of the shroud which bound his jaws,held firm and would not let him. He tried to lift imploring hands,but they were crossed upon his breast and tied. I said-'Shout, Franz Adler; make the sleepers in the distantstreets hear you and bring help. Shout--and lose no time,for there is little to lose. What, you cannot? That is a pity;but it is no matter--it does not always bring help.

When you and your cousin murdered a helpless woman and childin a cabin in Arkansas--my wife, it was, and my child!--they shrieked for help, you remember; but it did no good;you remember that it did no good, is it not so? Your teeth chatter--then why cannot you shout? Loosen the bandages with your hands--then you can. Ah, I see--your hands are tied, they cannot aid you.

How strangely things repeat themselves, after long years;for MY hands were tied, that night, you remember? Yes, tied muchas yours are now--how odd that is. I could not pull free.

It did not occur to you to untie me; it does not occurto me to untie you. Sh----! there's a late footstep.

It is coming this way. Hark, how near it is! One can countthe footfalls--one--two--three. There--it is just outside.

Now is the time! Shout, man, shout!--it is the one sole chancebetween you and eternity! Ah, you see you have delayed too long--it is gone by. There--it is dying out. It is gone! Think of it--reflect upon it--you have heard a human footstep for the last time.

How curious it must be, to listen to so common a sound as that,and know that one will never hear the fellow to it again.'

Oh, my friend, the agony in that shrouded face was ecstasy to see!

I thought of a new torture, and applied it--assisting myself with a trifleof lying invention--'That poor Kruger tried to save my wife and child, and Idid him a grateful good turn for it when the time came.

I persuaded him to rob you; and I and a woman helped him to desert,and got him away in safety.' A look as of surprise and triumphshone out dimly through the anguish in my victim's face.

I was disturbed, disquieted. I said--'What, then--didn't he escape?'

A negative shake of the head.

'No? What happened, then?'

The satisfaction in the shrouded face was still plainer.

The man tried to mumble out some words--could not succeed;tried to express something with his obstructed hands--failed;paused a moment, then feebly tilted his head, in a meaning way,toward the corpse that lay nearest him.

'Dead?' I asked. 'Failed to escape?--caught in the act and shot?'

Negative shake of the head.

'How, then?'

Again the man tried to do something with his hands. I watched closely,but could not guess the intent. I bent over and watched still more intently.

He had twisted a thumb around and was weakly punching at his breast with it.

'Ah--stabbed, do you mean?'

Affirmative nod, accompanied by a spectral smile of suchpeculiar devilishness, that it struck an awakening lightthrough my dull brain, and I cried--'Did I stab him, mistaking him for you?--for that stroke was meantfor none but you.'

The affirmative nod of the re-dying rascal was as joyous as his failingstrength was able to put into its expression.

'O, miserable, miserable me, to slaughter the pitying soul that,stood a friend to my darlings when they were helpless, and wouldhave saved them if he could! miserable, oh, miserable, miserable me!'

I fancied I heard the muffled gurgle of a, mocking laugh.

I took my face out of my hands, and saw my enemy sinking back uponhis inclined board.

He was a satisfactory long time dying. He had a wonderful vitality,an astonishing constitution. Yes, he was a pleasant long time at it.

I got a chair and a newspaper, and sat down by him and read.

Occasionally I took a sip of brandy. This was necessary,on account of the cold. But I did it partly because I saw,that along at first, whenever I reached for the bottle,he thought I was going to give him some. I read aloud:

mainly imaginary accounts of people snatched from the grave'sthreshold and restored to life and vigor by a few spoonsfulof liquor and a warm bath. Yes, he had a long, hard death of it--three hours and six minutes, from the time he rang his bell.

It is believed that in all these eighteen years that have elapsed sincethe institution of the corpse-watch, no shrouded occupant of the Bavariandead-houses has ever rung its bell. Well, it is a harmless belief.

Let it stand at that.

The chill of that death-room had penetrated my bones.

It revived and fastened upon me the disease which had beenafflicting me, but which, up to that night, had beensteadily disappearing. That man murdered my wife and my child;and in three days hence he will have added me to his list.

No matter--God! how delicious the memory of it!--I caught himescaping from his grave, and thrust him back into it.

After that night, I was confined to my bed for a week;but as soon as I could get about, I went to the dead-housebooks and got the number of the house which Adler had died in.

A wretched lodging-house, it was. It was my idea that he wouldnaturally have gotten hold of Kruger's effects, being his cousin;and I wanted to get Kruger's watch, if I could. But while I was sick,Adler's things had been sold and scattered, all except a few old letters,and some odds and ends of no value. However, through those letters,I traced out a son of Kruger's, the only relative left.

He is a man of thirty now, a shoemaker by trade, and living atNo. 14 Konigstrasse, Mannheim--widower, with several small children.

Without explaining to him why, I have furnished two-thirds ofhis support, ever since.

Now, as to that watch--see how strangely things happen!

I traced it around and about Germany for more than a year,at considerable cost in money and vexation; and at last I got it.

Got it, and was unspeakably glad; opened it, and found nothingin it! Why, I might have known that that bit of paper was notgoing to stay there all this time. Of course I gave up that tenthousand dollars then; gave it up, and dropped it out of my mind:

and most sorrowfully, for I had wanted it for Kruger's son.

Last night, when I consented at last that I must die, I began tomake ready. I proceeded to burn all useless papers; and sure enough,from a batch of Adler's, not previously examined with thoroughness,out dropped that long-desired scrap! I recognized it in a moment.

Here it is--I will translate it:

'Brick livery stable, stone foundation, middle of town, corner of Orleansand Market. Corner toward Court-house. Third stone, fourth row.

Stick notice there, saying how many are to come.'

There--take it, and preserve it. Kruger explained that that stonewas removable; and that it was in the north wall of the foundation,fourth row from the top, and third stone from the west.

The money is secreted behind it. He said the closing sentence wasa blind, to mislead in case the paper should fall into wrong hands.

It probably performed that office for Adler.

Now I want to beg that when you make your intended journey down the river,you will hunt out that hidden money, and send it to Adam Kruger, care ofthe Mannheim address which I have mentioned. It will make a rich man of him,and I shall sleep the sounder in my grave for knowing that I have donewhat I could for the son of the man who tried to save my wife and child--albeit my hand ignorantly struck him down, whereas the impulse of my heartwould have been to shield and serve him.

Chapter 32 'SUCH was Ritter's narrative,' said I to my two friends.
　　There was a profound and impressive silence, which lasteda considerable time; then both men broke into a fusilladeof exciting and admiring ejaculations over the strange incidentsof the tale; and this, along with a rattling fire of questions,was kept up until all hands were about out of breath.

Then my friends began to cool down, and draw off,under shelter of occasional volleys, into silence andabysmal reverie. For ten minutes now, there was stillness.

Then Rogers said dreamily--'Ten thousand dollars.'

Adding, after a considerable pause--'Ten thousand. It is a heap of money.'

Presently the poet inquired--'Are you going to send it to him right away?'

'Yes,' I said. 'It is a queer question.'

No reply. After a little, Rogers asked, hesitatingly:

'ALL of it?--That is--I mean----'

'Certainly, all of it.'

I was going to say more, but stopped--was stopped by atrain of thought which started up in me. Thompson spoke,but my mind was absent, and I did not catch what he said.

But I heard Rogers answer--'Yes, it seems so to me. It ought to be quite sufficient;for I don't see that he has done anything.'

Presently the poet said--'When you come to look at it, it is more than sufficient. Just look at it--five thousand dollars! Why, he couldn't spend it in a lifetime!

And it would injure him, too; perhaps ruin him--you want to look at that.

In a little while he would throw his last away, shut up his shop, maybe taketo drinking, maltreat his motherless children, drift into other evil courses,go steadily from bad to worse----'

'Yes, that's it,' interrupted Rogers, fervently, 'I've seen ita hundred times--yes, more than a hundred. You put money intothe hands of a man like that, if you want to destroy him, that's all;just put money into his hands, it's all you've got to do;and if it don't pull him down, and take all the usefulness out of him,and all the self-respect and everything, then I don't know human nature--ain't that so, Thompson? And even if we were to give him a THIRDof it; why, in less than six months--'

'Less than six WEEKS, you'd better say!' said I, warming up and breaking in.

'Unless he had that three thousand dollars in safe hands where he couldn'ttouch it, he would no more last you six weeks than---- '

'Of COURSE he wouldn't,' said Thompson; 'I've edited books for thatkind of people; and the moment they get their hands on the royalty--maybe it's three thousand, maybe it's two thousand----'

'What business has that shoemaker with two thousand dollars,I should like to know?' broke in Rogers, earnestly. 'A man perhapsperfectly contented now, there in Mannheim, surrounded by his own class,eating his bread with the appetite which laborious industry alonecan give, enjoying his humble life, honest, upright, pure in heart;and BLEST!--yes, I say blest! blest above all the myriads that goin silk attire and walk the empty artificial round of social folly--but just you put that temptation before him once! just you lay fifteenhundred dollars before a man like that, and say----'

'Fifteen hundred devils!' cried I, 'FIVE hundred would rot his principles,paralyze his industry, drag him to the rumshop, thence to the gutter,thence to the almshouse, thence to----'

'WHY put upon ourselves this crime, gentlemen?' interrupted the poetearnestly and appealingly. 'He is happy where he is, and AS he is.

Every sentiment of honor, every sentiment of charity, every sentimentof high and sacred benevolence warns us, beseeches us, commands us to leavehim undisturbed. That is real friendship, that is true friendship.

We could follow other courses that would be more showy; but none that wouldbe so truly kind and wise, depend upon it.'

After some further talk, it became evident that each of us, down in his heart,felt some misgivings over this settlement of the matter. It was manifestthat we all felt that we ought to send the poor shoemaker SOMETHING.

There was long and thoughtful discussion of this point; and we finally decidedto send him a chromo.

Well, now that everything seemed to be arranged satisfactorilyto everybody concerned, a new trouble broke out: it transpired thatthese two men were expecting to share equally in the money with me.

That was not my idea. I said that if they got half of it between themthey might consider themselves lucky. Rogers said--'Who would have had ANY if it hadn't been for me? I flung out the first hint--but for that it would all have gone to the shoemaker.'

Thompson said that he was thinking of the thing himself at the very momentthat Rogers had originally spoken.

I retorted that the idea would have occurred to me plenty soon enough,and without anybody's help. I was slow about thinking, maybe, but I was sure.

This matter warmed up into a quarrel; then into a fight; and each mangot pretty badly battered. As soon as I had got myself mended up aftera fashion, I ascended to the hurricane deck in a pretty sour humor.

I found Captain McCord there, and said, as pleasantly as my humor would permit--'I have come to say good-bye, captain. I wish to go ashore at Napoleon.'

'Go ashore where?'

'Napoleon.'

The captain laughed; but seeing that I was not in a jovial mood,stopped that and said--'But are you serious?'

'Serious? I certainly am.'

The captain glanced up at the pilot-house and said--'He wants to get off at Napoleon!'

'Napoleon ?'

'That's what he says.'

'Great Caesar's ghost!'

Uncle Mumford approached along the deck. The captain said--'Uncle, here's a friend of yours wants to get off at Napoleon!'

'Well, by ----?'

I said--'Come, what is all this about? Can't a man go ashore at Napoleonif he wants to?'

'Why, hang it, don't you know? There ISN'T any Napoleon any more.

Hasn't been for years and years. The Arkansas River burst through it,tore it all to rags, and emptied it into the Mississippi!'

'Carried the WHOLE town away?-banks, churches, jails,newspaper-offices, court-house, theater, fire department,livery stable EVERYTHING ?'

'Everything. just a fifteen-minute job.' or such a matter.

Didn't leave hide nor hair, shred nor shingle of it, except thefag-end of a shanty and one brick chimney. This boat is paddlingalong right now, where the dead-center of that town used to be;yonder is the brick chimney-all that's left of Napoleon.

These dense woods on the right used to be a mile back of the town.

Take a look behind you--up-stream--now you begin to recognizethis country, don't you?'

'Yes, I do recognize it now. It is the most wonderful thing I ever heard of;by a long shot the most wonderful--and unexpected.'

Mr. Thompson and Mr. Rogers had arrived, meantime, with satchelsand umbrellas, and had silently listened to the captain's news.

Thompson put a half-dollar in my hand and said softly--'For my share of the chromo.'

Rogers followed suit.

Yes, it was an astonishing thing to see the Mississippi rollingbetween unpeopled shores and straight over the spot where Iused to see a good big self-complacent town twenty years ago.

Town that was county-seat of a great and important county; town witha big United States marine hospital; town of innumerable fights--an inquest every day; town where I had used to know the prettiest girl,and the most accomplished in the whole Mississippi Valley;town where we were handed the first printed news of the 'Pennsylvania's'

mournful disaster a quarter of a century ago; a town no more--swallowed up, vanished, gone to feed the fishes; nothing left but afragment of a shanty and a crumbling brick chimney!

The Disposal of a Bonanza
Chapter 33
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
Chapter 34
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
Chapter 35
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
Chapter 36
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
Chapter 37
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'
Chapter 38
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
Chapter 39
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
Chapter 40
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
Chapter 41
THE approaches to New Orleans were familiar; general aspects were unchanged.

When one goes flying through London along a railway propped in the air ontall arches, he may inspect miles of upper bedrooms through the open windows,but the lower half of the houses is under his level and out of sight.

Similarly, in high-river stage, in the New Orleans region, the water is upto the top of the enclosing levee-rim, the flat country behind it lies low--representing the bottom of a dish--and as the boat swims along, high onthe flood, one looks down upon the houses and into the upper windows.

There is nothing but that frail breastwork of earth between the peopleand destruction.

The old brick salt-warehouses clustered at the upper end of the citylooked as they had always looked; warehouses which had had a kindof Aladdin's lamp experience, however, since I had seen them;for when the war broke out the proprietor went to bed one nightleaving them packed with thousands of sacks of vulgar salt,worth a couple of dollars a sack, and got up in the morning and foundhis mountain of salt turned into a mountain of gold, so to speak,so suddenly and to so dizzy a height had the war news sent upthe price of the article.

The vast reach of plank wharves remained unchanged, and there wereas many ships as ever: but the long array of steamboats had vanished;not altogether, of course, but not much of it was left.

The city itself had not changed--to the eye. It had greatly increasedin spread and population, but the look of the town was not altered.

The dust, waste-paper-littered, was still deep in the streets;the deep, trough-like gutters alongside the curbstones were still halffull of reposeful water with a dusty surface; the sidewalks were still--in the sugar and bacon region--encumbered by casks and barrelsand hogsheads; the great blocks of austerely plain commercial houseswere as dusty-looking as ever.

Canal Street was finer, and more attractive and stirring than formerly,with its drifting crowds of people, its several processions of hurryingstreet-cars, and--toward evening--its broad second-story verandas crowdedwith gentlemen and ladies clothed according to the latest mode.

Not that there is any 'architecture' in Canal Street: to speakin broad, general terms, there is no architecture in New Orleans,except in the cemeteries. It seems a strange thing to say of a wealthy,far-seeing, and energetic city of a quarter of a million inhabitants,but it is true. There is a huge granite U.S. Custom-house--costly enough,genuine enough, but as a decoration it is inferior to a gasometer.

It looks like a state prison. But it was built before the war.

Architecture in America may be said to have been born since the war.

New Orleans, I believe, has had the good luck--and in a sense the bad luck--to have had no great fire in late years. It must be so. If the oppositehad been the case, I think one would be able to tell the 'burnt district'

by the radical improvement in its architecture over the old forms.

One can do this in Boston and Chicago. The 'burnt district' of Bostonwas commonplace before the fire; but now there is no commercial districtin any city in the world that can surpass it--or perhaps even rival it--in beauty, elegance, and tastefulness.

However, New Orleans has begun--just this moment, as one may say.

When completed, the new Cotton Exchange will be a stately andbeautiful building; massive, substantial, full of architectural graces;no shams or false pretenses or uglinesses about it anywhere.

To the city, it will be worth many times its cost, for it willbreed its species. What has been lacking hitherto, was a modelto build toward; something to educate eye and taste; a SUGGESTER,so to speak.

The city is well outfitted with progressive men--thinking, sagacious,long-headed men. The contrast between the spirit of the city andthe city's architecture is like the contrast between waking and sleep.

Apparently there is a 'boom' in everything but that one dead feature.

The water in the gutters used to be stagnant and slimy, and a potentdisease-breeder; but the gutters are flushed now, two or three times a day,by powerful machinery; in many of the gutters the water never stands still,but has a steady current. Other sanitary improvements have been made;and with such effect that New Orleans claims to be (during the longintervals between the occasional yellow-fever assaults) one of thehealthiest cities in the union. There's plenty of ice now for everybody,manufactured in the town. It is a driving place commercially, and hasa great river, ocean, and railway business. At the date of our visit,it was the best lighted city in the union, electrically speaking.

The New Orleans electric lights were more numerous than those of New York,and very much better. One had this modified noonday not only in Canaland some neighboring chief streets, but all along a stretch of fivemiles of river frontage. There are good clubs in the city now--several of them but recently organized--and inviting modern-style pleasureresorts at West End and Spanish Fort. The telephone is everywhere.

One of the most notable advances is in journalism. The newspapers,as I remember them, were not a striking feature. Now they are.

Money is spent upon them with a free hand. They get the news, let it costwhat it may. The editorial work is not hack-grinding, but literature.

As an example of New Orleans journalistic achievement, it may bementioned that the 'Times-Democrat' of August 26, 1882, contained areport of the year's business of the towns of the Mississippi Valley,from New Orleans all the way to St. Paul--two thousand miles.

That issue of the paper consisted of forty pages; seven columns to the page;two hundred and eighty columns in all; fifteen hundred words to the column;an aggregate of four hundred and twenty thousand words. That is to say,not much short of three times as many words as there are in this book.

One may with sorrow contrast this with the architecture of New Orleans.

I have been speaking of public architecture only. The domesticarticle in New Orleans is reproachless, notwithstanding itremains as it always was. All the dwellings are of wood--in the American part of the town, I mean--and all have acomfortable look. Those in the wealthy quarter are spacious;painted snow-white usually, and generally have wide verandas,or double-verandas, supported by ornamental columns.

These mansions stand in the center of large grounds,and rise, garlanded with roses, out of the midst of swellingmasses of shining green foliage and many-colored blossoms.

No houses could well be in better harmony with their surroundings,or more pleasing to the eye, or more home-like and comfortable-looking.

One even becomes reconciled to the cistern presently; this is a mighty cask,painted green, and sometimes a couple of stories high, which is proppedagainst the house-corner on stilts. There is a mansion-and-brewerysuggestion about the combination which seems very incongruous at first.

But the people cannot have wells, and so they take rain-water. Neithercan they conveniently have cellars, or graves,are buried in graves--by permission, I take it, not requirement;but none else, except the destitute, who are buried at public expense.

The graves are but three or four feet deep.]> the town being built upon'made' ground; so they do without both, and few of the living complain,and none of the others.

The Metropolis of the South
Chapter 42
THEY bury their dead in vaults, above the ground. These vaultshave a resemblance to houses--sometimes to temples; are builtof marble, generally; are architecturally graceful and shapely;they face the walks and driveways of the cemetery; and when onemoves through the midst of a thousand or so of them and sees theirwhite roofs and gables stretching into the distance on every hand,the phrase 'city of the dead' has all at once a meaning to him.

Many of the cemeteries are beautiful, and are kept in perfect order.

When one goes from the levee or the business streets near it,to a cemetery, he observes to himself that if those people down therewould live as neatly while they are alive as they do after they are dead,they would find many advantages in it; and besides, their quarter wouldbe the wonder and admiration of the business world. Fresh flowers,in vases of water, are to be seen at the portals of many of the vaults:

placed there by the pious hands of bereaved parents and children,husbands and wives, and renewed daily. A milder form of sorrow findsits inexpensive and lasting remembrancer in the coarse and uglybut indestructible 'immortelle'--which is a wreath or cross or somesuch emblem, made of rosettes of black linen, with sometimes a yellowrosette at the conjunction of the cross's bars--kind of sorrowfulbreast-pin, so to say. The immortelle requires no attention:

you just hang it up, and there you are; just leave it alone, it will takecare of your grief for you, and keep it in mind better than you can;stands weather first-rate, and lasts like boiler-iron.

On sunny days, pretty little chameleons--gracefullest of legged reptiles--creep along the marble fronts of the vaults, and catch flies. Their changesof color--as to variety--are not up to the creature's reputation.

They change color when a person comes along and hangs up an immortelle;but that is nothing: any right-feeling reptile would do that.

I will gradually drop this subject of graveyards. I have beentrying all I could to get down to the sentimental part of it,but I cannot accomplish it. I think there is no genuinelysentimental part to it. It is all grotesque, ghastly, horrible.

Graveyards may have been justifiable in the bygone ages,when nobody knew that for every dead body put into the ground,to glut the earth and the plant-roots, and the air withdisease-germs, five or fifty, or maybe a hundred persons must diebefore their proper time; but they are hardly justifiable now,when even the children know that a dead saint enters upona century-long career of assassination the moment the earthcloses over his corpse. It is a grim sort of a thought.

The relics of St. Anne, up in Canada, have now, after nineteenhundred years, gone to curing the sick by the dozen.

But it is merest matter-of-course that these same relics,within a generation after St. Anne's death and burial,MADE several thousand people sick. Therefore thesemiracle-performances are simply compensation, nothing more.

St. Anne is somewhat slow pay, for a Saint, it is true;but better a debt paid after nineteen hundred years,and outlawed by the statute of limitations, than not paid at all;and most of the knights of the halo do not pay at all.

Where you find one that pays--like St. Anne--you finda hundred and fifty that take the benefit of the statute.

And none of them pay any more than the principal of what they owe--they pay none of the interest either simple or compound.

A Saint can never QUITE return the principal, however;for his dead body KILLS people, whereas his relics HEAL only--they never restore the dead to life. That part of the account isalways left unsettled.

'Dr. F. Julius Le Moyne, after fifty years of medical practice, wrote:

"The inhumation of human bodies, dead from infectious diseases,results in constantly loading the atmosphere, and polluting the waters,with not only the germs that rise from simply putrefaction, but also withthe SPECIFIC germs of the diseases from which death resulted."'The gases (from buried corpses) will rise to the surfacethrough eight or ten feet of gravel, just as coal-gas will do,and there is practically no limit to their power of escape.

'During the epidemic in New Orleans in 1853, Dr. E. H. Bartonreported that in the Fourth District the mortality was four hundredand fifty-two per thousand--more than double that of any other.

In this district were three large cemeteries, in which duringthe previous year more than three thousand bodies had been buried.

In other districts the proximity of cemeteries seemed toaggravate the disease.

'In 1828 Professor Bianchi demonstrated how the fearful reappearanceof the plague at Modena was caused by excavations in ground where,THREE HUNDRED YEARS PREVIOUSLY, the victims of the pestilence hadbeen buried. Mr. Cooper, in explaining the causes of some epidemics,remarks that the opening of the plague burial-grounds at Eyam resultedin an immediate outbreak of disease.'--NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, NO.

3, VOL. 135.

In an address before the Chicago Medical Society, in advocacy of cremation,Dr. Charles W. Purdy made some striking comparisons to show what a burdenis laid upon society by the burial of the dead:--'One and one-fourth times more money is expended annually in funerals inthe United States than the Government expends for public-school purposes.

Funerals cost this country in 1880 enough money to pay the liabilitiesof all the commercial failures in the United States during the same year,and give each bankrupt a capital of $8,630 with which to resume business.

Funerals cost annually more money than the value of the combinedgold and silver yield of the United States in the year 1880!

These figures do not include the sums invested in burial-groundsand expended in tombs and monuments, nor the loss from depreciationof property in the vicinity of cemeteries.'

For the rich, cremation would answer as well as burial;for the ceremonies connected with it could be made as costlyand ostentatious as a Hindu suttee; while for the poor,cremation would be better than burial, because so cheap[Four or five dollars is the minimum cost.]>--so cheap untilthe poor got to imitating the rich, which they would doby-and-bye. The adoption of cremation would relieve us of a muckof threadbare burial-witticisms; but, on the other hand,it would resurrect a lot of mildewed old cremation-jokesthat have had a rest for two thousand years.

I have a colored acquaintance who earns his living by odd jobs and heavymanual labor. He never earns above four hundred dollars in a year,and as he has a wife and several young children, the closest scrimpingis necessary to get him through to the end of the twelve months debtless.

To such a man a funeral is a colossal financial disaster. While I waswriting one of the preceding chapters, this man lost a little child.

He walked the town over with a friend, trying to find a coffin thatwas within his means. He bought the very cheapest one he could find,plain wood, stained. It cost him twenty-six dollars. It would have costless than four, probably, if it had been built to put something useful into.

He and his family will feel that outlay a good many months.

Hygiene and Sentiment
Chapter 43
ABOUT the same time, I encountered a man in the street,whom I had not seen for six or seven years; and somethinglike this talk followed. I said--'But you used to look sad and oldish; you don't now.

Where did you get all this youth and bubbling cheerfulness?

Give me the address.'

He chuckled blithely, took off his shining tile, pointed to a notchedpink circlet of paper pasted into its crown, with something letteredon it, and went on chuckling while I read, 'J. B ----, UNDERTAKER.'

Then he clapped his hat on, gave it an irreverent tilt to leeward,and cried out--'That's what's the matter! It used to be rough times with me when youknew me--insurance-agency business, you know; mighty irregular.

Big fire, all right--brisk trade for ten days while people scared;after that, dull policy-business till next fire. Town like this don'thave fires often enough--a fellow strikes so many dull weeks in a rowthat he gets discouraged. But you bet you, this is the business!

People don't wait for examples to die. No, sir, they drop offright along--there ain't any dull spots in the undertaker line.

I just started in with two or three little old coffins anda hired hearse, and now look at the thing! I've worked upa business here that would satisfy any man, don't care who he is.

Five years ago, lodged in an attic; live in a swell house now,with a mansard roof, and all the modern inconveniences.'

'Does a coffin pay so well. Is there much profit on a coffin?'

'Go-way! How you talk!' Then, with a confidential wink, a droppingof the voice, and an impressive laying of his hand on my arm;'Look here; there's one thing in this world which isn't ever cheap.

That's a coffin. There's one thing in this world which a person don'tever try to jew you down on. That's a coffin. There's one thingin this world which a person don't say--"I'll look around a little,and if I find I can't do better I'll come back and take it."That's a coffin. There's one thing in this world which a personwon't take in pine if he can go walnut; and won't take in walnutif he can go mahogany; and won't take in mahogany if he can go an ironcasket with silver door-plate and bronze handles. That's a coffin.

And there's one thing in this world which you don't have to worryaround after a person to get him to pay for. And that's a coffin.

Undertaking?--why it's the dead-surest business in Christendom,and the nobbiest.

'Why, just look at it. A rich man won't have anything but your very best;and you can just pile it on, too--pile it on and sock it to him--he won'tever holler. And you take in a poor man, and if you work him right he'llbust himself on a single lay-out. Or especially a woman. F'r instance:

Mrs. O'Flaherty comes in--widow--wiping her eyes and kind of moaning.

Unhandkerchiefs one eye, bats it around tearfully over the stock; says--' "And fhat might ye ask for that wan?"' "Thirty-nine dollars, madam," says I.

' "It 's a foine big price, sure, but Pat shall be buried likea gintleman, as he was, if I have to work me fingers off for it.

I'll have that wan, sor."' "Yes, madam," says I, "and it is a very good one, too; not costly,to be sure, but in this life we must cut our garment to our clothes,as the saying is." And as she starts out, I heave in, kind of casually,"This one with the white satin lining is a beauty, but I am afraid--well, sixty-five dollars is a rather--rather--but no matter, I feltobliged to say to Mrs. O'Shaughnessy--"' "D'ye mane to soy that Bridget O'Shaughnessy bought the mateto that joo-ul box to ship that dhrunken divil to Purgatory in?"' "Yes, madam."' "Then Pat shall go to heaven in the twin to it, if it takesthe last rap the O'Flaherties can raise; and moind you,stick on some extras, too, and I'll give ye another dollar."'And as I lay-in with the livery stables, of course I don't forget to mentionthat Mrs. O'Shaughnessy hired fifty-four dollars' worth of hacks and flungas much style into Dennis's funeral as if he had been a duke or an assassin.

And of course she sails in and goes the O'Shaughnessy about four hacksand an omnibus better. That used to be, but that's all played now;that is, in this particular town. The Irish got to piling up hacks so,on their funerals, that a funeral left them ragged and hungry fortwo years afterward; so the priest pitched in and broke it all up.

He don't allow them to have but two hacks now, and sometimes only one.'

'Well,' said I, 'if you are so light-hearted and jolly in ordinary times,what must you be in an epidemic?'

He shook his head.

'No, you're off, there. We don't like to see an epidemic.

An epidemic don't pay. Well, of course I don't mean that, exactly;but it don't pay in proportion to the regular thing.

Don't it occur to you, why?'

No.

'Think.'

'I can't imagine. What is it?'

'It's just two things.'

'Well, what are they?'

'One's Embamming.'

'And what's the other?'

'Ice.'

'How is that?'

'Well, in ordinary times, a person dies, and we lay him up in ice;one day two days, maybe three, to wait for friends to come.

Takes a lot of it--melts fast. We charge jewelry rates for that ice,and war-prices for attendance. Well, don't you know, when there'san epidemic, they rush 'em to the cemetery the minute the breath's out.

No market for ice in an epidemic. Same with Embamming.

You take a family that's able to embam, and you've got a soft thing.

You can mention sixteen different ways to do it--though thereAIN'T only one or two ways, when you come down to the bottom factsof it--and they'll take the highest-priced way, every time.

It's human nature--human nature in grief. It don't reason, you see.

Time being, it don't care a dam. All it wants is physical immortalityfor deceased, and they're willing to pay for it. All you've gotto do is to just be ca'm and stack it up--they'll stand the racket.

Why, man, you can take a defunct that you couldn't GIVE away; and getyour embamming traps around you and go to work; and in a couple of hourshe is worth a cool six hundred--that's what HE'S worth. There ain'tanything equal to it but trading rats for di'monds in time of famine.

Well, don't you see, when there's an epidemic, people don't wait to embam.

No, indeed they don't; and it hurts the business like hell-th, as we say--hurts it like hell-th, HEALTH, see?--Our little joke in the trade.

Well, I must be going. Give me a call whenever you need any--I mean,when you're going by, sometime.'

In his joyful high spirits, he did the exaggerating himself,if any has been done. I have not enlarged on him.

With the above brief references to inhumation, let us leave the subject.

As for me, I hope to be cremated. I made that remark to my pastor once,who said, with what he seemed to think was an impressive manner--'I wouldn't worry about that, if I had your chances.'

Much he knew about it--the family all so opposed to it.

The Art of Inhumation
Chapter 44
THE old French part of New Orleans--anciently the Spanish part--bears no resemblance to the American end of the city:

the American end which lies beyond the interveningbrick business-center. The houses are massed in blocks;are austerely plain and dignified; uniform of pattern,with here and there a departure from it with pleasant effect;all are plastered on the outside, and nearly all have long,iron-railed verandas running along the several stories.

Their chief beauty is the deep, warm, varicolored stainwith which time and the weather have enriched the plaster.

It harmonizes with all the surroundings, and has as naturala look of belonging there as has the flush upon sunset clouds.

This charming decoration cannot be successfully imitated;neither is it to be found elsewhere in America.

The iron railings are a specialty, also. The pattern is oftenexceedingly light and dainty, and airy and graceful--with a largecipher or monogram in the center, a delicate cobweb of baffling,intricate forms, wrought in steel. The ancient railings are hand-made,and are now comparatively rare and proportionately valuable.

They are become BRIC-A-BRAC.

The party had the privilege of idling through this ancientquarter of New Orleans with the South's finest literary genius,the author of 'the Grandissimes.' In him the South has founda masterly delineator of its interior life and its history.

In truth, I find by experience, that the untrained eye andvacant mind can inspect it, and learn of it, and judge of it,more clearly and profitably in his books than by personalcontact with it.

With Mr. Cable along to see for you, and describe and explain and illuminate,a jog through that old quarter is a vivid pleasure. And you have a vividsense as of unseen or dimly seen things--vivid, and yet fitful and darkling;you glimpse salient features, but lose the fine shades or catch themimperfectly through the vision of the imagination: a case, as it were,of ignorant near-sighted stranger traversing the rim of wide vague horizonsof Alps with an inspired and enlightened long-sighted native.

We visited the old St. Louis Hotel, now occupied by municipal offices.

There is nothing strikingly remarkable about it; but one can say of itas of the Academy of Music in New York, that if a broom or a shovel has everbeen used in it there is no circumstantial evidence to back up the fact.

It is curious that cabbages and hay and things do not grow in the Academyof Music; but no doubt it is on account of the interruption of the light bythe benches, and the impossibility of hoeing the crop except in the aisles.

The fact that the ushers grow their buttonhole-bouquets on the premisesshows what might be done if they had the right kind of an agricultural headto the establishment.

We visited also the venerable Cathedral, and the pretty square in front of it;the one dim with religious light, the other brilliant with the worldly sort,and lovely with orange-trees and blossomy shrubs; then we drove in the hot sunthrough the wilderness of houses and out on to the wide dead level beyond,where the villas are, and the water wheels to drain the town, and the commonspopulous with cows and children; passing by an old cemetery where we weretold lie the ashes of an early pirate; but we took him on trust, and didnot visit him. He was a pirate with a tremendous and sanguinary history;and as long as he preserved unspotted, in retirement, the dignity of hisname and the grandeur of his ancient calling, homage and reverence were hisfrom high and low; but when at last he descended into politics and becamea paltry alderman, the public 'shook' him, and turned aside and wept.

When he died, they set up a monument over him; and little by little he hascome into respect again; but it is respect for the pirate, not the alderman.

To-day the loyal and generous remember only what he was, and charitably forgetwhat he became.

Thence, we drove a few miles across a swamp, along a raised shell road,with a canal on one hand and a dense wood on the other; and here and there,in the distance, a ragged and angular-limbed and moss-bearded cypress,top standing out, clear cut against the sky, and as quaint of form as theapple-trees in Japanese pictures--such was our course and the surroundingsof it. There was an occasional alligator swimming comfortably alongin the canal, and an occasional picturesque colored person on the bank,flinging his statue-rigid reflection upon the still water and watchingfor a bite.

And by-and-bye we reached the West End, a collection of hotels ofthe usual light summer-resort pattern, with broad verandas all around,and the waves of the wide and blue Lake Pontchartrain lapping the thresholds.

We had dinner on a ground-veranda over the water--the chief dish the renownedfish called the pompano, delicious as the less criminal forms of sin.

Thousands of people come by rail and carriage to West End andto Spanish Fort every evening, and dine, listen to the bands,take strolls in the open air under the electric lights,go sailing on the lake, and entertain themselves in variousand sundry other ways.

We had opportunities on other days and in other places to test the pompano.

Notably, at an editorial dinner at one of the clubs in the city.

He was in his last possible perfection there, and justified his fame.

In his suite was a tall pyramid of scarlet cray-fish--large ones; as largeas one's thumb--delicate, palatable, appetizing. Also deviled whitebait;also shrimps of choice quality; and a platter of small soft-shell crabsof a most superior breed. The other dishes were what one might getat Delmonico's, or Buckingham Palace; those I have spoken of can be hadin similar perfection in New Orleans only, I suppose.

In the West and South they have a new institution--the Broom Brigade.

It is composed of young ladies who dress in a uniform costume,and go through the infantry drill, with broom in place of musket.

It is a very pretty sight, on private view. When they performon the stage of a theater, in the blaze of colored fires,it must be a fine and fascinating spectacle. I saw them go throughtheir complex manual with grace, spirit, and admirable precision.

I saw them do everything which a human being can possibly do with a broom,except sweep. I did not see them sweep. But I know they could learn.

What they have already learned proves that. And if they evershould learn, and should go on the war-path down Tchoupitoulasor some of those other streets around there, those thoroughfareswould bear a greatly improved aspect in a very few minutes.

But the girls themselves wouldn't; so nothing would be really gained,after all.

The drill was in the Washington Artillery building.

In this building we saw many interesting relics of the war.

Also a fine oil-painting representing Stonewall Jackson'slast interview with General Lee. Both men are on horseback.

Jackson has just ridden up, and is accosting Lee.

The picture is very valuable, on account of the portraits,which are authentic. But, like many another historical picture,it means nothing without its label. And one label will fit itas well as another--First Interview between Lee and Jackson.

Last Interview between Lee and Jackson.

Jackson Introducing Himself to Lee.

Jackson Accepting Lee's Invitation to Dinner.

Jackson Declining Lee's Invitation to Dinner--with Thanks.

Jackson Apologizing for a Heavy Defeat.

Jackson Reporting a Great Victory.

Jackson Asking Lee for a Match.

It tells ONE story, and a sufficient one; for it says quiteplainly and satisfactorily, 'Here are Lee and Jackson together.'

The artist would have made it tell that this is Lee and Jackson's lastinterview if he could have done it. But he couldn't, for there wasn'tany way to do it. A good legible label is usually worth, for information,a ton of significant attitude and expression in a historical picture.

In Rome, people with fine sympathetic natures stand up and weep in frontof the celebrated 'Beatrice Cenci the Day before her Execution.'

It shows what a label can do. If they did not know the picture,they would inspect it unmoved, and say, 'Young girl with hay fever;young girl with her head in a bag.'

I found the half-forgotten Southern intonations andelisions as pleasing to my ear as they had formerly been.

A Southerner talks music. At least it is music to me,but then I was born in the South. The educated Southernerhas no use for an r, except at the beginning of a word.

He says 'honah,' and 'dinnah,' and 'Gove'nuh,' and 'befo' the waw,'

and so on. The words may lack charm to the eye, in print,but they have it to the ear. When did the r disappearfrom Southern speech, and how did it come to disappear?

The custom of dropping it was not borrowed from the North,nor inherited from England. Many Southerners--most Southerners--put a y into occasional words that begin with the k sound.

For instance, they say Mr. K'yahtah (Carter) and speakof playing k'yahds or of riding in the k'yahs. And theyhave the pleasant custom--long ago fallen into decay inthe North--of frequently employing the respectful 'Sir.'

Instead of the curt Yes, and the abrupt No, they say 'Yes, Suh','No, Suh.'

But there are some infelicities. Such as 'like' for 'as,'

and the addition of an 'at' where it isn't needed.

I heard an educated gentleman say, 'Like the flag-officer did.'

His cook or his butler would have said, 'Like the flag-officer done.'

You hear gentlemen say, 'Where have you been at?' And here isthe aggravated form--heard a ragged street Arab say it to a comrade:

'I was a-ask'n' Tom whah you was a-sett'n' at.' The very electcarelessly say 'will' when they mean 'shall'; and many of them say,'I didn't go to do it,' meaning 'I didn't mean to do it.'

The Northern word 'guess'--imported from England, where itused to be common, and now regarded by satirical Englishmenas a Yankee original--is but little used among Southerners.

They say 'reckon.' They haven't any 'doesn't' in their language;they say 'don't' instead. The unpolished often use 'went' for 'gone.'

It is nearly as bad as the Northern 'hadn't ought.' This reminds methat a remark of a very peculiar nature was made here in my neighborhood(in the North) a few days ago: 'He hadn't ought to have went.'

How is that? Isn't that a good deal of a triumph?

One knows the orders combined in this half-breed's architecturewithout inquiring: one parent Northern, the other Southern.

To-day I heard a schoolmistress ask, 'Where is John gone?'

This form is so common--so nearly universal, in fact--that if shehad used 'whither' instead of 'where,' I think it would have soundedlike an affectation.

We picked up one excellent word--a word worth traveling to NewOrleans to get; a nice limber, expressive, handy word--'lagniappe.'

They pronounce it lanny-yap. It is Spanish--so they said.

We discovered it at the head of a column of odds and ends inthe Picayune, the first day; heard twenty people use it the second;inquired what it meant the third; adopted it and got facilityin swinging it the fourth. It has a restricted meaning,but I think the people spread it out a little when they choose.

It is the equivalent of the thirteenth roll in a 'baker's dozen.'

It is something thrown in, gratis, for good measure.

The custom originated in the Spanish quarter of the city.

When a child or a servant buys something in a shop--or even the mayor or the governor, for aught I know--he finishesthe operation by saying--'Give me something for lagniappe.'

The shopman always responds; gives the child a bit of licorice-root,gives the servant a cheap cigar or a spool of thread, gives the governor--I don't know what he gives the governor; support, likely.

When you are invited to drink, and this does occur now and thenin New Orleans--and you say, 'What, again?--no, I've had enough;'

the other party says, 'But just this one time more--this is for lagniappe.'

When the beau perceives that he is stacking his compliments a trifle too high,and sees by the young lady's countenance that the edifice would have beenbetter with the top compliment left off, he puts his 'I beg pardon--no harm intended,' into the briefer form of 'Oh, that's for lagniappe.'

If the waiter in the restaurant stumbles and spills a gill of coffee downthe back of your neck, he says 'For lagniappe, sah,' and gets you another cupwithout extra charge.

City Sights
Chapter 45
IN the North one hears the war mentioned, in social conversation,once a month; sometimes as often as once a week; but as a distinctsubject for talk, it has long ago been relieved of duty. There aresufficient reasons for this. Given a dinner company of six gentlemento-day, it can easily happen that four of them--and possibly five--were not in the field at all. So the chances are four to two,or five to one, that the war will at no time during the eveningbecome the topic of conversation; and the chances are still greaterthat if it become the topic it will remain so but a little while.

If you add six ladies to the company, you have added six peoplewho saw so little of the dread realities of the war that they ranout of talk concerning them years ago, and now would soon weary ofthe war topic if you brought it up.

The case is very different in the South. There, every man youmeet was in the war; and every lady you meet saw the war.

The war is the great chief topic of conversation. The interest in itis vivid and constant; the interest in other topics is fleeting.

Mention of the war will wake up a dull company and settheir tongues going, when nearly any other topic would fail.

In the South, the war is what A.D. is elsewhere: they date from it.

All day long you hear things 'placed' as having happened since the waw;or du'in' the waw; or befo' the waw; or right aftah the waw;or 'bout two yeahs or five yeahs or ten yeahs befo' the wawor aftah the waw. It shows how intimately every individualwas visited, in his own person, by that tremendous episode.

It gives the inexperienced stranger a better idea of what a vastand comprehensive calamity invasion is than he can ever get by readingbooks at the fireside.

At a club one evening, a gentleman turned to me and said,in an aside--'You notice, of course, that we are nearly always talking about the war.

It isn't because we haven't anything else to talk about, but because nothingelse has so strong an interest for us. And there is another reason:

In the war, each of us, in his own person, seems to have sampledall the different varieties of human experience; as a consequence,you can't mention an outside matter of any sort but it will certainlyremind some listener of something that happened during the war--and out he comes with it. Of course that brings the talk back to the war.

You may try all you want to, to keep other subjects before the house,and we may all join in and help, but there can be but one result:

the most random topic would load every man up with war reminiscences,and shut him up, too; and talk would be likely to stop presently,because you can't talk pale inconsequentialities when you'vegot a crimson fact or fancy in your head that you are burningto fetch out.'

The poet was sitting some little distance away; and presentlyhe began to speak--about the moon.

The gentleman who had been talking to me remarked in an 'aside:'

'There, the moon is far enough from the seat of war, but youwill see that it will suggest something to somebody about the war;in ten minutes from now the moon, as a topic, will be shelved.'

The poet was saying he had noticed something which was a surpriseto him; had had the impression that down here, toward the equator,the moonlight was much stronger and brighter than up North;had had the impression that when he visited New Orleans,many years ago, the moon--Interruption from the other end of the room--'Let me explain that. Reminds me of an anecdote.

Everything is changed since the war, for better or for worse;but you'll find people down here born grumblers, who see nochange except the change for the worse. There was an old negrowoman of this sort. A young New-Yorker said in her presence,"What a wonderful moon you have down here!" She sighed and said,"Ah, bless yo' heart, honey, you ought to seen dat moon befo'

de waw!" '

The new topic was dead already. But the poet resurrected it,and gave it a new start.

A brief dispute followed, as to whether the difference betweenNorthern and Southern moonlight really existed or was only imagined.

Moonlight talk drifted easily into talk about artificialmethods of dispelling darkness. Then somebody rememberedthat when Farragut advanced upon Port Hudson on a dark night--and did not wish to assist the aim of the Confederate gunners--he carried no battle-lanterns, but painted the decks of his ships white,and thus created a dim but valuable light, which enabled hisown men to grope their way around with considerable facility.

At this point the war got the floor again--the ten minutes notquite up yet.

I was not sorry, for war talk by men who have been in a waris always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who hasnot been in the moon is likely to be dull.

We went to a cockpit in New Orleans on a Saturday afternoon.

I had never seen a cock-fight before. There were men and boys thereof all ages and all colors, and of many languages and nationalities.

But I noticed one quite conspicuous and surprising absence:

the traditional brutal faces. There were no brutal faces.

With no cock-fighting going on, you could have played the gatheringon a stranger for a prayer-meeting; and after it began,for a revival--provided you blindfolded your stranger--for the shouting was something prodigious.

A negro and a white man were in the ring; everybody else outside.

The cocks were brought in in sacks; and when time was called,they were taken out by the two bottle-holders, stroked,caressed, poked toward each other, and finally liberated.

The big black cock plunged instantly at the little gray one and struckhim on the head with his spur. The gray responded with spirit.

Then the Babel of many-tongued shoutings broke out, and ceasednot thenceforth. When the cocks had been fighting some little time,I was expecting them momently to drop dead, for both were blind,red with blood, and so exhausted that they frequently fell down.

Yet they would not give up, neither would they die.

The negro and the white man would pick them up every few seconds,wipe them off, blow cold water on them in a fine spray,and take their heads in their mouths and hold them therea moment--to warm back the perishing life perhaps;I do not know. Then, being set down again, the dyingcreatures would totter gropingly about, with dragging wings,find each other, strike a guesswork blow or two, and fallexhausted once more.

I did not see the end of the battle. I forced myself to endureit as long as I could, but it was too pitiful a sight;so I made frank confession to that effect, and we retired.

We heard afterward that the black cock died in the ring,and fighting to the last.

Evidently there is abundant fascination about this 'sport' for suchas have had a degree of familiarity with it. I never saw peopleenjoy anything more than this gathering enjoyed this fight.

The case was the same with old gray-heads and with boys of ten.

They lost themselves in frenzies of delight. The 'cocking-main'

is an inhuman sort of entertainment, there is no questionabout that; still, it seems a much more respectable and farless cruel sport than fox-hunting--for the cocks like it;they experience, as well as confer enjoyment; which is notthe fox's case.

We assisted--in the French sense--at a mule race, one day.

I believe I enjoyed this contest more than any other mule there.

I enjoyed it more than I remember having enjoyed any other animalrace I ever saw. The grand-stand was well filled with the beautyand the chivalry of New Orleans. That phrase is not original with me.

It is the Southern reporter's. He has used it for two generations.

He uses it twenty times a day, or twenty thousand times a day;or a million times a day--according to the exigencies.

He is obliged to use it a million times a day, if he haveoccasion to speak of respectable men and women that often;for he has no other phrase for such service except that single one.

He never tires of it; it always has a fine sound to him.

There is a kind of swell medieval bulliness and tinsel about itthat pleases his gaudy barbaric soul. If he had been in Palestinein the early times, we should have had no references to 'much people'

out of him. No, he would have said 'the beauty and the chivalryof Galilee' assembled to hear the Sermon on the Mount.

It is likely that the men and women of the South are sick enoughof that phrase by this time, and would like a change, but there is noimmediate prospect of their getting it.

The New Orleans editor has a strong, compact, direct, unflowery style;wastes no words, and does not gush. Not so with his average correspondent.

In the Appendix I have quoted a good letter, penned by a trained hand;but the average correspondent hurls a style which differs from that.

For instance--The 'Times-Democrat' sent a relief-steamer up one of the bayous, last April.

This steamer landed at a village, up there somewhere, and the Captaininvited some of the ladies of the village to make a short trip with him.

They accepted and came aboard, and the steamboat shoved out up the creek.

That was all there was 'to it.' And that is all that the editorof the 'Times-Democrat' would have got out of it. There was nothingin the thing but statistics, and he would have got nothing else out of it.

He would probably have even tabulated them, partly to secureperfect clearness of statement, and partly to save space.

But his special correspondent knows other methods of handling statistics.

He just throws off all restraint and wallows in them--'On Saturday, early in the morning, the beauty of the place graced our cabin,and proud of her fair freight the gallant little boat glided up the bayou.'

Twenty-two words to say the ladies came aboard and the boatshoved out up the creek, is a clean waste of ten good words,and is also destructive of compactness of statement.

The trouble with the Southern reporter is--Women. They unsettle him;they throw him off his balance. He is plain, and sensible,and satisfactory, until a woman heaves in sight. Then he goesall to pieces; his mind totters, he becomes flowery and idiotic.

From reading the above extract, you would imagine that this studentof Sir Walter Scott is an apprentice, and knows next to nothingabout handling a pen. On the contrary, he furnishes plenty of proofs,in his long letter, that he knows well enough how to handle it whenthe women are not around to give him the artificial-flower complaint.

For instance--'At 4 o'clock ominous clouds began to gather in the south-east, and presentlyfrom the Gulf there came a blow which increased in severity every moment.

It was not safe to leave the landing then, and there was a delay.

The oaks shook off long tresses of their mossy beards to the tuggingof the wind, and the bayou in its ambition put on miniature wavesin mocking of much larger bodies of water. A lull permitted a start,and homewards we steamed, an inky sky overhead and a heavy wind blowing.

As darkness crept on, there were few on board who did not wishthemselves nearer home.'

There is nothing the matter with that. It is good description,compactly put. Yet there was great temptation, there, to dropinto lurid writing.

But let us return to the mule. Since I left him, I have rummagedaround and found a full report of the race. In it I find confirmationof the theory which I broached just now--namely, that the troublewith the Southern reporter is Women: Women, supplemented by WalterScott and his knights and beauty and chivalry, and so on.

This is an excellent report, as long as the women stay out of it.

But when they intrude, we have this frantic result--'It will be probably a long time before the ladies'

stand presents such a sea of foam-like loveliness as itdid yesterday. The New Orleans women are always charming,but never so much so as at this time of the year, when.

in their dainty spring costumes they bring with them a breathof balmy freshness and an odor of sanctity unspeakable.

The stand was so crowded with them that, walking at their feetand seeing no possibility of approach, many a man appreciatedas he never did before the Peri's feeling at the Gates of Paradise,and wondered what was the priceless boon that would admit himto their sacred presence. Sparkling on their white-robedbreasts or shoulders were the colors of their favorite knights,and were it not for the fact that the doughty heroes appearedon unromantic mules, it would have been easy to imagine one ofKing Arthur's gala-days.'

There were thirteen mules in the first heat; all sorts of mules,they were; all sorts of complexions, gaits, dispositions, aspects.

Some were handsome creatures, some were not; some were sleek,some hadn't had their fur brushed lately; some were innocentlygay and frisky; some were full of malice and all unrighteousness;guessing from looks, some of them thought the matter on hand was war,some thought it was a lark, the rest took it for a religious occasion.

And each mule acted according to his convictions. The result was anabsence of harmony well compensated by a conspicuous presence of variety--variety of a picturesque and entertaining sort.

All the riders were young gentlemen in fashionable society.

If the reader has been wondering why it is that the ladies of New Orleansattend so humble an orgy as a mule-race, the thing is explained now.

It is a fashion-freak; all connected with it are people of fashion.

It is great fun, and cordially liked. The mule-race is one of the markedoccasions of the year. It has brought some pretty fast mules to the front.

One of these had to be ruled out, because he was so fast that he turnedthe thing into a one-mule contest, and robbed it of one of itsbest features--variety. But every now and then somebody disguises himwith a new name and a new complexion, and rings him in again.

The riders dress in full jockey costumes of bright-colored silks,satins, and velvets.

The thirteen mules got away in a body, after a coupleof false starts, and scampered off with prodigious spirit.

As each mule and each rider had a distinct opinion of his ownas to how the race ought to be run, and which side of the trackwas best in certain circumstances, and how often the track oughtto be crossed, and when a collision ought to be accomplished,and when it ought to be avoided, these twenty-six conflictingopinions created a most fantastic and picturesque confusion,and the resulting spectacle was killingly comical.

Mile heat; time 2:22. Eight of the thirteen mules distanced.

I had a bet on a mule which would have won if the processionhad been reversed. The second heat was good fun; and so wasthe 'consolation race for beaten mules,' which followed later;but the first heat was the best in that respect.

I think that much the most enjoyable of all races isa steamboat race; but, next to that, I prefer the gayand joyous mule-rush. Two red-hot steamboats raging along,neck-and-neck, straining every nerve--that is to say,every rivet in the boilers--quaking and shaking and groaningfrom stem to stern, spouting white steam from the pipes,pouring black smoke from the chimneys, raining down sparks,parting the river into long breaks of hissing foam--this issport that makes a body's very liver curl with enjoyment.

A horse-race is pretty tame and colorless in comparison.

Still, a horse-race might be well enough, in its way,perhaps, if it were not for the tiresome false starts.

But then, nobody is ever killed. At least, nobody was ever killedwhen I was at a horse-race. They have been crippled, it is true;but this is little to the purpose.

Southern Sports
Chapter 46
THE largest annual event in New Orleans is a something which wearrived too late to sample--the Mardi-Gras festivities.

I saw the procession of the Mystic Crew of Comus there,twenty-four years ago--with knights and nobles and so on,clothed in silken and golden Paris-made gorgeousnesses,planned and bought for that single night's use; and in theirtrain all manner of giants, dwarfs, monstrosities, and otherdiverting grotesquerie--a startling and wonderful sort of show,as it filed solemnly and silently down the street in the lightof its smoking and flickering torches; but it is said thatin these latter days the spectacle is mightily augmented,as to cost, splendor, and variety. There is a chief personage--'Rex;'

and if I remember rightly, neither this king nor any of hisgreat following of subordinates is known to any outsider.

All these people are gentlemen of position and consequence;and it is a proud thing to belong to the organization; so the mysteryin which they hide their personality is merely for romance's sake,and not on account of the police.

Mardi-Gras is of course a relic of the French and Spanish occupation; but Ijudge that the religious feature has been pretty well knocked out of it now.

Sir Walter has got the advantage of the gentlemen of the cowl and rosary,and he will stay. His medieval business, supplemented by the monsters andthe oddities, and the pleasant creatures from fairy-land, is finer to lookat than the poor fantastic inventions and performances of the reveling rabbleof the priest's day, and serves quite as well, perhaps, to emphasize the dayand admonish men that the grace-line between the worldly season and the holyone is reached.

This Mardi-Gras pageant was the exclusive possession of NewOrleans until recently. But now it has spread to Memphis andSt. Louis and Baltimore. It has probably reached its limit.

It is a thing which could hardly exist in the practical North;would certainly last but a very brief time; as brief a timeas it would last in London. For the soul of it is the romantic,not the funny and the grotesque. Take away the romanticmysteries, the kings and knights and big-sounding titles,and Mardi-Gras would die, down there in the South.

The very feature that keeps it alive in the South--girly-girly romance--would kill it in the North or in London.

Puck and Punch, and the press universal, would fall upon itand make merciless fun of it, and its first exhibition would bealso its last.

Against the crimes of the French Revolution and of Bonapartemay be set two compensating benefactions: the Revolutionbroke the chains of the ANCIEN REGIME and of the Church,and made of a nation of abject slaves a nation of freemen;and Bonaparte instituted the setting of merit above birth,and also so completely stripped the divinity from royalty,that whereas crowned heads in Europe were gods before,they are only men, since, and can never be gods again,but only figureheads, and answerable for their acts like common clay.

Such benefactions as these compensate the temporary harm whichBonaparte and the Revolution did, and leave the world in debtto them for these great and permanent services to liberty,humanity, and progress.

Then comes Sir Walter Scott with his enchantments, and by hissingle might checks this wave of progress, and even turns it back;sets the world in love with dreams and phantoms; with decayed and swinishforms of religion; with decayed and degraded systems of government;with the sillinesses and emptinesses, sham grandeurs, sham gauds,and sham chivalries of a brainless and worthless long-vanished society.

He did measureless harm; more real and lasting harm, perhaps, than anyother individual that ever wrote. Most of the world has nowoutlived good part of these harms, though by no means all of them;but in our South they flourish pretty forcefully still. Not soforcefully as half a generation ago, perhaps, but still forcefully.

There, the genuine and wholesome civilization of the nineteenthcentury is curiously confused and commingled with the WalterScott Middle-Age sham civilization; and so you have practical,common-sense, progressive ideas, and progressive works; mixed upwith the duel, the inflated speech, and the jejune romanticism of anabsurd past that is dead, and out of charity ought to be buried.

But for the Sir Walter disease, the character of the Southerner--or Southron, according to Sir Walter's starchier way of phrasing it--would be wholly modern, in place of modern and medieval mixed,and the South would be fully a generation further advanced than it is.

It was Sir Walter that made every gentleman in the South a Majoror a Colonel, or a General or a Judge, before the war; and itwas he, also, that made these gentlemen value these bogus decorations.

For it was he that created rank and caste down there, and alsoreverence for rank and caste, and pride and pleasure in them.

Enough is laid on slavery, without fathering upon it these creations andcontributions of Sir Walter.

Sir Walter had so large a hand in making Southern character, as it existedbefore the war, that he is in great measure responsible for the war.

It seems a little harsh toward a dead man to say that we never should have hadany war but for Sir Walter; and yet something of a plausible argument might,perhaps, be made in support of that wild proposition. The Southerner ofthe American Revolution owned slaves; so did the Southerner of the Civil War:

but the former resembles the latter as an Englishman resembles a Frenchman.

The change of character can be traced rather more easily to Sir Walter'sinfluence than to that of any other thing or person.

One may observe, by one or two signs, how deeplythat influence penetrated, and how strongly it holds.

If one take up a Northern or Southern literary periodicalof forty or fifty years ago, he will find it filled with wordy,windy, flowery 'eloquence,' romanticism, sentimentality--all imitated from Sir Walter, and sufficiently badly done, too--innocent travesties of his style and methods, in fact.

This sort of literature being the fashion in both sections ofthe country, there was opportunity for the fairest competition;and as a consequence, the South was able to show as manywell-known literary names, proportioned to population,as the North could.

But a change has come, and there is no opportunitynow for a fair competition between North and South.

For the North has thrown out that old inflated style,whereas the Southern writer still clings to it--clings to itand has a restricted market for his wares, as a consequence.

There is as much literary talent in the South, now, as everthere was, of course; but its work can gain but slight currencyunder present conditions; the authors write for the past,not the present; they use obsolete forms, and a dead language.

But when a Southerner of genius writes modern English,his book goes upon crutches no longer, but upon wings;and they carry it swiftly all about America and England,and through the great English reprint publishing houses of Germany--as witness the experience of Mr. Cable and Uncle Remus, two of thevery few Southern authors who do not write in the Southern style.

Instead of three or four widely-known literary names, the Southought to have a dozen or two--and will have them when Sir Walter'stime is out.

A curious exemplification of the power of a single book forgood or harm is shown in the effects wrought by 'Don Quixote'

and those wrought by 'Ivanhoe.' The first swept the world'sadmiration for the medieval chivalry-silliness out of existence;and the other restored it. As far as our South is concerned,the good work done by Cervantes is pretty nearly a dead letter,so effectually has Scott's pernicious work undermined it.

Enchantments and Enchanters
Chapter 47
MR. JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS ('Uncle Remus') was to arrive from Atlantaat seven o'clock Sunday morning; so we got up and received him.

We were able to detect him among the crowd of arrivals atthe hotel-counter by his correspondence with a descriptionof him which had been furnished us from a trustworthy source.

He was said to be undersized, red-haired, and somewhat freckled.

He was the only man in the party whose outside tallied with thisbill of particulars. He was said to be very shy. He is a shy man.

Of this there is no doubt. It may not show on the surface,but the shyness is there. After days of intimacy one wondersto see that it is still in about as strong force as ever.

There is a fine and beautiful nature hidden behind it, as all knowwho have read the Uncle Remus book; and a fine genius, too, as all knowby the same sign. I seem to be talking quite freely about this neighbor;but in talking to the public I am but talking to his personal friends,and these things are permissible among friends.

He deeply disappointed a number of children who had flockedeagerly to Mr. Cable's house to get a glimpse of the illustrioussage and oracle of the nation's nurseries. They said--'Why, he 's white! '

They were grieved about it. So, to console them, the book was brought,that they might hear Uncle Remus's Tar-Baby story from the lips of UncleRemus himself--or what, in their outraged eyes, was left of him.

But it turned out that he had never read aloud to people, and was too shyto venture the attempt now. Mr. Cable and I read from books of ours,to show him what an easy trick it was; but his immortal shyness wasproof against even this sagacious strategy, so we had to read aboutBrer Rabbit ourselves.

Mr. Harris ought to be able to read the negro dialect betterthan anybody else, for in the matter of writing it he is the onlymaster the country has produced. Mr. Cable is the only masterin the writing of French dialects that the country has produced;and he reads them in perfection. It was a great treat to hear himread about Jean-ah Poquelin, and about Innerarity and his famous'pigshoo' representing 'Louisihanna RIF-fusing to Hanter the union,'

along with passages of nicely-shaded German dialect from a novelwhich was still in manuscript.

It came out in conversation, that in two different instancesMr. Cable got into grotesque trouble by using, in his books,next-to-impossible French names which nevertheless happenedto be borne by living and sensitive citizens of New Orleans.

His names were either inventions or were borrowed fromthe ancient and obsolete past, I do not now remember which;but at any rate living bearers of them turned up, and werea good deal hurt at having attention directed to themselvesand their affairs in so excessively public a manner.

Mr. Warner and I had an experience of the same sort when we wrote the bookcalled 'The Gilded Age.' There is a character in it called 'Sellers.'

I do not remember what his first name was, in the beginning;but anyway, Mr. Warner did not like it, and wanted it improved.

He asked me if I was able to imagine a person named 'Eschol Sellers.'

Of course I said I could not, without stimulants. He said that awayout West, once, he had met, and contemplated, and actually shakenhands with a man bearing that impossible name--'Eschol Sellers.'

He added--'It was twenty years ago; his name has probably carried him offbefore this; and if it hasn't, he will never see the book anyhow.

We will confiscate his name. The name you are using is common,and therefore dangerous; there are probably a thousand Sellersesbearing it, and the whole horde will come after us; but EscholSellers is a safe name--it is a rock.'

So we borrowed that name; and when the book had been out about a week,one of the stateliest and handsomest and most aristocratic lookingwhite men that ever lived, called around, with the most formidablelibel suit in his pocket that ever--well, in brief, we got hispermission to suppress an edition of ten milliontaken from memory, and probably incorrect. Think it was more.]>

copies of the book and change that name to 'Mulberry Sellers'

in future editions.

Uncle Remus and Mr. Cable
Chapter 48
ONE day, on the street, I encountered the man whom, of all men,I most wished to see--Horace Bixby; formerly pilot under me--or rather, over me--now captain of the great steamer 'City ofBaton Rouge,' the latest and swiftest addition to the Anchor Line.

The same slender figure, the same tight curls, the same springy step,the same alertness, the same decision of eye and answering decisionof hand, the same erect military bearing; not an inch gained or lostin girth, not an ounce gained or lost in weight, not a hair turned.

It is a curious thing, to leave a man thirty-five years old, and comeback at the end of twenty-one years and find him still only thirty-five.

I have not had an experience of this kind before, I believe.

There were some crow's-feet, but they counted for next to nothing,since they were inconspicuous.

His boat was just in. I had been waiting several days for her,purposing to return to St. Louis in her. The captain and Ijoined a party of ladies and gentlemen, guests of Major Wood,and went down the river fifty-four miles, in a swift tug,to ex-Governor Warmouth's sugar plantation. Strung along belowthe city, were a number of decayed, ram-shackly, superannuatedold steamboats, not one of which had I ever seen before.

They had all been built, and worn out, and thrown aside,since I was here last. This gives one a realizing senseof the frailness of a Mississippi boat and the briefnessof its life.

Six miles below town a fat and battered brick chimney, sticking abovethe magnolias and live-oaks, was pointed out as the monument erectedby an appreciative nation to celebrate the battle of New Orleans--Jackson's victory over the British, January 8, 1815. The war had ended,the two nations were at peace, but the news had not yet reached New Orleans.

If we had had the cable telegraph in those days, this blood wouldnot have been spilt, those lives would not have been wasted;and better still, Jackson would probably never have been president.

We have gotten over the harms done us by the war of 1812, but not over someof those done us by Jackson's presidency.

The Warmouth plantation covers a vast deal of ground, and the hospitalityof the Warmouth mansion is graduated to the same large scale.

We saw steam-plows at work, here, for the first time. The traction enginetravels about on its own wheels, till it reaches the required spot;then it stands still and by means of a wire rope pulls the huge plow towarditself two or three hundred yards across the field, between the rows of cane.

The thing cuts down into the black mold a foot and a half deep.

The plow looks like a fore-and-aft brace of a Hudson river steamer, inverted.

When the negro steersman sits on one end of it, that end tilts down nearthe ground, while the other sticks up high in air. This great see-saw goesrolling and pitching like a ship at sea, and it is not every circus riderthat could stay on it.

The plantation contains two thousand six hundred acres;six hundred and fifty are in cane; and there is a fruitfulorange grove of five thousand trees. The cane iscultivated after a modern and intricate scientific fashion,too elaborate and complex for me to attempt to describe;but it lost $40,000 last year. I forget the other details.

However, this year's crop will reach ten or twelve hundredtons of sugar, consequently last year's loss will not matter.

These troublesome and expensive scientific methods achieve a yieldof a ton and a half and from that to two tons, to the acre;which is three or four times what the yield of an acre wasin my time.

The drainage-ditches were everywhere alive withlittle crabs--'fiddlers.' One saw them scampering sidewisein every direction whenever they heard a disturbing noise.

Expensive pests, these crabs; for they bore into the levees,and ruin them.

The great sugar-house was a wilderness of tubs and tanksand vats and filters, pumps, pipes, and machinery.

The process of making sugar is exceedingly interesting.

First, you heave your cane into the centrifugals and grind outthe juice; then run it through the evaporating pan to extractthe fiber; then through the bone-filter to remove the alcohol;then through the clarifying tanks to discharge the molasses;then through the granulating pipe to condense it; then throughthe vacuum pan to extract the vacuum. It is now ready for market.

I have jotted these particulars down from memory.

The thing looks simple and easy. Do not deceive yourself.

To make sugar is really one of the most difficult thingsin the world. And to make it right, is next to impossible.

If you will examine your own supply every now and thenfor a term of years, and tabulate the result, you will findthat not two men in twenty can make sugar without getting sandinto it.

We could have gone down to the mouth of the river and visited Captain Eads'

great work, the 'jetties,' where the river has been compressed between walls,and thus deepened to twenty-six feet; but it was voted useless to go,since at this stage of the water everything would be covered up and invisible.

We could have visited that ancient and singular burg,'Pilot-town,' which stands on stilts in the water--so they say;where nearly all communication is by skiff and canoe, even tothe attending of weddings and funerals; and where the littlestboys and girls are as handy with the oar as unamphibiouschildren are with the velocipede.

We could have done a number of other things; but on account of limited time,we went back home. The sail up the breezy and sparkling river wasa charming experience, and would have been satisfyingly sentimentaland romantic but for the interruptions of the tug's pet parrot,whose tireless comments upon the scenery and the guests were alwaysthis-worldly, and often profane. He had also a superabundanceof the discordant, ear-splitting, metallic laugh common to his breed--a machine-made laugh, a Frankenstein laugh, with the soul left out of it.

He applied it to every sentimental remark, and to every pathetic song.

He cackled it out with hideous energy after 'Home again, home againfrom a foreign shore,' and said he 'wouldn't give a damn for a tug-loadof such rot.' Romance and sentiment cannot long survive this sortof discouragement; so the singing and talking presently ceased; which sodelighted the parrot that he cursed himself hoarse for joy.

Then the male members of the party moved to the forecastle,to smoke and gossip. There were several old steamboatmen along,and I learned from them a great deal of what had beenhappening to my former river friends during my long absence.

I learned that a pilot whom I used to steer for is becomea spiritualist, and for more than fifteen years has beenreceiving a letter every week from a deceased relative,through a New York spiritualist medium named Manchester--postage graduated by distance: from the local post-officein Paradise to New York, five dollars; from New York toSt. Louis, three cents. I remember Mr. Manchester very well.

I called on him once, ten years ago, with a couple of friends,one of whom wished to inquire after a deceased uncle.

This uncle had lost his life in a peculiarly violent andunusual way, half a dozen years before: a cyclone blew himsome three miles and knocked a tree down with him which wasfour feet through at the butt and sixty-five feet high.

He did not survive this triumph. At the ance/>

just referred to, my friend questioned his late uncle,through Mr. Manchester, and the late uncle wrote down his replies,using Mr. Manchester's hand and pencil for that purpose.

The following is a fair example of the questions asked,and also of the sloppy twaddle in the way of answers, furnished byManchester under the pretense that it came from the specter.

If this man is not the paltriest fraud that lives, I owe him anapology--QUESTION. Where are you?

ANSWER. In the spirit world.

Q. Are you happy?

A. Very happy. Perfectly happy.

Q. How do you amuse yourself?

A. Conversation with friends, and other spirits.

Q. What else?

A. Nothing else. Nothing else is necessary.

Q. What do you talk about?

A. About how happy we are; and about friends left behind in the earth,and how to influence them for their good.

Q. When your friends in the earth all get to the spirit land,what shall you have to talk about then?--nothing but abouthow happy you all are?

No reply. It is explained that spirits will not answer frivolous questions.

Q. How is it that spirits that are content to spend an eternityin frivolous employments, and accept it as happiness,are so fastidious about frivolous questions upon the subject?

No reply.

Q. Would you like to come back?

A. No.

Q. Would you say that under oath?

A. Yes.

Q. What do you eat there?

A. We do not eat.

Q. What do you drink?

A. We do not drink.

Q. What do you smoke?

A. We do not smoke.

Q. What do you read?

A. We do not read.

Q. Do all the good people go to your place?

A. Yes.

Q. You know my present way of life. Can you suggest any additions to it,in the way of crime, that will reasonably insure my going to some other place.

A. No reply.

Q. When did you die?

A. I did not die, I passed away.

Q. Very well, then, when did you pass away? How long have youbeen in the spirit land?

A. We have no measurements of time here.

Q. Though you may be indifferent and uncertain as to datesand times in your present condition and environment,this has nothing to do with your former condition.

You had dates then. One of these is what I ask for.

You departed on a certain day in a certain year.

Is not this true?

A. Yes.

Q. Then name the day of the month.

(Much fumbling with pencil, on the part of the medium, accompanied byviolent spasmodic jerkings of his head and body, for some little time.

Finally, explanation to the effect that spirits often forget dates,such things being without importance to them.)Q. Then this one has actually forgotten the date of its translationto the spirit land?

This was granted to be the case.

Q. This is very curious. Well, then, what year was it?

(More fumbling, jerking, idiotic spasms, on the part of the medium.

Finally, explanation to the effect that the spirit has forgotten the year.)Q. This is indeed stupendous. Let me put one more question,one last question, to you, before we part to meet no more;--for even if I fail to avoid your asylum, a meeting there will gofor nothing as a meeting, since by that time you will easilyhave forgotten me and my name: did you die a natural death,or were you cut off by a catastrophe?

A. (After long hesitation and many throes and spasms.) NATURAL DEATH.

This ended the interview. My friend told the medium that when his relativewas in this poor world, he was endowed with an extraordinary intellectand an absolutely defectless memory, and it seemed a great pity that he hadnot been allowed to keep some shred of these for his amusement in the realmsof everlasting contentment, and for the amazement and admiration of the restof the population there.

This man had plenty of clients--has plenty yet. He receivesletters from spirits located in every part of the spirit world,and delivers them all over this country through the United States mail.

These letters are filled with advice--advice from 'spirits' who don'tknow as much as a tadpole--and this advice is religiously followedby the receivers. One of these clients was a man whom the spirits(if one may thus plurally describe the ingenious Manchester)were teaching how to contrive an improved railway car-wheel. Itis coarse employment for a spirit, but it is higher and wholesomeractivity than talking for ever about 'how happy we are.'
Chapter 49 Episodes in Pilot Life
N the course of the tug-boat gossip, it came out that outof every five of my former friends who had quitted the river,four had chosen farming as an occupation. Of course this was notbecause they were peculiarly gifted, agriculturally, and thusmore likely to succeed as farmers than in other industries:

the reason for their choice must be traced to some other source.

Doubtless they chose farming because that life is privateand secluded from irruptions of undesirable strangers--like the pilot-house hermitage. And doubtless they also choseit because on a thousand nights of black storm and dangerthey had noted the twinkling lights of solitary farm-houses,as the boat swung by, and pictured to themselves the serenityand security and coziness of such refuges at such times,and so had by-and-bye come to dream of that retired and peacefullife as the one desirable thing to long for, anticipate, earn, andat last enjoy.

But I did not learn that any of these pilot-farmers had astonished anybodywith their successes. Their farms do not support them: they supporttheir farms. The pilot-farmer disappears from the river annually,about the breaking of spring, and is seen no more till next frost.

Then he appears again, in damaged homespun, combs the hayseedout of his hair, and takes a pilot-house berth for the winter.

In this way he pays the debts which his farming has achieved duringthe agricultural season. So his river bondage is but half broken;he is still the river's slave the hardest half of the year.

One of these men bought a farm, but did not retire to it.

He knew a trick worth two of that. He did not propose to pauperizehis farm by applying his personal ignorance to working it.

No, he put the farm into the hands of an agriculturalexpert to be worked on shares--out of every three loadsof corn the expert to have two and the pilot the third.

But at the end of the season the pilot received no corn.

The expert explained that his share was not reached. The farmproduced only two loads.

Some of the pilots whom I had known had had adventures--the outcome fortunate, sometimes, but not in all cases.

Captain Montgomery, whom I had steered for when he was a pilot,commanded the Confederate fleet in the great battle before Memphis;when his vessel went down, he swam ashore, fought his way througha squad of soldiers, and made a gallant and narrow escape.

He was always a cool man; nothing could disturb his serenity.

Once when he was captain of the 'Crescent City,' I was bringingthe boat into port at New Orleans, and momently expecting ordersfrom the hurricane deck, but received none. I had stoppedthe wheels, and there my authority and responsibility ceased.

It was evening--dim twilight--the captain's hat was perched uponthe big bell, and I supposed the intellectual end of the captainwas in it, but such was not the case. The captain was very strict;therefore I knew better than to touch a bell without orders.

My duty was to hold the boat steadily on her calamitous course,and leave the consequences to take care of themselves--which I did.

So we went plowing past the sterns of steamboats and getting closerand closer--the crash was bound to come very soon--and still that hatnever budged; for alas, the captain was napping in the texas....

Things were becoming exceedingly nervous and uncomfortable.

It seemed to me that the captain was not going to appear in timeto see the entertainment. But he did. Just as we were walkinginto the stern of a steamboat, he stepped out on deck, and said,with heavenly serenity, 'Set her back on both'--which I did;but a trifle late, however, for the next moment we went smashing throughthat other boat's flimsy outer works with a most prodigious racket.

The captain never said a word to me about the matter afterwards,except to remark that I had done right, and that he hoped I would nothesitate to act in the same way again in like circumstances.

One of the pilots whom I had known when I was on the riverhad died a very honorable death. His boat caught fire,and he remained at the wheel until he got her safe to land.

Then he went out over the breast-board with his clothingin flames, and was the last person to get ashore.

He died from his injuries in the course of two or three hours,and his was the only life lost.

The history of Mississippi piloting affords six or seven instances of thissort of martyrdom, and half a hundred instances of escapes from a like fatewhich came within a second or two of being fatally too late; BUT THEREIS NO INSTANCE OF A PILOT DESERTING HIS POST TO SAVE HIS LIFE WHILE BYREMAINING AND SACRIFICING IT HE MIGHT SECURE OTHER LIVES FROM DESTRUCTION.

It is well worth while to set down this noble fact, and well worth while toput it in italics, too.

The 'cub' pilot is early admonished to despise all perilsconnected with a pilot's calling, and to prefer any sortof death to the deep dishonor of deserting his postwhile there is any possibility of his being useful in it.

And so effectively are these admonitions inculcated,that even young and but half-tried pilots can be depended uponto stick to the wheel, and die there when occasion requires.

In a Memphis graveyard is buried a young fellow who perishedat the wheel a great many years ago, in White River, to savethe lives of other men. He said to the captain that if the firewould give him time to reach a sand bar, some distance away,all could be saved, but that to land against the bluff bankof the river would be to insure the loss of many lives.

He reached the bar and grounded the boat in shallow water;but by that time the flames had closed around him,and in escaping through them he was fatally burned.

He had been urged to fly sooner, but had replied as becamea pilot to reply--'I will not go. If I go, nobody will be saved; if I stay,no one will be lost but me. I will stay.'

There were two hundred persons on board, and no life was lost but the pilot's.

There used to be a monument to this young fellow, in that Memphis graveyard.

While we tarried in Memphis on our down trip, I started out to look for it,but our time was so brief that I was obliged to turn back before myobject was accomplished.

The tug-boat gossip informed me that Dick Kennet was dead--blown up, near Memphis, and killed; that several others whomI had known had fallen in the war--one or two of them shotdown at the wheel; that another and very particular friend,whom I had steered many trips for, had stepped out of his housein New Orleans, one night years ago, to collect some moneyin a remote part of the city, and had never been seen again--was murdered and thrown into the river, it was thought; that BenThornburgh was dead long ago; also his wild 'cub' whom I usedto quarrel with, all through every daylight watch. A heedless,reckless creature he was, and always in hot water, always in mischief.

An Arkansas passenger brought an enormous bear aboard, one day,and chained him to a life-boat on the hurricane deck.

Thornburgh's 'cub' could not rest till he had gone there and unchainedthe bear, to 'see what he would do.' He was promptly gratified.

The bear chased him around and around the deck, for miles and miles,with two hundred eager faces grinning through the railingsfor audience, and finally snatched off the lad's coat-tailand went into the texas to chew it. The off-watch turnedout with alacrity, and left the bear in sole possession.

He presently grew lonesome, and started out for recreation.

He ranged the whole boat--visited every part of it, with anadvance guard of fleeing people in front of him and a voicelessvacancy behind him; and when his owner captured him at last,those two were the only visible beings anywhere; everybody elsewas in hiding, and the boat was a solitude.

I was told that one of my pilot friends fell dead at the wheel,from heart disease, in 1869. The captain was on the roof at the time.

He saw the boat breaking for the shore; shouted, and got no answer;ran up, and found the pilot lying dead on the floor.

Mr. Bixby had been blown up, in Madrid bend; was not injured,but the other pilot was lost.

George Ritchie had been blown up near Memphis--blown intothe river from the wheel, and disabled. The water wasvery cold; he clung to a cotton bale--mainly with his teeth--and floated until nearly exhausted, when he was rescuedby some deck hands who were on a piece of the wreck.

They tore open the bale and packed him in the cotton,and warmed the life back into him, and got him safe to Memphis.

He is one of Bixby's pilots on the 'Baton Rouge' now.

Into the life of a steamboat clerk, now dead, had dropped a bitof romance--somewhat grotesque romance, but romance nevertheless.

When I knew him he was a shiftless young spendthrift, boisterous,goodhearted, full of careless generosities, and pretty conspicuouslypromising to fool his possibilities away early, and come to nothing.

In a Western city lived a rich and childless old foreigner and his wife;and in their family was a comely young girl--sort of friend, sort of servant.

The young clerk of whom I have been speaking--whose name was notGeorge Johnson, but who shall be called George Johnson for the purposesof this narrative--got acquainted with this young girl, and they sinned;and the old foreigner found them out, and rebuked them. Being ashamed,they lied, and said they were married; that they had been privately married.

Then the old foreigner's hurt was healed, and he forgave and blessed them.

After that, they were able to continue their sin without concealment.

By-and-bye the foreigner's wife died; and presently he followed after her.

Friends of the family assembled to mourn; and among the mournerssat the two young sinners. The will was opened and solemnly read.

It bequeathed every penny of that old man's great wealth to MRS.

GEORGE JOHNSON!

And there was no such person. The young sinners fled forth then,and did a very foolish thing: married themselves before anobscure Justice of the Peace, and got him to antedate the thing.

That did no sort of good. The distant relatives flocked in and exposedthe fraudful date with extreme suddenness and surprising ease,and carried off the fortune, leaving the Johnsons very legitimately,and legally, and irrevocably chained together in honorable marriage,but with not so much as a penny to bless themselves withal.

Such are the actual facts; and not all novels have for a base sotelling a situation.
Chapter 50 The 'Original Jacobs'
WE had some talk about Captain Isaiah Sellers, now many years dead.

He was a fine man, a high-minded man, and greatly respected both ashore and onthe river. He was very tall, well built, and handsome; and in his old age--as I remember him--his hair was as black as an Indian's, and his eyeand hand were as strong and steady and his nerve and judgment as firmand clear as anybody's, young or old, among the fraternity of pilots.

He was the patriarch of the craft; he had been a keelboat pilot before the dayof steamboats; and a steamboat pilot before any other steamboat pilot,still surviving at the time I speak of, had ever turned a wheel.

Consequently his brethren held him in the sort of awe in which illustrioussurvivors of a bygone age are always held by their associates.

He knew how he was regarded, and perhaps this fact added some trifleof stiffening to his natural dignity, which had been sufficiently stiffin its original state.

He left a diary behind him; but apparently it did not date backto his first steamboat trip, which was said to be 1811, the yearthe first steamboat disturbed the waters of the Mississippi.

At the time of his death a correspondent of the 'St. Louis Republican'

culled the following items from the diary--'In February, 1825, he shipped on board the steamer "Rambler," at Florence,Ala., and made during that year three trips to New Orleans and back--this on the "Gen. Carrol," between Nashville and New Orleans. It was duringhis stay on this boat that Captain Sellers introduced the tap of the bellas a signal to heave the lead, previous to which time it was the customfor the pilot to speak to the men below when soundings were wanted.

The proximity of the forecastle to the pilot-house, no doubt, rendered thisan easy matter; but how different on one of our palaces of the present day.

'In 1827 we find him on board the "President," a boat of twohundred and eighty-five tons burden, and plying between Smithlandand New Orleans. Thence he joined the "Jubilee" in 1828,and on this boat he did his first piloting in the St. Louis trade;his first watch extending from Herculaneum to St. Genevieve.

On May 26, 1836, he completed and left Pittsburgh in chargeof the steamer "Prairie," a boat of four hundred tons, and thefirst steamer with a STATE-ROOM CABIN ever seen at St. Louis.

In 1857 he introduced the signal for meeting boats, and which has,with some slight change, been the universal custom of this day;in fact, is rendered obligatory by act of Congress.

'As general items of river history, we quote the following marginalnotes from his general log--'In March, 1825, Gen. Lafayette left New Orleans for St. Louison the low-pressure steamer "Natchez."'In January, 1828, twenty-one steamers left the New Orleans wharfto celebrate the occasion of Gen. Jackson's visit to that city.

'In 1830 the "North American" made the run from New Orleansto Memphis in six days--best time on record to that date.

It has since been made in two days and ten hours.

'In 1831 the Red River cut-off formed.

'In 1832 steamer "Hudson" made the run from White Riverto Helena, a distance of seventy-five miles, in twelve hours.

This was the source of much talk and speculation amongparties directly interested.

'In 1839 Great Horseshoe cut-off formed.

'Up to the present time, a term of thirty-five years, we ascertain,by reference to the diary, he has made four hundred and sixty roundtrips to New Orleans, which gives a distance of one million one hundredand four thousand miles, or an average of eighty-six miles a day.'

Whenever Captain Sellers approached a body of gossiping pilots,a chill fell there, and talking ceased. For this reason:

whenever six pilots were gathered together, there would alwaysbe one or two newly fledged ones in the lot, and the elderones would be always 'showing off' before these poor fellows;making them sorrowfully feel how callow they were, how recenttheir nobility, and how humble their degree, by talkinglargely and vaporously of old-time experiences on the river;always making it a point to date everything back as far as they could,so as to make the new men feel their newness to the sharpestdegree possible, and envy the old stagers in the like degree.

And how these complacent baldheads WOULD swell, and brag, and lie,and date back--ten, fifteen, twenty years,--and how they did enjoythe effect produced upon the marveling and envying youngsters!

And perhaps just at this happy stage of the proceedings,the stately figure of Captain Isaiah Sellers, that real and onlygenuine Son of Antiquity, would drift solemnly into the midst.

Imagine the size of the silence that would result on the instant.

And imagine the feelings of those bald-heads, and the exultationof their recent audience when the ancient captain would beginto drop casual and indifferent remarks of a reminiscent nature--about islands that had disappeared, and cutoffs that had been made,a generation before the oldest bald-head in the company had ever sethis foot in a pilot-house!

Many and many a time did this ancient mariner appear on the scenein the above fashion, and spread disaster and humiliation around him.

If one might believe the pilots, he always dated his islands back tothe misty dawn of river history; and he never used the same island twice;and never did he employ an island that still existed, or give onea name which anybody present was old enough to have heard of before.

If you might believe the pilots, he was always conscientiously particularabout little details; never spoke of 'the State of Mississippi,'

for instance--no, he would say, 'When the State of Mississippi waswhere Arkansas now is," and would never speak of Louisiana or Missouriin a general way, and leave an incorrect impression on your mind--no, he would say, 'When Louisiana was up the river farther,' or 'WhenMissouri was on the Illinois side.'

The old gentleman was not of literary turn or capacity, but he used to jotdown brief paragraphs of plain practical information about the river,and sign them 'MARK TWAIN,' and give them to the 'New Orleans Picayune.'

They related to the stage and condition of the river, and wereaccurate and valuable; and thus far, they contained no poison.

But in speaking of the stage of the river to-day, at a given point,the captain was pretty apt to drop in a little remark about thisbeing the first time he had seen the water so high or so low atthat particular point for forty-nine years; and now and then he wouldmention Island So-and-so, and follow it, in parentheses, with somesuch observation as 'disappeared in 1807, if I remember rightly.'

In these antique interjections lay poison and bitterness forthe other old pilots, and they used to chaff the 'Mark Twain'

paragraphs with unsparing mockery.

It so chanced that one of these paragraphsof it, in the captain's own hand, has been sent to me from New Orleans.

It reads as follows--VICKSBURG May 4, 1859.

'My opinion for the benefit of the citizens of New Orleans:

The water is higher this far up than it has been since 8.

My opinion is that the water will be feet deep in Canal streetbefore the first of next June. Mrs. Turner's plantation atthe head of Big Black Island is all under water, and it has notbeen since 1815.

'I. Sellers.']>

became the text for my first newspaper article. I burlesquedit broadly, very broadly, stringing my fantastics out to the extentof eight hundred or a thousand words. I was a 'cub' at the time.

I showed my performance to some pilots, and they eagerly rushed it intoprint in the 'New Orleans True Delta.' It was a great pity; for it didnobody any worthy service, and it sent a pang deep into a good man's heart.

There was no malice in my rubbish; but it laughed at the captain.

It laughed at a man to whom such a thing was new and strange and dreadful.

I did not know then, though I do now, that there is no suffering comparablewith that which a private person feels when he is for the first timepilloried in print.

Captain Sellers did me the honor to profoundly detest me from that day forth.

When I say he did me the honor, I am not using empty words.

It was a very real honor to be in the thoughts of so great a man asCaptain Sellers, and I had wit enough to appreciate it and be proud of it.

It was distinction to be loved by such a man; but it was a much greaterdistinction to be hated by him, because he loved scores of people;but he didn't sit up nights to hate anybody but me.

He never printed another paragraph while he lived, and he never againsigned 'Mark Twain' to anything. At the time that the telegraphbrought the news of his death, I was on the Pacific coast.

I was a fresh new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre;so I confiscated the ancient mariner's discarded one,and have done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands--a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found in itscompany may be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how Ihave succeeded, it would not be modest in me to say.

The captain had an honorable pride in his professionand an abiding love for it. He ordered his monumentbefore he died, and kept it near him until he did die.

It stands over his grave now, in Bellefontaine cemetery, St. Louis.

It is his image, in marble, standing on duty at the pilot wheel;and worthy to stand and confront criticism, for it represents a manwho in life would have stayed there till he burned to a cinder,if duty required it.

The finest thing we saw on our whole Mississippi trip, we saw as we approachedNew Orleans in the steam-tug. This was the curving frontage of the crescentcity lit up with the white glare of five miles of electric lights.

It was a wonderful sight, and very beautiful.
Chapter 51 Reminiscences
WE left for St. Louis in the 'City of Baton Rouge,' on a delightfullyhot day, but with the main purpose of my visit but lamely accomplished.

I had hoped to hunt up and talk with a hundred steamboatmen,but got so pleasantly involved in the social life of the town that Igot nothing more than mere five-minute talks with a couple of dozenof the craft.

I was on the bench of the pilot-house when we backed out and'straightened up' for the start--the boat pausing for a 'good ready,'

in the old-fashioned way, and the black smoke piling out of the chimneysequally in the old-fashioned way. Then we began to gather momentum,and presently were fairly under way and booming along.

It was all as natural and familiar--and so were the shoreward sights--as if there had been no break in my river life. There was a 'cub,'

and I judged that he would take the wheel now; and he did.

Captain Bixby stepped into the pilot-house. Presently the cubclosed up on the rank of steamships. He made me nervous,for he allowed too much water to show between our boat and the ships.

I knew quite well what was going to happen, because I could dateback in my own life and inspect the record. The captain looked on,during a silent half-minute, then took the wheel himself,and crowded the boat in, till she went scraping along withina band-breadth of the ships. It was exactly the favor which he haddone me, about a quarter of a century before, in that same spot,the first time I ever steamed out of the port of New Orleans.

It was a very great and sincere pleasure to me to see the thing repeated--with somebody else as victim.

We made Natchez (three hundred miles) in twenty-two hours and a half--much the swiftest passage I have ever made over that piece of water.

The next morning I came on with the four o'clock watch, and saw Ritchiesuccessfully run half a dozen crossings in a fog, using for hisguidance the marked chart devised and patented by Bixby and himself.

This sufficiently evidenced the great value of the chart.

By and by, when the fog began to clear off, I noticed that the reflectionof a tree in the smooth water of an overflowed bank, six hundredyards away, was stronger and blacker than the ghostly tree itself.

The faint spectral trees, dimly glimpsed through the shredding fog,were very pretty things to see.

We had a heavy thunder-storm at Natchez, another at Vicksburg,and still another about fifty miles below Memphis. They hadan old-fashioned energy which had long been unfamiliar to me.

This third storm was accompanied by a raging wind. We tied up to the bankwhen we saw the tempest coming, and everybody left the pilot-house but me.

The wind bent the young trees down, exposing the pale undersideof the leaves; and gust after gust followed, in quick succession,thrashing the branches violently up and down, and to this side and that,and creating swift waves of alternating green and white accordingto the side of the leaf that was exposed, and these waves racedafter each other as do their kind over a wind-tossed field of oats.

No color that was visible anywhere was quite natural--all tintswere charged with a leaden tinge from the solid cloud-bank overhead.

The river was leaden; all distances the same; and even the far-reachingranks of combing white-caps were dully shaded by the dark,rich atmosphere through which their swarming legions marched.

The thunder-peals were constant and deafening; explosion followed explosionwith but inconsequential intervals between, and the reports grew steadilysharper and higher-keyed, and more trying to the ear; the lightningwas as diligent as the thunder, and produced effects which enchantedthe eye and sent electric ecstasies of mixed delight and apprehensionshivering along every nerve in the body in unintermittent procession.

The rain poured down in amazing volume; the ear-splitting thunder-pealsbroke nearer and nearer; the wind increased in fury and began to wrenchoff boughs and tree-tops and send them sailing away through space;the pilot-house fell to rocking and straining and cracking and surging,and I went down in the hold to see what time it was.

People boast a good deal about Alpine thunderstorms;but the storms which I have had the luck to see in the Alps were notthe equals of some which I have seen in the Mississippi Valley.

I may not have seen the Alps do their best, of course,and if they can beat the Mississippi, I don't wish to.

On this up trip I saw a little towhead (infant island) half amile long, which had been formed during the past nineteen years.

Since there was so much time to spare that nineteen yearsof it could be devoted to the construction of a mere towhead,where was the use, originally, in rushing this whole globe throughin six days? It is likely that if more time had been taken,in the first place, the world would have been made right, and thisceaseless improving and repairing would not be necessary now.

But if you hurry a world or a house, you are nearly sure to findout by and by that you have left out a towhead, or a broom-closet,or some other little convenience, here and there, which hasgot to be supplied, no matter how much expense and vexationit may cost.

We had a succession of black nights, going up the river, and it was observablethat whenever we landed, and suddenly inundated the trees with the intensesunburst of the electric light, a certain curious effect was always produced:

hundreds of birds flocked instantly out from the masses of shininggreen foliage, and went careering hither and thither through the white rays,and often a song-bird tuned up and fell to singing. We judged thatthey mistook this superb artificial day for the genuine article.

We had a delightful trip in that thoroughly well-ordered steamer,and regretted that it was accomplished so speedily. By means of diligenceand activity, we managed to hunt out nearly all the old friends.

One was missing, however; he went to his reward, whatever it was,two years ago. But I found out all about him. His case helped meto realize how lasting can be the effect of a very trifling occurrence.

When he was an apprentice-blacksmith in our village, and I a schoolboy,a couple of young Englishmen came to the town and sojourned a while;and one day they got themselves up in cheap royal finery and didthe Richard III swordfight with maniac energy and prodigious powwow,in the presence of the village boys. This blacksmith cub was there,and the histrionic poison entered his bones. This vast, lumbering, ignorant,dull-witted lout was stage-struck, and irrecoverably. He disappeared,and presently turned up in St. Louis. I ran across him there, by and by.

He was standing musing on a street corner, with his left hand on his hip,the thumb of his right supporting his chin, face bowed and frowning,slouch hat pulled down over his forehead--imagining himself to be Othelloor some such character, and imagining that the passing crowd marked histragic bearing and were awestruck.

I joined him, and tried to get him down out of the clouds,but did not succeed. However, he casually informed me, presently,that he was a member of the Walnut Street theater company--and he tried to say it with indifference, but the indifferencewas thin, and a mighty exultation showed through it.

He said he was cast for a part in Julius Caesar, for that night,and if I should come I would see him. IF I should come!

I said I wouldn't miss it if I were dead.

I went away stupefied with astonishment, and saying to myself,'How strange it is! WE always thought this fellow a fool;yet the moment he comes to a great city, where intelligenceand appreciation abound, the talent concealed in this shabbynapkin is at once discovered, and promptly welcomed and honored.'

But I came away from the theater that night disappointed and offended;for I had had no glimpse of my hero, and his name was not in the bills.

I met him on the street the next morning, and before I could speak, he asked--'Did you see me?'

'No, you weren't there.'

He looked surprised and disappointed. He said--'Yes, I was. Indeed I was. I was a Roman soldier.'

'Which one?'

'Why didn't you see them Roman soldiers that stood back there in a rank,and sometimes marched in procession around the stage?'

'Do you mean the Roman army?--those six sandaled roustaboutsin nightshirts, with tin shields and helmets, that marched aroundtreading on each other's heels, in charge of a spider-leggedconsumptive dressed like themselves? '

'That's it! that's it! I was one of them Roman soldiers.

I was the next to the last one. A half a year ago I used to alwaysbe the last one; but I've been promoted.'

Well, they told me that that poor fellow remained a Roman soldier to the last--a matter of thirty-four years. Sometimes they cast him for a 'speaking part,'

but not an elaborate one. He could be trusted to go and say, 'My lord,the carriage waits,' but if they ventured to add a sentence or two to this,his memory felt the strain and he was likely to miss fire. Yet, poor devil,he had been patiently studying the part of Hamlet for more than thirty years,and he lived and died in the belief that some day he would be invitedto play it!

And this is what came of that fleeting visit of those youngEnglishmen to our village such ages and ages ago! What noblehorseshoes this man might have made, but for those Englishmen;and what an inadequate Roman soldier he DID make!

A day or two after we reached St. Louis, I was walking along FourthStreet when a grizzly-headed man gave a sort of start as he passed me,then stopped, came back, inspected me narrowly, with a clouding brow,and finally said with deep asperity--'Look here, HAVE YOU GOT THAT DRINK YET?'

A maniac, I judged, at first. But all in a flash I recognized him.

I made an effort to blush that strained every muscle in me,and answered as sweetly and winningly as ever I knew how--'Been a little slow, but am just this minute closing in on the placewhere they keep it. Come in and help.'

He softened, and said make it a bottle of champagne and he was agreeable.

He said he had seen my name in the papers, and had put all his affairsaside and turned out, resolved to find me or die; and make me answerthat question satisfactorily, or kill me; though the most of his lateasperity had been rather counterfeit than otherwise.

This meeting brought back to me the St. Louis riots of aboutthirty years ago. I spent a week there, at that time,in a boarding-house, and had this young fellow for a neighboracross the hall. We saw some of the fightings and killings;and by and by we went one night to an armory where twohundred young men had met, upon call, to be armed and goforth against the rioters, under command of a military man.

We drilled till about ten o'clock at night; then news camethat the mob were in great force in the lower end of the town,and were sweeping everything before them. Our column moved at once.

It was a very hot night, and my musket was very heavy.

We marched and marched; and the nearer we approached the seatof war, the hotter I grew and the thirstier I got. I was behindmy friend; so, finally, I asked him to hold my musket while Idropped out and got a drink. Then I branched off and went home.

I was not feeling any solicitude about him of course,because I knew he was so well armed, now, that he could takecare of himself without any trouble. If I had had any doubtsabout that, I would have borrowed another musket for him.

I left the city pretty early the next morning, and if thisgrizzled man had not happened to encounter my name in the papersthe other day in St. Louis, and felt moved to seek me out,I should have carried to my grave a heart-torturing uncertaintyas to whether he ever got out of the riots all right or not.

I ought to have inquired, thirty years ago; I know that.

And I would have inquired, if I had had the muskets; but, in thecircumstances, he seemed better fixed to conduct the investigationsthan I was.

One Monday, near the time of our visit to St. Louis,the 'Globe-Democrat' came out with a couple of pages of Sundaystatistics, whereby it appeared that 119,448 St. Louis peopleattended the morning and evening church services the day before,and 23,102 children attended Sunday-school. Thus 142,550 persons,out of the city's total of 400,000 population, respected the dayreligious-wise. I found these statistics, in a condensed form,in a telegram of the Associated Press, and preserved them.

They made it apparent that St. Louis was in a higher stateof grace than she could have claimed to be in my time.

But now that I canvass the figures narrowly, I suspectthat the telegraph mutilated them. It cannot be that thereare more than 150,000 Catholics in the town; the other 250,000must be classified as Protestants. Out of these 250,000,according to this questionable telegram, only 26,362 attendedchurch and Sunday-school, while out of the 150,000 Catholics,116,188 went to church and Sunday-school.
Chapter 52 A Burning Brand
ALL at once the thought came into my mind, 'I have not soughtout Mr. Brown.'

Upon that text I desire to depart from the direct line of my subject,and make a little excursion. I wish to reveal a secret which I havecarried with me nine years, and which has become burdensome.

Upon a certain occasion, nine years ago, I had said, with strong feeling,'If ever I see St. Louis again, I will seek out Mr. Brown, the greatgrain merchant, and ask of him the privilege of shaking him by the hand.'

The occasion and the circumstances were as follows.

A friend of mine, a clergyman, came one evening and said--'I have a most remarkable letter here, which I want to read to you,if I can do it without breaking down. I must preface it withsome explanations, however. The letter is written by an ex-thiefand ex-vagabond of the lowest origin and basest rearing, a manall stained with crime and steeped in ignorance; but, thank God,with a mine of pure gold hidden away in him, as you shall see.

His letter is written to a burglar named Williams, who is servinga nine-year term in a certain State prison, for burglary.

Williams was a particularly daring burglar, and pliedthat trade during a number of years; but he was caughtat last and jailed, to await trial in a town where he hadbroken into a house at night, pistol in hand, and forcedthe owner to hand over to him $8,000 in government bonds.

Williams was not a common sort of person, by any means; he wasa graduate of Harvard College, and came of good New England stock.

His father was a clergyman. While lying in jail, his healthbegan to fail, and he was threatened with consumption.

This fact, together with the opportunity for reflection affordedby solitary confinement, had its effect--its natural effect.

He fell into serious thought; his early training asserted itself withpower, and wrought with strong influence upon his mind and heart.

He put his old life behind him, and became an earnest Christian.

Some ladies in the town heard of this, visited him,and by their encouraging words supported him in his goodresolutions and strengthened him to continue in his new life.

The trial ended in his conviction and sentence to the Stateprison for the term of nine years, as I have before said.

In the prison he became acquainted with the poor wretchreferred to in the beginning of my talk, Jack Hunt,the writer of the letter which I am going to read.

You will see that the acquaintanceship bore fruit for Hunt.

When Hunt's time was out, he wandered to St. Louis;and from that place he wrote his letter to Williams.

The letter got no further than the office of the prison warden,of course; prisoners are not often allowed to receive lettersfrom outside. The prison authorities read this letter,but did not destroy it. They had not the heart to do it.

They read it to several persons, and eventually it fellinto the hands of those ladies of whom I spoke a while ago.

The other day I came across an old friend of mine--a clergyman--who had seen this letter, and was full of it.

The mere remembrance of it so moved him that he couldnot talk of it without his voice breaking. He promisedto get a copy of it for me; and here it is--an exact copy,with all the imperfections of the original preserved.

It has many slang expressions in it--thieves' argot--but theirmeaning has been interlined, in parentheses, by the prisonauthorities'--St. Louis, June 9th 1872.

Mr. W---- friend Charlie if i may call you so: i no you are surprisedto get a letter from me, but i hope you won't be mad at my writing to you.

i want to tell you my thanks for the way you talked to me when i wasin prison--it has led me to try and be a better man; i guess you thoughti did not cair for what you said, & at the first go off I didn't, but inoed you was a man who had don big work with good men & want no sucker,nor want gasing & all the boys knod it.

I used to think at nite what you said, & for it i nocked off swearing monthsbefore my time was up, for i saw it want no good, nohow--the day my timewas up you told me if i would shake the cross (QUIT STEALING) & live onthe square for months, it would be the best job i ever done in my life.

The state agent give me a ticket to here, & on the car i thought more ofwhat you said to me, but didn't make up my mind. When we got to Chicagoon the cars from there to here, I pulled off an old woman's leather;(ROBBED HER OF HER POCKETBOOK) i hadn't no more than got it off when iwished i hadn't done it, for awhile before that i made up my mindto be a square bloke, for months on your word, but forgot it when i sawthe leather was a grip (EASY TO GET)--but i kept clos to her & when shegot out of the cars at a way place i said, marm have you lost anything.

& she tumbled (DISCOVERED) her leather was off (GONE)--is this it says i,giving it to her--well if you aint honest, says she, but i hadn't gotcheak enough to stand that sort of talk, so i left her in a hurry.

When i got here i had $1 and 25 cents left & i didn't get no work for 3days as i aint strong enough for roust about on a steam bote (FOR ADECK HAND)--The afternoon of the 3rd day I spent my last 10 cts for moons(LARGE, ROUND SEA-BISCUIT) & cheese & i felt pretty rough & was thinkingi would have to go on the dipe (PICKING POCKETS) again, when i thoughtof what you once said about a fellows calling on the Lord when he wasin hard luck, & i thought i would try it once anyhow, but when i tryedit i got stuck on the start, & all i could get off wos, Lord give a poorfellow a chance to square it for 3 months for Christ's sake, amen; & ikept a thinking, of it over and over as i went along--about an hour afterthat i was in 4th St. & this is what happened & is the cause of my beingwhere i am now & about which i will tell you before i get done writing.

As i was walking along herd a big noise & saw a horse running away with acarriage with 2 children in it, & I grabed up a peace of box cover fromthe side walk & run in the middle of the street, & when the horse came up ismashed him over the head as hard as i could drive--the bord split to peces& the horse checked up a little & I grabbed the reigns & pulled his headdown until he stopped--the gentleman what owned him came running up & soonas he saw the children were all rite, he shook hands with me and gaveme a $50 green back, & my asking the Lord to help me come into my head,& i was so thunderstruck i couldn't drop the reigns nor say nothing--he saw something was up, & coming back to me said, my boy are you hurt?

& the thought come into my head just then to ask him for work; & i askedhim to take back the bill and give me a job--says he, jump in here &lets talk about it, but keep the money--he asked me if i could take careof horses & i said yes, for i used to hang round livery stables & oftenwould help clean & drive horses, he told me he wanted a man for that work,& would give me $16 a month & bord me. You bet i took that chance at once.

that nite in my little room over the stable i sat a long time thinkingover my past life & of what had just happened & i just got down onmy nees & thanked the Lord for the job & to help me to square it,& to bless you for putting me up to it, & the next morning i done itagain & got me some new togs (CLOTHES) & a bible for i made up my mindafter what the Lord had done for me i would read the bible every niteand morning, & ask him to keep an eye on me. When I had been thereabout a week Mr. Brown (that's his name) came in my room one nite and sawme reading the bible--he asked me if i was a Christian & i told him no--he asked me how it was i read the bible instead of papers & books--Well Charlie i thought i had better give him a square deal in the start,so i told him all about my being in prison & about you, & how i had almostdone give up looking for work & how the Lord got me the job when I asked him;& the only way i had to pay him back was to read the bible & square it,& i asked him to give me a chance for 3 months--he talked to me like a fatherfor a long time, & told me i could stay & then i felt better than everi had done in my life, for i had given Mr. Brown a fair start with me &now i didn't fear no one giving me a back cap (EXPOSING HIS PAST LIFE)& running me off the job--the next morning he called me into the library& gave me another square talk, & advised me to study some every day,& he would help me one or 2 hours every nite, & he gave me a Arithmetic,a spelling book, a Geography & a writing book, & he hers me every nite--he lets me come into the house to prayers every morning, & got me put in abible class in the Sunday School which i likes very much for it helps meto understand my bible better.

Now, Charlie the 3 months on the square are up 2 months ago,& as you said, it is the best job i ever did in my life,& i commenced another of the same sort right away, only itis to God helping me to last a lifetime Charlie--i wrotethis letter to tell you I do think God has forgiven my sins& herd your prayers, for you told me you should pray for me--i no i love to read his word & tell him all my troubles &he helps me i know for i have plenty of chances to stealbut i don't feel to as i once did & now i take more pleasurein going to church than to the theater & that wasnt so once--our minister and others often talk with me & a month agothey wanted me to join the church, but I said no, not now,i may be mistaken in my feelings, i will wait awhile,but now i feel that God has called me & on the first Sundayin July i will join the church--dear friend i wish i couldwrite to you as i feel, but i cant do it yet--you no i learnedto read and write while prisons & i aint got well enough alongto write as i would talk; i no i aint spelled all the words ritein this & lots of other mistakes but you will excuse it i no,for you no i was brought up in a poor house until i run away,& that i never new who my father and mother was & i dontno my right name, & i hope you wont be mad at me, but i haveas much rite to one name as another & i have taken your name,for you wont use it when you get out i no, & you are the mani think most of in the world; so i hope you wont be mad--I am doing well, i put $10 a month in bank with $25 of the $50--if you ever want any or all of it let me know, & it is yours.

i wish you would let me send you some now. I send you with thisa receipt for a year of Littles Living Age, i didn't knowwhat you would like & i told Mr. Brown & he said he thought youwould like it--i wish i was nere you so i could send you chuck(REFRESHMENTS) on holidays; it would spoil this weatherfrom here, but i will send you a box next thanksgiving any way--next week Mr. Brown takes me into his store as liteporter & will advance me as soon as i know a little more--he keeps a big granary store, wholesale--i forgot to tellyou of my mission school, sunday school class--the schoolis in the sunday afternoon, i went out two sunday afternoons,and picked up seven kids (LITTLE BOYS) & got them to come in.

two of them new as much as i did & i had them put in a classwhere they could learn something. i dont no much myself,but as these kids cant read i get on nicely with them.

i make sure of them by going after them every Sundayhour before school time, I also got 4 girls to come.

tell Mack and Harry about me, if they will come out herewhen their time is up i will get them jobs at once.

i hope you will excuse this long letter & all mistakes,i wish i could see you for i cant write as i would talk--i hope the warm weather is doing your lungs good--i was afraid when you was bleeding you would die--give my respects to all the boys and tell them how i am doing--i am doing well and every one here treats me as kind as they can--Mr. Brown is going to write to you sometime--i hope some dayyou will write to me, this letter is from your very truefriendC----W----who you know as Jack Hunt.

I send you Mr. Brown's card. Send my letter to him.

Here was true eloquence; irresistible eloquence;and without a single grace or ornament to help it out.

I have seldom been so deeply stirred by any piece of writing.

The reader of it halted, all the way through, on a lame and broken voice;yet he had tried to fortify his feelings by several privatereadings of the letter before venturing into company with it.

He was practising upon me to see if there was any hope of hisbeing able to read the document to his prayer-meeting withanything like a decent command over his feelings. The resultwas not promising. However, he determined to risk it; and did.

He got through tolerably well; but his audience broke down early,and stayed in that condition to the end.

The fame of the letter spread through the town. A brotherminister came and borrowed the manuscript, put it bodily intoa sermon, preached the sermon to twelve hundred people on aSunday morning, and the letter drowned them in their own tears.

Then my friend put it into a sermon and went before his Sundaymorning congregation with it. It scored another triumph.

The house wept as one individual.

My friend went on summer vacation up into the fishing regionsof our northern British neighbors, and carried this sermonwith him, since he might possibly chance to need a sermon.

He was asked to preach, one day. The little church was full.

Among the people present were the late Dr. J. G. Holland,the late Mr. Seymour of the 'New York Times,' Mr. Page,the philanthropist and temperance advocate, and, I think,Senator Frye, of Maine. The marvelous letter did its wonted work;all the people were moved, all the people wept; the tearsflowed in a steady stream down Dr. Holland's cheeks, and nearlythe same can be said with regard to all who were there.

Mr. Page was so full of enthusiasm over the letter that he saidhe would not rest until he made pilgrimage to that prison,and had speech with the man who had been able to inspire afellow-unfortunate to write so priceless a tract.

Ah, that unlucky Page!--and another man. If they had only been in Jericho,that letter would have rung through the world and stirred all the hearts ofall the nations for a thousand years to come, and nobody might ever have foundout that it was the confoundedest, brazenest, ingeniousest piece of fraudand humbuggery that was ever concocted to fool poor confiding mortals with!

The letter was a pure swindle, and that is the truth.

And take it by and large, it was without a compeer among swindles.

It was perfect, it was rounded, symmetrical, complete, colossal!

The reader learns it at this point; but we didn't learn ittill some miles and weeks beyond this stage of the affair.

My friend came back from the woods, and he and other clergymenand lay missionaries began once more to inundate audienceswith their tears and the tears of said audiences; I begged hardfor permission to print the letter in a magazine and tell the waterystory of its triumphs; numbers of people got copies of the letter,with permission to circulate them in writing, but not in print;copies were sent to the Sandwich Islands and other far regions.

Charles Dudley Warner was at church, one day, when the worn letter was readand wept over. At the church door, afterward, he dropped a peculiarly coldiceberg down the clergyman's back with the question--'Do you know that letter to be genuine?'

It was the first suspicion that had ever been voiced;but it had that sickening effect which first-uttered suspicionsagainst one's idol always have. Some talk followed--'Why--what should make you suspect that it isn't genuine?'

'Nothing that I know of, except that it is too neat, and compact, and fluent,and nicely put together for an ignorant person, an unpractised hand.

I think it was done by an educated man.'

The literary artist had detected the literary machinery.

If you will look at the letter now, you will detect it yourself--it is observable in every line.

Straightway the clergyman went off, with this seed of suspicionsprouting in him, and wrote to a minister residing in that townwhere Williams had been jailed and converted; asked for light;and also asked if a person in the literary line (meaning me)might be allowed to print the letter and tell its history.

He presently received this answer--Rev. -----MY DEAR FRIEND,--In regard to that 'convict's letter' there can beno doubt as to its genuineness. 'Williams,' to whom it was written,lay in our jail and professed to have been converted, and Rev. Mr.----,the chaplain, had great faith in the genuineness of the change--as much as one can have in any such case.

The letter was sent to one of our ladies, who is a Sunday-school teacher,--sent either by Williams himself, or the chaplain of the State'sprison, probably. She has been greatly annoyed in having so much publicity,lest it might seem a breach of confidence, or be an injury to Williams.

In regard to its publication, I can give no permission; though if the namesand places were omitted, and especially if sent out of the country,I think you might take the responsibility and do it.

It is a wonderful letter, which no Christian genius, much lessone unsanctified, could ever have written. As showing the workof grace in a human heart, and in a very degraded and wicked one,it proves its own origin and reproves our weak faith in its powerto cope with any form of wickedness.

'Mr. Brown' of St. Louis, some one said, was a Hartford man.

Do all whom you send from Hartford serve their Master as well?

P.S.--Williams is still in the State's prison, serving out along sentence--of nine years, I think. He has been sick and threatenedwith consumption, but I have not inquired after him lately.

This lady that I speak of corresponds with him, I presume,and will be quite sure to look after him.

This letter arrived a few days after it was written--and up wentMr. Williams's stock again. Mr. Warner's low-down suspicionwas laid in the cold, cold grave, where it apparently belonged.

It was a suspicion based upon mere internal evidence, anyway;and when you come to internal evidence, it's a big field and a gamethat two can play at: as witness this other internal evidence,discovered by the writer of the note above quoted, that 'itis a wonderful letter--which no Christian genius, much lessone unsanctified, could ever have written.'

I had permission now to print--provided I suppressed namesand places and sent my narrative out of the country.

So I chose an Australian magazine for vehicle, as being farenough out of the country, and set myself to work on my article.

And the ministers set the pumps going again, with the letter towork the handles.

But meantime Brother Page had been agitating.

He had not visited the penitentiary, but he had sent a copyof the illustrious letter to the chaplain of that institution,and accompanied it with--apparently inquiries. He got an answer,dated four days later than that other Brother's reassuring epistle;and before my article was complete, it wandered into my hands.

The original is before me, now, and I here append it.

It is pretty well loaded with internal evidence of the mostsolid description--STATE'S PRISON, CHAPLAIN'S OFFICE, July 11, 1873.

DEAR BRO. PAGE,--Herewith please find the letter kindly loaned me.

I am afraid its genuineness cannot be established.

It purports to be addressed to some prisoner here. No such letterever came to a prisoner here. All letters received are carefullyread by officers of the prison before they go into the handsof the convicts, and any such letter could not be forgotten.

Again, Charles Williams is not a Christian man, but a dissolute,cunning prodigal, whose father is a minister of the gospel.

His name is an assumed one. I am glad to have made your acquaintance.

I am preparing a lecture upon life seen through prison bars,and should like to deliver the same in your vicinity.

And so ended that little drama. My poor article went into the fire;for whereas the materials for it were now more abundant andinfinitely richer than they had previously been, there were partiesall around me, who, although longing for the publication before,were a unit for suppression at this stage and complexion of the game.

They said: 'Wait--the wound is too fresh, yet.' All the copiesof the famous letter except mine disappeared suddenly; and from thattime onward, the aforetime same old drought set in in the churches.

As a rule, the town was on a spacious grin for a while, but therewere places in it where the grin did not appear, and where it wasdangerous to refer to the ex-convict's letter.

A word of explanation. 'Jack Hunt,' the professed writer of the letter,was an imaginary person. The burglar Williams--Harvard graduate,son of a minister--wrote the letter himself, to himself: got it smuggledout of the prison; got it conveyed to persons who had supported andencouraged him in his conversion--where he knew two things would happen:

the genuineness of the letter would not be doubted or inquired into;and the nub of it would be noticed, and would have valuable effect--the effect, indeed, of starting a movement to get Mr. Williams pardonedout of prison.

That 'nub' is so ingeniously, so casually, flung in, and immediatelyleft there in the tail of the letter, undwelt upon, that an indifferentreader would never suspect that it was the heart and core of the epistle,if he even took note of it at all, This is the 'nub'--'i hope the warm weather is doing your lungs good--I WAS AFRAIDWHEN YOU WAS BLEEDING YOU WOULD DIE--give my respects,' etc.

That is all there is of it--simply touch and go--no dwelling upon it.

Nevertheless it was intended for an eye that would be swift to see it;and it was meant to move a kind heart to try to effect the liberation of apoor reformed and purified fellow lying in the fell grip of consumption.

When I for the first time heard that letter read, nine years ago,I felt that it was the most remarkable one I had ever encountered.

And it so warmed me toward Mr. Brown of St. Louis that I said that if everI visited that city again, I would seek out that excellent man and kissthe hem of his garment if it was a new one. Well, I visited St. Louis,but I did not hunt for Mr. Brown; for, alas! the investigationsof long ago had proved that the benevolent Brown, like 'Jack Hunt,'

was not a real person, but a sheer invention of that gifted rascal,Williams--burglar, Harvard graduate, son of a clergyman.
Chapter 53 My Boyhood's Home
WE took passage in one of the fast boats of the St. Louis and St. PaulPacket Company, and started up the river.

When I, as a boy, first saw the mouth of the Missouri River, it was twenty-twoor twenty-three miles above St. Louis, according to the estimate of pilots;the wear and tear of the banks have moved it down eight miles since then;and the pilots say that within five years the river will cut through andmove the mouth down five miles more, which will bring it within ten milesof St. Louis.

About nightfall we passed the large and flourishing townof Alton, Illinois; and before daylight next morning the townof Louisiana, Missouri, a sleepy village in my day, but a briskrailway center now; however, all the towns out there arerailway centers now. I could not clearly recognize the place.

This seemed odd to me, for when I retired from the rebel armyin '61 I retired upon Louisiana in good order; at least in goodenough order for a person who had not yet learned how to retreataccording to the rules of war, and had to trust to native genius.

It seemed to me that for a first attempt at a retreat it wasnot badly done. I had done no advancing in all that campaignthat was at all equal to it.

There was a railway bridge across the river here well sprinkledwith glowing lights, and a very beautiful sight it was.

At seven in the morning we reached Hannibal, Missouri, where my boyhoodwas spent. I had had a glimpse of it fifteen years ago, and another glimpsesix years earlier, but both were so brief that they hardly counted.

The only notion of the town that remained in my mind was the memoryof it as I had known it when I first quitted it twenty-nine years ago.

That picture of it was still as clear and vivid to me as a photograph.

I stepped ashore with the feeling of one who returns out of adead-and-gone generation. I had a sort of realizing sense of whatthe Bastille prisoners must have felt when they used to come outand look upon Paris after years of captivity, and note how curiouslythe familiar and the strange were mixed together before them.

I saw the new houses--saw them plainly enough--but they did notaffect the older picture in my mind, for through their solid bricksand mortar I saw the vanished houses, which had formerly stood there,with perfect distinctness.

It was Sunday morning, and everybody was abed yet. So I passedthrough the vacant streets, still seeing the town as it was,and not as it is, and recognizing and metaphorically shakinghands with a hundred familiar objects which no longer exist;and finally climbed Holiday's Hill to get a comprehensive view.

The whole town lay spread out below me then, and I could mark and fixevery locality, every detail. Naturally, I was a good deal moved.

I said, 'Many of the people I once knew in this tranquil refuge of mychildhood are now in heaven; some, I trust, are in the other place.'

The things about me and before me made me feel like a boy again--convinced me that I was a boy again, and that I had simply beendreaming an unusually long dream; but my reflections spoiled all that;for they forced me to say, 'I see fifty old houses down yonder,into each of which I could enter and find either a man or a womanwho was a baby or unborn when I noticed those houses last, or agrandmother who was a plump young bride at that time.'

From this vantage ground the extensive view up and down the river,and wide over the wooded expanses of Illinois, is very beautiful--one of the most beautiful on the Mississippi, I think; which isa hazardous remark to make, for the eight hundred miles of riverbetween St. Louis and St. Paul afford an unbroken successionof lovely pictures. It may be that my affection for the one inquestion biases my judgment in its favor; I cannot say as to that.

No matter, it was satisfyingly beautiful to me, and it had thisadvantage over all the other friends whom I was about to greet again:

it had suffered no change; it was as young and fresh and comely and graciousas ever it had been; whereas, the faces of the others would be old,and scarred with the campaigns of life, and marked with their griefsand defeats, and would give me no upliftings of spirit.

An old gentleman, out on an early morning walk, came along, and wediscussed the weather, and then drifted into other matters. I could notremember his face. He said he had been living here twenty-eight years.

So he had come after my time, and I had never seen him before.

I asked him various questions; first about a mate of mine in Sunday school--what became of him?

'He graduated with honor in an Eastern college, wandered off intothe world somewhere, succeeded at nothing, passed out of knowledgeand memory years ago, and is supposed to have gone to the dogs.'

'He was bright, and promised well when he was a boy.'

'Yes, but the thing that happened is what became of it all.'

I asked after another lad, altogether the brightest in our villageschool when I was a boy.

'He, too, was graduated with honors, from an Eastern college;but life whipped him in every battle, straight along, and he diedin one of the Territories, years ago, a defeated man.'

I asked after another of the bright boys.

'He is a success, always has been, always will be, I think.'

I inquired after a young fellow who came to the town to studyfor one of the professions when I was a boy.

'He went at something else before he got through--went from medicineto law, or from law to medicine--then to some other new thing;went away for a year, came back with a young wife; fell to drinking,then to gambling behind the door; finally took his wife and two youngchildren to her father's, and went off to Mexico; went from badto worse, and finally died there, without a cent to buy a shroud,and without a friend to attend the funeral.'

'Pity, for he was the best-natured, and most cheery and hopefulyoung fellow that ever was.'

I named another boy.

'Oh, he is all right. Lives here yet; has a wife and children,and is prospering.'

Same verdict concerning other boys.

I named three school-girls.

'The first two live here, are married and have children;the other is long ago dead--never married.'

I named, with emotion, one of my early sweethearts.

'She is all right. Been married three times; buried two husbands,divorced from the third, and I hear she is getting ready to marryan old fellow out in Colorado somewhere. She's got children scatteredaround here and there, most everywheres.'

The answer to several other inquiries was brief and simple--'Killed in the war.'

I named another boy.

'Well, now, his case is curious! There wasn't a human beingin this town but knew that that boy was a perfect chucklehead;perfect dummy; just a stupid ass, as you may say.

Everybody knew it, and everybody said it. Well, if that veryboy isn't the first lawyer in the State of Missouri to-day,I'm a Democrat!'

'Is that so?'

'It's actually so. I'm telling you the truth.'

'How do you account for it?'

'Account for it? There ain't any accounting for it,except that if you send a damned fool to St. Louis, and youdon't tell them he's a damned fool they'll never find it out.

There's one thing sure--if I had a damned fool I should knowwhat to do with him: ship him to St. Louis--it's the noblestmarket in the world for that kind of property. Well, when youcome to look at it all around, and chew at it and think it over,don't it just bang anything you ever heard of?'

'Well, yes, it does seem to. But don't you think maybe itwas the Hannibal people who were mistaken about the boy,and not the St. Louis people'

'Oh, nonsense! The people here have known him from the very cradle--they knew him a hundred times better than the St. Louis idiots couldhave known him. No, if you have got any damned fools that you wantto realize on, take my advice--send them to St. Louis.'

I mentioned a great number of people whom I had formerly known.

Some were dead, some were gone away, some had prospered,some had come to naught; but as regarded a dozen or so of the lot,the answer was comforting:

'Prosperous--live here yet--town littered with their children.'

I asked about Miss ----Died in the insane asylum three or four years ago--never was out of itfrom the time she went in; and was always suffering, too; never gota shred of her mind back.'

If he spoke the truth, here was a heavy tragedy, indeed.

Thirty-six years in a madhouse, that some young fools might have some fun!

I was a small boy, at the time; and I saw those giddy young ladies cometiptoeing into the room where Miss ---- sat reading at midnight by a lamp.

The girl at the head of the file wore a shroud and a doughface,she crept behind the victim, touched her on the shoulder,and she looked up and screamed, and then fell into convulsions.

She did not recover from the fright, but went mad. In these days itseems incredible that people believed in ghosts so short a time ago.

But they did.

After asking after such other folk as I could call to mind,I finally inquired about MYSELF:

'Oh, he succeeded well enough--another case of damned fool.

If they'd sent him to St. Louis, he'd have succeeded sooner.'

It was with much satisfaction that I recognized the wisdomof having told this candid gentleman, in the beginning,that my name was Smith.
Chapter 54 Past and Present
Being left to myself, up there, I went on picking out old houses in thedistant town, and calling back their former inmates out of the moldy past.

Among them I presently recognized the house of the father of Lem Hackett(fictitious name). It carried me back more than a generation in a moment,and landed me in the midst of a time when the happenings of life were notthe natural and logical results of great general laws, but of special orders,and were freighted with very precise and distinct purposes--partly punitivein intent, partly admonitory; and usually local in application.

When I was a small boy, Lem Hackett was drowned--on a Sunday.

He fell out of an empty flat-boat, where he was playing.

Being loaded with sin, he went to the bottom like an anvil.

He was the only boy in the village who slept that night.

We others all lay awake, repenting. We had not needed the information,delivered from the pulpit that evening, that Lem's was a caseof special judgment--we knew that, already. There was a ferociousthunder-storm, that night, and it raged continuously until near dawn.

The winds blew, the windows rattled, the rain swept along the roofin pelting sheets, and at the briefest of intervals the inky blacknessof the night vanished, the houses over the way glared out whiteand blinding for a quivering instant, then the solid darkness shutdown again and a splitting peal of thunder followed, which seemedto rend everything in the neighborhood to shreds and splinters.

I sat up in bed quaking and shuddering, waiting for the destructionof the world, and expecting it. To me there was nothing strangeor incongruous in heaven's making such an uproar about Lem Hackett.

Apparently it was the right and proper thing to do.

Not a doubt entered my mind that all the angels were grouped together,discussing this boy's case and observing the awful bombardmentof our beggarly little village with satisfaction and approval.

There was one thing which disturbed me in the most serious way;that was the thought that this centering of the celestial intereston our village could not fail to attract the attention of the observersto people among us who might otherwise have escaped notice for years.

I felt that I was not only one of those people, but the very one mostlikely to be discovered. That discovery could have but one result:

I should be in the fire with Lem before the chill of the riverhad been fairly warmed out of him. I knew that this would beonly just and fair. I was increasing the chances against myselfall the time, by feeling a secret bitterness against Lem for havingattracted this fatal attention to me, but I could not help it--this sinful thought persisted in infesting my breast in spite of me.

Every time the lightning glared I caught my breath, and judged I was gone.

In my terror and misery, I meanly began to suggest other boys,and mention acts of theirs which were wickeder than mine, and peculiarlyneeded punishment--and I tried to pretend to myself that I was simplydoing this in a casual way, and without intent to divert the heavenlyattention to them for the purpose of getting rid of it myself.

With deep sagacity I put these mentions into the form of sorrowingrecollections and left-handed sham-supplications that the sins of thoseboys might be allowed to pass unnoticed--'Possibly they may repent.'

'It is true that Jim Smith broke a window and lied about it--but maybe he did not mean any harm. And although Tom Holmessays more bad words than any other boy in the village,he probably intends to repent--though he has never said he would.

And whilst it is a fact that John Jones did fish a littleon Sunday, once, he didn't really catch anything but only just onesmall useless mud-cat; and maybe that wouldn't have been so awfulif he had thrown it back--as he says he did, but he didn't. Pitybut they would repent of these dreadful things--and maybe they willyet.'

But while I was shamefully trying to draw attention to these poor chaps--who were doubtless directing the celestial attention to me at the same moment,though I never once suspected that--I had heedlessly left my candle burning.

It was not a time to neglect even trifling precautions. There was no occasionto add anything to the facilities for attracting notice to me--so I putthe light out.

It was a long night to me, and perhaps the most distressful one I ever spent.

I endured agonies of remorse for sins which I knew I had committed,and for others which I was not certain about, yet was sure that they hadbeen set down against me in a book by an angel who was wiser than I and didnot trust such important matters to memory. It struck me, by and by,that I had been making a most foolish and calamitous mistake, in one respect:

doubtless I had not only made my own destruction sure by directing attentionto those other boys, but had already accomplished theirs!--Doubtless thelightning had stretched them all dead in their beds by this time!

The anguish and the fright which this thought gave me made my previoussufferings seem trifling by comparison.

Things had become truly serious. I resolved to turn overa new leaf instantly; I also resolved to connect myselfwith the church the next day, if I survived to see itssun appear. I resolved to cease from sin in all its forms,and to lead a high and blameless life for ever after.

I would be punctual at church and Sunday-school; visit the sick;carry baskets of victuals to the poor (simply to fulfilthe regulation conditions, although I knew we had none among usso poor but they would smash the basket over my head for my pains);I would instruct other boys in right ways, and take the resultingtrouncings meekly; I would subsist entirely on tracts;I would invade the rum shop and warn the drunkard--and finally,if I escaped the fate of those who early become too good to live,I would go for a missionary.

The storm subsided toward daybreak, and I dozed gradually to sleepwith a sense of obligation to Lem Hackett for going to eternal sufferingin that abrupt way, and thus preventing a far more dreadful disaster--my own loss.

But when I rose refreshed, by and by, and found that those other boyswere still alive, I had a dim sense that perhaps the whole thingwas a false alarm; that the entire turmoil had been on Lem's accountand nobody's else. The world looked so bright and safe that theredid not seem to be any real occasion to turn over a new leaf.

I was a little subdued, during that day, and perhaps the next;after that, my purpose of reforming slowly dropped out of my mind,and I had a peaceful, comfortable time again, until the next storm.

That storm came about three weeks later; and it was the mostunaccountable one, to me, that I had ever experienced;for on the afternoon of that day, 'Dutchy' was drowned.

Dutchy belonged to our Sunday-school. He was a Germanlad who did not know enough to come in out of the rain;but he was exasperatingly good, and had a prodigious memory.

One Sunday he made himself the envy of all the youth and the talkof all the admiring village, by reciting three thousand verses ofScripture without missing a word; then he went off the very next dayand got drowned.

Circumstances gave to his death a peculiar impressiveness.

We were all bathing in a muddy creek which had a deep holein it, and in this hole the coopers had sunk a pile of greenhickory hoop poles to soak, some twelve feet under water.

We were diving and 'seeing who could stay under longest.'

We managed to remain down by holding on to the hoop poles.

Dutchy made such a poor success of it that he was hailed withlaughter and derision every time his head appeared above water.

At last he seemed hurt with the taunts, and begged usto stand still on the bank and be fair with him and give himan honest count--'be friendly and kind just this once, and notmiscount for the sake of having the fun of laughing at him.'

Treacherous winks were exchanged, and all said 'All right, Dutchy--go ahead, we'll play fair.'

Dutchy plunged in, but the boys, instead of beginning to count,followed the lead of one of their number and scamperedto a range of blackberry bushes close by and hid behind it.

They imagined Dutchy's humiliation, when he should rise aftera superhuman effort and find the place silent and vacant,nobody there to applaud. They were 'so full of laugh' with the idea,that they were continually exploding into muffled cackles.

Time swept on, and presently one who was peeping through the briers,said, with surprise--'Why, he hasn't come up, yet!'

The laughing stopped.

'Boys, it 's a splendid dive,' said one.

'Never mind that,' said another, 'the joke on him is all the better for it.'

There was a remark or two more, and then a pause.

Talking ceased, and all began to peer through the vines.

Before long, the boys' faces began to look uneasy, then anxious,then terrified. Still there was no movement of the placid water.

Hearts began to beat fast, and faces to turn pale.

We all glided out, silently, and stood on the bank, our horrifiedeyes wandering back and forth from each other's countenancesto the water.

'Somebody must go down and see!'

Yes, that was plain; but nobody wanted that grisly task.

'Draw straws!'

So we did--with hands which shook so, that we hardly knewwhat we were about. The lot fell to me, and I went down.

The water was so muddy I could not see anything, but I felt aroundamong the hoop poles, and presently grasped a limp wrist whichgave me no response--and if it had I should not have known it,I let it go with such a frightened suddenness.

The boy had been caught among the hoop poles and entangledthere, helplessly. I fled to the surface and told the awful news.

Some of us knew that if the boy were dragged out at once he mightpossibly be resuscitated, but we never thought of that. We did notthink of anything; we did not know what to do, so we did nothing--except that the smaller lads cried, piteously, and we all struggledfrantically into our clothes, putting on anybody's that came handy,and getting them wrong-side-out and upside-down, as a rule.

Then we scurried away and gave the alarm, but none of us went back to seethe end of the tragedy. We had a more important thing to attend to:

we all flew home, and lost not a moment in getting ready to leada better life.

The night presently closed down. Then came on that tremendousand utterly unaccountable storm. I was perfectly dazed; I couldnot understand it. It seemed to me that there must be some mistake.

The elements were turned loose, and they rattled and banged and blazedaway in the most blind and frantic manner. All heart and hope wentout of me, and the dismal thought kept floating through my brain,'If a boy who knows three thousand verses by heart is not satisfactory,what chance is there for anybody else?'

Of course I never questioned for a moment that the storm wason Dutchy's account, or that he or any other inconsequentialanimal was worthy of such a majestic demonstration from on high;the lesson of it was the only thing that troubled me;for it convinced me that if Dutchy, with all his perfections,was not a delight, it would be vain for me to turn over a new leaf,for I must infallibly fall hopelessly short of that boy,no matter how hard I might try. Nevertheless I did turn it over--a highly educated fear compelled me to do that--but succeedingdays of cheerfulness and sunshine came bothering around,and within a month I had so drifted backward that again Iwas as lost and comfortable as ever.

Breakfast time approached while I mused these musings and calledthese ancient happenings back to mind; so I got me back intothe present and went down the hill.

On my way through town to the hotel, I saw the house which wasmy home when I was a boy. At present rates, the people who nowoccupy it are of no more value than I am; but in my time theywould have been worth not less than five hundred dollars apiece.

They are colored folk.

After breakfast, I went out alone again, intending to hunt up someof the Sunday-schools and see how this generation of pupils mightcompare with their progenitors who had sat with me in those placesand had probably taken me as a model--though I do not rememberas to that now. By the public square there had been in my daya shabby little brick church called the 'Old Ship of Zion,'

which I had attended as a Sunday-school scholar; and I foundthe locality easily enough, but not the old church; it was gone,and a trig and rather hilarious new edifice was in its place.

The pupils were better dressed and better looking than were thoseof my time; consequently they did not resemble their ancestors;and consequently there was nothing familiar to me in their faces.

Still, I contemplated them with a deep interest and a yearning wistfulness,and if I had been a girl I would have cried; for they were the offspring,and represented, and occupied the places, of boys and girls someof whom I had loved to love, and some of whom I had loved to hate,but all of whom were dear to me for the one reason or the other,so many years gone by--and, Lord, where be they now!

I was mightily stirred, and would have been grateful to be allowedto remain unmolested and look my fill; but a bald-summited superintendentwho had been a tow-headed Sunday-school mate of mine on that spotin the early ages, recognized me, and I talked a flutter of wildnonsense to those children to hide the thoughts which were in me,and which could not have been spoken without a betrayal of feelingthat would have been recognized as out of character with me.

Making speeches without preparation is no gift of mine;and I was resolved to shirk any new opportunity, but inthe next and larger Sunday-school I found myself in the rearof the assemblage; so I was very willing to go on the platforma moment for the sake of getting a good look at the scholars.

On the spur of the moment I could not recall any of the old idiotictalks which visitors used to insult me with when I was a pupil there;and I was sorry for this, since it would have given me timeand excuse to dawdle there and take a long and satisfying lookat what I feel at liberty to say was an array of fresh youngcomeliness not matchable in another Sunday-school of the same size.

As I talked merely to get a chance to inspect; and as I strungout the random rubbish solely to prolong the inspection,I judged it but decent to confess these low motives,and I did so.

If the Model Boy was in either of these Sunday-schools, I did not see him.

The Model Boy of my time--we never had but the one--was perfect:

perfect in manners, perfect in dress, perfect in conduct, perfect infilial piety, perfect in exterior godliness; but at bottom he was aprig; and as for the contents of his skull, they could have changedplace with the contents of a pie and nobody would have been the worse offfor it but the pie. This fellow's reproachlessness was a standingreproach to every lad in the village. He was the admiration of all themothers, and the detestation of all their sons. I was told what becameof him, but as it was a disappointment to me, I will not enter intodetails. He succeeded in life.
Chapter 55 A Vendetta and Other Things
DURING my three days' stay in the town, I woke up every morningwith the impression that I was a boy--for in my dreams the faceswere all young again, and looked as they had looked in the old times--but I went to bed a hundred years old, every night--for meantime Ihad been seeing those faces as they are now.

Of course I suffered some surprises, along at first,before I had become adjusted to the changed state of things.

I met young ladies who did not seem to have changed at all;but they turned out to be the daughters of the young ladiesI had in mind--sometimes their grand-daughters. When youare told that a stranger of fifty is a grandmother, there isnothing surprising about it; but if, on the contrary, she isa person whom you knew as a little girl, it seems impossible.

You say to yourself, 'How can a little girl be a grandmother.'

It takes some little time to accept and realize the fact that while youhave been growing old, your friends have not been standing still,in that matter.

I noticed that the greatest changes observable were with the women,not the men. I saw men whom thirty years had changed but slightly;but their wives had grown old. These were good women; it is very wearingto be good.

There was a saddler whom I wished to see; but he was gone.

Dead, these many years, they said. Once or twice a day,the saddler used to go tearing down the street, putting on hiscoat as he went; and then everybody knew a steamboat was coming.

Everybody knew, also, that John Stavely was not expecting anybodyby the boat--or any freight, either; and Stavely must have knownthat everybody knew this, still it made no difference to him;he liked to seem to himself to be expecting a hundred thousandtons of saddles by this boat, and so he went on all his life,enjoying being faithfully on hand to receive and receiptfor those saddles, in case by any miracle they should come.

A malicious Quincy paper used always to refer to this town, in derisionas 'Stavely's Landing.' Stavely was one of my earliest admirations;I envied him his rush of imaginary business, and the displayhe was able to make of it, before strangers, as he went flyingdown the street struggling with his fluttering coat.

But there was a carpenter who was my chiefest hero. He was a mighty liar,but I did not know that; I believed everything he said. He was a romantic,sentimental, melodramatic fraud, and his bearing impressed me with awe.

I vividly remember the first time he took me into his confidence. He wasplaning a board, and every now and then he would pause and heave a deep sigh;and occasionally mutter broken sentences--confused and not intelligible--but out of their midst an ejaculation sometimes escaped which made me shiverand did me good: one was, 'O God, it is his blood!' I sat on the tool-chestand humbly and shudderingly admired him; for I judged he was full of crime.

At last he said in a low voice--'My little friend, can you keep a secret?'

I eagerly said I could.

'A dark and dreadful one?'

I satisfied him on that point.

'Then I will tell you some passages in my history; for oh,I MUST relieve my burdened soul, or I shall die! '

He cautioned me once more to be 'as silent as the grave;'

then he told me he was a 'red-handed murderer.'

He put down his plane, held his hands out before him,contemplated them sadly, and said--'Look--with these hands I have taken the lives of thirty human beings!'

The effect which this had upon me was an inspiration to him,and he turned himself loose upon his subject with interest and energy.

He left generalizing, and went into details,--began with his first murder;described it, told what measures he had taken to avert suspicion;then passed to his second homicide, his third, his fourth, and so on.

He had always done his murders with a bowie-knife, and he made all myhairs rise by suddenly snatching it out and showing it to me.

At the end of this first seance I went home with six of hisfearful secrets among my freightage, and found them a greathelp to my dreams, which had been sluggish for a while back.

I sought him again and again, on my Saturday holidays; in fact Ispent the summer with him--all of it which was valuable to me.

His fascinations never diminished, for he threw something freshand stirring, in the way of horror, into each successive murder.

He always gave names, dates, places--everything. This by and by enabledme to note two things: that he had killed his victims in everyquarter of the globe, and that these victims were always named Lynch.

The destruction of the Lynches went serenely on, Saturday after Saturday,until the original thirty had multiplied to sixty--and more to beheard from yet; then my curiosity got the better of my timidity,and I asked how it happened that these justly punished persons all borethe same name.

My hero said he had never divulged that dark secret to anyliving being; but felt that he could trust me, and thereforehe would lay bare before me the story of his sad and blighted life.

He had loved one 'too fair for earth,' and she had reciprocated'with all the sweet affection of her pure and noble nature.'

But he had a rival, a 'base hireling' named Archibald Lynch,who said the girl should be his, or he would 'dye his handsin her heart's best blood.' The carpenter, 'innocent andhappy in love's young dream,' gave no weight to the threat,but led his 'golden-haired darling to the altar,' and there,the two were made one; there also, just as the minister's handswere stretched in blessing over their heads, the fell deed was done--with a knife--and the bride fell a corpse at her husband's feet.

And what did the husband do? He plucked forth that knife,and kneeling by the body of his lost one, swore to 'consecratehis life to the extermination of all the human scum that bearthe hated name of Lynch.'

That was it. He had been hunting down the Lynches and slaughtering them,from that day to this--twenty years. He had always used that sameconsecrated knife; with it he had murdered his long array of Lynches,and with it he had left upon the forehead of each victim a peculiar mark--a cross, deeply incised. Said he--'The cross of the Mysterious Avenger is known in Europe, in America,in China, in Siam, in the Tropics, in the Polar Seas, in the deserts of Asia,in all the earth. Wherever in the uttermost parts of the globe, a Lynchhas penetrated, there has the Mysterious Cross been seen, and those whohave seen it have shuddered and said, "It is his mark, he has been here."You have heard of the Mysterious Avenger--look upon him, for before youstands no less a person! But beware--breathe not a word to any soul.

Be silent, and wait. Some morning this town will flock aghast to viewa gory corpse; on its brow will be seen the awful sign, and men will trembleand whisper, "He has been here--it is the Mysterious Avenger's mark!"You will come here, but I shall have vanished; you will see me no more.'

This ass had been reading the 'Jibbenainosay,' no doubt,and had had his poor romantic head turned by it; but as I hadnot yet seen the book then, I took his inventions for truth,and did not suspect that he was a plagiarist.

However, we had a Lynch living in the town; and the more Ireflected upon his impending doom, the more I could not sleep.

It seemed my plain duty to save him, and a still plainerand more important duty to get some sleep for myself,so at last I ventured to go to Mr. Lynch and tell himwhat was about to happen to him--under strict secrecy.

I advised him to 'fly,' and certainly expected him to do it.

But he laughed at me; and he did not stop there; he led medown to the carpenter's shop, gave the carpenter a jeering andscornful lecture upon his silly pretensions, slapped his face,made him get down on his knees and beg--then went off andleft me to contemplate the cheap and pitiful ruin of what,in my eyes, had so lately been a majestic and incomparable hero.

The carpenter blustered, flourished his knife, and doomed thisLynch in his usual volcanic style, the size of his fatefulwords undiminished; but it was all wasted upon me; he was a heroto me no longer, but only a poor, foolish, exposed humbug.

I was ashamed of him, and ashamed of myself; I took no furtherinterest in him, and never went to his shop any more. He was aheavy loss to me, for he was the greatest hero I had ever known.

The fellow must have had some talent; for some of his imaginarymurders were so vividly and dramatically described that I remember alltheir details yet.

The people of Hannibal are not more changed than is the town.

It is no longer a village; it is a city, with a mayor, and a council,and water-works, and probably a debt. It has fifteen thousand people,is a thriving and energetic place, and is paved like the restof the west and south--where a well-paved street and a good sidewalkare things so seldom seen, that one doubts them when he does see them.

The customary half-dozen railways center in Hannibal now,and there is a new depot which cost a hundred thousand dollars.

In my time the town had no specialty, and no commercial grandeur;the daily packet usually landed a passenger and bought a catfish,and took away another passenger and a hatful of freight; but now a hugecommerce in lumber has grown up and a large miscellaneous commerceis one of the results. A deal of money changes hands there now.

Bear Creek--so called, perhaps, because it was always so particularlybare of bears--is hidden out of sight now, under islands andcontinents of piled lumber, and nobody but an expert can find it.

I used to get drowned in it every summer regularly, and bedrained out, and inflated and set going again by some chance enemy;but not enough of it is unoccupied now to drown a person in.

It was a famous breeder of chills and fever in its day.

I remember one summer when everybody in town had thisdisease at once. Many chimneys were shaken down, and allthe houses were so racked that the town had to be rebuilt.

The chasm or gorge between Lover's Leap and the hill west of itis supposed by scientists to have been caused by glacial action.

This is a mistake.

There is an interesting cave a mile or two below Hannibal, among the bluffs.

I would have liked to revisit it, but had not time. In my time the personwho then owned it turned it into a mausoleum for his daughter, aged fourteen.

The body of this poor child was put into a copper cylinder filled withalcohol, and this was suspended in one of the dismal avenues of the cave.

The top of the cylinder was removable; and it was said to be a common thingfor the baser order of tourists to drag the dead face into view and examine itand comment upon it.
Chapter 56 A Question of Law
THE slaughter-house is gone from the mouth of Bear Creek and so isthe small jail (or 'calaboose') which once stood in its neighborhood.

A citizen asked, 'Do you remember when Jimmy Finn, the town drunkard,was burned to death in the calaboose?'

Observe, now, how history becomes defiled, through lapse of timeand the help of the bad memories of men. Jimmy Finn was notburned in the calaboose, but died a natural death in a tan vat,of a combination of delirium tremens and spontaneous combustion.

When I say natural death, I mean it was a natural death forJimmy Finn to die. The calaboose victim was not a citizen;he was a poor stranger, a harmless whiskey-sodden tramp.

I know more about his case than anybody else; I knew too much of it,in that bygone day, to relish speaking of it. That tramp was wanderingabout the streets one chilly evening, with a pipe in his mouth,and begging for a match; he got neither matches nor courtesy;on the contrary, a troop of bad little boys followed himaround and amused themselves with nagging and annoying him.

I assisted; but at last, some appeal which the wayfarer madefor forbearance, accompanying it with a pathetic reference to hisforlorn and friendless condition, touched such sense of shameand remnant of right feeling as were left in me, and I went awayand got him some matches, and then hied me home and to bed,heavily weighted as to conscience, and unbuoyant in spirit.

An hour or two afterward, the man was arrested and locked upin the calaboose by the marshal--large name for a constable,but that was his title. At two in the morning, the church bells rangfor fire, and everybody turned out, of course--I with the rest.

The tramp had used his matches disastrously: he had set his strawbed on fire, and the oaken sheathing of the room had caught.

When I reached the ground, two hundred men, women, and childrenstood massed together, transfixed with horror, and staringat the grated windows of the jail. Behind the iron bars,and tugging frantically at them, and screaming for help,stood the tramp; he seemed like a black object set againsta sun, so white and intense was the light at his back.

That marshal could not be found, and he had the only key.

A battering-ram was quickly improvised, and the thunder of itsblows upon the door had so encouraging a sound that the spectatorsbroke into wild cheering, and believed the merciful battle won.

But it was not so. The timbers were too strong; they did not yield.

It was said that the man's death-grip still held fast to the barsafter he was dead; and that in this position the fires wrapped himabout and consumed him. As to this, I do not know. What was seenafter I recognized the face that was pleading through the barswas seen by others, not by me.

I saw that face, so situated, every night for a long time afterward;and I believed myself as guilty of the man's death as if I had givenhim the matches purposely that he might burn himself up with them.

I had not a doubt that I should be hanged if my connection withthis tragedy were found out. The happenings and the impressionsof that time are burnt into my memory, and the study of thementertains me as much now as they themselves distressed me then.

If anybody spoke of that grisly matter, I was all ears in a moment,and alert to hear what might be said, for I was always dreadingand expecting to find out that I was suspected; and so fineand so delicate was the perception of my guilty conscience,that it often detected suspicion in the most purposeless remarks,and in looks, gestures, glances of the eye which had no significance,but which sent me shivering away in a panic of fright, just the same.

And how sick it made me when somebody dropped, howsoever carelesslyand barren of intent, the remark that 'murder will out!'

For a boy of ten years, I was carrying a pretty weighty cargo.

All this time I was blessedly forgetting one thing--the fact that I was an inveterate talker in my sleep.

But one night I awoke and found my bed-mate--my younger brother--sitting up in bed and contemplating me by the light of the moon.

I said--'What is the matter?'

'You talk so much I can't sleep.'

I came to a sitting posture in an instant, with my kidneys in my throatand my hair on end.

'What did I say. Quick--out with it--what did I say?'

'Nothing much.'

'It's a lie--you know everything.'

'Everything about what?'

'You know well enough. About THAT.'

'About WHAT?--I don't know what you are talking about.

I think you are sick or crazy or something. But anyway,you're awake, and I'll get to sleep while I've got a chance.'

He fell asleep and I lay there in a cold sweat, turning thisnew terror over in the whirling chaos which did duty as my mind.

The burden of my thought was, How much did I divulge?

How much does he know?--what a distress is this uncertainty!

But by and by I evolved an idea--I would wake my brother and probe himwith a supposititious case. I shook him up, and said--'Suppose a man should come to you drunk--'

'This is foolish--I never get drunk.'

'I don't mean you, idiot--I mean the man. Suppose a MANshould come to you drunk, and borrow a knife, or a tomahawk,or a pistol, and you forgot to tell him it was loaded, and--'

'How could you load a tomahawk?'

'I don't mean the tomahawk, and I didn't say the tomahawk; I said the pistol.

Now don't you keep breaking in that way, because this is serious.

There's been a man killed.'

'What! in this town?'

'Yes, in this town.'

'Well, go on--I won't say a single word.'

'Well, then, suppose you forgot to tell him to be careful with it,because it was loaded, and he went off and shot himself with that pistol--fooling with it, you know, and probably doing it by accident, being drunk.

Well, would it be murder?'

'No--suicide.'

'No, no. I don't mean HIS act, I mean yours: would you be a murdererfor letting him have that pistol?'

After deep thought came this answer--'Well, I should think I was guilty of something--maybe murder--yes, probably murder, but I don't quite know.'

This made me very uncomfortable. However, it was not a decisive verdict.

I should have to set out the real case--there seemed to be no other way.

But I would do it cautiously, and keep a watch out for suspicious effects.

I said--'I was supposing a case, but I am coming to the real one now.

Do you know how the man came to be burned up in the calaboose?'

'No.'

'Haven't you the least idea?'

'Not the least.'

'Wish you may die in your tracks if you have?'

'Yes, wish I may die in my tracks.'

'Well, the way of it was this. The man wanted some matches to lighthis pipe. A boy got him some. The man set fire to the calaboosewith those very matches, and burnt himself up.'

'Is that so?'

'Yes, it is. Now, is that boy a murderer, do you think?'

'Let me see. The man was drunk?'

'Yes, he was drunk.'

'Very drunk?'

'Yes.'

'And the boy knew it?'

'Yes, he knew it.'

There was a long pause. Then came this heavy verdict--'If the man was drunk, and the boy knew it, the boy murdered that man.

This is certain.'

Faint, sickening sensations crept along all the fibers of my body,and I seemed to know how a person feels who hears his death sentencepronounced from the bench. I waited to hear what my brother would say next.

I believed I knew what it would be, and I was right. He said--'I know the boy.'

I had nothing to say; so I said nothing. I simply shuddered.

Then he added--'Yes, before you got half through telling about the thing,I knew perfectly well who the boy was; it was Ben Coontz! '

I came out of my collapse as one who rises from the dead.

I said, with admiration--'Why, how in the world did you ever guess it?'

'You told it in your sleep.'

I said to myself, 'How splendid that is! This is a habitwhich must be cultivated.'

My brother rattled innocently on--'When you were talking in your sleep, you kept mumbling somethingabout "matches," which I couldn't make anything out of; but just now,when you began to tell me about the man and the calaboose and the matches,I remembered that in your sleep you mentioned Ben Coontz two or three times;so I put this and that together, you see, and right away I knew it was Benthat burnt that man up.'

I praised his sagacity effusively. Presently he asked--'Are you going to give him up to the law?'

'No,' I said; 'I believe that this will be a lesson to him.

I shall keep an eye on him, of course, for that is but right;but if he stops where he is and reforms, it shall never be said thatI betrayed him.'

'How good you are!'

'Well, I try to be. It is all a person can do in a world like this.'

And now, my burden being shifted to other shoulders, my terrorssoon faded away.

The day before we left Hannibal, a curious thing fell under my notice--the surprising spread which longitudinal time undergoes there.

I learned it from one of the most unostentatious of men--the coloredcoachman of a friend of mine, who lives three miles from town.

He was to call for me at the Park Hotel at 7.30 P.M., and drive me out.

But he missed it considerably--did not arrive till ten. He excusedhimself by saying--'De time is mos' an hour en a half slower in de country enwhat it is in de town; you'll be in plenty time, boss.

Sometimes we shoves out early for church, Sunday, en fetches updah right plum in de middle er de sermon. Diffunce in de time.

A body can't make no calculations 'bout it.'

I had lost two hours and a half; but I had learned a fact worth four.
Chapter 57 An Archangel
FROM St. Louis northward there are all the enlivening signs ofthe presence of active, energetic, intelligent, prosperous, practicalnineteenth-century populations. The people don't dream, they work.

The happy result is manifest all around in the substantial outsideaspect of things, and the suggestions of wholesome life and comfortthat everywhere appear.

Quincy is a notable example--a brisk, handsome, well-ordered city;and now, as formerly, interested in art, letters, and other high things.

But Marion City is an exception. Marion City has gone backwardsin a most unaccountable way. This metropolis promisedso well that the projectors tacked 'city' to its name in thevery beginning, with full confidence; but it was bad prophecy.

When I first saw Marion City, thirty-five years ago,it contained one street, and nearly or quite six houses.

It contains but one house now, and this one, in a state of ruin,is getting ready to follow the former five into the river.

Doubtless Marion City was too near to Quincy. It hadanother disadvantage: it was situated in a flat mud bottom,below high-water mark, whereas Quincy stands high up on the slopeof a hill.

In the beginning Quincy had the aspect and ways of a model New England town:

and these she has yet: broad, clean streets, trim, neat dwellingsand lawns, fine mansions, stately blocks of commercial buildings.

And there are ample fair-grounds, a well kept park, and manyattractive drives; library, reading-rooms, a couple of colleges,some handsome and costly churches, and a grand court-house, with groundswhich occupy a square. The population of the city is thirty thousand.

There are some large factories here, and manufacturing, of many sorts,is done on a great scale.

La Grange and Canton are growing towns, but I missed Alexandria;was told it was under water, but would come up to blow in the summer.

Keokuk was easily recognizable. I lived there in 1857--an extraordinaryyear there in real-estate matters. The 'boom' was something wonderful.

Everybody bought, everybody sold--except widows and preachers;they always hold on; and when the tide ebbs, they get left.

Anything in the semblance of a town lot, no matter how situated,was salable, and at a figure which would still have been high if the groundhad been sodded with greenbacks.

The town has a population of fifteen thousand now, and is progressing witha healthy growth. It was night, and we could not see details, for which wewere sorry, for Keokuk has the reputation of being a beautiful city.

It was a pleasant one to live in long ago, and doubtless has advanced,not retrograded, in that respect.

A mighty work which was in progress there in my day is finished now.

This is the canal over the Rapids. It is eight miles long,three hundred feet wide, and is in no place less than six feet deep.

Its masonry is of the majestic kind which the War Departmentusually deals in, and will endure like a Roman aqueduct.

The work cost four or five millions.

After an hour or two spent with former friends, we started upthe river again. Keokuk, a long time ago, was an occasionalloafing-place of that erratic genius, Henry Clay Dean.

I believe I never saw him but once; but he was much talked ofwhen I lived there. This is what was said of him--He began life poor and without education. But he educated himself--on the curbstones of Keokuk. He would sit down on a curbstonewith his book, careless or unconscious of the clatter of commerceand the tramp of the passing crowds, and bury himself in hisstudies by the hour, never changing his position except to drawin his knees now and then to let a dray pass unobstructed;and when his book was finished, its contents, however abstruse,had been burnt into his memory, and were his permanent possession.

In this way he acquired a vast hoard of all sorts of learning,and had it pigeon-holed in his head where he could put his intellectualhand on it whenever it was wanted.

His clothes differed in no respect from a 'wharf-rat's,' except thatthey were raggeder, more ill-assorted and inharmonious (and thereforemore extravagantly picturesque), and several layers dirtier.

Nobody could infer the master-mind in the top of that edifice fromthe edifice itself.

He was an orator--by nature in the first place, and later by the trainingof experience and practice. When he was out on a canvass, his name wasa lodestone which drew the farmers to his stump from fifty miles around.

His theme was always politics. He used no notes, for a volcano doesnot need notes. In 1862, a son of Keokuk's late distinguished citizen,Mr. Claggett, gave me this incident concerning Dean--The war feeling was running high in Keokuk (in '61), and a greatmass meeting was to be held on a certain day in the new Athenaeum.

A distinguished stranger was to address the house.

After the building had been packed to its utmost capacity withsweltering folk of both sexes, the stage still remained vacant--the distinguished stranger had failed to connect.

The crowd grew impatient, and by and by indignant and rebellious.

About this time a distressed manager discovered Dean on a curb-stone,explained the dilemma to him, took his book away from him,rushed him into the building the back way, and told him to makefor the stage and save his country.

Presently a sudden silence fell upon the grumbling audience, and everybody'seyes sought a single point--the wide, empty, carpetless stage. A figureappeared there whose aspect was familiar to hardly a dozen persons present.

It was the scarecrow Dean--in foxy shoes, down at the heels; socks ofodd colors, also 'down;' damaged trousers, relics of antiquity, and a worldtoo short, exposing some inches of naked ankle; an unbuttoned vest,also too short, and exposing a zone of soiled and wrinkled linenbetween it and the waistband; shirt bosom open; long black handkerchief,wound round and round the neck like a bandage; bob-tailed blue coat,reaching down to the small of the back, with sleeves which left fourinches of forearm unprotected; small, stiff-brimmed soldier-cap hung ona corner of the bump of--whichever bump it was. This figure moved gravelyout upon the stage and, with sedate and measured step, down to the front,where it paused, and dreamily inspected the house, saying no word.

The silence of surprise held its own for a moment, then was broken by a justaudible ripple of merriment which swept the sea of faces like the washof a wave. The figure remained as before, thoughtfully inspecting.

Another wave started--laughter, this time. It was followed by another,then a third--this last one boisterous.

And now the stranger stepped back one pace, took off his soldier-cap,tossed it into the wing, and began to speak, with deliberation,nobody listening, everybody laughing and whispering.

The speaker talked on unembarrassed, and presently delivereda shot which went home, and silence and attention resulted.

He followed it quick and fast, with other telling things; warmed tohis work and began to pour his words out, instead of dripping them;grew hotter and hotter, and fell to discharging lightningsand thunder--and now the house began to break into applause,to which the speaker gave no heed, but went hammering straight on;unwound his black bandage and cast it away, still thundering;presently discarded the bob tailed coat and flung it aside,firing up higher and higher all the time; finally flung the vestafter the coat; and then for an untimed period stood there,like another Vesuvius, spouting smoke and flame, lava and ashes,raining pumice-stone and cinders, shaking the moral earth withintellectual crash upon crash, explosion upon explosion, while the madmultitude stood upon their feet in a solid body, answering backwith a ceaseless hurricane of cheers, through a thrashing snowstormof waving handkerchiefs.

'When Dean came,' said Claggett, 'the people thoughthe was an escaped lunatic; but when he went, they thoughthe was an escaped archangel.'

Burlington, home of the sparkling Burdette, is another hill city;and also a beautiful one; unquestionably so; a fine and flourishing city,with a population of twenty-five thousand, and belted with busy factoriesof nearly every imaginable description. It was a very sober city, too--for the moment--for a most sobering bill was pending; a bill to forbidthe manufacture, exportation, importation, purchase, sale, borrowing,lending, stealing, drinking, smelling, or possession, by conquest,inheritance, intent, accident, or otherwise, in the State of Iowa, of eachand every deleterious beverage known to the human race, except water.

This measure was approved by all the rational people in the State;but not by the bench of Judges.

Burlington has the progressive modern city's full equipment of devicesfor right and intelligent government; including a paid fire department,a thing which the great city of New Orleans is without, but still employsthat relic of antiquity, the independent system.

In Burlington, as in all these Upper-River towns, one breathesa go-ahead atmosphere which tastes good in the nostrils.

An opera-house has lately been built there which is in strongcontrast with the shabby dens which usually do duty as theatersin cities of Burlington's size.

We had not time to go ashore in Muscatine, but had a daylightview of it from the boat. I lived there awhile, many years ago,but the place, now, had a rather unfamiliar look; so Isuppose it has clear outgrown the town which I used to know.

In fact, I know it has; for I remember it as a small place--which it isn't now. But I remember it best for a lunaticwho caught me out in the fields, one Sunday, and extracteda butcher-knife from his boot and proposed to carve me up with it,unless I acknowledged him to be the only son of the Devil.

I tried to compromise on an acknowledgment that he was the onlymember of the family I had met; but that did not satisfy him;he wouldn't have any half-measures; I must say he was the soleand only son of the Devil--he whetted his knife on his boot.

It did not seem worth while to make trouble about a little thinglike that; so I swung round to his view of the matter and savedmy skin whole. Shortly afterward, he went to visit his father;and as he has not turned up since, I trust he is there yet.

And I remember Muscatine--still more pleasantly--for its summer sunsets.

I have never seen any, on either side of the ocean, that equaled them.

They used the broad smooth river as a canvas, and painted on it everyimaginable dream of color, from the mottled daintinesses and delicaciesof the opal, all the way up, through cumulative intensities, to blindingpurple and crimson conflagrations which were enchanting to the eye,but sharply tried it at the same time. All the Upper Mississippiregion has these extraordinary sunsets as a familiar spectacle.

It is the true Sunset Land: I am sure no other country can show so gooda right to the name. The sunrises are also said to be exceedingly fine.

I do not know.
Chapter 58 On the Upper River
THE big towns drop in, thick and fast, now: and between stretchprocessions of thrifty farms, not desolate solitude. Hour by hour,the boat plows deeper and deeper into the great and populous North-west;and with each successive section of it which is revealed,one's surprise and respect gather emphasis and increase.

Such a people, and such achievements as theirs, compel homage.

This is an independent race who think for themselves, and who arecompetent to do it, because they are educated and enlightened;they read, they keep abreast of the best and newest thought,they fortify every weak place in their land with a school,a college, a library, and a newspaper; and they live under law.

Solicitude for the future of a race like this is not in order.

This region is new; so new that it may be said to be still in its babyhood.

By what it has accomplished while still teething, one may forecastwhat marvels it will do in the strength of its maturity. It is so newthat the foreign tourist has not heard of it yet; and has not visited it.

For sixty years, the foreign tourist has steamed up and down the riverbetween St. Louis and New Orleans, and then gone home and written his book,believing he had seen all of the river that was worth seeing or thathad anything to see. In not six of all these books is there mentionof these Upper River towns--for the reason that the five or six touristswho penetrated this region did it before these towns were projected.

The latest tourist of them all (1878) made the same old regulation trip--he had not heard that there was anything north of St. Louis.

Yet there was. There was this amazing region, bristling with great towns,projected day before yesterday, so to speak, and built next morning.

A score of them number from fifteen hundred to five thousand people.

Then we have Muscatine, ten thousand; Winona, ten thousand; Moline,ten thousand; Rock Island, twelve thousand; La Crosse, twelve thousand;Burlington, twenty-five thousand; Dubuque, twenty-five thousand;Davenport, thirty thousand; St. Paul, fifty-eight thousand, Minneapolis,sixty thousand and upward.

The foreign tourist has never heard of these; there is no note of themin his books. They have sprung up in the night, while he slept.

So new is this region, that I, who am comparatively young,am yet older than it is. When I was born, St. Paul had a populationof three persons, Minneapolis had just a third as many.

The then population of Minneapolis died two years ago; and whenhe died he had seen himself undergo an increase, in forty years,of fifty-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine persons.

He had a frog's fertility.

I must explain that the figures set down above, as the population of St. Pauland Minneapolis, are several months old. These towns are far larger now.

In fact, I have just seen a newspaper estimate which gives the formerseventy-one thousand, and the latter seventy-eight thousand.

This book will not reach the public for six or seven months yet;none of the figures will be worth much then.

We had a glimpse of Davenport, which is another beautiful city,crowning a hill--a phrase which applies to all these towns; for theyare all comely, all well built, clean, orderly, pleasant to the eye,and cheering to the spirit; and they are all situated upon hills.

Therefore we will give that phrase a rest. The Indians have a traditionthat Marquette and Joliet camped where Davenport now stands, in 1673.

The next white man who camped there, did it about a hundred and seventyyears later--in 1834. Davenport has gathered its thirty thousandpeople within the past thirty years. She sends more children to herschools now, than her whole population numbered twenty-three years ago.

She has the usual Upper River quota of factories, newspapers,and institutions of learning; she has telephones, local telegraphs,an electric alarm, and an admirable paid fire department,consisting of six hook and ladder companies, four steam fire engines,and thirty churches. Davenport is the official residence of two bishops--Episcopal and Catholic.

Opposite Davenport is the flourishing town of Rock Island,which lies at the foot of the Upper Rapids. A great railroadbridge connects the two towns--one of the thirteen which fretthe Mississippi and the pilots, between St. Louis and St. Paul.

The charming island of Rock Island, three miles long and halfa mile wide, belongs to the United States, and the Government hasturned it into a wonderful park, enhancing its natural attractionsby art, and threading its fine forests with many miles of drives.

Near the center of the island one catches glimpses, through the trees,of ten vast stone four-story buildings, each of which covers an acreof ground. These are the Government workshops; for the Rock Islandestablishment is a national armory and arsenal.

We move up the river--always through enchanting scenery,there being no other kind on the Upper Mississippi--and pass Moline, a center of vast manufacturing industries;and Clinton and Lyons, great lumber centers; and presentlyreach Dubuque, which is situated in a rich mineral region.

The lead mines are very productive, and of wide extent.

Dubuque has a great number of manufacturing establishments; among thema plow factory which has for customers all Christendom in general.

At least so I was told by an agent of the concern who was onthe boat. He said--'You show me any country under the sun where they really know how to plow,and if I don't show you our mark on the plow they use, I'll eat that plow;and I won't ask for any Woostershyre sauce to flavor it up with, either.'

All this part of the river is rich in Indian history and traditions.

Black Hawk's was once a puissant name hereabouts; as was Keokuk's,further down. A few miles below Dubuque is the Tete de Mort--Death's-head rock, or bluff--to the top of which the French drovea band of Indians, in early times, and cooped them up there,with death for a certainty, and only the manner of it matterof choice--to starve, or jump off and kill themselves.

Black Hawk adopted the ways of the white people, toward the endof his life; and when he died he was buried, near Des Moines,in Christian fashion, modified by Indian custom; that is to say,clothed in a Christian military uniform, and with a Christian canein his hand, but deposited in the grave in a sitting posture.

Formerly, a horse had always been buried with a chief.

The substitution of the cane shows that Black Hawk's haughty naturewas really humbled, and he expected to walk when he got over.

We noticed that above Dubuque the water of the Mississippi wasolive-green--rich and beautiful and semi-transparent, with the sun on it.

Of course the water was nowhere as clear or of as fine a complexion as itis in some other seasons of the year; for now it was at flood stage,and therefore dimmed and blurred by the mud manufactured from caving banks.

The majestic bluffs that overlook the river, along through this region,charm one with the grace and variety of their forms, and the softbeauty of their adornment. The steep verdant slope, whose baseis at the water's edge is topped by a lofty rampart of broken,turreted rocks, which are exquisitely rich and mellow in color--mainly dark browns and dull greens, but splashed with other tints.

And then you have the shining river, winding here and there and yonder,its sweep interrupted at intervals by clusters of wooded islandsthreaded by silver channels; and you have glimpses of distant villages,asleep upon capes; and of stealthy rafts slipping along in the shadeof the forest walls; and of white steamers vanishing around remote points.

And it is all as tranquil and reposeful as dreamland, and has nothingthis-worldly about it--nothing to hang a fret or a worry upon.

Until the unholy train comes tearing along--which it presently does,ripping the sacred solitude to rags and tatters with its devil'swarwhoop and the roar and thunder of its rushing wheels--and straightwayyou are back in this world, and with one of its frets ready to handfor your entertainment: for you remember that this is the very roadwhose stock always goes down after you buy it, and always goes upagain as soon as you sell it. It makes me shudder to this day,to remember that I once came near not getting rid of my stock at all.

It must be an awful thing to have a railroad left on your hands.

The locomotive is in sight from the deck of the steamboat almostthe whole way from St. Louis to St. Paul--eight hundred miles.

These railroads have made havoc with the steamboat commerce.

The clerk of our boat was a steamboat clerk before these roadswere built. In that day the influx of population was so great,and the freight business so heavy, that the boats were not ableto keep up with the demands made upon their carrying capacity;consequently the captains were very independent and airy--pretty 'biggity,' as Uncle Remus would say. The clerk nut-shelled thecontrast between the former time and the present, thus--'Boat used to land--captain on hurricane roof--mighty stiff and straight--iron ramrod for a spine--kid gloves, plug tile, hair parted behind--man on shore takes off hat and says--' "Got twenty-eight tons of wheat, cap'n--be great favor if youcan take them."'Captain says--' " 'll take two of them"--and don't even condescend to look at him.

'But nowadays the captain takes off his old slouch, and smilesall the way around to the back of his ears, and gets off a bowwhich he hasn't got any ramrod to interfere with, and says--' "Glad to see you, Smith, glad to see you--you're looking well--haven't seen you looking so well for years--what you got for us?"' "Nuth'n", says Smith; and keeps his hat on, and just turnshis back and goes to talking with somebody else.

'Oh, yes, eight years ago, the captain was on top; but it's Smith's turn now.

Eight years ago a boat used to go up the river with every stateroom full,and people piled five and six deep on the cabin floor; and a soliddeck-load of immigrants and harvesters down below, into the bargain.

To get a first-class stateroom, you'd got to prove sixteen quarteringsof nobility and four hundred years of descent, or be personallyacquainted with the nigger that blacked the captain's boots.

But it's all changed now; plenty staterooms above, no harvesters below--there's a patent self-binder now, and they don't have harvestersany more; they've gone where the woodbine twineth--and they didn't goby steamboat, either; went by the train.'

Up in this region we met massed acres of lumber rafts coming down--but not floating leisurely along, in the old-fashioned way,manned with joyous and reckless crews of fiddling,song-singing, whiskey-drinking, breakdown-dancing rapscallions;no, the whole thing was shoved swiftly along by a powerfulstern-wheeler, modern fashion, and the small crews were quiet,orderly men, of a sedate business aspect, with not a suggestionof romance about them anywhere.

Along here, somewhere, on a black night, we ran some exceedinglynarrow and intricate island-chutes by aid of the electric light.

Behind was solid blackness--a crackless bank of it; ahead, a narrowelbow of water, curving between dense walls of foliage that almosttouched our bows on both sides; and here every individual leaf,and every individual ripple stood out in its natural color,and flooded with a glare as of noonday intensified.

The effect was strange, and fine, and very striking.

We passed Prairie du Chien, another of Father Marquette's camping-places;and after some hours of progress through varied and beautiful scenery,reached La Crosse. Here is a town of twelve or thirteen thousand population,with electric lighted streets, and with blocks of buildings which are statelyenough, and also architecturally fine enough, to command respect in any city.

It is a choice town, and we made satisfactory use of the hour allowed us,in roaming it over, though the weather was rainier than necessary.
Chapter 59 Legends and Scenery
WE added several passengers to our list, at La Crosse; among othersan old gentleman who had come to this north-western regionwith the early settlers, and was familiar with every part of it.

Pardonably proud of it, too. He said--'You'll find scenery between here and St. Paul that can givethe Hudson points. You'll have the Queen's Bluff--seven hundredfeet high, and just as imposing a spectacle as you can find anywheres;and Trempeleau Island, which isn't like any other island in America,I believe, for it is a gigantic mountain, with precipitous sides,and is full of Indian traditions, and used to be full of rattlesnakes;if you catch the sun just right there, you will have a picture thatwill stay with you. And above Winona you'll have lovely prairies;and then come the Thousand Islands, too beautiful for anything;green? why you never saw foliage so green, nor packed so thick;it's like a thousand plush cushions afloat on a looking-glass--when the water 's still; and then the monstrous bluffs on both sides ofthe river--ragged, rugged, dark-complected--just the frame that's wanted;you always want a strong frame, you know, to throw up the nice pointsof a delicate picture and make them stand out.'

The old gentleman also told us a touching Indian legend or two--but not very powerful ones.

After this excursion into history, he came back to the scenery,and described it, detail by detail, from the Thousand Islandsto St. Paul; naming its names with such facility, tripping alonghis theme with such nimble and confident ease, slamming in athree-ton word, here and there, with such a complacent air of 'tisn't-anything,-I-can-do-it-any-time-I-want-to, and letting offfine surprises of lurid eloquence at such judicious intervals,that I presently began to suspect--But no matter what I began to suspect. Hear him--'Ten miles above Winona we come to Fountain City, nestling sweetly at the feetof cliffs that lift their awful fronts, Jovelike, toward the blue depthsof heaven, bathing them in virgin atmospheres that have known no other contactsave that of angels' wings.

'And next we glide through silver waters, amid lovely and stupendousaspects of nature that attune our hearts to adoring admiration,about twelve miles, and strike Mount Vernon, six hundred feet high,with romantic ruins of a once first-class hotel perchedfar among the cloud shadows that mottle its dizzy heights--sole remnant of once-flourishing Mount Vernon, town of early days,now desolate and utterly deserted.

'And so we move on. Past Chimney Rock we fly--noble shaft of sixhundred feet; then just before landing at Minnieska our attention isattracted by a most striking promontory rising over five hundred feet--the ideal mountain pyramid. Its conic shape--thickly-wooded surfacegirding its sides, and its apex like that of a cone, cause the spectatorto wonder at nature's workings. From its dizzy heights superb viewsof the forests, streams, bluffs, hills and dales below and beyondfor miles are brought within its focus. What grander river scenerycan be conceived, as we gaze upon this enchanting landscape,from the uppermost point of these bluffs upon the valleys below?

The primeval wildness and awful loneliness of these sublime creationsof nature and nature's God, excite feelings of unbounded admiration,and the recollection of which can never be effaced from the memory,as we view them in any direction.

'Next we have the Lion's Head and the Lioness's Head, carved bynature's hand, to adorn and dominate the beauteous stream;and then anon the river widens, and a most charming and magnificentview of the valley before us suddenly bursts upon our vision;rugged hills, clad with verdant forests from summit to base,level prairie lands, holding in their lap the beautiful Wabasha,City of the Healing Waters, puissant foe of Bright's disease,and that grandest conception of nature's works, incomparable Lake Pepin--these constitute a picture whereon the tourist's eye may gazeuncounted hours, with rapture unappeased and unappeasable.

'And so we glide along; in due time encountering those majestic domes,the mighty Sugar Loaf, and the sublime Maiden's Rock--which latter,romantic superstition has invested with a voice; and oft-timesas the birch canoe glides near, at twilight, the dusky paddlerfancies he hears the soft sweet music of the long-departed Winona,darling of Indian song and story.

'Then Frontenac looms upon our vision, delightful resort of jadedsummer tourists; then progressive Red Wing; and Diamond Bluff, impressive andpreponderous in its lone sublimity; then Prescott and the St. Croix;and anon we see bursting upon us the domes and steeples of St. Paul,giant young chief of the North, marching with seven-league stride inthe van of progress, banner-bearer of the highest and newest civilization,carving his beneficent way with the tomahawk of commercial enterprise,sounding the warwhoop of Christian culture, tearing off the reeking scalpof sloth and superstition to plant there the steam-plow and the school-house--ever in his front stretch arid lawlessness, ignorance, crime, despair;ever in his wake bloom the jail, the gallows, and the pulpit; and ever----'

'Have you ever traveled with a panorama?'

'I have formerly served in that capacity.'

My suspicion was confirmed.

'Do you still travel with it?'

'No, she is laid up till the fall season opens. I am helping now to work upthe materials for a Tourist's Guide which the St. Louis and St. Paul PacketCompany are going to issue this summer for the benefit of travelers who goby that line.'

'When you were talking of Maiden's Rock, you spoke ofthe long-departed Winona, darling of Indian song and story.

Is she the maiden of the rock?--and are the two connected by legend?'

'Yes, and a very tragic and painful one. Perhaps the most celebrated,as well as the most pathetic, of all the legends of the Mississippi.'

We asked him to tell it. He dropped out of his conversationalvein and back into his lecture-gait without an effort,and rolled on as follows--'A little distance above Lake City is a famous point knownas Maiden's Rock, which is not only a picturesque spot, but isfull of romantic interest from the event which gave it its name,Not many years ago this locality was a favorite resort for the SiouxIndians on account of the fine fishing and hunting to be had there,and large numbers of them were always to be found in this locality.

Among the families which used to resort here, was one belongingto the tribe of Wabasha. We-no-na (first-born) was the nameof a maiden who had plighted her troth to a lover belongingto the same band. But her stern parents had promised her handto another, a famous warrior, and insisted on her wedding him.

The day was fixed by her parents, to her great grief.

She appeared to accede to the proposal and accompany them tothe rock, for the purpose of gathering flowers for the feast.

On reaching the rock, We-no-na ran to its summit and standing onits edge upbraided her parents who were below, for their cruelty,and then singing a death-dirge, threw herself from the precipice anddashed them in pieces on the rock below.'

'Dashed who in pieces--her parents?'

'Yes.'

'Well, it certainly was a tragic business, as you say.

And moreover, there is a startling kind of dramatic surpriseabout it which I was not looking for. It is a distinctimprovement upon the threadbare form of Indian legend.

There are fifty Lover's Leaps along the Mississippi from whosesummit disappointed Indian girls have jumped, but this is the onlyjump in the lot hat turned out in the right and satisfactory way.

What became of Winona?'

'She was a good deal jarred up and jolted: but she got herselftogether and disappeared before the coroner reached the fatal spot;and 'tis said she sought and married her true love, and wanderedwith him to some distant clime, where she lived happy ever after,her gentle spirit mellowed and chastened by the romantic incidentwhich had so early deprived her of the sweet guidance of a mother'slove and a father's protecting arm, and thrown her, all unfriended,upon the cold charity of a censorious world.'

I was glad to hear the lecturer's description of the scenery,for it assisted my appreciation of what I saw of it, and enabledme to imagine such of it as we lost by the intrusion of night.

As the lecturer remarked, this whole region is blanketed with Indiantales and traditions. But I reminded him that people usually merelymention this fact--doing it in a way to make a body's mouth water--and judiciously stopped there. Why? Because the impression left,was that these tales were full of incident and imagination--a pleasantimpression which would be promptly dissipated if the tales were told.

I showed him a lot of this sort of literature which I had been collecting,and he confessed that it was poor stuff, exceedingly sorry rubbish;and I ventured to add that the legends which he had himself told uswere of this character, with the single exception of the admirablestory of Winona. He granted these facts, but said that if I wouldhunt up Mr. Schoolcraft's book, published near fifty years ago,and now doubtless out of print, I would find some Indian inventionsin it that were very far from being barren of incident and imagination;that the tales in Hiawatha were of this sort, and they came fromSchoolcraft's book; and that there were others in the same bookwhich Mr. Longfellow could have turned into verse with good effect.

For instance, there was the legend of 'The Undying Head.'

He could not tell it, for many of the details had grown dimin his memory; but he would recommend me to find it and enlargemy respect for the Indian imagination. He said that this tale,and most of the others in the book, were current among the Indiansalong this part of the Mississippi when he first came here;and that the contributors to Schoolcraft's book had got them directlyfrom Indian lips, and had written them down with strict exactness,and without embellishments of their own.

I have found the book. The lecturer was right. There are severallegends in it which confirm what he said. I will offer two of them--'TheUndying Head,' and 'Peboan and Seegwun, an Allegory of the Seasons.'

The latter is used in Hiawatha; but it is worth reading in the original form,if only that one may see how effective a genuine poem can be withoutthe helps and graces of poetic measure and rhythm--PEBOAN AND SEEGWUN.

An old man was sitting alone in his lodge, by the sideof a frozen stream. It was the close of winter, and his firewas almost out, He appeared very old and very desolate.

His locks were white with age, and he trembled in every joint.

Day after day passed in solitude, and he heard nothing but the soundof the tempest, sweeping before it the new-fallen snow.

One day, as his fire was just dying, a handsome young man approachedand entered his dwelling. His cheeks were red with the blood of youth,his eyes sparkled with animation, and a smile played upon his lips.

He walked with a light and quick step. His forehead was boundwith a wreath of sweet grass, in place of a warrior's frontlet,and he carried a bunch of flowers in his hand.

'Ah, my son,' said the old man, 'I am happy to see you.

Come in. Come and tell me of your adventures, and what strangelands you have been to see. Let us pass the night together.

I will tell you of my prowess and exploits, and what I can perform.

You shall do the same, and we will amuse ourselves.'

He then drew from his sack a curiously wrought antique pipe,and having filled it with tobacco, rendered mild by a mixtureof certain leaves, handed it to his guest. When this ceremonywas concluded they began to speak.

'I blow my breath,' said the old man, 'and the stream stands still.

The water becomes stiff and hard as clear stone.'

'I breathe,' said the young man, 'and flowers spring up over the plain.'

'I shake my locks,' retorted the old man, 'and snow covers the land.

The leaves fall from the trees at my command, and my breath blows them away.

The birds get up from the water, and fly to a distant land.

The animals hide themselves from my breath, and the very ground becomes ashard as flint.'

'I shake my ringlets,' rejoined the young man, 'and warm showersof soft rain fall upon the earth. The plants lift up their headsout of the earth, like the eyes of children glistening with delight.

My voice recalls the birds. The warmth of my breath unlocks the streams.

Music fills the groves wherever I walk, and all nature rejoices.'

At length the sun began to rise. A gentle warmth cameover the place. The tongue of the old man became silent.

The robin and bluebird began to sing on the top of the lodge.

The stream began to murmur by the door, and the fragrance of growingherbs and flowers came softly on the vernal breeze.

Daylight fully revealed to the young man the character of his entertainer.

When he looked upon him, he had the icy visage of Peboan.

[Winter.]> Streams began to flow from his eyes. As the sun increased,he grew less and less in stature, and anon had melted completely away.

Nothing remained on the place of his lodge-fire but the miskodeed,[The trailing arbutus.]> a small white flower, with a pink border, which isone of the earliest species of northern plants.

'The Undying Head' is a rather long tale, but it makes up in weird conceits,fairy-tale prodigies, variety of incident, and energy of movement,for what it lacks in brevity.
Chapter 60
Speculations and ConclusionsWE reached St. Paul, at the head of navigation of the Mississippi,and there our voyage of two thousand miles from New Orleans ended. It isabout a ten-day trip by steamer. It can probably be done quicker by rail.

I judge so because I know that one may go by rail from St. Louis to Hannibal--a distance of at least a hundred and twenty miles--in seven hours.

This is better than walking; unless one is in a hurry.

The season being far advanced when we were in New Orleans, the rosesand magnolia blossoms were falling; but here in St. Paul it was the snow,In New Orleans we had caught an occasional withering breath from overa crater, apparently; here in St. Paul we caught a frequent benumbingone from over a glacier, apparently.

But I wander from my theme. St. Paul is a wonderful town.

It is put together in solid blocks of honest brick and stone,and has the air of intending to stay. Its post-office was establishedthirty-six years ago; and by and by, when the postmaster receiveda letter, he carried it to Washington, horseback, to inquire whatwas to be done with it. Such is the legend. Two frame houses werebuilt that year, and several persons were added to the population.

A recent number of the leading St. Paul paper, the 'Pioneer Press,'

gives some statistics which furnish a vivid contrast to that oldstate of things, to wit: Population, autumn of the present year(1882), 71,000; number of letters handled, first half ofthe year, 1,209,387; number of houses built during three-quartersof the year, 989; their cost, $3,186,000. The increase of lettersover the corresponding six months of last year was fifty per cent.

Last year the new buildings added to the city cost above $4,500,000.

St. Paul's strength lies in her commerce--I mean his commerce.

He is a manufacturing city, of course--all the cities of thatregion are--but he is peculiarly strong in the matter of commerce.

Last year his jobbing trade amounted to upwards of $52,000,000.

He has a custom-house, and is building a costly capitol to replacethe one recently burned--for he is the capital of the State.

He has churches without end; and not the cheap poor kind,but the kind that the rich Protestant puts up, the kind thatthe poor Irish 'hired-girl' delights to erect. What a passionfor building majestic churches the Irish hired-girl has.

It is a fine thing for our architecture but too often we enjoyher stately fanes without giving her a grateful thought.

In fact, instead of reflecting that 'every brick and every stonein this beautiful edifice represents an ache or a pain, and a handfulof sweat, and hours of heavy fatigue, contributed by the backand forehead and bones of poverty,' it is our habit to forgetthese things entirely, and merely glorify the mighty temple itself,without vouchsafing one praiseful thought to its humble builder,whose rich heart and withered purse it symbolizes.

This is a land of libraries and schools. St. Paul has three public libraries,and they contain, in the aggregate, some forty thousand books.

He has one hundred and sixteen school-houses, and pays out more thanseventy thousand dollars a year in teachers' salaries.

There is an unusually fine railway station; so large is it,in fact, that it seemed somewhat overdone, in the matterof size, at first; but at the end of a few months it wasperceived that the mistake was distinctly the other way.

The error is to be corrected.

The town stands on high ground; it is about seven hundred feetabove the sea level. It is so high that a wide view of riverand lowland is offered from its streets.

It is a very wonderful town indeed, and is not finished yet.

All the streets are obstructed with building material,and this is being compacted into houses as fast as possible,to make room for more--for other people are anxious to build,as soon as they can get the use of the streets to pile up their bricksand stuff in.

How solemn and beautiful is the thought, that the earliest pioneerof civilization, the van-leader of civilization, is never the steamboat,never the railroad, never the newspaper, never the Sabbath-school,never the missionary--but always whiskey! Such is the case.

Look history over; you will see. The missionary comes after the whiskey--I mean he arrives after the whiskey has arrived; next comesthe poor immigrant, with ax and hoe and rifle; next, the trader;next, the miscellaneous rush; next, the gambler, the desperado,the highwayman, and all their kindred in sin of both sexes; and next,the smart chap who has bought up an old grant that covers all the land;this brings the lawyer tribe; the vigilance committee brings the undertaker.

All these interests bring the newspaper; the newspaper starts up politicsand a railroad; all hands turn to and build a church and a jail--and behold, civilization is established for ever in the land.

But whiskey, you see, was the van-leader in this beneficent work.

It always is. It was like a foreigner--and excusable in a foreigner--to be ignorant of this great truth, and wander off into astronomyto borrow a symbol. But if he had been conversant with the facts,he would have said--Westward the Jug of Empire takes its way.

This great van-leader arrived upon the ground which St. Paul now occupies,in June 1837. Yes, at that date, Pierre Parrant, a Canadian, built thefirst cabin, uncorked his jug, and began to sell whiskey to the Indians.

The result is before us.

All that I have said of the newness, briskness, swift progress,wealth, intelligence, fine and substantial architecture,and general slash and go, and energy of St. Paul, will applyto his near neighbor, Minneapolis--with the additionthat the latter is the bigger of the two cities.

These extraordinary towns were ten miles apart, a few months ago,but were growing so fast that they may possibly be joined now,and getting along under a single mayor. At any rate, within five yearsfrom now there will be at least such a substantial ligament of buildingsstretching between them and uniting them that a stranger will not be ableto tell where the one Siamese twin leaves off and the other begins.

Combined, they will then number a population of two hundred andfifty thousand, if they continue to grow as they are now growing.

Thus, this center of population at the head of Mississippi navigation,will then begin a rivalry as to numbers, with that center of populationat the foot of it--New Orleans.

Minneapolis is situated at the falls of St. Anthony, which stretch acrossthe river, fifteen hundred feet, and have a fall of eighty-two feet--a waterpower which, by art, has been made of inestimable value,business-wise, though somewhat to the damage of the Falls as a spectacle,or as a background against which to get your photograph taken.

Thirty flouring-mills turn out two million barrels of the verychoicest of flour every year; twenty sawmills produce two hundredmillion feet of lumber annually; then there are woolen mills,cotton mills, paper and oil mills; and sash, nail, furniture,barrel, and other factories, without number, so to speak.

The great flouring-mills here and at St. Paul use the 'new process'

and mash the wheat by rolling, instead of grinding it.

Sixteen railroads meet in Minneapolis, and sixty-five passenger trains arriveand depart daily. In this place, as in St. Paul, journalism thrives.

Here there are three great dailies, ten weeklies, and three monthlies.

There is a university, with four hundred students--and, better still,its good efforts are not confined to enlightening the one sex.

There are sixteen public schools, with buildings which cost $500,000;there are six thousand pupils and one hundred and twenty-eight teachers.

There are also seventy churches existing, and a lot more projected.

The banks aggregate a capital of $3,000,000, and the wholesale jobbing tradeof the town amounts to $50,000,000 a year.

Near St. Paul and Minneapolis are several points of interest--Fort Snelling, a fortress occupying a river-bluff a hundredfeet high; the falls of Minnehaha, White-bear Lake, and so forth.

The beautiful falls of Minnehaha are sufficiently celebrated--they do not need a lift from me, in that direction.

The White-bear Lake is less known. It is a lovely sheet of water,and is being utilized as a summer resort by the wealth and fashionof the State. It has its club-house, and its hotel, with the modernimprovements and conveniences; its fine summer residences;and plenty of fishing, hunting, and pleasant drives.

There are a dozen minor summer resorts around about St. Pauland Minneapolis, but the White-bear Lake is the resort.

Connected with White-bear Lake is a most idiotic Indian legend.

I would resist the temptation to print it here, if I could,but the task is beyond my strength. The guide-book names the preserverof the legend, and compliments his 'facile pen.' Without furthercomment or delay then, let us turn the said facile pen looseupon the reader--A LEGEND OF WHITE-BEAR LAKE.

Every spring, for perhaps a century, or as long as there has been a nationof red men, an island in the middle of White-bear Lake has been visitedby a band of Indians for the purpose of making maple sugar.

Tradition says that many springs ago, while upon this island,a young warrior loved and wooed the daughter of his chief,and it is said, also, the maiden loved the warrior.

He had again and again been refused her hand by her parents,the old chief alleging that he was no brave, and his old consortcalled him a woman!

The sun had again set upon the 'sugar-bush,' and the bright moon rosehigh in the bright blue heavens, when the young warrior took down hisflute and went out alone, once more to sing the story of his love,the mild breeze gently moved the two gay feathers in his head-dress,and as he mounted on the trunk of a leaning tree, the damp snow fellfrom his feet heavily. As he raised his flute to his lips, his blanketslipped from his well-formed shoulders, and lay partly on the snow beneath.

He began his weird, wild love-song, but soon felt that he was cold,and as he reached back for his blanket, some unseen hand laid it gentlyon his shoulders; it was the hand of his love, his guardian angel.

She took her place beside him, and for the present they were happy;for the Indian has a heart to love, and in this pride he is as nobleas in his own freedom, which makes him the child of the forest.

As the legend runs, a large white-bear, thinking, perhaps, that polar snowsand dismal winter weather extended everywhere, took up his journey southward.

He at length approached the northern shore of the lake which now bearshis name, walked down the bank and made his way noiselessly throughthe deep heavy snow toward the island. It was the same spring ensuingthat the lovers met. They had left their first retreat, and were nowseated among the branches of a large elm which hung far over the lake.

(The same tree is still standing, and excites universal curiosityand interest.) For fear of being detected, they talked almost in a whisper,and now, that they might get back to camp in good time and therebyavoid suspicion, they were just rising to return, when the maiden uttereda shriek which was heard at the camp, and bounding toward the young brave,she caught his blanket, but missed the direction of her foot and fell,bearing the blanket with her into the great arms of the ferocious monster.

Instantly every man, woman, and child of the band were upon the bank,but all unarmed. Cries and wailings went up from every mouth.

What was to be done'? In the meantime this white and savage beast heldthe breathless maiden in his huge grasp, and fondled with his preciousprey as if he were used to scenes like this. One deafening yell fromthe lover warrior is heard above the cries of hundreds of his tribe,and dashing away to his wigwam he grasps his faithful knife,returns almost at a single bound to the scene of fear and fright,rushes out along the leaning tree to the spot where his treasure fell,and springing with the fury of a mad panther, pounced upon his prey.

The animal turned, and with one stroke of his huge paw broughtthe lovers heart to heart, but the next moment the warrior, with oneplunge of the blade of his knife, opened the crimson sluices of death,and the dying bear relaxed his hold.

That night there was no more sleep for the band or the lovers,and as the young and the old danced about the carcass of the dead monster,the gallant warrior was presented with another plume, and ereanother moon had set he had a living treasure added to his heart.

Their children for many years played upon the skin of the white-bear--from which the lake derives its name--and the maiden and the braveremembered long the fearful scene and rescue that made them one,for Kis-se-me-pa and Ka-go-ka could never forget their fearfulencounter with the huge monster that came so near sending them tothe happy hunting-ground.

It is a perplexing business. First, she fell down out of the tree--she and the blanket; and the bear caught her and fondled her--her and the blanket; then she fell up into the tree again--leaving the blanket; meantime the lover goes war-whoopinghome and comes back 'heeled,' climbs the tree, jumps down onthe bear, the girl jumps down after him--apparently, for shewas up the tree--resumes her place in the bear's arms alongwith the blanket, the lover rams his knife into the bear,and saves--whom, the blanket? No--nothing of the sort.

You get yourself all worked up and excited about that blanket,and then all of a sudden, just when a happy climax seemsimminent you are let down flat--nothing saved but the girl.

Whereas, one is not interested in the girl; she is notthe prominent feature of the legend. Nevertheless, there youare left, and there you must remain; for if you livea thousand years you will never know who got the blanket.

A dead man could get up a better legend than this one.

I don't mean a fresh dead man either; I mean a man that's been deadweeks and weeks.

We struck the home-trail now, and in a few hours were in thatastonishing Chicago--a city where they are always rubbing the lamp,and fetching up the genii, and contriving and achieving new impossibilities.

It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try to keep up with Chicago--she outgrows his prophecies faster than he can make them.

She is always a novelty; for she is never the Chicago you saw when youpassed through the last time. The Pennsylvania road rushed us to NewYork without missing schedule time ten minutes anywhere on the route;and there ended one of the most enjoyable five-thousand-mile journeys I haveever had the good fortune to make.

APPENDIX A(FROM THE NEW ORLEANS TIMES DEMOCRAT OF MARCH 29, 1882.)VOYAGE OF THE TIMES-DEMOCRAT'S RELIEF BOAT THROUGH THE INUNDATEDREGIONSIT was nine o'clock Thursday morning when the 'Susie'

left the Mississippi and entered Old River, or what isnow called the mouth of the Red. Ascending on the left,a flood was pouring in through and over the levees onthe Chandler plantation, the most northern point in PointeCoupee parish. The water completely covered the place,although the levees had given way but a short time before.

The stock had been gathered in a large flat-boat, where,without food, as we passed, the animals were huddled together,waiting for a boat to tow them off. On the right-hand sideof the river is Turnbull's Island, and on it is a large plantationwhich formerly was pronounced one of the most fertile in the State.

The water has hitherto allowed it to go scot-free in usual floods,but now broad sheets of water told only where fields were.

The top of the protecting levee could be seen here and there,but nearly all of it was submerged.

The trees have put on a greener foliage since the water has poured in,and the woods look bright and fresh, but this pleasant aspect to the eyeis neutralized by the interminable waste of water. We pass mile after mile,and it is nothing but trees standing up to their branches in water.

A water-turkey now and again rises and flies ahead into the long avenueof silence. A pirogue sometimes flits from the bushes and crossesthe Red River on its way out to the Mississippi, but the sad-facedpaddlers never turn their heads to look at our boat. The puffingof the boat is music in this gloom, which affects one most curiously.

It is not the gloom of deep forests or dark caverns, but a peculiar kind ofsolemn silence and impressive awe that holds one perforce to its recognition.

We passed two negro families on a raft tied up in the willows this morning.

They were evidently of the well-to-do class, as they had a supply of mealand three or four hogs with them. Their rafts were about twenty feet square,and in front of an improvised shelter earth had been placed, on which theybuilt their fire.

The current running down the Atchafalaya was very swift,the Mississippi showing a predilection in that direction,which needs only to be seen to enforce the opinion of thatriver's desperate endeavors to find a short way to the Gulf.

Small boats, skiffs, pirogues, etc., are in great demand,and many have been stolen by piratical negroes,who take them where they will bring the greatest price.

From what was told me by Mr. C. P. Ferguson, a planternear Red River Landing, whose place has just gone under,there is much suffering in the rear of that place.

The negroes had given up all thoughts of a crevasse there,as the upper levee had stood so long, and when it didcome they were at its mercy. On Thursday a number weretaken out of trees and off of cabin roofs and brought in,many yet remaining.

One does not appreciate the sight of earth until he has traveledthrough a flood. At sea one does not expect or look for it,but here, with fluttering leaves, shadowy forest aisles, house-topsbarely visible, it is expected. In fact a grave-yard, if the moundswere above water, would be appreciated. The river here is knownonly because there is an opening in the trees, and that is all.

It is in width, from Fort Adams on the left bank of the Mississippito the bank of Rapides Parish, a distance of about sixty miles.

A large portion of this was under cultivation, particularly alongthe Mississippi and back of the Red. When Red River properwas entered, a strong current was running directly across it,pursuing the same direction as that of the Mississippi.

After a run of some hours, Black River was reached.

Hardly was it entered before signs of suffering became visible.

All the willows along the banks were stripped of their leaves.

One man, whom your correspondent spoke to, said that he had had onehundred and fifty head of cattle and one hundred head of hogs.

At the first appearance of water he had started to drivethem to the high lands of Avoyelles, thirty-five miles off,but he lost fifty head of the beef cattle and sixty hogs.

Black River is quite picturesque, even if its shores are under water.

A dense growth of ash, oak, gum, and hickory make the shoresalmost impenetrable, and where one can get a view down someavenue in the trees, only the dim outlines of distant trunkscan be barely distinguished in the gloom.

A few miles up this river, the depth of water on the bankswas fully eight feet, and on all sides could be seen,still holding against the strong current, the tops of cabins.

Here and there one overturned was surrounded by drift-wood, formingthe nucleus of possibly some future island.

In order to save coal, as it was impossible to get that fuel at any pointto be touched during the expedition, a look-out was kept for a wood-pile.

On rounding a point a pirogue, skilfully paddled by a youth, shot out,and in its bow was a girl of fifteen, of fair face, beautiful black eyes,and demure manners. The boy asked for a paper, which was thrown to him,and the couple pushed their tiny craft out into the swell of the boat.

Presently a little girl, not certainly over twelve years, paddled outin the smallest little canoe and handled it with all the deftnessof an old voyageur. The little one looked more like an Indianthan a white child, and laughed when asked if she were afraid.

She had been raised in a pirogue and could go anywhere.

She was bound out to pick willow leaves for the stock, and she pointedto a house near by with water three inches deep on the floors.

At its back door was moored a raft about thirty feet square,with a sort of fence built upon it, and inside of this some sixteencows and twenty hogs were standing. The family did not complain,except on account of losing their stock, and promptly brought asupply of wood in a flat.

From this point to the Mississippi River, fifteen miles, there is not a spotof earth above water, and to the westward for thirty-five miles thereis nothing but the river's flood. Black River had risen during Thursday,the 23rd, 1 inches, and was going up at night still.

As we progress up the river habitations become more frequent,but are yet still miles apart. Nearly all of them are deserted,and the out-houses floated off. To add to the gloom, almost everyliving thing seems to have departed, and not a whistle of a birdnor the bark of the squirrel can be heard in this solitude.

Sometimes a morose gar will throw his tail aloft and disappear in the river,but beyond this everything is quiet--the quiet of dissolution.

Down the river floats now a neatly whitewashed hen-house, thena cluster of neatly split fence-rails, or a door and a bloated carcass,solemnly guarded by a pair of buzzards, the only bird to be seen,which feast on the carcass as it bears them along. A picture-framein which there was a cheap lithograph of a soldier on horseback,as it floated on told of some hearth invaded by the water and despoiledof this ornament.

At dark, as it was not prudent to run, a place alongside the woods was huntedand to a tall gum-tree the boat was made fast for the night.

A pretty quarter of the moon threw a pleasant light over forest and river,making a picture that would be a delightful piece of landscape study,could an artist only hold it down to his canvas. The motion ofthe engines had ceased, the puffing of the escaping steam was stilled,and the enveloping silence closed upon us, and such silence it was!

Usually in a forest at night one can hear the piping of frogs,the hum of insects, or the dropping of limbs; but here nature was dumb.

The dark recesses, those aisles into this cathedral, gave forth no sound,and even the ripplings of the current die away.

At daylight Friday morning all hands were up, and up the Black we started.

The morning was a beautiful one, and the river, which is remarkablystraight, put on its loveliest garb. The blossoms of the haw perfumedthe air deliciously, and a few birds whistled blithely along the banks.

The trees were larger, and the forest seemed of older growth than below.

More fields were passed than nearer the mouth, but the same scenepresented itself--smoke-houses drifting out in the pastures, negro quartersanchored in confusion against some oak, and the modest residence justshowing its eaves above water. The sun came up in a glory of carmine,and the trees were brilliant in their varied shades of green.

Not a foot of soil is to be seen anywhere, and the water is apparently growingdeeper and deeper, for it reaches up to the branches of the largest trees.

All along, the bordering willows have been denuded of leaves, showing how longthe people have been at work gathering this fodder for their animals. An oldman in a pirogue was asked how the willow leaves agreed with his cattle.

He stopped in his work, and with an ominous shake of his head replied:

'Well, sir, it 's enough to keep warmth in their bodies and that'sall we expect, but it's hard on the hogs, particularly the small ones.

They is dropping off powerful fast. But what can you do? It 'sall we've got.'

At thirty miles above the mouth of Black River the waterextends from Natchez on the Mississippi across to the pinehills of Louisiana, a distance of seventy-three miles,and there is hardly a spot that is not ten feet under it.

The tendency of the current up the Black is toward the west.

In fact, so much is this the case, the waters of Red Riverhave been driven down from toward the Calcasieu country,and the waters of the Black enter the Red some fifteen milesabove the mouth of the former, a thing never before seen by eventhe oldest steamboatmen. The water now in sight of us is entirelyfrom the Mississippi.

Up to Trinity, or rather Troy, which is but a shortdistance below, the people have nearly all moved out,those remaining having enough for their present personal needs.

Their cattle, though, are suffering and dying off quite fast,as the confinement on rafts and the food they get breeds disease.

After a short stop we started, and soon came to a section wherethere were many open fields and cabins thickly scattered about.

Here were seen more pictures of distress. On the inside of the housesthe inmates had built on boxes a scaffold on which they placedthe furniture. The bed-posts were sawed off on top, as the ceilingwas not more than four feet from the improvised floor. The buildingslooked very insecure, and threatened every moment to float off.

Near the houses were cattle standing breast high in the water,perfectly impassive. They did not move in their places, but stoodpatiently waiting for help to come. The sight was a distressing one,and the poor creatures will be sure to die unless speedily rescued.

Cattle differ from horses in this peculiar quality. A horse,after finding no relief comes, will swim off in search of food,whereas a beef will stand in its tracks until with exhaustion it drops inthe water and drowns.

At half-past twelve o'clock a hail was given from a flat-boatinside the line of the bank. Rounding to we ran alongside,and General York stepped aboard. He was just then engagedin getting off stock, and welcomed the 'Times-Democrat'

boat heartily, as he said there was much need for her.

He said that the distress was not exaggerated in the least.

People were in a condition it was difficult even for one to imagine.

The water was so high there was great danger of their housesbeing swept away. It had already risen so high that it wasapproaching the eaves, and when it reaches this point there isalways imminent risk of their being swept away. If this occurs,there will be great loss of life. The General spoke of the gallantwork of many of the people in their attempts to save their stock,but thought that fully twenty-five per cent. had perished.

Already twenty-five hundred people had received rations from Troy,on Black River, and he had towed out a great many cattle,but a very great quantity remained and were in dire need.

The water was now eighteen inches higher than in 1874, and there wasno land between Vidalia and the hills of Catahoula.

At two o'clock the 'Susie' reached Troy, sixty-five miles abovethe mouth of Black River. Here on the left comes in Little River;just beyond that the Ouachita, and on the right the Tensas.

These three rivers form the Black River. Troy, or a portionof it, is situated on and around three large Indian mounds,circular in shape, which rise above the present waterabout twelve feet. They are about one hundred and fiftyfeet in diameter, and are about two hundred yards apart.

The houses are all built between these mounds, and hence are allflooded to a depth of eighteen inches on their floors.

These elevations, built by the aborigines, hundreds of years ago,are the only points of refuge for miles. When we arrived we found themcrowded with stock, all of which was thin and hardly able to stand up.

They were mixed together, sheep, hogs, horses, mules, and cattle.

One of these mounds has been used for many years as the grave-yard,and to-day we saw attenuated cows lying against the marble tomb-stones,chewing their cud in contentment, after a meal of corn furnishedby General York. Here, as below, the remarkable skill of the womenand girls in the management of the smaller pirogues was noticed.

Children were paddling about in these most ticklish crafts with all thenonchalance of adepts.

General York has put into operation a perfect system in regardto furnishing relief. He makes a personal inspection of the placewhere it is asked, sees what is necessary to be done, and then,having two boats chartered, with flats, sends them promptlyto the place, when the cattle are loaded and towed to the pinehills and uplands of Catahoula. He has made Troy his headquarters,and to this point boats come for their supply of feed for cattle.

On the opposite side of Little River, which branches to the leftout of Black, and between it and the Ouachita, is situatedthe town of Trinity, which is hourly threatened with destruction.

It is much lower than Troy, and the water is eight and ninefeet deep in the houses. A strong current sweeps through it,and it is remarkable that all of its houses have not gone before.

The residents of both Troy and Trinity have been cared for, yet someof their stock have to be furnished with food.

As soon as the 'Susie' reached Troy, she was turned over to General York,and placed at his disposition to carry out the work of relief more rapidly.

Nearly all her supplies were landed on one of the mounds to lighten her,and she was headed down stream to relieve those below. At Tom Hooper's place,a few miles from Troy, a large flat, with about fifty head of stock on board,was taken in tow. The animals were fed, and soon regained some strength.

To-day we go on Little River, where the suffering is greatest.

DOWN BLACK RIVERSaturday Evening, March 25.

We started down Black River quite early, under the direction of General York,to bring out what stock could be reached. Going down river a flatin tow was left in a central locality, and from there men poled her backin the rear of plantations, picking up the animals wherever found.

In the loft of a gin-house there were seventeen head found, and aftera gangway was built they were led down into the flat without difficulty.

Taking a skiff with the General, your reporter was pulled up to a littlehouse of two rooms, in which the water was standing two feet on the floors.

In one of the large rooms were huddled the horses and cows of the place,while in the other the Widow Taylor and her son were seated on a scaffoldraised on the floor. One or two dug-outs were drifting about in the roamready to be put in service at any time. When the flat was brought up,the side of the house was cut away as the only means of gettingthe animals out, and the cattle were driven on board the boat.

General York, in this as in every case, inquired if the family desiredto leave, informing them that Major Burke, of 'The Times-Democrat,'

has sent the 'Susie' up for that purpose. Mrs. Taylor said she thankedMajor Burke, but she would try and hold out. The remarkable tenacityof the people here to their homes is beyond all comprehension. Just below,at a point sixteen miles from Troy, information was received that the houseof Mr. Tom Ellis was in danger, and his family were all in it. We steamedthere immediately, and a sad picture was presented. Looking out of the halfof the window left above water, was Mrs. Ellis, who is in feeble health,whilst at the door were her seven children, the oldest not fourteen years.

One side of the house was given up to the work animals, some twelve head,besides hogs. In the next room the family lived, the water coming within twoinches of the bed-rail. The stove was below water, and the cooking was doneon a fire on top of it. The house threatened to give way at any moment:

one end of it was sinking, and, in fact, the building looked a mere shell.

As the boat rounded to, Mr. Ellis came out in a dug-out, and GeneralYork told him that he had come to his relief; that 'The Times-Democrat'

boat was at his service, and would remove his family at once to the hills,and on Monday a flat would take out his stock, as, until that time,they would be busy. Notwithstanding the deplorable situation himselfand family were in, Mr. Ellis did not want to leave. He said he thoughthe would wait until Monday, and take the risk of his house falling.

The children around the door looked perfectly contented, seeming to carelittle for the danger they were in. These are but two instances of the many.

After weeks of privation and suffering, people still cling to their housesand leave only when there is not room between the water and the ceilingto build a scaffold on which to stand. It seemed to be incomprehensible,yet the love for the old place was stronger than that for safety.

After leaving the Ellis place, the next spot touched atwas the Oswald place. Here the flat was towed alongsidethe gin-house where there were fifteen head standing in water;and yet, as they stood on scaffolds, their heads were abovethe top of the entrance. It was found impossible to getthem out without cutting away a portion of the front;and so axes were brought into requisition and a gap made.

After much labor the horses and mules were securely placedon the flat.

At each place we stop there are always three, four, or more dug-outsarriving, bringing information of stock in other places in need.

Notwithstanding the fact that a great many had driven a part of theirstock to the hills some time ago, there yet remains a large quantity,which General York, who is working with indomitable energy, will getlanded in the pine hills by Tuesday.

All along Black River the 'Susie' has been visited by scoresof planters, whose tales are the repetition of those alreadyheard of suffering and loss. An old planter, who has lived onthe river since 1844, said there never was such a rise, and he wassatisfied more than one quarter of the stock has been lost.

Luckily the people cared first for their work stock, and when theycould find it horses and mules were housed in a place of safety.

The rise which still continues, and was two inches last night,compels them to get them out to the hills; hence it isthat the work of General York is of such a great value.

From daylight to late at night he is going this way and that,cheering by his kindly words and directing with calm judgmentwhat is to be done. One unpleasant story, of a certainmerchant in New Orleans, is told all along the river.

It appears for some years past the planters have been dealingwith this individual, and many of them had balances in his hands.

When the overflow came they wrote for coffee, for meal, and,in fact, for such little necessities as were required.

No response to these letters came, and others were written,and yet these old customers, with plantations under water,were refused even what was necessary to sustain life. It is needlessto say he is not popular now on Back River.

The hills spoken of as the place of refuge for the people and stock on BlackRiver are in Catahoula parish, twenty-four miles from Black River.

After filling the flat with cattle we took on board the familyof T. S. Hooper, seven in number, who could not longer remainin their dwelling, and we are now taking them up Little Riverto the hills.

THE FLOOD STILL RISINGTroy: March 27, 1882, noon.

The flood here is rising about three and a half inches everytwenty-four hours, and rains have set in which will increase this.

General York feels now that our efforts ought to be directed towardssaving life, as the increase of the water has jeopardized many houses.

We intend to go up the Tensas in a few minutes, and then wewill return and go down Black River to take off families.

There is a lack of steam transportation here to meet the emergency.

The General has three boats chartered, with flats in tow,but the demand for these to tow out stock is greater than theycan meet with promptness. All are working night and day,and the 'Susie' hardly stops for more than an hour anywhere.

The rise has placed Trinity in a dangerous plight, and momentarilyit is expected that some of the houses will float off.

Troy is a little higher, yet all are in the water.

Reports have come in that a woman and child have beenwashed away below here, and two cabins floated off.

Their occupants are the same who refused to come off daybefore yesterday. One would not believe the utter passivenessof the people.

As yet no news has been received of the steamer 'Delia,' which issupposed to be the one sunk in yesterday's storm on Lake Catahoula.

She is due here now, but has not arrived. Even the mail here ismost uncertain, and this I send by skiff to Natchez to get it to you.

It is impossible to get accurate data as to past crops, etc., asthose who know much about the matter have gone, and those who remainare not well versed in the production of this section.

General York desires me to say that the amount of rationsformerly sent should be duplicated and sent at once.

It is impossible to make any estimate, for the people are fleeingto the hills, so rapid is the rise. The residents here arein a state of commotion that can only be appreciated when seen,and complete demoralization has set in,If rations are drawn for any particular section hereabouts, they wouldnot be certain to be distributed, so everything should be sent to Troyas a center, and the General will have it properly disposed of.

He has sent for one hundred tents, and, if all go to the hills who arein motion now, two hundred will be required.

APPENDIX A(FROM THE NEW ORLEANS TIMES DEMOCRAT OF MARCH 29, 1882.)VOYAGE OF THE TIMES-DEMOCRAT'S RELIEF BOAT THROUGH THE INUNDATEDREGIONSIT was nine o'clock Thursday morning when the 'Susie'

left the Mississippi and entered Old River, or what isnow called the mouth of the Red. Ascending on the left,a flood was pouring in through and over the levees onthe Chandler plantation, the most northern point in PointeCoupee parish. The water completely covered the place,although the levees had given way but a short time before.

The stock had been gathered in a large flat-boat, where,without food, as we passed, the animals were huddled together,waiting for a boat to tow them off. On the right-hand sideof the river is Turnbull's Island, and on it is a large plantationwhich formerly was pronounced one of the most fertile in the State.

The water has hitherto allowed it to go scot-free in usual floods,but now broad sheets of water told only where fields were.

The top of the protecting levee could be seen here and there,but nearly all of it was submerged.

The trees have put on a greener foliage since the water has poured in,and the woods look bright and fresh, but this pleasant aspect to the eyeis neutralized by the interminable waste of water. We pass mile after mile,and it is nothing but trees standing up to their branches in water.

A water-turkey now and again rises and flies ahead into the long avenueof silence. A pirogue sometimes flits from the bushes and crossesthe Red River on its way out to the Mississippi, but the sad-facedpaddlers never turn their heads to look at our boat. The puffingof the boat is music in this gloom, which affects one most curiously.

It is not the gloom of deep forests or dark caverns, but a peculiar kind ofsolemn silence and impressive awe that holds one perforce to its recognition.

We passed two negro families on a raft tied up in the willows this morning.

They were evidently of the well-to-do class, as they had a supply of mealand three or four hogs with them. Their rafts were about twenty feet square,and in front of an improvised shelter earth had been placed, on which theybuilt their fire.

The current running down the Atchafalaya was very swift,the Mississippi showing a predilection in that direction,which needs only to be seen to enforce the opinion of thatriver's desperate endeavors to find a short way to the Gulf.

Small boats, skiffs, pirogues, etc., are in great demand,and many have been stolen by piratical negroes,who take them where they will bring the greatest price.

From what was told me by Mr. C. P. Ferguson, a planternear Red River Landing, whose place has just gone under,there is much suffering in the rear of that place.

The negroes had given up all thoughts of a crevasse there,as the upper levee had stood so long, and when it didcome they were at its mercy. On Thursday a number weretaken out of trees and off of cabin roofs and brought in,many yet remaining.

One does not appreciate the sight of earth until he has traveledthrough a flood. At sea one does not expect or look for it,but here, with fluttering leaves, shadowy forest aisles, house-topsbarely visible, it is expected. In fact a grave-yard, if the moundswere above water, would be appreciated. The river here is knownonly because there is an opening in the trees, and that is all.

It is in width, from Fort Adams on the left bank of the Mississippito the bank of Rapides Parish, a distance of about sixty miles.

A large portion of this was under cultivation, particularly alongthe Mississippi and back of the Red. When Red River properwas entered, a strong current was running directly across it,pursuing the same direction as that of the Mississippi.

After a run of some hours, Black River was reached.

Hardly was it entered before signs of suffering became visible.

All the willows along the banks were stripped of their leaves.

One man, whom your correspondent spoke to, said that he had had onehundred and fifty head of cattle and one hundred head of hogs.

At the first appearance of water he had started to drivethem to the high lands of Avoyelles, thirty-five miles off,but he lost fifty head of the beef cattle and sixty hogs.

Black River is quite picturesque, even if its shores are under water.

A dense growth of ash, oak, gum, and hickory make the shoresalmost impenetrable, and where one can get a view down someavenue in the trees, only the dim outlines of distant trunkscan be barely distinguished in the gloom.

A few miles up this river, the depth of water on the bankswas fully eight feet, and on all sides could be seen,still holding against the strong current, the tops of cabins.

Here and there one overturned was surrounded by drift-wood, formingthe nucleus of possibly some future island.

In order to save coal, as it was impossible to get that fuel at any pointto be touched during the expedition, a look-out was kept for a wood-pile.

On rounding a point a pirogue, skilfully paddled by a youth, shot out,and in its bow was a girl of fifteen, of fair face, beautiful black eyes,and demure manners. The boy asked for a paper, which was thrown to him,and the couple pushed their tiny craft out into the swell of the boat.

Presently a little girl, not certainly over twelve years, paddled outin the smallest little canoe and handled it with all the deftnessof an old voyageur. The little one looked more like an Indianthan a white child, and laughed when asked if she were afraid.

She had been raised in a pirogue and could go anywhere.

She was bound out to pick willow leaves for the stock, and she pointedto a house near by with water three inches deep on the floors.

At its back door was moored a raft about thirty feet square,with a sort of fence built upon it, and inside of this some sixteencows and twenty hogs were standing. The family did not complain,except on account of losing their stock, and promptly brought asupply of wood in a flat.

From this point to the Mississippi River, fifteen miles, there is not a spotof earth above water, and to the westward for thirty-five miles thereis nothing but the river's flood. Black River had risen during Thursday,the 23rd, 1 inches, and was going up at night still.

As we progress up the river habitations become more frequent,but are yet still miles apart. Nearly all of them are deserted,and the out-houses floated off. To add to the gloom, almost everyliving thing seems to have departed, and not a whistle of a birdnor the bark of the squirrel can be heard in this solitude.

Sometimes a morose gar will throw his tail aloft and disappear in the river,but beyond this everything is quiet--the quiet of dissolution.

Down the river floats now a neatly whitewashed hen-house, thena cluster of neatly split fence-rails, or a door and a bloated carcass,solemnly guarded by a pair of buzzards, the only bird to be seen,which feast on the carcass as it bears them along. A picture-framein which there was a cheap lithograph of a soldier on horseback,as it floated on told of some hearth invaded by the water and despoiledof this ornament.

At dark, as it was not prudent to run, a place alongside the woods was huntedand to a tall gum-tree the boat was made fast for the night.

A pretty quarter of the moon threw a pleasant light over forest and river,making a picture that would be a delightful piece of landscape study,could an artist only hold it down to his canvas. The motion ofthe engines had ceased, the puffing of the escaping steam was stilled,and the enveloping silence closed upon us, and such silence it was!

Usually in a forest at night one can hear the piping of frogs,the hum of insects, or the dropping of limbs; but here nature was dumb.

The dark recesses, those aisles into this cathedral, gave forth no sound,and even the ripplings of the current die away.

At daylight Friday morning all hands were up, and up the Black we started.

The morning was a beautiful one, and the river, which is remarkablystraight, put on its loveliest garb. The blossoms of the haw perfumedthe air deliciously, and a few birds whistled blithely along the banks.

The trees were larger, and the forest seemed of older growth than below.

More fields were passed than nearer the mouth, but the same scenepresented itself--smoke-houses drifting out in the pastures, negro quartersanchored in confusion against some oak, and the modest residence justshowing its eaves above water. The sun came up in a glory of carmine,and the trees were brilliant in their varied shades of green.

Not a foot of soil is to be seen anywhere, and the water is apparently growingdeeper and deeper, for it reaches up to the branches of the largest trees.

All along, the bordering willows have been denuded of leaves, showing how longthe people have been at work gathering this fodder for their animals. An oldman in a pirogue was asked how the willow leaves agreed with his cattle.

He stopped in his work, and with an ominous shake of his head replied:

'Well, sir, it 's enough to keep warmth in their bodies and that'sall we expect, but it's hard on the hogs, particularly the small ones.

They is dropping off powerful fast. But what can you do? It 'sall we've got.'

At thirty miles above the mouth of Black River the waterextends from Natchez on the Mississippi across to the pinehills of Louisiana, a distance of seventy-three miles,and there is hardly a spot that is not ten feet under it.

The tendency of the current up the Black is toward the west.

In fact, so much is this the case, the waters of Red Riverhave been driven down from toward the Calcasieu country,and the waters of the Black enter the Red some fifteen milesabove the mouth of the former, a thing never before seen by eventhe oldest steamboatmen. The water now in sight of us is entirelyfrom the Mississippi.

Up to Trinity, or rather Troy, which is but a shortdistance below, the people have nearly all moved out,those remaining having enough for their present personal needs.

Their cattle, though, are suffering and dying off quite fast,as the confinement on rafts and the food they get breeds disease.

After a short stop we started, and soon came to a section wherethere were many open fields and cabins thickly scattered about.

Here were seen more pictures of distress. On the inside of the housesthe inmates had built on boxes a scaffold on which they placedthe furniture. The bed-posts were sawed off on top, as the ceilingwas not more than four feet from the improvised floor. The buildingslooked very insecure, and threatened every moment to float off.

Near the houses were cattle standing breast high in the water,perfectly impassive. They did not move in their places, but stoodpatiently waiting for help to come. The sight was a distressing one,and the poor creatures will be sure to die unless speedily rescued.

Cattle differ from horses in this peculiar quality. A horse,after finding no relief comes, will swim off in search of food,whereas a beef will stand in its tracks until with exhaustion it drops inthe water and drowns.

At half-past twelve o'clock a hail was given from a flat-boatinside the line of the bank. Rounding to we ran alongside,and General York stepped aboard. He was just then engagedin getting off stock, and welcomed the 'Times-Democrat'

boat heartily, as he said there was much need for her.

He said that the distress was not exaggerated in the least.

People were in a condition it was difficult even for one to imagine.

The water was so high there was great danger of their housesbeing swept away. It had already risen so high that it wasapproaching the eaves, and when it reaches this point there isalways imminent risk of their being swept away. If this occurs,there will be great loss of life. The General spoke of the gallantwork of many of the people in their attempts to save their stock,but thought that fully twenty-five per cent. had perished.

Already twenty-five hundred people had received rations from Troy,on Black River, and he had towed out a great many cattle,but a very great quantity remained and were in dire need.

The water was now eighteen inches higher than in 1874, and there wasno land between Vidalia and the hills of Catahoula.

At two o'clock the 'Susie' reached Troy, sixty-five miles abovethe mouth of Black River. Here on the left comes in Little River;just beyond that the Ouachita, and on the right the Tensas.

These three rivers form the Black River. Troy, or a portionof it, is situated on and around three large Indian mounds,circular in shape, which rise above the present waterabout twelve feet. They are about one hundred and fiftyfeet in diameter, and are about two hundred yards apart.

The houses are all built between these mounds, and hence are allflooded to a depth of eighteen inches on their floors.

These elevations, built by the aborigines, hundreds of years ago,are the only points of refuge for miles. When we arrived we found themcrowded with stock, all of which was thin and hardly able to stand up.

They were mixed together, sheep, hogs, horses, mules, and cattle.

One of these mounds has been used for many years as the grave-yard,and to-day we saw attenuated cows lying against the marble tomb-stones,chewing their cud in contentment, after a meal of corn furnishedby General York. Here, as below, the remarkable skill of the womenand girls in the management of the smaller pirogues was noticed.

Children were paddling about in these most ticklish crafts with all thenonchalance of adepts.

General York has put into operation a perfect system in regardto furnishing relief. He makes a personal inspection of the placewhere it is asked, sees what is necessary to be done, and then,having two boats chartered, with flats, sends them promptlyto the place, when the cattle are loaded and towed to the pinehills and uplands of Catahoula. He has made Troy his headquarters,and to this point boats come for their supply of feed for cattle.

On the opposite side of Little River, which branches to the leftout of Black, and between it and the Ouachita, is situatedthe town of Trinity, which is hourly threatened with destruction.

It is much lower than Troy, and the water is eight and ninefeet deep in the houses. A strong current sweeps through it,and it is remarkable that all of its houses have not gone before.

The residents of both Troy and Trinity have been cared for, yet someof their stock have to be furnished with food.

As soon as the 'Susie' reached Troy, she was turned over to General York,and placed at his disposition to carry out the work of relief more rapidly.

Nearly all her supplies were landed on one of the mounds to lighten her,and she was headed down stream to relieve those below. At Tom Hooper's place,a few miles from Troy, a large flat, with about fifty head of stock on board,was taken in tow. The animals were fed, and soon regained some strength.

To-day we go on Little River, where the suffering is greatest.

DOWN BLACK RIVERSaturday Evening, March 25.

We started down Black River quite early, under the direction of General York,to bring out what stock could be reached. Going down river a flatin tow was left in a central locality, and from there men poled her backin the rear of plantations, picking up the animals wherever found.

In the loft of a gin-house there were seventeen head found, and aftera gangway was built they were led down into the flat without difficulty.

Taking a skiff with the General, your reporter was pulled up to a littlehouse of two rooms, in which the water was standing two feet on the floors.

In one of the large rooms were huddled the horses and cows of the place,while in the other the Widow Taylor and her son were seated on a scaffoldraised on the floor. One or two dug-outs were drifting about in the roamready to be put in service at any time. When the flat was brought up,the side of the house was cut away as the only means of gettingthe animals out, and the cattle were driven on board the boat.

General York, in this as in every case, inquired if the family desiredto leave, informing them that Major Burke, of 'The Times-Democrat,'

has sent the 'Susie' up for that purpose. Mrs. Taylor said she thankedMajor Burke, but she would try and hold out. The remarkable tenacityof the people here to their homes is beyond all comprehension. Just below,at a point sixteen miles from Troy, information was received that the houseof Mr. Tom Ellis was in danger, and his family were all in it. We steamedthere immediately, and a sad picture was presented. Looking out of the halfof the window left above water, was Mrs. Ellis, who is in feeble health,whilst at the door were her seven children, the oldest not fourteen years.

One side of the house was given up to the work animals, some twelve head,besides hogs. In the next room the family lived, the water coming within twoinches of the bed-rail. The stove was below water, and the cooking was doneon a fire on top of it. The house threatened to give way at any moment:

one end of it was sinking, and, in fact, the building looked a mere shell.

As the boat rounded to, Mr. Ellis came out in a dug-out, and GeneralYork told him that he had come to his relief; that 'The Times-Democrat'

boat was at his service, and would remove his family at once to the hills,and on Monday a flat would take out his stock, as, until that time,they would be busy. Notwithstanding the deplorable situation himselfand family were in, Mr. Ellis did not want to leave. He said he thoughthe would wait until Monday, and take the risk of his house falling.

The children around the door looked perfectly contented, seeming to carelittle for the danger they were in. These are but two instances of the many.

After weeks of privation and suffering, people still cling to their housesand leave only when there is not room between the water and the ceilingto build a scaffold on which to stand. It seemed to be incomprehensible,yet the love for the old place was stronger than that for safety.

After leaving the Ellis place, the next spot touched atwas the Oswald place. Here the flat was towed alongsidethe gin-house where there were fifteen head standing in water;and yet, as they stood on scaffolds, their heads were abovethe top of the entrance. It was found impossible to getthem out without cutting away a portion of the front;and so axes were brought into requisition and a gap made.

After much labor the horses and mules were securely placedon the flat.

At each place we stop there are always three, four, or more dug-outsarriving, bringing information of stock in other places in need.

Notwithstanding the fact that a great many had driven a part of theirstock to the hills some time ago, there yet remains a large quantity,which General York, who is working with indomitable energy, will getlanded in the pine hills by Tuesday.

All along Black River the 'Susie' has been visited by scoresof planters, whose tales are the repetition of those alreadyheard of suffering and loss. An old planter, who has lived onthe river since 1844, said there never was such a rise, and he wassatisfied more than one quarter of the stock has been lost.

Luckily the people cared first for their work stock, and when theycould find it horses and mules were housed in a place of safety.

The rise which still continues, and was two inches last night,compels them to get them out to the hills; hence it isthat the work of General York is of such a great value.

From daylight to late at night he is going this way and that,cheering by his kindly words and directing with calm judgmentwhat is to be done. One unpleasant story, of a certainmerchant in New Orleans, is told all along the river.

It appears for some years past the planters have been dealingwith this individual, and many of them had balances in his hands.

When the overflow came they wrote for coffee, for meal, and,in fact, for such little necessities as were required.

No response to these letters came, and others were written,and yet these old customers, with plantations under water,were refused even what was necessary to sustain life. It is needlessto say he is not popular now on Back River.

The hills spoken of as the place of refuge for the people and stock on BlackRiver are in Catahoula parish, twenty-four miles from Black River.

After filling the flat with cattle we took on board the familyof T. S. Hooper, seven in number, who could not longer remainin their dwelling, and we are now taking them up Little Riverto the hills.

THE FLOOD STILL RISINGTroy: March 27, 1882, noon.

The flood here is rising about three and a half inches everytwenty-four hours, and rains have set in which will increase this.

General York feels now that our efforts ought to be directed towardssaving life, as the increase of the water has jeopardized many houses.

We intend to go up the Tensas in a few minutes, and then wewill return and go down Black River to take off families.

There is a lack of steam transportation here to meet the emergency.

The General has three boats chartered, with flats in tow,but the demand for these to tow out stock is greater than theycan meet with promptness. All are working night and day,and the 'Susie' hardly stops for more than an hour anywhere.

The rise has placed Trinity in a dangerous plight, and momentarilyit is expected that some of the houses will float off.

Troy is a little higher, yet all are in the water.

Reports have come in that a woman and child have beenwashed away below here, and two cabins floated off.

Their occupants are the same who refused to come off daybefore yesterday. One would not believe the utter passivenessof the people.

As yet no news has been received of the steamer 'Delia,' which issupposed to be the one sunk in yesterday's storm on Lake Catahoula.

She is due here now, but has not arrived. Even the mail here ismost uncertain, and this I send by skiff to Natchez to get it to you.

It is impossible to get accurate data as to past crops, etc., asthose who know much about the matter have gone, and those who remainare not well versed in the production of this section.

General York desires me to say that the amount of rationsformerly sent should be duplicated and sent at once.

It is impossible to make any estimate, for the people are fleeingto the hills, so rapid is the rise. The residents here arein a state of commotion that can only be appreciated when seen,and complete demoralization has set in,If rations are drawn for any particular section hereabouts, they wouldnot be certain to be distributed, so everything should be sent to Troyas a center, and the General will have it properly disposed of.

He has sent for one hundred tents, and, if all go to the hills who arein motion now, two hundred will be required.

APPENDIX BTHE MISSISSIPPI RIVER COMMISSIONTHE condition of this rich valley of the Lower Mississippi,immediately after and since the war, constituted oneof the disastrous effects of war most to be deplored.

Fictitious property in slaves was not only righteously destroyed,but very much of the work which had depended upon the slave laborwas also destroyed or greatly impaired, especially the levee system.

It might have been expected by those who have not investigated the subject,that such important improvements as the construction and maintenanceof the levees would have been assumed at once by the several States.

But what can the State do where the people are under subjection torates of interest ranging from 18 to 30 per cent., and are also underthe necessity of pledging their crops in advance even of planting,at these rates, for the privilege of purchasing all of their supplies at 100per cent. profit?

It has needed but little attention to make it perfectly obviousthat the control of the Mississippi River, if undertaken at all,must be undertaken by the national government, and cannotbe compassed by States. The river must be treated as a unit;its control cannot be compassed under a divided or separatesystem of administration.

Neither are the States especially interested competentto combine among themselves for the necessary operations.

The work must begin far up the river; at least as far as Cairo,if not beyond; and must be conducted upon a consistent general planthroughout the course of the river.

It does not need technical or scientific knowledge to comprehend the elementsof the case if one will give a little time and attention to the subject,and when a Mississippi River commission has been constituted, as the existingcommission is, of thoroughly able men of different walks in life,may it not be suggested that their verdict in the case should be acceptedas conclusive, so far as any a priori theory of construction or controlcan be considered conclusive?

It should be remembered that upon this board are General Gilmore,General Comstock, and General Suter, of the United States Engineers;Professor Henry Mitchell (the most competent authority on the questionof hydrography), of the United States Coast Survey; B. B. Harrod,the State Engineer of Louisiana; Jas. B. Eads, whose successwith the jetties at New Orleans is a warrant of his competency,and Judge Taylor, of Indiana.

It would be presumption on the part of any single man, however skilled,to contest the judgment of such a board as this.

The method of improvement proposed by the commission is atonce in accord with the results of engineering experienceand with observations of nature where meeting our wants.

As in nature the growth of trees and their proneness where underminedto fall across the slope and support the bank secures at somepoints a fair depth of channel and some degree of permanence,so in the project of the engineer the use of timber and brushand the encouragement of forest growth are the main features.

It is proposed to reduce the width where excessive by brushwood dykes,at first low, but raised higher and higher as the mud of the riversettles under their shelter, and finally slope them back atthe angle upon which willows will grow freely. In this work thereare many details connected with the forms of these shelter dykes,their arrangements so as to present a series of settling basins,etc., a description of which would only complicate the conception.

Through the larger part of the river works of contractionwill not be required, but nearly all the banks on the concaveside of the beds must be held against the wear of the stream,and much of the opposite banks defended at critical points.

The works having in view this conservative object may begenerally designated works of revetment; and these alsowill be largely of brushwood, woven in continuous carpets,or twined into wire-netting. This veneering process has beensuccessfully employed on the Missouri River; and in some casesthey have so covered themselves with sediments, and have becomeso overgrown with willows, that they may be regarded as permanent.

In securing these mats rubble-stone is to be used in small quantities,and in some instances the dressed slope between high and low riverwill have to be more or less paved with stone.

Any one who has been on the Rhine will have observed operations not unlikethose to which we have just referred; and, indeed, most of the riversof Europe flowing among their own alluvia have required similar treatmentin the interest of navigation and agriculture.

The levee is the crowning work of bank revetment, although not necessarilyin immediate connection. It may be set back a short distance fromthe revetted bank; but it is, in effect, the requisite parapet.

The flood river and the low river cannot be brought into register,and compelled to unite in the excavation of a single permanent channel,without a complete control of all the stages; and even the abnormalrise must be provided against, because this would endanger the levee,and once in force behind the works of revetment would tear them also away.

Under the general principle that the local slope of a riveris the result and measure of the resistance of its bed, it isevident that a narrow and deep stream should have less slope,because it has less frictional surface in proportion to capacity;i.e., less perimeter in proportion to area of cross section.

The ultimate effect of levees and revetments confiningthe floods and bringing all the stages of the river intoregister is to deepen the channel and let down the slope.

The first effect of the levees is to raise the surface;but this, by inducing greater velocity of flow, inevitablycauses an enlargement of section, and if this enlargementis prevented from being made at the expense of the banks,the bottom must give way and the form of the waterwaybe so improved as to admit this flow with less rise.

The actual experience with levees upon the Mississippi River,with no attempt to hold the banks, has been favorable,and no one can doubt, upon the evidence furnished in the reportsof the commission, that if the earliest levees had beenaccompanied by revetment of banks, and made complete,we should have to-day a river navigable at low water,and an adjacent country safe from inundation.

Of course it would be illogical to conclude that the constrained rivercan ever lower its flood slope so as to make levees unnecessary,but it is believed that, by this lateral constraint, the riveras a conduit may be so improved in form that even those rarefloods which result from the coincident rising of many tributarieswill find vent without destroying levees of ordinary height.

That the actual capacity of a channel through alluvium dependsupon its service during floods has been often shown, but thiscapacity does not include anomalous, but recurrent, floods.

It is hardly worth while to consider the projects for relievingthe Mississippi River floods by creating new outlets,since these sensational propositions have commended themselvesonly to unthinking minds, and have no support among engineers.

Were the river bed cast-iron, a resort to openings for surpluswaters might be a necessity; but as the bottom is yielding,and the best form of outlet is a single deep channel,as realizing the least ratio of perimeter to area of cross section,there could not well be a more unphilosophical method of treatmentthan the multiplication of avenues of escape.

In the foregoing statement the attempt has been made to condensein as limited a space as the importance of the subject would permit,the general elements of the problem, and the general featuresof the proposed method of improvement which has been adoptedby the Mississippi River Commission.

The writer cannot help feeling that it is somewhat presumptuous onhis part to attempt to present the facts relating to an enterprisewhich calls for the highest scientific skill; but it is a matterwhich interests every citizen of the United States, and is oneof the methods of reconstruction which ought to be approved.

It is a war claim which implies no private gain, and no compensationexcept for one of the cases of destruction incident to war,which may well be repaired by the people of the whole country.

EDWARD ATKINSON.

Boston: April 14, 1882.

APPENDIX CRECEPTION OF CAPTAIN BASIL HALL'S BOOK IN THE UNITED STATESHAVING now arrived nearly at the end of our travels,I am induced, ere I conclude, again to mention what I consideras one of the most remarkable traits in the national characterof the Americans; namely, their exquisite sensitiveness andsoreness respecting everything said or written concerning them.

Of this, perhaps, the most remarkable example I can give isthe effect produced on nearly every class of readers by theappearance of Captain Basil Hall's 'Travels in North America.'

In fact, it was a sort of moral earthquake, and the vibration itoccasioned through the nerves of the republic, from one cornerof the union to the other, was by no means over when I leftthe country in July 1831, a couple of years after the shock.

I was in Cincinnati when these volumes came out, but itwas not till July 1830, that I procured a copy of them.

One bookseller to whom I applied told me that he had had a fewcopies before he understood the nature of the work, but that,after becoming acquainted with it, nothing should inducehim to sell another. Other persons of his profession must,however, have been less scrupulous; for the book was readin city, town, village, and hamlet, steamboat, and stage-coach,and a sort of war-whoop was sent forth perfectly unprecedentedin my recollection upon any occasion whatever.

An ardent desire for approbation, and a delicate sensitiveness under censure,have always, I believe, been considered as amiable traits of character;but the condition into which the appearance of Captain Hall's work threwthe republic shows plainly that these feelings, if carried to excess,produce a weakness which amounts to imbecility.

It was perfectly astonishing to hear men who, on other subjects,were of some judgment, utter their opinions upon this.

I never heard of any instance in which the commonsense generallyfound in national criticism was so overthrown by passion.

I do not speak of the want of justice, and of fair andliberal interpretation: these, perhaps, were hardly to be expected.

Other nations have been called thin-skinned, but the citizensof the union have, apparently, no skins at all; they wince if abreeze blows over them, unless it be tempered with adulation.

It was not, therefore, very surprising that the acute and forcibleobservations of a traveler they knew would be listened to should bereceived testily. The extraordinary features of the business were,first, the excess of the rage into which they lashed themselves;and, secondly, the puerility of the inventions by which theyattempted to account for the severity with which they fancied theyhad been treated.

Not content with declaring that the volumes contained no word of truth,from beginning to end (which is an assertion I heard made very nearlyas often as they were mentioned), the whole country set to workto discover the causes why Captain Hall had visited the United States,and why he had published his book.

I have heard it said with as much precision and gravityas if the statement had been conveyed by an official report,that Captain Hall had been sent out by the British Governmentexpressly for the purpose of checking the growing admirationof England for the Government of the United States,--that it was by a commission from the treasury he had come,and that it was only in obedience to orders that he had foundanything to object to.

I do not give this as the gossip of a coterie; I am persuaded that itis the belief of a very considerable portion of the country.

So deep is the conviction of this singular people that they cannotbe seen without being admired, that they will not admit the possibilitythat any one should honestly and sincerely find aught to disapprovein them or their country.

The American Reviews are, many of them, I believe, well known in England;I need not, therefore, quote them here, but I sometimes wonderedthat they, none of them, ever thought of translating Obadiah'scurse into classic American; if they had done so, on placing(he, Basil Hall) between brackets, instead of (he, Obadiah)it would have saved them a world of trouble.

I can hardly describe the curiosity with which I sat down at lengthto peruse these tremendous volumes; still less can I do justice to mysurprise at their contents. To say that I found not one exaggeratedstatement throughout the work is by no means saying enough.

It is impossible for any one who knows the country not to see thatCaptain Hall earnestly sought out things to admire and commend.

When he praises, it is with evident pleasure; and when he finds fault,it is with evident reluctance and restraint, excepting where motivespurely patriotic urge him to state roundly what it is for the benefitof his country should be known.

In fact, Captain Hall saw the country to the greatest possible advantage.

Furnished, of course, with letters of introduction to the mostdistinguished individuals, and with the still more influentialrecommendation of his own reputation, he was received in fulldrawing-room style and state from one end of the union to the other.

He saw the country in full dress, and had little or no opportunityof judging of it unhouselled, unanointed, unannealed, with all itsimperfections on its head, as I and my family too often had.

Captain Hall had certainly excellent opportunities of makinghimself acquainted with the form of the government and the laws;and of receiving, moreover, the best oral commentary upon them,in conversation with the most distinguished citizens.

Of these opportunities he made excellent use; nothing important methis eye which did not receive that sort of analytical attentionwhich an experienced and philosophical traveler alone can give.

This has made his volumes highly interesting and valuable;but I am deeply persuaded, that were a man of equal penetrationto visit the United States with no other means of becomingacquainted with the national character than the ordinary working-dayintercourse of life, he would conceive an infinitely lower ideaof the moral atmosphere of the country than Captain Hall appearsto have done; and the internal conviction on my mind is strong,that if Captain Hall had not placed a firm restraint on himself,he must have given expression to far deeper indignation than any he hasuttered against many points in the American character, with whichhe shows from other circumstances that he was well acquainted.

His rule appears to have been to state just so much of the truthas would leave on the mind of his readers a correct impression,at the least cost of pain to the sensitive folks he was writing about.

He states his own opinions and feelings, and leaves it to beinferred that he has good grounds for adopting them; but he sparesthe Americans the bitterness which a detail of the circumstanceswould have produced.

If any one chooses to say that some wicked antipathy to twelvemillions of strangers is the origin of my opinion, I mustbear it; and were the question one of mere idle speculation,I certainly would not court the abuse I must meet for stating it.

But it is not so.

. . . . . . .

The candor which he expresses, and evidently feels, they mistake for irony,or totally distrust; his unwillingness to give pain to persons fromwhom he has received kindness, they scornfully reject as affectation,and although they must know right well, in their own secret hearts,how infinitely more they lay at his mercy than he has chosen to betray;they pretend, even to themselves, that he has exaggerated the bad pointsof their character and institutions; whereas, the truth is, that he haslet them off with a degree of tenderness which may be quite suitablefor him to exercise, however little merited; while, at the same time,he has most industriously magnified their merits, whenever he could possiblyfind anything favorable.

APPENDIX CRECEPTION OF CAPTAIN BASIL HALL'S BOOK IN THE UNITED STATESHAVING now arrived nearly at the end of our travels,I am induced, ere I conclude, again to mention what I consideras one of the most remarkable traits in the national characterof the Americans; namely, their exquisite sensitiveness andsoreness respecting everything said or written concerning them.

Of this, perhaps, the most remarkable example I can give isthe effect produced on nearly every class of readers by theappearance of Captain Basil Hall's 'Travels in North America.'

In fact, it was a sort of moral earthquake, and the vibration itoccasioned through the nerves of the republic, from one cornerof the union to the other, was by no means over when I leftthe country in July 1831, a couple of years after the shock.

I was in Cincinnati when these volumes came out, but itwas not till July 1830, that I procured a copy of them.

One bookseller to whom I applied told me that he had had a fewcopies before he understood the nature of the work, but that,after becoming acquainted with it, nothing should inducehim to sell another. Other persons of his profession must,however, have been less scrupulous; for the book was readin city, town, village, and hamlet, steamboat, and stage-coach,and a sort of war-whoop was sent forth perfectly unprecedentedin my recollection upon any occasion whatever.

An ardent desire for approbation, and a delicate sensitiveness under censure,have always, I believe, been considered as amiable traits of character;but the condition into which the appearance of Captain Hall's work threwthe republic shows plainly that these feelings, if carried to excess,produce a weakness which amounts to imbecility.

It was perfectly astonishing to hear men who, on other subjects,were of some judgment, utter their opinions upon this.

I never heard of any instance in which the commonsense generallyfound in national criticism was so overthrown by passion.

I do not speak of the want of justice, and of fair andliberal interpretation: these, perhaps, were hardly to be expected.

Other nations have been called thin-skinned, but the citizensof the union have, apparently, no skins at all; they wince if abreeze blows over them, unless it be tempered with adulation.

It was not, therefore, very surprising that the acute and forcibleobservations of a traveler they knew would be listened to should bereceived testily. The extraordinary features of the business were,first, the excess of the rage into which they lashed themselves;and, secondly, the puerility of the inventions by which theyattempted to account for the severity with which they fancied theyhad been treated.

Not content with declaring that the volumes contained no word of truth,from beginning to end (which is an assertion I heard made very nearlyas often as they were mentioned), the whole country set to workto discover the causes why Captain Hall had visited the United States,and why he had published his book.

I have heard it said with as much precision and gravityas if the statement had been conveyed by an official report,that Captain Hall had been sent out by the British Governmentexpressly for the purpose of checking the growing admirationof England for the Government of the United States,--that it was by a commission from the treasury he had come,and that it was only in obedience to orders that he had foundanything to object to.

I do not give this as the gossip of a coterie; I am persuaded that itis the belief of a very considerable portion of the country.

So deep is the conviction of this singular people that they cannotbe seen without being admired, that they will not admit the possibilitythat any one should honestly and sincerely find aught to disapprovein them or their country.

The American Reviews are, many of them, I believe, well known in England;I need not, therefore, quote them here, but I sometimes wonderedthat they, none of them, ever thought of translating Obadiah'scurse into classic American; if they had done so, on placing(he, Basil Hall) between brackets, instead of (he, Obadiah)it would have saved them a world of trouble.

I can hardly describe the curiosity with which I sat down at lengthto peruse these tremendous volumes; still less can I do justice to mysurprise at their contents. To say that I found not one exaggeratedstatement throughout the work is by no means saying enough.

It is impossible for any one who knows the country not to see thatCaptain Hall earnestly sought out things to admire and commend.

When he praises, it is with evident pleasure; and when he finds fault,it is with evident reluctance and restraint, excepting where motivespurely patriotic urge him to state roundly what it is for the benefitof his country should be known.

In fact, Captain Hall saw the country to the greatest possible advantage.

Furnished, of course, with letters of introduction to the mostdistinguished individuals, and with the still more influentialrecommendation of his own reputation, he was received in fulldrawing-room style and state from one end of the union to the other.

He saw the country in full dress, and had little or no opportunityof judging of it unhouselled, unanointed, unannealed, with all itsimperfections on its head, as I and my family too often had.

Captain Hall had certainly excellent opportunities of makinghimself acquainted with the form of the government and the laws;and of receiving, moreover, the best oral commentary upon them,in conversation with the most distinguished citizens.

Of these opportunities he made excellent use; nothing important methis eye which did not receive that sort of analytical attentionwhich an experienced and philosophical traveler alone can give.

This has made his volumes highly interesting and valuable;but I am deeply persuaded, that were a man of equal penetrationto visit the United States with no other means of becomingacquainted with the national character than the ordinary working-dayintercourse of life, he would conceive an infinitely lower ideaof the moral atmosphere of the country than Captain Hall appearsto have done; and the internal conviction on my mind is strong,that if Captain Hall had not placed a firm restraint on himself,he must have given expression to far deeper indignation than any he hasuttered against many points in the American character, with whichhe shows from other circumstances that he was well acquainted.

His rule appears to have been to state just so much of the truthas would leave on the mind of his readers a correct impression,at the least cost of pain to the sensitive folks he was writing about.

He states his own opinions and feelings, and leaves it to beinferred that he has good grounds for adopting them; but he sparesthe Americans the bitterness which a detail of the circumstanceswould have produced.

If any one chooses to say that some wicked antipathy to twelvemillions of strangers is the origin of my opinion, I mustbear it; and were the question one of mere idle speculation,I certainly would not court the abuse I must meet for stating it.

But it is not so.

. . . . . . .

The candor which he expresses, and evidently feels, they mistake for irony,or totally distrust; his unwillingness to give pain to persons fromwhom he has received kindness, they scornfully reject as affectation,and although they must know right well, in their own secret hearts,how infinitely more they lay at his mercy than he has chosen to betray;they pretend, even to themselves, that he has exaggerated the bad pointsof their character and institutions; whereas, the truth is, that he haslet them off with a degree of tenderness which may be quite suitablefor him to exercise, however little merited; while, at the same time,he has most industriously magnified their merits, whenever he could possiblyfind anything favorable.

APPENDIX DTHE UNDYING HEADIN a remote part of the North lived a man and his sister,who had never seen a human being. Seldom, if ever, had the manany cause to go from home; for, as his wants demanded food,he had only to go a little distance from the lodge, and there,in some particular spot, place his arrows, with their barbsin the ground. Telling his sister where they had been placed,every morning she would go in search, and never fail offinding each stuck through the heart of a deer. She had thenonly to drag them into the lodge and prepare their food.

Thus she lived till she attained womanhood, when one dayher brother, whose name was Iamo, said to her: 'Sister, the timeis at hand when you will be ill. Listen to my advice.

If you do not, it will probably be the cause of my death.

Take the implements with which we kindle our fires.

Go some distance from our lodge and build a separate fire.

When you are in want of food, I will tell you where to find it.

You must cook for yourself, and I will for myself.

When you are ill, do not attempt to come near the lodge,or bring any of the utensils you use. Be sure alwaysto fasten to your belt the implements you need, for youdo not know when the time will come. As for myself, I mustdo the best I can.' His sister promised to obey him in allhe had said.

Shortly after, her brother had cause to go from home.

She was alone in her lodge, combing her hair. She had just untiedthe belt to which the implements were fastened, when suddenlythe event, to which her brother had alluded, occurred.

She ran out of the lodge, but in her haste forgot the belt.

Afraid to return, she stood for some time thinking.

Finally, she decided to enter the lodge and get it.

For, thought she, my brother is not at home, and I willstay but a moment to catch hold of it. She went back.

Running in suddenly, she caught hold of it, and was coming outwhen her brother came in sight. He knew what was the matter.

'Oh,' he said, 'did I not tell you to take care.

But now you have killed me.' She was going on her way,but her brother said to her, 'What can you do there now.

The accident has happened. Go in, and stay where youhave always stayed. And what will become of you?

You have killed me.'

He then laid aside his hunting-dress and accoutrements, and soonafter both his feet began to turn black, so that he could not move.

Still he directed his sister where to place the arrows,that she might always have food. The inflammation continuedto increase, and had now reached his first rib; and he said:

'Sister, my end is near. You must do as I tell you.

You see my medicine-sack, and my war-club tied to it. It containsall my medicines, and my war-plumes, and my paints of all colors.

As soon as the inflammation reaches my breast, you will takemy war-club. It has a sharp point, and you will cut off my head.

When it is free from my body, take it, place its neck in the sack,which you must open at one end. Then hang it up in its former place.

Do not forget my bow and arrows. One of the last youwill take to procure food. The remainder, tie in my sack,and then hang it up, so that I can look towards the door.

Now and then I will speak to you, but not often.' His sister againpromised to obey.

In a little time his breast was affected. 'Now,' said he,'take the club and strike off my head.' She was afraid, but he toldher to muster courage. 'Strike,' said he, and a smile was on his face.

Mustering all her courage, she gave the blow and cut off the head.

'Now,' said the head, 'place me where I told you.'

And fearfully she obeyed it in all its commands.

Retaining its animation, it looked around the lodge as usual,and it would command its sister to go in such places as it thoughtwould procure for her the flesh of different animals she needed.

One day the head said: 'The time is not distant when I shall be freedfrom this situation, and I shall have to undergo many sore evils.

So the superior manito decrees, and I must bear all patiently.'

In this situation we must leave the head.

In a certain part of the country was a village inhabited by anumerous and warlike band of Indians. In this village was a familyof ten young men--brothers. It was in the spring of the yearthat the youngest of these blackened his face and fasted.

His dreams were propitious. Having ended his fast, he wentsecretly for his brothers at night, so that none in the villagecould overhear or find out the direction they intended to go.

Though their drum was heard, yet that was a common occurrence.

Having ended the usual formalities, he told how favorablehis dreams were, and that he had called them togetherto know if they would accompany him in a war excursion.

They all answered they would. The third brother from the eldest,noted for his oddities, coming up with his war-club when his brotherhad ceased speaking, jumped up. 'Yes,' said he, 'I will go,and this will be the way I will treat those I am going to fight;'

and he struck the post in the center of the lodge, and gave a yell.

The others spoke to him, saying: 'Slow, slow, Mudjikewis, when youare in other people's lodges.' So he sat down. Then, in turn,they took the drum, and sang their songs, and closed with a feast.

The youngest told them not to whisper their intentionto their wives, but secretly to prepare for their journey.

They all promised obedience, and Mudjikewis was the firstto say so.

The time for their departure drew near. Word was given toassemble on a certain night, when they would depart immediately.

Mudjikewis was loud in his demands for his moccasins.

Several times his wife asked him the reason. 'Besides,' said she,'you have a good pair on.' 'Quick, quick,' said he, 'since youmust know, we are going on a war excursion; so be quick.'

He thus revealed the secret. That night they met and started.

The snow was on the ground, and they traveled all night, lest othersshould follow them. When it was daylight, the leader took snowand made a ball of it, then tossing it into the air, he said:

'It was in this way I saw snow fall in a dream, so that I could notbe tracked.' And he told them to keep close to each other for fearof losing themselves, as the snow began to fall in very large flakes.

Near as they walked, it was with difficulty they could see each other.

The snow continued falling all that day and the following night,so it was impossible to track them.

They had now walked for several days, and Mudjikewis wasalways in the rear. One day, running suddenly forward,he gave the SAW-SAW-QUAN, and strucka tree with his war-club, and it broke into pieces as if struckwith lightning. 'Brothers,' said he, 'this will be the way Iwill serve those we are going to fight.' The leader answered,'Slow, slow, Mudjikewis, the one I lead you to is not to be thoughtof so lightly.' Again he fell back and thought to himself:

'What! what! who can this be he is leading us to?'

He felt fearful and was silent. Day after day they traveled on,till they came to an extensive plain, on the borders of whichhuman bones were bleaching in the sun. The leader spoke:

'They are the bones of those who have gone before us.

None has ever yet returned to tell the sad tale of their fate.'

Again Mudjikewis became restless, and, running forward,gave the accustomed yell. Advancing to a large rock whichstood above the ground, he struck it, and it fell to pieces.

'See, brothers,' said he, 'thus will I treat those whom we aregoing to fight.' 'Still, still,' once more said the leader;'he to whom I am leading you is not to be comparedto the rock.'

Mudjikewis fell back thoughtful, saying to himself: 'I wonderwho this can be that he is going to attack;' and he was afraid.

Still they continued to see the remains of former warriors,who had been to the place where they were now going,some of whom had retreated as far back as the place where theyfirst saw the bones, beyond which no one had ever escaped.

At last they came to a piece of rising ground, from which theyplainly distinguished, sleeping on a distant mountain,a mammoth bear.

The distance between them was very great, but the size of the animalcaused him to be plainly seen. 'There,' said the leader,'it is he to whom I am leading you; here our troubles will commence,for he is a mishemokwa and a manito. It is he who has that weprize so dearly (i.e. wampum), to obtain which, the warriors whosebones we saw, sacrificed their lives. You must not be fearful:

be manly. We shall find him asleep.' Then the leader wentforward and touched the belt around the animal's neck.

'This,' said he, 'is what we must get. It contains the wampum.'

Then they requested the eldest to try and slip the belt overthe bear's head, who appeared to be fast asleep, as he was notin the least disturbed by the attempt to obtain the belt.

All their efforts were in vain, till it came to the onenext the youngest. He tried, and the belt moved nearlyover the monster's head, but he could get it no farther.

Then the youngest one, and the leader, made his attempt, and succeeded.

Placing it on the back of the oldest, he said, 'Now we must run,'

and off they started. When one became fatigued with its weight,another would relieve him. Thus they ran till they had passedthe bones of all former warriors, and were some distance beyond,when looking back, they saw the monster slowly rising.

He stood some time before he missed his wampum. Soon they heard histremendous howl, like distant thunder, slowly filling all the sky;and then they heard him speak and say, 'Who can it be that hasdared to steal my wampum? earth is not so large but that Ican find them;' and he descended from the hill in pursuit.

As if convulsed, the earth shook with every jump he made.

Very soon he approached the party. They, however, kept the belt,exchanging it from one to another, and encouraging each other;but he gained on them fast. 'Brothers,' said the leader,'has never any one of you, when fasting, dreamed of some friendlyspirit who would aid you as a guardian?' A dead silence followed.

'Well,' said he, 'fasting, I dreamed of being in dangerof instant death, when I saw a small lodge, with smoke curlingfrom its top. An old man lived in it, and I dreamed he helped me;and may it be verified soon,' he said, running forward andgiving the peculiar yell, and a howl as if the sounds camefrom the depths of his stomach, and what is called CHECAUDUM.

Getting upon a piece of rising ground, behold! a lodge, with smokecurling from its top, appeared. This gave them all new strength,and they ran forward and entered it. The leader spoke tothe old man who sat in the lodge, saying, 'Nemesho, help us;we claim your protection, for the great bear will kill us.'

'Sit down and eat, my grandchildren,' said the old man.

'Who is a great manito?' said he. 'There is none but me;but let me look,' and he opened the door of the lodge, when,lo! at a little distance he saw the enraged animal coming on,with slow but powerful leaps. He closed the door.

'Yes,' said he, 'he is indeed a great manito: my grandchildren,you will be the cause of my losing my life; you asked my protection,and I granted it; so now, come what may, I will protect you.

When the bear arrives at the door, you must run out of the otherdoor of the lodge.' Then putting his hand to the side ofthe lodge where he sat, he brought out a bag which he opened.

Taking out two small black dogs, he placed them before him.

'These are the ones I use when I fight,' said he; and he commencedpatting with both hands the sides of one of them, and he beganto swell out, so that he soon filled the lodge by his bulk;and he had great strong teeth. When he attained his fullsize he growled, and from that moment, as from instinct,he jumped out at the door and met the bear, who in another leapwould have reached the lodge. A terrible combat ensued.

The skies rang with the howls of the fierce monsters.

The remaining dog soon took the field. The brothers, at the onset,took the advice of the old man, and escaped through the oppositeside of the lodge. They had not proceeded far before they heardthe dying cry of one of the dogs, and soon after of the other.

'Well,' said the leader, 'the old man will share their fate:

so run; he will soon be after us.' They started with fresh vigor,for they had received food from the old man: but very soon the bearcame in sight, and again was fast gaining upon them. Again the leaderasked the brothers if they could do nothing for their safety.

All were silent. The leader, running forward, did as before.

'I dreamed,' he cried, 'that, being in great trouble, an oldman helped me who was a manito; we shall soon see his lodge.'

Taking courage, they still went on. After going a short distancethey saw the lodge of the old manito. They entered immediatelyand claimed his protection, telling him a manito was after them.

The old man, setting meat before them, said: 'Eat! who is amanito? there is no manito but me; there is none whom I fear;'

and the earth trembled as the monster advanced. The old manopened the door and saw him coming. He shut it slowly, and said:

'Yes, my grandchildren, you have brought trouble upon me.'

Procuring his medicine-sack, he took out his small war-clubs ofblack stone, and told the young men to run through the other sideof the lodge. As he handled the clubs, they became very large,and the old man stepped out just as the bear reached the door.

Then striking him with one of the clubs, it broke in pieces;the bear stumbled. Renewing the attempt with the otherwar-club, that also was broken, but the bear fell senseless.

Each blow the old man gave him sounded like a clap of thunder,and the howls of the bear ran along till they filled theheavens.

The young men had now run some distance, when they looked back.

They could see that the bear was recovering from the blows.

First he moved his paws, and soon they saw him riseon his feet. The old man shared the fate of the first,for they now heard his cries as he was torn in pieces.

Again the monster was in pursuit, and fast overtaking them.

Not yet discouraged, the young men kept on their way;but the bear was now so close, that the leader once more appliedto his brothers, but they could do nothing. 'Well,' said he,'my dreams will soon be exhausted; after this I have but one more.'

He advanced, invoking his guardian spirit to aid him.

'Once,' said he, 'I dreamed that, being sorely pressed, I came to alarge lake, on the shore of which was a canoe, partly out of water,having ten paddles all in readiness. Do not fear,' he cried,'we shall soon get it.' And so it was, even as he had said.

Coming to the lake, they saw the canoe with ten paddles,and immediately they embarked. Scarcely had they reached the centerof the lake, when they saw the bear arrive at its borders.

Lifting himself on his hind legs, he looked all around.

Then he waded into the water; then losing his footing he turned back,and commenced making the circuit of the lake. Meantime the partyremained stationary in the center to watch his movements.

He traveled all around, till at last he came to the place fromwhence he started. Then he commenced drinking up the water,and they saw the current fast setting in towards his open mouth.

The leader encouraged them to paddle hard for the opposite shore.

When only a short distance from land, the current had increasedso much, that they were drawn back by it, and all their effortsto reach it were in vain.

Then the leader again spoke, telling them to meet their fates manfully.

'Now is the time, Mudjikewis,' said he, 'to show your prowess.

Take courage and sit at the bow of the canoe; and when it approacheshis mouth, try what effect your club will have on his head.'

He obeyed, and stood ready to give the blow; while the leader,who steered, directed the canoe for the open mouth of the monster.

Rapidly advancing, they were just about to enter his mouth, when Mudjikewisstruck him a tremendous blow on the head, and gave the SAW-SAW-QUAN.

The bear's limbs doubled under him, and he fell, stunned by the blow.

But before Mudjikewis could renew it, the monster disgorged allthe water he had drank, with a force which sent the canoe with greatvelocity to the opposite shore. Instantly leaving the canoe,again they fled, and on they went till they were completely exhausted.

The earth again shook, and soon they saw the monster hardafter them. Their spirits drooped, and they felt discouraged.

The leader exerted himself, by actions and words, to cheer them up;and once more he asked them if they thought of nothing, or coulddo nothing for their rescue; and, as before, all were silent.

'Then,' he said, 'this is the last time I can apply to my guardian spirit.

Now, if we do not succeed, our fates are decided.' He ran forward,invoking his spirit with great earnestness, and gave the yell.

'We shall soon arrive,' said he to his brothers, 'at the place wheremy last guardian spirit dwells. In him I place great confidence.

Do not, do not be afraid, or your limbs will be fear-bound. We shallsoon reach his lodge. Run, run,' he cried.

Returning now to Iamo, he had passed all the time in the samecondition we had left him, the head directing his sister,in order to procure food, where to place the magic arrows,and speaking at long intervals. One day the sister saw the eyesof the head brighten, as if with pleasure. At last it spoke.

'Oh, sister,' it said, 'in what a pitiful situation youhave been the cause of placing me! Soon, very soon, a partyof young men will arrive and apply to me for aid; but alas!

How can I give what I would have done with so much pleasure?

Nevertheless, take two arrows, and place them where you havebeen in the habit of placing the others, and have meat preparedand cooked before they arrive. When you hear them comingand calling on my name, go out and say, "Alas! it is longago that an accident befell him. I was the cause of it."If they still come near, ask them in, and set meat before them.

And now you must follow my directions strictly. When the bearis near, go out and meet him. You will take my medicine-sack, bowsand arrows, and my head. You must then untie the sack, and spreadout before you my paints of all colors, my war-eagle feathers,my tufts of dried hair, and whatever else it contains.

As the bear approaches, you will take all these articles,one by one, and say to him, "This is my deceased brother's paint,"and so on with all the other articles, throwing each of themas far as you can. The virtues contained in them will causehim to totter; and, to complete his destruction, you will takemy head, and that too you will cast as far off as you can,crying aloud, "See, this is my deceased brother's head."He will then fall senseless. By this time the young menwill have eaten, and you will call them to your assistance.

You must then cut the carcass into pieces, yes, into small pieces,and scatter them to the four winds; for, unless you do this,he will again revive.' She promised that all should bedone as he said. She had only time to prepare the meat,when the voice of the leader was heard calling upon Iamo for aid.

The woman went out and said as her brother had directed.

But the war party being closely pursued, came up to the lodge.

She invited them in, and placed the meat before them.

While they were eating, they heard the bear approaching.

Untying the medicine-sack and taking the head, she had allin readiness for his approach. When he came up she didas she had been told; and, before she had expended the paintsand feathers, the bear began to totter, but, still advancing,came close to the woman. Saying as she was commanded, she thentook the head, and cast it as far from her as she could.

As it rolled along the ground, the blood, excited by the feelingsof the head in this terrible scene, gushed from the nose and mouth.

The bear, tottering, soon fell with a tremendous noise.

Then she cried for help, and the young men camerushing out, having partially regained their strength andspirits.

Mudjikewis, stepping up, gave a yell and struck him a blow uponthe head. This he repeated, till it seemed like a mass of brains,while the others, as quick as possible, cut him into very small pieces,which they then scattered in every direction. While thus employed,happening to look around where they had thrown the meat,wonderful to behold, they saw starting up and turning off in everydirection small black bears, such as are seen at the present day.

The country was soon overspread with these black animals.

And it was from this monster that the present race of bearsderived their origin.

Having thus overcome their pursuer, they returned to the lodge.

In the meantime, the woman, gathering the implements she had used,and the head, placed them again in the sack. But the head did notspeak again, probably from its great exertion to overcome the monster.

Having spent so much time and traversed so vast a country in their flight,the young men gave up the idea of ever returning to their own country,and game being plenty, they determined to remain where they now were.

One day they moved off some distance from the lodge for thepurpose of hunting, having left the wampum with the woman.

They were very successful, and amused themselves, as all youngmen do when alone, by talking and jesting with each other.

One of them spoke and said, 'We have all this sport to ourselves;let us go and ask our sister if she will not let us bring the headto this place, as it is still alive. It may be pleased to hear us talk,and be in our company. In the meantime take food to our sister.'

They went and requested the head. She told them to take it,and they took it to their hunting-grounds, and tried to amuse it,but only at times did they see its eyes beam with pleasure.

One day, while busy in their encampment, they were unexpectedly attackedby unknown Indians. The skirmish was long contested and bloody;many of their foes were slain, but still they were thirty to one.

The young men fought desperately till they were all killed.

The attacking party then retreated to a height of ground,to muster their men, and to count the number of missing and slain.

One of their young men had stayed away, and, in endeavoringto overtake them, came to the place where the head was hung up.

Seeing that alone retain animation, he eyed it for some timewith fear and surprise. However, he took it down and openedthe sack, and was much pleased to see the beautiful feathers,one of which he placed on his head.

Starting off, it waved gracefully over him till he reached his party,when he threw down the head and sack, and told them how he hadfound it, and that the sack was full of paints and feathers.

They all looked at the head and made sport of it.

Numbers of the young men took the paint and painted themselves,and one of the party took the head by the hair and said--'Look, you ugly thing, and see your paints on the faces of warriors.'

But the feathers were so beautiful, that numbers of themalso placed them on their heads. Then again they used allkinds of indignity to the head, for which they were in turnrepaid by the death of those who had used the feathers.

Then the chief commanded them to throw away all except the head.

'We will see,' said he, 'when we get home, what we can do with it.

We will try to make it shut its eyes.'

When they reached their homes they took it to the council-lodge,and hung it up before the fire, fastening it with raw hide soaked,which would shrink and become tightened by the action of the fire.

'We will then see,' they said, 'if we cannot make it shut its eyes.'

Meantime, for several days, the sister had been waiting for the youngmen to bring back the head; till, at last, getting impatient,she went in search of it. The young men she found lying withinshort distances of each other, dead, and covered with wounds.

Various other bodies lay scattered in different directions around them.

She searched for the head and sack, but they were nowhere to be found.

She raised her voice and wept, and blackened her face. Then shewalked in different directions, till she came to the place from whencethe head had been taken. Then she found the magic bow and arrows,where the young men, ignorant of their qualities, had left them.

She thought to herself that she would find her brother's head, and cameto a piece of rising ground, and there saw some of his paints and feathers.

These she carefully put up, and hung upon the branch of a tree tillher return.

At dusk she arrived at the first lodge of a very extensive village.

Here she used a charm, common among Indians when they wish to meetwith a kind reception. On applying to the old man and womanof the lodge, she was kindly received. She made known her errand.

The old man promised to aid her, and told her the head was hung up beforethe council-fire, and that the chiefs of the village, with their young men,kept watch over it continually. The former are considered as manitoes.

She said she only wished to see it, and would be satisfied if she could onlyget to the door of the lodge. She knew she had not sufficient power to takeit by force. 'Come with me,' said the Indian, 'I will take you there.'

They went, and they took their seats near the door. The council-lodgewas filled with warriors, amusing themselves with games, and constantlykeeping up a fire to smoke the head, as they said, to make dry meat.

They saw the head move, and not knowing what to make of it, one spokeand said: 'Ha! ha! It is beginning to feel the effects of the smoke.'

The sister looked up from the door, and her eyes met those of her brother,and tears rolled down the cheeks of the head. 'Well,' said the chief,'I thought we would make you do something at last. Look! look at it--shedding tears,' said he to those around him; and they all laughed and passedtheir jokes upon it. The chief, looking around, and observing the woman,after some time said to the man who came with her: 'Who have you got there?

I have never seen that woman before in our village.' 'Yes,' replied the man,'you have seen her; she is a relation of mine, and seldom goes out. She staysat my lodge, and asked me to allow her to come with me to this place.'

In the center of the lodge sat one of those young men who are always forward,and fond of boasting and displaying themselves before others.

'Why,' said he, 'I have seen her often, and it is to this lodge I go almostevery night to court her.' All the others laughed and continued their games.

The young man did not know he was telling a lie to the woman's advantage,who by that means escaped.

She returned to the man's lodge, and immediately set out for herown country. Coming to the spot where the bodies of her adoptedbrothers lay, she placed them together, their feet toward the east.

Then taking an ax which she had, she cast it up into the air,crying out, 'Brothers, get up from under it, or it will fall on you.'

This she repeated three times, and the third time the brothers all aroseand stood on their feet.

Mudjikewis commenced rubbing his eyes and stretching himself.

'Why,' said he, 'I have overslept myself.' 'No, indeed,'

said one of the others, 'do you not know we were all killed,and that it is our sister who has brought us to life?'

The young men took the bodies of their enemies and burned them.

Soon after, the woman went to procure wives for them,in a distant country, they knew not where; but she returnedwith ten young women, which she gave to the ten young men,beginning with the eldest. Mudjikewis stepped to and fro,uneasy lest he should not get the one he liked.

But he was not disappointed, for she fell to his lot.

And they were well matched, for she was a female magician.

They then all moved into a very large lodge, and their sistertold them that the women must now take turns in goingto her brother's head every night, trying to untie it.

They all said they would do so with pleasure. The eldestmade the first attempt, and with a rushing noise she fledthrough the air.

Toward daylight she returned. She had been unsuccessful, as she succeededin untying only one of the knots. All took their turns regularly,and each one succeeded in untying only one knot each time.

But when the youngest went, she commenced the work as soonas she reached the lodge; although it had always been occupied,still the Indians never could see any one. For ten nights now,the smoke had not ascended, but filled the lodge and drove them out.

This last night they were all driven out, and the young woman carriedoff the head.

The young people and the sister heard the young womancoming high through the air, and they heard her saying:

'Prepare the body of our brother.' And as soon as they heard it,they went to a small lodge where the black body of Iamo lay.

His sister commenced cutting the neck part, from which the neckhad been severed. She cut so deep as to cause it to bleed;and the others who were present, by rubbing the body andapplying medicines, expelled the blackness. In the meantime,the one who brought it, by cutting the neck of the head, caused thatalso to bleed.

As soon as she arrived, they placed that close to the body,and, by aid of medicines and various other means, succeeded inrestoring Iamo to all his former beauty and manliness.

All rejoiced in the happy termination of their troubles,and they had spent some time joyfully together, when Iamo said:

'Now I will divide the wampum,' and getting the belt which containedit, he commenced with the eldest, giving it in equal portions.

But the youngest got the most splendid and beautiful,as the bottom of the belt held the richest and rarest.

They were told that, since they had all once died, and wererestored to life, they were no longer mortal, but spirits,and they were assigned different stations in the invisible world.

Only Mudjikewis's place was, however, named. He was to directthe west wind, hence generally called Kebeyun, there to remain for ever.

They were commanded, as they had it in their power, to do goodto the inhabitants of the earth, and, forgetting their sufferingsin procuring the wampum, to give all things with a liberal hand.

And they were also commanded that it should also be held by them sacred;those grains or shells of the pale hue to be emblematic of peace,while those of the darker hue would lead to evil and war.

The spirits then, amid songs and shouts, took their flight to theirrespective abodes on high; while Iamo, with his sister Iamoqua,descended into the depths below.

　　End