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!

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