Freight and passenger way-traffic remains to the steamers.
This is in the hands—along the two thousand miles of river Traveling Incognito
between St. Paul and New Orleans—of two or three close corporations well fortified with capital; and by able and thor-MY IDEA WAS, TO TARRY A WHILE in every town between St.
oughly business-like management and system, these make a Louis and New Orleans. To do this, it would be necessary to sufficiency of money out of what is left of the once prodi-go from place to place by the short packet lines. It was an gious steamboating industry. I suppose that St. Louis and easy plan to make, and would have been an easy one to fol-New Orleans have not suffered materially by the change, low, twenty years ago-but not now. There are wide intervals but alas for the wood-yard man!
between boats, these days.
He used to fringe the river all the way; his close-ranked I wanted to begin with the interesting old French settle-merchandise stretched from the one city to the other, along ments of St. Genevieve and Kaskaskia, sixty miles below St.
the banks, and he sold uncountable cords of it every year for Louis. There was only one boat advertised for that section—
cash on the nail; but all the scattering boats that are left burn a Grand Tower packet. Still, one boat was enough; so we coal now, and the seldomest spectacle on the Mississippi towent down to look at her. She was a venerable rack-heap, day is a wood-pile. Where now is the once wood-yard man?
and a fraud to boot; for she was playing herself for personal property, whereas the good honest dirt was so thickly caked all over her that she was righteously taxable as real estate.
There are places in New England where her hurricane deck would be worth a hundred and fifty dollars an acre. The soil on her forecastle was quite good—the new crop of wheat 135
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain was already springing from the cracks in protected places.
with a benevolent face and a tongue that worked easily in The companionway was of a dry sandy character, and would the socket, and from him we learned that he had lived in St.
have been well suited for grapes, with a southern exposure Louis thirty-four years and had never been across the river and a little subsoiling. The soil of the boiler deck was thin during that period. Then he wandered into a very flowing and rocky, but good enough for grazing purposes. A colored lecture, filled with classic names and allusions, which was boy was on watch here—nobody else visible. We gathered quite wonderful for fluency until the fact became rather from him that this calm craft would go, as advertised, “if she apparent that this was not the first time, nor perhaps the got her trip;” if she didn’t get it, she would wait for it.
fiftieth, that the speech had been delivered. He was a good
“Has she got any of her trip?”
deal of a character, and much better company than the sappy
“Bless you, no, boss. She ain’t unloadened, yit. She only literature he was selling. A random remark, connecting come in dis mawnin’.”
Irishmen and beer, brought this nugget of information out He was uncertain as to when she might get her trip, but of him—
thought it might be to-morrow or maybe next day. This
“They don’t drink it, sir. They can’t drink it, sir. Give an would not answer at all; so we had to give up the novelty of Irishman lager for a month, and he’s a dead man. An Irishman sailing down the river on a farm. We had one more arrow in is lined with copper, and the beer corrodes it. But whiskey our quiver: a Vicksburg packet, the “Gold Dust,” was to polishes the copper and is the saving of him, sir.” leave at 5 P.M. We took passage in her for Memphis, and At eight o’clock, promptly, we backed out and crossed the gave up the idea of stopping off here and there, as being river. As we crept toward the shore, in the thick darkness, a impracticable. She was neat, clean, and comfortable. We blinding glory of white electric light burst suddenly from camped on the boiler deck, and bought some cheap litera-our forecastle, and lit up the water and the warehouses as ture to kill time with. The vender was a venerable Irishman with a noon-day glare. Another big change, this—no more 136
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain flickering, smoky, pitch-dripping, ineffectual torch-baskets, We put ashore a well-dressed lady and gentleman, and two now: their day is past. Next, instead of calling out a score of well-dressed, lady-like young girls, together with sundry hands to man the stage, a couple of men and a hatful of Russia-leather bags. A strange place for such folk! No car-steam lowered it from the derrick where it was suspended, riage was waiting. The party moved off as if they had not launched it, deposited it in just the right spot, and the whole expected any, and struck down a winding country road afoot.
thing was over and done with before a mate in the olden But the mystery was explained when we got under way time could have got his profanity-mill adjusted to begin the again; for these people were evidently bound for a large town preparatory services. Why this new and simple method of which lay shut in behind a tow-head (i.e., new island) a couple handling the stages was not thought of when the first steam-of miles below this landing. I couldn’t remember that town; boat was built, is a mystery which helps one to realize what I couldn’t place it, couldn’t call its name. So I lost part of my a dull-witted slug the average human being is.
temper. I suspected that it might be St. Genevieve—and so We finally got away at two in the morning, and when I it proved to be. Observe what this eccentric river had been turned out at six, we were rounding to at a rocky point where about: it had built up this huge useless tow-head directly in there was an old stone warehouse—at any rate, the ruins of front of this town, cut off its river communications, fenced it; two or three decayed dwelling-houses were near by, in the it away completely, and made a “country” town of it. It is a shelter of the leafy hills; but there were no evidences of hu-fine old place, too, and deserved a better fate. It was settled man or other animal life to be seen. I wondered if I had by the French, and is a relic of a time when one could travel forgotten the river; for I had no recollection whatever of this from the mouths of the Mississippi to Quebec and be on place; the shape of the river, too, was unfamiliar; there was French territory and under French rule all the way.
nothing in sight, anywhere, that I could remember ever hav-Presently I ascended to the hurricane deck and cast a longing seen before. I was surprised, disappointed, and annoyed.
ing glance toward the pilot-house.
137
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain Chapter 24
I crept under that one.
“Where are you from?”
My Incognito is Exploded
“New England.”
“First time you have ever been West?” AFTER A CLOSE STUDY OF THE FACE of the pilot on watch, I was I climbed over this one.
satisfied that I had never seen him before; so I went up there.
“If you take an interest in such things, I can tell you what The pilot inspected me; I re-inspected the pilot. These cus-all these things are for.”
tomary preliminaries over, I sat down on the high bench, I said I should like it.
and he faced about and went on with his work. Every detail
“This,” putting his hand on a backing-bell rope, “is to of the pilot-house was familiar to me, with one exception,—
sound the fire-alarm; this,” putting his hand on a go-ahead a large-mouthed tube under the breast-board. I puzzled over bell, “is to call the texas-tender; this one,” indicating the that thing a considerable time; then gave up and asked what whistle-lever, “is to call the captain”—and so he went on, it was for.
touching one object after another, and reeling off his tran-
“To hear the engine-bells through.”
quil spool of lies.
It was another good contrivance which ought to have been I had never felt so like a passenger before. I thanked him, invented half a century sooner. So I was thinking, when the with emotion, for each new fact, and wrote it down in my pilot asked—
note-book. The pilot warmed to his opportunity, and pro-
“Do you know what this rope is for?”
ceeded to load me up in the good old-fashioned way. At I managed to get around this question, without commit-times I was afraid he was going to rupture his invention; but ting myself.
it always stood the strain, and he pulled through all right.
“Is this the first time you were ever in a pilot-house?” He drifted, by easy stages, into revealments of the river’s 138
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain marvelous eccentricities of one sort and another, and backed Plum Point, and Stack Island, and so on—places they call them up with some pretty gigantic illustrations. For in-alligator beds.”
stance—
“Did they actually impede navigation?”
“Do you see that little boulder sticking out of the water
“Years ago, yes, in very low water; there was hardly a trip, yonder? well, when I first came on the river, that was a solid then, that we didn’t get aground on alligators.” ridge of rock, over sixty feet high and two miles long. All It seemed to me that I should certainly have to get out my washed away but that.” (This with a sigh.) tomahawk. However, I restrained myself and said—
I had a mighty impulse to destroy him, but it seemed to
“It must have been dreadful.”
me that killing, in any ordinary way, would be too good for
“Yes, it was one of the main difficulties about piloting. It him.
was so hard to tell anything about the water; the damned Once, when an odd-looking craft, with a vast coal-scuttle things shift around so—never lie still five minutes at a time.
slanting aloft on the end of a beam, was steaming by in the You can tell a wind-reef, straight off, by the look of it; you distance, he indifferently drew attention to it, as one might can tell a break; you can tell a sand-reef—that’s all easy; but to an object grown wearisome through familiarity, and ob-an alligator reef doesn’t show up, worth anything. Nine times served that it was an “alligator boat.” in ten you can’t tell where the water is; and when you do see
“An alligator boat? What’s it for?”
where it is, like as not it ain’t there when you get there, the
“To dredge out alligators with.”
devils have swapped around so, meantime. Of course there
“Are they so thick as to be troublesome?” were some few pilots that could judge of alligator water nearly
“Well, not now, because the Government keeps them as well as they could of any other kind, but they had to have down. But they used to be. Not everywhere; but in favorite natural talent for it; it wasn’t a thing a body could learn, you places, here and there, where the river is wide and shoal-like had to be born with it. Let me see: there was Ben Thornburg, 139
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain and Beck Jolly, and Squire Bell, and Horace Bixby, and Major proved in comeliness in five-and-twenty year and in the noble Downing, and John Stevenson, and Billy Gordon, and Jim art of inflating his facts.] After these musings, I said aloud—
Brady, and George Ealer, and Billy Youngblood—all A 1
“I should think that dredging out the alligators wouldn’t alligator pilots. they could tell alligator water as far as an-have done much good, because they could come back again other Christian could tell whiskey. Read it?—Ah, couldn’t right away.”
they, though! I only wish I had as many dollars as they could
“If you had had as much experience of alligators as I have, read alligator water a mile and a half off. Yes, and it paid you wouldn’t talk like that. You dredge an alligator once and them to do it, too. A good alligator pilot could always get he’s convinced. It’s the last you hear of him. He wouldn’t fifteen hundred dollars a month. Nights, other people had come back for pie. If there’s one thing that an alligator is to lay up for alligators, but those fellows never laid up for more down on than another, it’s being dredged. Besides, they alligators; they never laid up for anything but fog. They could were not simply shoved out of the way; the most of the scoop-smell the best alligator water it was said; I don’t know whether ful were scooped aboard; they emptied them into the hold; it was so or not, and I think a body’s got his hands full enough and when they had got a trip, they took them to Orleans to if he sticks to just what he knows himself, without going the Government works.”
around backing up other people’s say-so’s, though there’s a
“What for?”
plenty that ain’t backward about doing it, as long as they can
“Why, to make soldier-shoes out of their hides. All the roust out something wonderful to tell. Which is not the style Government shoes are made of alligator hide. It makes the of Robert Styles, by as much as three fathom—maybe quar-best shoes in the world. They last five years, and they won’t ter- less.”
absorb water. The alligator fishery is a Government mo-
[My! Was this Rob Styles?—This mustached and stately nopoly. All the alligators are Government property—just like figure?—A slim enough cub, in my time. How he has im-the live-oaks. You cut down a live-oak, and Government fines 140
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain you fifty dollars; you kill an alligator, and up you go for and then adding—
misprision of treason—lucky duck if they don’t hang you,
“That boat was the ‘Cyclone,’—last trip she ever made—
too. And they will, if you’re a Democrat. The buzzard is the she sunk, that very trip—captain was Tom Ballou, the most sacred bird of the South, and you can’t touch him; the alliga-immortal liar that ever I struck. He couldn’t ever seem to tell tor is the sacred bird of the Government, and you’ve got to the truth, in any kind of weather. Why, he would make you let him alone.”
fairly shudder. He was the most scandalous liar! I left him,
“Do you ever get aground on the alligators now?” finally; I couldn’t stand it. The proverb says, ‘like master,
“Oh, no! it hasn’t happened for years.” like man;’ and if you stay with that kind of a man, you’ll
“Well, then, why do they still keep the alligator boats in come under suspicion by and by, just as sure as you live. He service?”
paid first-class wages; but said I, What’s wages when your
“Just for police duty—nothing more. They merely go up reputation’s in danger? So I let the wages go, and froze to my and down now and then. The present generation of alliga-reputation. And I’ve never regretted it. Reputation’s worth tors know them as easy as a burglar knows a roundsman; everything, ain’t it? That’s the way I look at it. He had more when they see one coming, they break camp and go for the selfish organs than any seven men in the world—all packed woods.”
in the stern-sheets of his skull, of course, where they be-After rounding-out and finishing-up and polishing-off the longed. They weighed down the back of his head so that it alligator business, he dropped easily and comfortably into made his nose tilt up in the air. People thought it was vanity, the historical vein, and told of some tremendous feats of but it wasn’t, it was malice. If you only saw his foot, you’d half-a-dozen old-time steamboats of his acquaintance, dwell-take him to be nineteen feet high, but he wasn’t; it was being at special length upon a certain extraordinary perfor-cause his foot was out of drawing. He was intended to be mance of his chief favorite among this distinguished fleet—
nineteen feet high, no doubt, if his foot was made first, but 141
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain he didn’t get there; he was only five feet ten. That’s what he
“You mean the sun—because you started out just at break was, and that’s what he is. You take the lies out of him, and of— look here! Was this before you quitted the captain on he’ll shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice out of account of his lying, or—”
him, and he’ll disappear. That “Cyclone” was a rattler to go,
“It was before—oh, a long time before. And as I was say-and the sweetest thing to steer that ever walked the waters.
ing, he—”
Set her amidships, in a big river, and just let her go; it was all
“But was this the trip she sunk, or was—” you had to do. She would hold herself on a star all night, if
“Oh, no!—months afterward. And so the old man, he—” you let her alone. You couldn’t ever feel her rudder. It wasn’t
“Then she made two last trips, because you said—” any more labor to steer her than it is to count the Republi-He stepped back from the wheel, swabbing away his per-can vote in a South Carolina election. One morning, just at spiration, and said—
daybreak, the last trip she ever made, they took her rudder
“Here!” (calling me by name), “you take her and lie a aboard to mend it; I didn’t know anything about it; I backed while—you’re handier at it than I am. Trying to play your-her out from the wood-yard and went a-weaving down the self for a stranger and an innocent!—why, I knew you be-river all serene. When I had gone about twenty-three miles, fore you had spoken seven words; and I made up my mind and made four horribly crooked crossings——” to find out what was your little game. It was to draw me out.
“Without any rudder?”
Well, I let you, didn’t I? Now take the wheel and finish the
“Yes—old Capt. Tom appeared on the roof and began to watch; and next time play fair, and you won’t have to work find fault with me for running such a dark night—” your passage.”
“Such a dark night?—Why, you said—” Thus ended the fictitious-name business. And not six hours
“Never mind what I said,—’twas as dark as Egypt now, out from St. Louis! but I had gained a privilege, any way, for though pretty soon the moon began to rise, and——” I had been itching to get my hands on the wheel, from the 142
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain beginning. I seemed to have forgotten the river, but I hadn’t work—and is one of the most picturesque features of the forgotten how to steer a steamboat, nor how to enjoy it, scenery of that region. For nearer or remoter neighbors, the either.
Tower has the Devil’s Bake Oven—so called, perhaps, because it does not powerfully resemble anybody else’s bake Chapter 25
oven; and the Devil’s Tea Table—this latter a great smooth-surfaced mass of rock, with diminishing wine-glass stem, From Cairo to Hickman
perched some fifty or sixty feet above the river, beside a beflowered and garlanded precipice, and sufficiently like a THE SCENERY, FROM ST. LOUIS TO CAIRO—two hundred tea-table to answer for anybody, Devil or Christian. Away miles—is varied and beautiful. The hills were clothed in the down the river we have the Devil’s Elbow and the Devil’s fresh foliage of spring now, and were a gracious and worthy Race-course, and lots of other property of his which I can-setting for the broad river flowing between. Our trip began not now call to mind.
auspiciously, with a perfect day, as to breeze and sunshine, The Town of Grand Tower was evidently a busier place and our boat threw the miles out behind her with satisfac-than it had been in old times, but it seemed to need some tory despatch.
repairs here and there, and a new coat of whitewash all over.
We found a railway intruding at Chester, Illinois; Chester Still, it was pleasant to me to see the old coat once more.
has also a penitentiary now, and is otherwise marching on.
“Uncle” Mumford, our second officer, said the place had At Grand Tower, too, there was a railway; and another at been suffering from high water, and consequently was not Cape Girardeau. The former town gets its name from a huge, looking its best now. But he said it was not strange that it squat pillar of rock, which stands up out of the water on the didn’t waste white-wash on itself, for more lime was made Missouri side of the river—a piece of nature’s fanciful handi-there, and of a better quality, than anywhere in the West; 143
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain and added— “On a dairy farm you never can get any milk attention to what he called the “strong and pervasive reli-for your coffee, nor any sugar for it on a sugar plantation; gious look of the town,” but I could not see that it looked and it is against sense to go to a lime town to hunt for white-more religious than the other hill towns with the same slope wash.” In my own experience I knew the first two items to and built of the same kind of bricks. Partialities often make be true; and also that people who sell candy don’t care for people see more than really exists.
candy; therefore there was plausibility in Uncle Mumford’s Uncle Mumford has been thirty years a mate on the river.
final observation that “people who make lime run more to He is a man of practical sense and a level head; has observed; religion than whitewash.” Uncle Mumford said, further, that has had much experience of one sort and another; has opin-Grand Tower was a great coaling center and a prospering ions; has, also, just a perceptible dash of poetry in his complace.
position, an easy gift of speech, a thick growl in his voice, Cape Girardeau is situated on a hillside, and makes a hand-and an oath or two where he can get at them when the exi-some appearance. There is a great Jesuit school for boys at gencies of his office require a spiritual lift. He is a mate of the foot of the town by the river. Uncle Mumford said it had the blessed old-time kind; and goes gravely damning around, as high a reputation for thoroughness as any similar institu-when there is work to the fore, in a way to mellow the ex-tion in Missouri. There was another college higher up on an steamboatman’s heart with sweet soft longings for the van-airy summit—a bright new edifice, picturesquely and pecu-ished days that shall come no more. “Git up there you! Go-liarly towered and pinnacled—a sort of gigantic casters, with ing to be all day? Why d’n’t you say you was petrified in your the cruets all complete. Uncle Mumford said that Cape hind legs, before you shipped!”
Girardeau was the Athens of Missouri, and contained sev-He is a steady man with his crew; kind and just, but firm; eral colleges besides those already mentioned; and all of them so they like him, and stay with him. He is still in the slouchy on a religious basis of one kind or another. He directed my garb of the old generation of mates; but next trip the An-144
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain chor Line will have him in uniform—a natty blue naval had not undergone conspicuous alteration. Nor the Chain, uniform, with brass buttons, along with all the officers of either—in the nature of things; for it is a chain of sunken the line—and then he will be a totally different style of scen-rocks admirably arranged to capture and kill steamboats on ery from what he is now.
bad nights. A good many steamboat corpses lie buried there, Uniforms on the Mississippi! It beats all the other changes out of sight; among the rest my first friend the “Paul Jones;” put together, for surprise. Still, there is another surprise—
she knocked her bottom out, and went down like a pot, so that it was not made fifty years ago. It is so manifestly sen-the historian told me—Uncle Mumford. He said she had a sible, that it might have been thought of earlier, one would gray mare aboard, and a preacher. To me, this sufficiently suppose. During fifty years, out there, the innocent passen-accounted for the disaster; as it did, of course, to Mumford, ger in need of help and information, has been mistaking the who added—
mate for the cook, and the captain for the barber—and be-
“But there are many ignorant people who would scoff at ing roughly entertained for it, too. But his troubles are ended such a matter, and call it superstition. But you will always now. And the greatly improved aspect of the boat’s staff is notice that they are people who have never traveled with a another advantage achieved by the dress-reform period.
gray mare and a preacher. I went down the river once in Steered down the bend below Cape Girardeau. They used such company. We grounded at Bloody Island; we grounded to call it “Steersman’s Bend;” plain sailing and plenty of wa-at Hanging Dog; we grounded just below this same Com-ter in it, always; about the only place in the Upper River merce; we jolted Beaver Dam Rock; we hit one of the worst that a new cub was allowed to take a boat through, in low breaks in the ‘Graveyard’ behind Goose Island; we had a water.
roustabout killed in a fight; we burnt a boiler; broke a shaft; Thebes, at the head of the Grand Chain, and Commerce collapsed a flue; and went into Cairo with nine feet of water at the foot of it, were towns easily rememberable, as they in the hold—may have been more, may have been less. I 145
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain remember it as if it were yesterday. The men lost their heads Hat Island, in early days. A farmer who lived on the Illinois with terror. They painted the mare blue, in sight of town, shore there, said that twenty-nine steamboats had left their and threw the preacher overboard, or we should not have bones strung along within sight from his house. Between St.
arrived at all. The preacher was fished out and saved. He Louis and Cairo the steamboat wrecks average one to the acknowledged, himself, that he had been to blame. I remem-mile;—two hundred wrecks, altogether.
ber it all, as if it were yesterday.” I could recognize big changes from Commerce down. Bea-That this combination—of preacher and gray mare—
ver Dam Rock was out in the middle of the river now, and should breed calamity, seems strange, and at first glance un-throwing a prodigious “break;” it used to be close to the believable; but the fact is fortified by so much unassailable shore, and boats went down outside of it. A big island that proof that to doubt is to dishonor reason. I myself remem-used to be away out in mid-river, has retired to the Missouri ber a case where a captain was warned by numerous friends shore, and boats do not go near it any more. The island against taking a gray mare and a preacher with him, but called Jacket Pattern is whittled down to a wedge now, and is persisted in his purpose in spite of all that could be said; and booked for early destruction. Goose Island is all gone but a the same day—it may have been the next, and some say it little dab the size of a steamboat. The perilous “Graveyard,” was, though I think it was the same day—he got drunk and among whose numberless wrecks we used to pick our way so fell down the hatchway, and was borne to his home a corpse.
slowly and gingerly, is far away from the channel now, and a This is literally true.
terror to nobody. One of the islands formerly called the Two No vestige of Hat Island is left now; every shred of it is Sisters is gone entirely; the other, which used to lie close to washed away. I do not even remember what part of the river the Illinois shore, is now on the Missouri side, a mile away; it used to be in, except that it was between St. Louis and it is joined solidly to the shore, and it takes a sharp eye to see Cairo somewhere. It was a bad region—all around and about where the seam is—but it is Illinois ground yet, and the 146
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain people who live on it have to ferry themselves over and work former estate, as per Mr. Dickens’s portrait of it. However, it the Illinois roads and pay Illinois taxes: singular state of things!
was already building with bricks when I had seen it last—
Near the mouth of the river several islands were missing—
which was when Colonel (now General) Grant was drilling washed away. Cairo was still there—easily visible across the long, his first command there. Uncle Mumford says the libraries flat point upon whose further verge it stands; but we had to and Sunday-schools have done a good work in Cairo, as well steam a long way around to get to it. Night fell as we were going as the brick masons. Cairo has