emotions are among the toughest things in the world to majestic, unchanging sameness of serenity, repose, tranquil-manufacture out of whole cloth; it is easier to manufacture lity, lethargy, vacancy—symbol of eternity, realization of the seven facts than one emotion. Captain Basil Hall. R.N., heaven pictured by priest and prophet, and longed for by writing fifty-five years ago, says—
the good and thoughtless!
“Here I caught the first glimpse of the object I had so long Immediately after the war of 1812, tourists began to come wished to behold, and felt myself amply repaid at that mo-to America, from England; scattering ones at first, then a ment for all the trouble I had experienced in coming so far; sort of procession of them—a procession which kept up its and stood looking at the river flowing past till it was too 154
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain dark to distinguish anything. But it was not till I had visited the same spot a dozen times, that I came to a right compre-
“It is only when you ascend the mighty current for fifty or hension of the grandeur of the scene.” a hundred miles, and use the eye of imagination as well as that of nature, that you begin to understand all his might Following are Mrs. Trollope’s emotions. She is writing a and majesty. You see him fertilizing a boundless valley, bear-few months later in the same year, 1827, and is coming in at ing along in his course the trophies of his thousand victories the mouth of the Mississippi—
over the shattered forest—here carrying away large masses of soil with all their growth, and there forming islands, des-
“The first indication of our approach to land was the ap-tined at some future period to be the residence of man; and pearance of this mighty river pouring forth its muddy mass while indulging in this prospect, it is then time for reflection of waters, and mingling with the deep blue of the Mexican to suggest that the current before you has flowed through Gulf. I never beheld a scene so utterly desolate as this en-two or three thousand miles, and has yet to travel one thou-trance of the Mississippi. Had Dante seen it, he might have sand three hundred more before reaching its ocean destina-drawn images of another Bolgia from its horrors. One only tion.”
object rears itself above the eddying waters; this is the mast of a vessel long since wrecked in attempting to cross the bar, Receive, now, the emotions of Captain Marryat, R.N. au-and it still stands, a dismal witness of the destruction that thor of the sea tales, writing in 1837, three years after Mr.
has been, and a boding prophet of that which is to come.” Murray—
Emotions of Hon. Charles Augustus Murray (near St.
“Never, perhaps, in the records of nations, was there an Louis), seven years later—
instance of a century of such unvarying and unmitigated 155
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain crime as is to be collected from the history of the turbulent loaded with the masses of soil which nourished their roots, and blood-stained Mississippi. The stream itself appears as if often blocking up and changing for a time the channel of the appropriate for the deeds which have been committed. It is river, which, as if in anger at its being opposed, inundates and not like most rivers, beautiful to the sight, bestowing fertil-devastates the whole country round; and as soon as it forces ity in its course; not one that the eye loves to dwell upon as its way through its former channel, plants in every direction it sweeps along, nor can you wander upon its banks, or trust the uprooted monarchs of the forest (upon whose branches yourself without danger to its stream. It is a furious, rapid, the bird will never again perch, or the raccoon, the opossum, desolating torrent, loaded with alluvial soil; and few of those or the squirrel climb) as traps to the adventurous navigators of who are received into its waters ever rise again,* or can sup-its waters by steam, who, borne down upon these concealed port themselves long upon its surface without assistance from dangers which pierce through the planks, very often have not some friendly log. It contains the coarsest and most uneatable time to steer for and gain the shore before they sink to the of fish, such as the cat-fish and such genus, and as you de-bottom. There are no pleasing associations connected with scend, its banks are occupied with the fetid alligator, while the great common sewer of the Western America, which pours the panther basks at its edge in the cane-brakes, almost im-out its mud into the Mexican Gulf, polluting the clear blue pervious to man. Pouring its impetuous waters through wild sea for many miles beyond its mouth. It is a river of desola-tracks covered with trees of little value except for firewood, tion; and instead of reminding you, like other beautiful rivers, it sweeps down whole forests in its course, which disappear of an angel which has descended for the benefit of man, you in tumultuous confusion, whirled away by the stream now imagine it a devil, whose energies have been only overcome by the wonderful power of steam.”
It is pretty crude literature for a man accustomed to han-
*There was a foolish superstition of some little prevalence in dling a pen; still, as a panorama of the emotions sent welter-that day, that the Mississippi would neither buoy up a swimmer, nor permit a drowned person’s body to rise to the surface.
156
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain ing through this noted visitor’s breast by the aspect and tra-So much for the emotions. The tourists, one and all, remark ditions of the “great common sewer,” it has a value. A value, upon the deep, brooding loneliness and desolation of the vast though marred in the matter of statistics by inaccuracies; for river. Captain Basil Hall, who saw it at flood-stage, says—
the catfish is a plenty good enough fish for anybody, and there are no panthers that are “impervious to man.”
“Sometimes we passed along distances of twenty or thirty miles without seeing a single habitation. An artist, in search Later still comes Alexander Mackay, of the Middle Temple, of hints for a painting of the deluge, would here have found Barrister at Law, with a better digestion, and no catfish din-them in abundance.”
ner aboard, and feels as follows—
The first shall be last, etc. just two hundred years ago, the
“The Mississippi! It was with indescribable emotions that old original first and gallantest of all the foreign tourists, I first felt myself afloat upon its waters. How often in my pioneer, head of the procession, ended his weary and te-schoolboy dreams, and in my waking visions afterwards, had dious discovery-voyage down the solemn stretches of the great my imagination pictured to itself the lordly stream, rolling river—La Salle, whose name will last as long as the river with tumultuous current through the boundless region to itself shall last. We quote from Mr. Parkman—
which it has given its name, and gathering into itself, in its course to the ocean, the tributary waters of almost every
“And now they neared their journey’s end. On the sixth of latitude in the temperate zone! Here it was then in its reality, April, the river divided itself into three broad channels. La and I, at length, steaming against its tide. I looked upon it Salle followed that of the west, and D’Autray that of the with that reverence with which everyone must regard a great east; while Tonty took the middle passage. As he drifted down feature of external nature.”
the turbid current, between the low and marshy shores, the 157
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain brackish water changed to brine, and the breeze grew fresh New Orleans intended to fittingly celebrate, this present with the salt breath of the sea. Then the broad bosom of the year, the bicentennial anniversary of this illustrious event; great Gulf opened on his sight, tossing its restless billows, but when the time came, all her energies and surplus money limitless, voiceless, lonely as when born of chaos, without a were required in other directions, for the flood was upon sail, without a sign of life.”
the land then, making havoc and devastation everywhere.
Then, on a spot of solid ground, La Salle reared a column
“bearing the arms of France; the Frenchmen were mustered Chapter 28
under arms; and while the New England Indians and their squaws looked on in wondering silence, they chanted the Te Uncle Mumford Unloads
Deum, the Exaudiat, , and the Domine Salvum Fac Regem.” Then, whilst the musketry volleyed and rejoicing shouts ALL DAY WE SWUNG ALONG DOWN THE RIVER, and had the stream burst forth, the victorious discoverer planted the column, almost wholly to ourselves. Formerly, at such a stage of the and made proclamation in a loud voice, taking formal pos-water, we should have passed acres of lumber rafts, and doz-session of the river and the vast countries watered by it, in ens of big coal barges; also occasional little trading-scows, the name of the King. The column bore this inscription—
peddling along from farm to farm, with the peddler’s family on board; possibly, a random scow, bearing a humble Ham-Louis le Grand, Roy de France et de Navarre, Regne; Le let and Co. on an itinerant dramatic trip. But these were all Neuvieme Avril,
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 1682.
wooded mouth of the Obion River. The spy-glass revealed 158
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain the fact that she was named for me—or he was named for boat can take herself through them without any help, after me, whichever you prefer. As this was the first time I had she has been through once. Lamps in such places are of course ever encountered this species of honor, it seems excusable to not wasted; it is much more convenient and comfortable for mention it, and at the same time call the attention of the a pilot to hold on them than on a spread of formless black-authorities to the tardiness of my recognition of it.
ness that won’t stay still; and money is saved to the boat, at Noted a big change in the river, at Island 21. It was a very the same time, for she can of course make more miles with large island, and used to be out toward mid-stream; but it is her rudder amidships than she can with it squared across her joined fast to the main shore now, and has retired from busi-stern and holding her back.
ness as an island.
But this thing has knocked the romance out of piloting, As we approached famous and formidable Plum Point, to a large extent. It, and some other things together, have darkness fell, but that was nothing to shudder about—in knocked all the romance out of it. For instance, the peril these modem times. For now the national government has from snags is not now what it once was. The government’s turned the Mississippi into a sort of two-thousand-mile torch-snag-boats go patrolling up and down, in these matter-of-light procession. In the head of every crossing, and in the fact days, pulling the river’s teeth; they have rooted out all foot of every crossing, the government has set up a clear-the old clusters which made many localities so formidable; burning lamp. You are never entirely in the dark, now; there and they allow no new ones to collect. Formerly, if your boat is always a beacon in sight, either before you, or behind you, got away from you, on a black night, and broke for the woods, or abreast. One might almost say that lamps have been squan-it was an anxious time with you; so was it also, when you dered there. Dozens of crossings are lighted which were not were groping your way through solidified darkness in a nar-shoal when they were created, and have never been shoal row chute; but all that is changed now—you flash out your since; crossings so plain, too, and also so straight, that a steam-electric light, transform night into day in the twinkling of 159
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain an eye, and your perils and anxieties are at an end. Horace house; and keep awake, too. Verily we are being treated like Bixby and George Ritchie have charted the crossings and a parcel of mates and engineers. The Government has taken laid out the courses by compass; they have invented a lamp away the romance of our calling; the Company has taken to go with the chart, and have patented the whole. With away its state and dignity.
these helps, one may run in the fog now, with considerable Plum Point looked as it had always looked by night, with security, and with a confidence unknown in the old days.
the exception that now there were beacons to mark the cross-With these abundant beacons, the banishment of snags, ings, and also a lot of other lights on the Point and along its plenty of daylight in a box and ready to be turned on when-shore; these latter glinting from the fleet of the United States ever needed, and a chart and compass to fight the fog with, River Commission, and from a village which the officials have piloting, at a good stage of water, is now nearly as safe and built on the land for offices and for the employes of the ser-simple as driving stage, and is hardly more than three times vice. The military engineers of the Commission have taken as romantic.
upon their shoulders the job of making the Mississippi over And now in these new days, these days of infinite change, again—a job transcended in size by only the original job of the Anchor Line have raised the captain above the pilot by creating it. They are building wing-dams here and there, to giving him the bigger wages of the two. This was going far, deflect the current; and dikes to confine it in narrower bounds; but they have not stopped there. They have decreed that the and other dikes to make it stay there; and for unnumbered pilot shall remain at his post, and stand his watch clear miles along the Mississippi, they are felling the timber-front through, whether the boat be under way or tied up to the for fifty yards back, with the purpose of shaving the bank shore. We, that were once the aristocrats of the river, can’t go down to low-water mark with the slant of a house roof, and to bed now, as we used to do, and sleep while a hundred tons ballasting it with stones; and in many places they have proof freight are lugged aboard; no, we must sit in the pilot-tected the wasting shores with rows of piles. One who knows 160
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain the Mississippi will promptly aver—not aloud, but to himself—
and therefore to be relied on as being full and correct; except that ten thousand River Commissions, with the mines of the that I have here and there left out remarks which were ad-world at their back, cannot tame that lawless stream, cannot dressed to the men, such as “where in blazes are you going curb it or confine it, cannot say to it, Go here, or Go there, and with that barrel now?” and which seemed to me to break the make it obey; cannot save a shore which it has sentenced; can-flow of the written statement, without compensating by add-not bar its path with an obstruction which it will not tear down, ing to its information or its clearness. Not that I have vendance over, and laugh at. But a discreet man will not put these tured to strike out all such interjections; I have removed things into spoken words; for the West Point engineers have only those which were obviously irrelevant; wherever one not their superiors anywhere; they know all that can be known occurred which I felt any question about, I have judged it of their abstruse science; and so, since they conceive that they safest to let it remain.
can fetter and handcuff that river and boss him, it is but wisdom for the unscientific man to keep still, lie low, and wait till UNCLE MUMFORD’S IMPRESSIONS
they do it. Captain Eads, with his jetties, has done a work at the mouth of the Mississippi which seemed clearly impossible; so Uncle Mumford said—
we do not feel full confidence now to prophesy against like
“As long as I have been mate of a steamboat—thirty years—
impossibilities. Otherwise one would pipe out and say the ComI have watched this river and studied it. Maybe I could have mission might as well bully the comets in their courses and learnt more about it at West Point, but if I believe it I wish I undertake to make them behave, as try to bully the Mississippi may be what are you sucking your fingers there for? — collar into right and reasonable conduct.
that kag of nails! Four years at West Point, and plenty of I consulted Uncle Mumford concerning this and cognate books and schooling, will learn a man a good deal, I reckon, matters; and I give here the result, stenographically reported, but it won’t learn him the river. You turn one of those little 161
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain European rivers over to this Commission, with its hard bot-It won’t do any good. If the river has got a mortgage on that tom and clear water, and it would just be a holiday job for island, it will foreclose, sure, pegs or no pegs. Away down them to wall it, and pile it, and dike it, and tame it down, yonder, they have driven two rows of piles straight through and boss it around, and make it go wherever they wanted it the middle of a dry bar half a mile long, which is forty foot to, and stay where they put it, and do just as they said, every out of the water when the river is low. What do you reckon time. But this ain’t that kind of a river. They have started in that is for? If I know, I wish I may land in- hump yourself, you here with big confidence, and the best intentions in the world; son of an undertaker! — out with that coal-oil, now, lively, lively!
but they are going to get left. What does Ecclesiastes vii. 13
And just look at what they are trying to do down there at say? Says enough to knock their little game galley-west, don’t Milliken’s Bend. There’s been a cut-off in that section, and it? Now you look at their methods once. There at Devil’s Vicksburg is left out in the cold. It’s a country town now.
Island, in the Upper River, they wanted the water to go one The river strikes in below it; and a boat can’t go up to the way, the water wanted to go another. So they put up a stone town except in high water. Well, they are going to build wall. But what does the river care for a stone wall? When it wing-dams in the bend opposite the foot of 103, and throw got ready, it just bulged through it. Maybe they can build the water over and cut off the foot of the island and plow another that will stay; that is, up there—but not down here down into an old ditch where the river used to be in ancient they can’t. Down here in the Lower River, they drive some times; and they think they can persuade the water around pegs to turn the water away from the shore and stop it from that way, and get it to strike in above Vicksburg, as it used to slicing off the bank; very well, don’t it go straight over and do, and fetch the town back into the world again. That is, cut somebody else’s bank? Certainly. Are they going to peg they are going to take this whole Mississippi, and twist it all the banks? Why, they could buy ground and build a new around and make it run several miles up stream. Well you’ve Mississippi cheaper. They are pegging Bulletin Tow-head now.
got to admire men that deal in ideas of that size and can tote 162
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain them around without crutches; but you haven’t got to be-unrighteousness, heirs of perdition! Going to be a year getting lieve they can do such miracles, have you! And yet you ain’t that hogshead ashore? ”
absolutely obliged to believe they can’t. I reckon the safe way, where a man can afford it, is to copper the operation, During our trip to New Orleans and back, we had many and at the same time buy enough property in Vicksburg to conversations with river men, planters, journalists, and of-square you up in case they win. Government is doing a deal ficers of the River Commission—with conflicting and con-for the Mississippi, now—spending loads of money on her.
fusing results. To wit:—
When there used to be four thousand steamboats and ten thousand acres of coal-barges, and rafts and trading scows, 1. Some believed in the Commission’s scheme to arbitrarily there wasn’t a lantern from St. Paul to New Orleans, and the and permanently confine (and thus deepen) the channel, snags were thicker than bristles on a hog’s back; and now preserve threatened shores, etc.
when there’s three dozen steamboats and nary barge or raft, 2. Some believed that the Commission’s money ought to be Government has snatched out all the snags, and lit up the spent only on building and repairing the great system of shores like Broadway, and a boat’s as safe on the river as she’d levees.
be in heaven. And I reckon that by the time there ain’t any 3. Some believed that the higher you build your levee, the boats left at all, the Commission will have the old thing all higher the river’s bottom will rise; and that consequently the reorganized, and dredged out, and fenced in, and tidied up, levee system is a mistake.
to a degree that will make navigation just simply perfect, 4. Some believed in the scheme to relieve the river, in flood-and absolutely safe and profitable; and all the days will be time, by turning its surplus waters off into Lake Borgne, etc.
Sundays, and all the mates will be Sunday-school su— what-5. Some believed in the scheme of northern lake-reservoirs in-the-nation-you-folling-around-there-for, you sons of to replenish the Mississippi in low-water seasons.
163
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain Wherever you find a man down there who believes in one for instance, he will exhale a cloud of deadly facts and statis-of these theories you may turn to the next man and frame tics which will lay you out with that disease, sure; but at the your talk upon the hypothesis that he does not believe in that same time he will cure you of any other of the five theories theory; and after you have had experience, you do not take that may have previously got into your system.
this course doubtfully, or hesitatingly, but with the confidence I have had all the five; and had them ‘bad;’ but ask me of a dying murderer—converted one, I mean. For you will not, in mournful numbers, which one racked me hardest, or have come to know, with a deep and restful certainty, that you which one numbered the biggest sick list, for I do not know.
are not going to meet two people sick of the same theory, one In truth, no one can answer the latter question. Mississippi right after the other. No, there will always be one or two with Improvement is a mighty topic, down yonder. Every man the other diseases along between. And as you proceed, you on the river banks, south of Cairo, talks about it every day, will find out one or two other things. You will find out that during such moments as he is able to spare from talking there is no distemper of the lot but is contagious; and you about the war; and each of the several chief theories has its cannot go where it is without catching it. You may vaccinate host of zealous partisans; but, as I have said, it is not possible yourself with deterrent facts as much as you please—it will do to determine which cause numbers the most recruits.
no good; it will seem to “take,” but it doesn’t; the moment you All were agreed upon one point, however: if Congress rub against any one of those theorists, make up your mind would make a sufficient appropriation, a colossal benefit that it is time to hang out your yellow flag.
would result. Very well; since then the appropriation has Yes, you are his sure victim: yet his work is not all to your been made—possibly a sufficient one, certainly not too large hurt—only part of it; for he is like your family physician, a one. Let us hope that the prophecy will be amply fulfilled.
who comes and cures the mumps, and leaves the scarlet-One thing will be easily granted by the reader; that an fever behind. If your man is a Lake-Borgne-relief theorist, opinion from Mr. Edward Atkinson, upon any vast national 164
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain commercial matter, comes as near ranking as authority, as $180,000, or $162,000 more by rail than by river. The tow can the opinion of any individual in the Union. What he will be taken from Pittsburg to New Orleans in fourteen or has to say about Mississippi River Improvement will be found fifteen days. It would take one hundred trains of eighteen in the Appendix.*
cars to the train to transport this one tow of six hundred Sometimes, half a dozen figures will reveal, as with a light-thousand bushels of coal, and even if it made the usual speed ning-flash, the importance of a subject which ten thousand of fast freight lines, it would take one whole summer to put labored words, with the same purpose in view, had left at it through by rail.”
last but dim and uncertain. Here is a case of the sort—paragraph from the “Cincinnati Commercial”—
When a river in good condition can enable one to save $162,000 and a whole summer’s time, on a single cargo, the
“The towboat ‘Jos. B. Williams’ is on her way to New wisdom of taking measures to keep the river in good condi-Orleans with a tow of thirty-two barges, containing six hun-tion is made plain to even the uncommercial mind.
dred thousand bushels (seventy-six pounds to the bushel) of coal exclusive of her own fuel, being the largest tow ever Chapter 29
taken to New Orleans or anywhere else in the world. Her freight bill, at 3 cents a bushel, amounts to $18,000. It would A Few Specimen Bricks
take eighteen hundred cars, of three hundred and thirty-three bushels to the car, to transport this amount of coal. At WE PASSED THROUGH THE PLUM POINT REGION, turned $10 per ton, or $100 per car, which would be a fair price for Craighead’s Point, and glided unchallenged by what was once the distance by rail, the freight bill would amount to the formidable Fort Pillow, memorable because of the massacre perpetrated there during the war. Massacres are
*See Appendix B.
165
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain sprinkled with some frequency through the histories of sev-was a colossal combination of robbers, horse-thieves, negro-eral Christian nations, but this is almost the only one that stealers, and counterfeiters, engaged in business along the can be found in American history; perhaps it is the only one river some fifty or sixty years ago. While our journey across which rises to a size correspondent to that huge and somber the country towards St. Louis was in progress we had had no title. We have the “Boston Massacre,” where two or three end of Jesse James and his stirring history; for he had just people were killed; but we must bunch Anglo-Saxon history been assassinated by an agent of the Governor of Missouri, together to find the fellow to the Fort Pillow tragedy; and and was in consequence occupying a good deal of space in doubtless even then we must travel back to the days and the the newspapers. Cheap histories of him were for sale by train performances of Coeur de Lion, that fine “hero,” before we boys. According to these, he was the most marvelous crea-accomplish it.
ture of his kind that had ever existed. It was a mistake. Murel More of the river’s freaks. In times past, the channel used was his equal in boldness; in pluck; in rapacity; in cruelty, to strike above Island 37, by Brandywine Bar, and down brutality, heartlessness, treachery, and in general and com-towards Island 39. Afterward, changed its course and went prehensive vileness and shamelessness; and very much his from Brandywine down through Vogelman’s chute in the superior in some larger aspects. James was a retail rascal; Devil’s Elbow, to Island 39—part of this course reversing Murel, wholesale. James’s modest genius dreamed of no loftier the old order; the river running UP four or five miles, in-flight than the planning of raids upon cars, coaches, and stead of down, and cutting off, throughout, some fifteen country banks; Murel projected negro insurrections and the miles of distance. This in 1876. All that region is now called capture of New Orleans; and furthermore, on occasion, this Centennial Island.
Murel could go into a pulpit and edify the congregation.
There is a tradition that Island 37 was one of the principal What are James and his half-dozen vulgar rascals compared abiding places of the once celebrated “Murel’s Gang.” This with this stately old-time criminal, with his sermons, his 166
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain meditated insurrections and city-captures, and his majestic complied with this request, hoping to obtain money and following of ten hundred men, sworn to do his evil will!
freedom; they would be sold to another master, and run away Here is a paragraph or two concerning this big operator, again, to their employers; sometimes they would be sold in from a now forgotten book which was published half a cen-this manner three or four times, until they had realized three tury ago—
or four thousand dollars by them; but as, after this, there was fear of detection, the usual custom was to get rid of the He appears to have been a most dexterous as well as con-only witness that could be produced against them, which