CHAPTER XIII.

VOYAGE OF 1844.

[Sidenote: A POPULAR FALLACY.]

In the winter of 1843–44 the American Fur Company built a new boat, the _Nimrod_, designed to correct certain defects in the _Omega_, and in this boat the voyage of 1844 was made. As in the previous year, Captains Sire and La Barge were master and pilot. It was in the spring and summer of this year that occurred the great flood of 1844. This appears to have been the greatest flood in the lower Missouri and central Mississippi ever known before or since. The entire bottoms in the vicinity of St. Louis were covered with water to a width of several miles. The flood had the curious effect of completely filling up the old bed of the river, so that, when it subsided, the river had to cut out a new channel, and it was many years before the channel was restored to its condition before the flood. The high water lasted far into the summer. When Captain La Barge returned from his trip to Fort Union he ran his boat up Washington Avenue to Commercial Alley, where he made her fast through a window in J. E. Walsh’s warehouse at the corner of those streets. This great flood was mostly from the lower country, and scarcely at all from the mountains. When the _Nimrod_ reached the Omaha villages, a short distance below the modern site of Sioux City, Ia., she found the water so low that she was compelled to wait several days for a rise. This fact is a noteworthy one, as another refutation of the popular idea that floods in the Mississippi have their origin in the melting snows of the Rocky Mountains. As a matter of fact they always come from the heavy rains of the lower country.

The _Nimrod_ passenger list, like that of the _Omega_ the year before, included some notable names. Among these were the Comte d’Otrante, son of the famous Fouché of France, and another Frenchman, the Comte de Peindry. D’Otrante was much liked by the crew. He was an accomplished gentleman, very wealthy, and had with him a retinue of servants who had been reared with him upon the ancestral domain in France. He was making the present journey solely for the purpose of pleasure. De Peindry was a different sort of man. He and d’Otrante met by accident on this trip and had little to do with each other. It was noted that de Peindry treated his compatriot with great deference and respect as being his superior. He was silent and impenetrable, and spent much of his time hunting. When leaving the boat on these hunts he would give directions not to wait for him if he did not return. He was repeatedly cautioned that the boat could not wait for him, but his invariable reply was: “Do not wait; I will turn up; if I do not, it is no matter.” He caused a great deal of uneasiness on several occasions by not getting back in time, and Captain Sire in his journal comments severely upon his conduct. He was said to be a noted duelist, who, for some unknown cause, had been compelled to leave Paris. He was very much of an enigma to the passengers of the _Nimrod_. In 1845 he went to California, whence the report came a few years later that he had been assassinated.

[Sidenote: MORE SHARP PRACTICE.]

In passing the Indian agency at Bellevue this year it was necessary to indulge in some more sharp practice to get the annual cargo of alcohol past that point. The new Indian agent at Bellevue was an ex-Methodist minister of the name of Joseph Miller--as zealous in his new role of liquor inspector as he had ever been in the regular practice of his profession. It was his boast that no liquor could pass his agency. He rummaged every boat from stem to stern, broke open the packages, overturned the piles of merchandise, and with a long, slender, pointed rod pierced the bales of blankets and clothing, lest kegs of alcohol might be rolled up within. The persistent clergyman put the experienced agents of the company to their wit’s ends, and it was with great difficulty that they succeeded in eluding his scrutiny.

[Sidenote: NECESSITY THE MOTHER OF INVENTION.]

The urgency of the problem, however, produced its own solution. Captain Sire had the alcohol all packed in barrels of flour. But he knew that even this device would not alone be enough, for the energetic agent would very likely have the barrels burst open. The Captain therefore had them all marked as if consigned to Peter A. Sarpy, the Company’s agent at Bellevue, and they were labeled in large letters “P. A. S.” The moment the nose of the boat touched the landing at Bellevue, the Captain, as was his custom, ordered the freight for that point placed on shore, and the barrels were promptly bowled out upon the bank and carried into the warehouse. The agent, never suspecting this freight, went on board, and after a most rigid search, found nothing wrong. The boat was permitted to proceed, but, contrary to its usual haste in getting away as soon as the loading and unloading were complete, it remained the rest of the day, and gave out that it would not sail until the following morning. The extraordinarily good character of the boat on this occasion, and the unusually long delay in departing, roused the suspicions of the agent, who stationed a man to watch the boat and to whistle if he saw anything wrong.

Everything remained quiet until some time after midnight, except that a full head of steam was kept up in the boilers. Presently there was great activity on the boat, although with an ominous silence about it all. The pilot, Captain La Barge, was quietly engineering the reloading of the barrels. He had spread tarpaulins on the deck and gang plank to deaden the noise, and the full crew of the boat were hurrying the barrels back in a most lively fashion. “What does this mean?” one of the deckhands asked of another. “We unloaded these barrels yesterday.” “Why, don’t you see?” was the brilliant reply of another, “they’re marked ‘P. A. S.’; they’ve got to pass.”

[Sidenote: THE PARTED LINE.]

The work was quickly over and every barrel was on board, when the agent’s sleepy guard awoke to the fact that something was going on. He uttered his signal, and the agent made haste to turn out and see what was the matter. La Barge and Captain Sire, who knew full well what the whistle meant, did not linger to make explanations. Captain La Barge seized an ax and cut the line. “Get aboard, men!” he shouted; “the line has parted!” The boat instantly dropped back into the current and then stood out into the river under her own steam. She was already out of reach of the bank when the reverend inspector appeared and wanted to know why they were off so early. It was about 3 A. M. “Oh, the line parted,” replied Captain La Barge, “and it was so near time to start that it was not worth while to tie up again.”[23]

[Sidenote: TOO MUCH FOR CREDULITY.]

This was a little too much for the agent, who could not understand how it happened that the boat was so thoroughly prepared for such an accident, with steam up, pilot at the wheel, crew at their places, and all at so early an hour. Next day he found that the barrels consigned to Sarpy were gone, and saw how completely he had been duped. Mortified and indignant, he reported the company to the authorities, and a long train of difficulties ensued, with ineffectual threats of canceling the company’s license.[24] Meanwhile the alcohol found its intended destination in the stomachs of the Indians, and the company reaped the enormous profit which traffic in that article always yielded.

[Sidenote: CAPTURED BY THE PAWNEES.]

As already noted, when the _Nimrod_ arrived at the site of the Omaha villages, the river was so low that she could not proceed for several days. A crew was kept constantly busy with the yawl, sounding the channel to detect any favorable changes in its shifting bed. On one of these sounding excursions, when about five miles from the boat, and under a high cut bank, La Barge was surprised and captured by a Pawnee war party on their way to steal horses from the Yanktonais. When the Captain heard them speak Pawnee he felt safe, and at once opened conversation with them in their own tongue. Although he knew none of the Indians personally, he succeeded in inducing them to come to the boat and partake of a feast. Thus the Captain’s knowledge of the Pawnee language, acquired in the villages of that tribe ten years before, stood him in excellent stead. These Indians might not have killed him, belonging as they did to a friendly tribe; but war parties, even of friendly Indians, were lawless and desperate, and they would no doubt have handled the little boat crew pretty roughly.

[Sidenote: THE LOST SAILORS.]

[Sidenote: A TIMELY RESCUE.]

Among the crew of the _Nimrod_ there were two ocean sailors, good men, but with no river experience, who had engaged for the trip to see the interior of the country. They were employed principally in handling the rigging. One Sunday morning, May 19, while the boat was still at the Omaha villages, they set off together with a single gun to try their luck hunting. They failed to return that day and likewise the next, when general uneasiness began to be felt about them. Parties were sent after them in all directions, guns were fired, and everything done to find them, but to no purpose; and the boat proceeded on her way without them. The general opinion was that they had been killed by some vagrant war party of Indians. Some two weeks later, as the boat was setting out one morning, a trader by the name of Kensler was seen coming down the river with a small boatload of furs. La Barge ran his boat to shore and hailed the trader, who promptly hove to and came on board. La Barge explained the circumstance of these two men having been lost, gave Kensler some provisions for them, and asked him to stop at the woodpile,[25] where the boat had laid up so long, and see if he could find any traces of the men. He did so, and actually found them there. They had converted the woodpile into a rude fortress, with one opening on the river just large enough to enable them to get out for water. They were almost starved to death, being reduced to mere skeletons, scarcely able to crawl back and forth to the river. Kensler took them to P. A. Sarpy’s trading post at Bellevue, where the _Nimrod_ found them on her way back and took them to St. Louis. They gave La Barge the following story: On the first day of their hunt they became confused and lost, and after much wandering came to the bank of the river. But they were utterly unable to conjecture whether they were above or below the steamboat, and in this dilemma resolved to build a raft and float down the river. If above the boat they would, of course, come to where it was; if below, they would land after having proven the fact, and return on foot. As a matter of fact they were below the boat, and after drifting some thirty miles concluded to start back. They were considering the question of landing when their raft ran upon a snag, broke to pieces, precipitated them into the water, and lost them their gun. They swam ashore and walked up the river bank until they reached the place where the boat had been. They resolved to stay there and wait for someone to come along. They disposed the woodpile so as to make a rough fort, and gathered into their fortress all remnants of camp refuse left by the _Nimrod_ which could sustain life. Here they waited for several weeks, and had about given themselves up as lost when they were rescued in the manner already related.

[Sidenote: NOT “UP TO” BUFFALO.]

The fare provided by the company for its steamboat crew was exceedingly plain and scanty. The men got very tired of it, and as they were much delayed by low water in getting into the buffalo country, La Barge told them that the first buffalo they came in sight of they should have, even if he had to lie to half a day to get it. La Barge had as first mate an excellent man, John Durack, who had served in the English navy, and had made his way to New Orleans and thence to St. Louis. He had been on the river before, but had never been engaged in a buffalo hunt, and the Captain thought this a good opportunity to initiate him. When the boat reached the vicinity of Handy’s post four buffalo bulls were seen swimming the river. “Man the yawl, John,” said La Barge. “I will go with you and we will have a buffalo before we get back.” The Captain gave orders to the men on the boat to shoot the buffaloes, and he would then lasso one of the wounded ones and drag it to the boat. He put Durack in the bow with a line while he took the rudder. The men on the steamboat fired and wounded two of the buffaloes. To get to the wounded ones the boat had to pass close to the two uninjured ones. The Captain supposed that Durack fully understood the programme, but the mate was not “up to buffalo,” and to La Barge’s consternation slipped the noose over the head of one of the uninjured animals. Too late Captain La Barge shouted to him not to do this--that he did not want to anchor to a live buffalo. “Oh,” replied Durack, “he’s as good as any.” The buffalo kept straight on his course. The men backed their oars, but to no purpose; they could not stop him. Finally his feet touched bottom and up the bank he went with the boat and its helpless crew after him. They might indeed have taken a boat ride over the bare prairie had not the stem of the yawl given way, being wrenched entirely out of the boat and carried off by the terrified animal. There stood the sorry crew, shipwrecked on a sandbar across the river from the steamboat--and with no buffalo. A whole day was consumed in getting back to the boat and in repairing the broken yawl. Meanwhile the crew kept on eating salt pork and navy bread.

[Sidenote: A TERRIBLE STORM.]

On the 23d of June, when the _Nimrod_ was a little below the site of the Aricara villages, near the mouth of Grand River, there arose one of those frightful tempests of wind, hail, and rain which were so frequent on the central prairies. For a little while the safety of the boat was despaired of. All the glass on the windward side was broken and the interior of the boat deluged with rain and hail. The hail accumulated in the cabin to the depth of a foot, and some of the hailstones were as large as turkey eggs. Captain La Barge made clay impressions of some of them and sent them to the St. Louis _Republican_ as curiosities deserving public notice. Besides the damage to the cabins the wind carried away the pilot-house, which had to be replaced with a skin roof.

On another of Captain La Barge’s voyages he encountered a storm which carried away the smokestacks. He extemporized some skin chimneys, which enabled him to complete the trip. The Captain was once summoned as an expert witness in a trial which grew out of a similar accident to another steamboat, whose owners had been sued for damages for not delivering freight. The defense was that a storm had so wrecked the boat that she could not proceed. The particular damage alleged was the blowing down of the smokestacks. La Barge explained how he had managed in a similar case, and the court instructed the jury against the defendant.

[Sidenote: EXPERT WITNESS.]

[Sidenote: ACCIDENT TO BE AVOIDED.]

In another case La Barge’s evidence, as an expert steamboat man, was decisive. It was a case of collision in which the pilot of the boat that was lost had not followed strictly the recognized signals and rules in passing the other boat. The owners had sued for damages. The defense was that the defendant’s pilot had followed the strict rules of steamboating, and the other pilot had not. The main question was whether the defendant’s pilot, when he saw the danger, should not have given way if possible, even if the other pilot was violating the rules, whether through willfulness or ignorance. La Barge was asked what course he would have pursued in the premises. He replied that, under any circumstances, it was a pilot’s duty to avoid accident, if possible. The court agreed with this view.

The rest of the voyage of the _Nimrod_ passed off without noteworthy incident. The boat reached Fort Union on June 22, started back June 24, and reached St. Louis July 9, after an absence of seventy-one days.