Life on the Mississippi

WE reached St. Paul, at the head of navigation of the Mississippi, and there our voyage of two thousand miles from New Orleans ended. It is about a ten-day trip by steamer. It c...

APPARENTLY the river was ready for business, now. But no, the distribution of a population along its banks was as calm and deliberate and time-devouring a process as the discove...

WE were approaching Napoleon, Arkansas. So I began to think about my errand there. Time, noonday; and bright and sunny. This was bad--not best, anyway; for mine was not (prefera...

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 have carried with me nine years, and which h...

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 cap...

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 perpetr...

ALL day we swung along down the river, and had the stream almost wholly to ourselves. Formerly, at such a stage of the water, we should have passed acres of lumber rafts, and do...

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 pilo...

IN the North one hears the war mentioned, in social conversation, once a month; sometimes as often as once a week; but as a distinct subject for talk, it has long ago been relie...

Being left to myself, up there, I went on picking out old houses in the distant town, and calling back their former inmates out of the moldy past. Among them I presently recogni...

THESE dry details are of importance in one particular. They give me an opportunity of introducing one of the Mississippi's oddest peculiarities,--that of shortening its length f...

IT was a big river, below Memphis; banks brimming full, everywhere, and very frequently more than full, the waters pouring out over the land, flooding the woods and fields for m...

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 ot...

WHAT with lying on the rocks four days at Louisville, and some other delays, the poor old 'Paul Jones' fooled away about two weeks in making the voyage from Cincinnati to New Or...

AFTER twenty-one years' absence, I felt a very strong desire to see the river again, and the steamboats, and such of the boys as might be left; so I resolved to go out there. I...

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 was a particularly cramped place in...

TALK began to run upon the war now, for we were getting down into the upper edge of the former battle-stretch by this time. Columbus was just behind us, so there was a good deal...

THERE was no use in arguing with a person like this. I promptly put such a strain on my memory that by and by even the shoal water and the countless crossing-marks began to stay...

At the end of what seemed a tedious while, I had managed to pack my head full of islands, towns, bars, 'points,' and bends; and a curiously inanimate mass of lumber it was, too....

WE added several passengers to our list, at La Crosse; among others an old gentleman who had come to this north-western region with the early settlers, and was familiar with eve...

WE left for St. Louis in the 'City of Baton Rouge,' on a delightfully hot day, but with the main purpose of my visit but lamely accomplished. I had hoped to hunt up and talk wit...

IN my preceding chapters I have tried, by going into the minutiae of the science of piloting, to carry the reader step by step to a comprehension of what the science consists of...

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...

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 case in the old times,--one must be p...

THE Mississippi is well worth reading about. It is not a commonplace river, but on the contrary is in all ways remarkable. Considering the Missouri its main branch, it is the lo...

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 intervening brick bu...

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 h...

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...

WHOSOEVER has done me the courtesy to read my chapters which have preceded this may possibly wonder that I deal so minutely with piloting as a science. It was the prime purpose...

THE big towns drop in, thick and fast, now: and between stretch processions of thrifty farms, not desolate solitude. Hour by hour, the boat plows deeper and deeper into the grea...

THE scenery, from St. Louis to Cairo--two hundred miles--is varied and beautiful. The hills were clothed in the fresh foliage of spring now, and were a gracious and worthy setti...

WE lay three days in New Orleans, but the captain did not succeed in finding another pilot; so he proposed that I should stand a daylight watch, and leave the night watches to G...

DURING my three days' stay in the town, I woke up every morning with the impression that I was a boy--for in my dreams the faces were all young again, and looked as they had loo...

AFTER a close study of the face of the pilot on watch, I was satisfied that I had never seen him before; so I went up there. The pilot inspected me; I re-inspected the pilot. Th...

DURING the two or two and a half years of my apprenticeship, I served under many pilots, and had experience of many kinds of steamboatmen and many varieties of steamboats; for i...

FROM St. Louis northward there are all the enlivening signs of the presence of active, energetic, intelligent, prosperous, practical nineteenth-century populations. The people d...

IN the course of the tug-boat gossip, it came out that out of every five of my former friends who had quitted the river, four had chosen farming as an occupation. Of course this...

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 measu...

LA SALLE himself sued for certain high privileges, and they were graciously accorded him by Louis XIV of inflated memory. Chief among them was the privilege to explore, far and...

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-f...

IT was always the custom for the boats to leave New Orleans between four and five o'clock in the afternoon. From three o'clock onward they would be burning rosin and pitch pine...

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.

THE slaughter-house is gone from the mouth of Bear Creek and so is the small jail (or 'calaboose') which once stood in its neighborhood. A citizen asked, 'Do you remember when J...

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 on the river. He was very tall, w...

When I, as a boy, first saw the mouth of the Missouri River, it was twenty-two or twenty-three miles above St. Louis, according to the estimate of pilots; the wear and tear of t...

WE met two steamboats at New Madrid. Two steamboats in sight at once! an infrequent spectacle now in the lonesome Mississippi. The loneliness of this solemn, stupendous flood is...

WHEN I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades in our village {footnote [1. Hannibal, Missouri]} on the west bank of the Mississippi River. That was, t...

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...

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 made them a vanity and a jest. Whe...

THE largest annual event in New Orleans is a something which we arrived too late to sample--the Mardi-Gras festivities. I saw the procession of the Mystic Crew of Comus there, t...

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 la...

'SUCH was Ritter's narrative,' said I to my two friends. There was a profound and impressive silence, which lasted a considerable time; then both men broke into a fusillade of e...

THE approaches to New Orleans were familiar; general aspects were unchanged. When one goes flying through London along a railway propped in the air on tall arches, he may inspec...

He chuckled blithely, took off his shining tile, pointed to a notched pink circlet of paper pasted into its crown, with something lettered on it, and went on chuckling while I r...

THEY bury their dead in vaults, above the ground. These vaults have a resemblance to houses--sometimes to temples; are built of marble, generally; are architecturally graceful a...

MY idea was, to tarry a while in every town between St. Louis and New Orleans. To do this, it would be necessary to go from place to place by the short packet lines. It was an e...

MR. JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS ['Uncle Remus') was to arrive from Atlanta at seven o'clock Sunday morning; so we got up and received him. We were able to detect him among the crowd of...

STACK island. I remembered Stack Island; also Lake Providence, Louisiana--which is the first distinctly Southern-looking town you come to, downward-bound; lies level and low, sh...

Vaccination.--A Long Ride.--Bones of Poverty.--The Pioneer of Civilization.--Jug of Empire.--Siamese Twins.--The Sugar-bush.--He Wins his Bride.--The Mystery about the Blanket.-...

'The steamer “Gold Dust” exploded her boilers at three o'clock to-day, just after leaving Hickman. Forty-seven persons were scalded and seventeen are missing. The boat was lande...

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 protract...

Flexible English.--A Dying Man's Confession.--I am Bound and Gagged. --I get Myself Free.--I Begin my Search.--The Man with one Thumb. --Red Paint and White Paper.--He Dropped o...

Remarkable.--Instead of Widening towards its Mouth, it grows Narrower.--It Empties four hundred and six million Tons of Mud.--It was First Seen in 1542.--It is Older than some P...

Rafts.--We start on a Voyage.--I seek Information.--Some Music.--The Trouble begins.--Tall Talk.--The Child of Calamity.--Ground and lofty Tumbling.--The Wash-up.--Business and...

--A Continual Sunday.--A ton of Iron and no Glass.--The Ardent is Saved.--Mule Meat--A National Cemetery.--A Dog and a Shell.--Railroads and Wealth.--Wharfage Economy.--Vicksbur...

also.--Some Indian Paintings are Seen on the Rocks.--“The Father of Waters “does not Flow into the Pacific.--More History and Indians. --Some Curious Performances--not Early Eng...

again.--Lights and Snag Boats.--Infinite Changes.--A Lawless River.--Changes and Jetties.--Uncle Mumford Testifies.--Pegging the River.--What the Government does.--The Commissio...

makes a Proposition.--Loading Beeves at Acapulco.--He was n't Raised to it.--He is Roped In.--His Dull Eyes Lit Up.--Four Aces, you Ass!--He does n't Care for the Gores.

Witnesses.--Stewart turns Traitor.--I Start a Rebellion.--I get a New Suit of Clothes.--We Cover our Tracks.--Pluck and Capacity.--A Good Samaritan City.--The Old and the New.

Manufacture.--More Statistics.--Some Drummers.--Oleomargarine versus Butter.--Olive Oil versus Cotton Seed.--The Answer was not Caught. --A Terrific Episode.--A Sulphurous Canop...

and Wages.--Putting on Airs.--The Captains Weaken.--The Association Laughs.--The Secret Sign.--An Admirable System.--Rough on Outsiders. --A Tight Monopoly.--No Loophole.--The R...

to Appear.--The River Man is Missing.--The Young Man is Discouraged.-- Specimen Water.--A Fine Quality of Smoke.--A Supreme Mistake.--We Inspect the Town.--Desolation Way-traffi...