Old Times on the Upper Mississippi The Recollections of a Steamboat Pilot from 1854 to 1863

One day in the spring of 1881, after having finished the business that had called me to St. Paul from my home in River Falls, Wisconsin (where I was a railway agent and newspape...

We come now to the consideration of that part of river life of which I was an interested observer, rather than an active participant. Had not the great war burst upon the countr...

The upper Mississippi has always been, comparatively, a remarkably healthy stream for steamboats. A great proportion of the craft ending their days there, have died of old age,...

Before leaving the main deck, with its savory scents of scorching oil, escaping steam, and soft-coal gas, let me describe some of the sights, sounds, and activities which impres...

How it was possible to derive any profit from an investment of from $20,000 to $40,000, the principal of which had an average tenure of life of but five years, has puzzled a gre...

Of the many men whom it was my good fortune to meet while on the river as a boy, or as a young man, there was none who came nearer to filling the bill as a nobleman than Robert...

It was not until commerce on the upper river was practically a thing of the past, that any effort was made to improve the channel for purposes of navigation. A number of interes...

Both of these specimens of natural history were bred, nurtured, and let loose in countless numbers to prey upon the people in the early days that witnessed the opening of the No...

It is popularly supposed that there was a great deal of racing on Western rivers in the olden time--in fact, that it was the main business of steamboat captains and owners, and...

It would be interesting to trace the origin of this term, which is universally applied to the captain in nautical circles, either on shipboard, among deep-sea sailors, on the gr...

When we first knew it, Prescott was in many respects a typical river town. But in one, it differed from all others with the possible exception of Wacouta and Reed's Landing. "To...

Captain William Fisher, of Galena, Illinois, is probably the oldest living pilot of the upper Mississippi. At the time of this writing (1908), he is spending the closing years o...

The officer in command of the battery when it left Fort Ridgeley was Captain and Brevet Major John C. Pemberton, U. S. A. He had won his brevet by gallant services in action at...

In the early spring of 1861 the "Fanny Harris" was chartered by the United States government to go to Fort Ridgeley, up the Minnesota River, and bring down the battery of light...

In the middle of the nineteenth century, many an artist whose canvases found no market in the older cities, found ready bidders for his brush, to decorate the thirty-foot paddle...

While some men were to be found on the Mississippi in the sixties who did not hesitate to avow themselves religious, and whose lives bore witness that they were indeed Christian...

In that early day when my acquaintance with the Mississippi began, Indians were numerous. Their dugouts lay at the levee by the dozen, the hunters retailing the ducks and geese,...

It was a saying on the river that if you wished to save the meals a passenger was entitled to on his trip, you took him through the kitchen the first thing when he came aboard....

To "know the river" fully, the pilot must not only know everything which may be seen by the eye, but he must also feel for a great deal of information of the first importance wh...

Every pilot must of necessity be a steersman; but not every steersman is of necessity a pilot. He may be studying to become a pilot, and not yet out of the steersman stage. "Cub...

"How did the first steamboats find their way up the hundreds of miles of water heretofore unbroken by steam-driven wheel?" No voice out of the past will give an answer to this q...

The same year and the same month in the year that witnessed the advent of the first steamboat on the Upper Mississippi, likewise witnessed the arrival in Galena of one who was d...

It would be impossible to pick out any one man who handled an engine on the river fifty years ago, and in describing his habits and peculiarities claim him as a type of all rive...

I have said that in addition to "knowing the river", and knowing that he knows it, the young pilot must also be fortified with a large measure of self-reliance, or all else will...

Descent from an ancestry whose members built and sailed ships from Salem, Newburyport, and Nantucket two hundred years ago, and even down to the early days of the nineteenth cen...

In writing of life on the main deck of a Mississippi River steamboat fifty years ago, a prefatory note may be in order. The reader must bear in mind that times have changed; and...

As second clerk, I was early taught to hold my own with the pirates who conducted the woodyards scattered along the river, from which the greater part of the fuel used on old-ti...

[B] "Mud" Clerk: Second clerk, whose duty it was to go out in all weathers, upon the unpaved levees and deliver or receive freight. As the levees were usually muddy in rainy wea...

Volumes have been written, first and last, on the subject of gambling on the Mississippi. In them a small fraction of truth is diluted with a deal of fiction. The scene is invar...

In the old days on the river, whiskey was not classed as one of the luxuries. It was regarded as one of the necessities, if not the prime necessity, of life. To say that everybo...

amount we could afford to take in and maintain any margin between the gunwales of our canoes and the water outside. Before we got across we were sitting in several inches of wat...

MOUTH OF THE WISCONSIN RIVER. The ancient highway between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi. This scene gives some idea of the multitude of islands which diversify both the Wi...

An item in a St. Louis paper of that date, announces the departure of the side-wheel steamer "Tishomingo" (Jenks, master), for St. Paul on April 14, 1857, with 465 cabin passeng...