1822 Wheeling Packet “ “
1 10
D. H. M.
1837 Moselle “ “
12
105
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain 1850 Telegraph No. 2 made the run in 1 17
Louis to St. Joseph, on the Missouri River, in 64 hours. In 1851 Buckeye State
“ “ 1 16
July, 1856, the steamer Jas. H. Lucas, Andy Wineland, Mas-1852 Pittsburgh
“ “ 1 15
ter, made the same run in 60 hours and 57 minutes. The distance between the ports is 600 miles, and when the diffi-FROM ST. LOUIS TO ALTON—30 MILES
culties of navigating the turbulent Missouri are taken into consideration, the performance of the Lucas deserves espeD. H. M.
cial mention.
1853 Altona made the run in
1 35
THE RUN OF THE ROBERT E. LEE
1876 Golden Eagle
“ “
1 37
1876 War Eagle
“ “
1 37
The time made by the R. E. Lee from New Orleans to St.
Louis in 1870, in her famous race with the Natchez, is the MISCELLANEOUS RUNS
best on record, and, inasmuch as the race created a national interest, we give below her time table from port to port.
In June, 1859, the St. Louis and Keokuk Packet, City of Left New Orleans, Thursday, June 30th, 1870, at 4 o’clock Louisiana, made the run from St. Louis to Keokuk (214
and 55 minutes, p.m.; reached
miles) in 16 hours and 20 minutes, the best time on record.
In 1868 the steamer Hawkeye State, of the Northern Packet D. H. M.
Company, made the run from St. Louis to St. Paul (800
miles) in 2 days and 20 hours. Never was beaten.
Carrollton 27(half ) In 1853 the steamer Polar Star made the run from St.
Harry Hills
1 00(half )
106
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain Red Church
1 39
Bailey’s
1 3 48
Bonnet Carre
2 38
Lake Providence
1 5 47
College Point
3 50(half )
Greenville
1 10 55
Donaldsonville
4 59
Napoleon
1 16 22
Plaquemine
7 05(half )
White River
1 16 56
Baton Rouge
8 25
Australia
1 19
Bayou Sara
10 26
Helena
1 23 25
Red River
12 56
Half Mile Below St. Francis
2
Stamps
13 56
Memphis
2 6 9
Bryaro
15 51(half )
Foot of Island 37
2 9
Hinderson’s
16 29
Foot of Island 26
2 13 30
Natchez
17 11
Tow-head, Island 14
2 17 23
Cole’s Creek
19 21
New Madrid
2 19 50
Waterproof
18 53
Dry Bar No. 10
2 20 37
Rodney
20 45
Foot of Island 8
2 21 25
St. Joseph
21 02
Upper Tow-head—Lucas Bend 3
Grand Gulf
22 06
Cairo
3 1
Hard Times
22 18
St. Louis
3 18 14
Half Mile below Warrenton
1
Vicksburg
1 38
The Lee landed at St. Louis at 11.25 A.M., on July 4th, Milliken’s Bend
1 2 37
1870—6 hours and 36 minutes ahead of the Natchez. The 107
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain officers of the Natchez claimed 7 hours and 1 minute stop-no means so crooked, that being a rocky country which the page on account of fog and repairing machinery. The R. E.
river cannot cut much.
Lee was commanded by Captain John W. Cannon, and the The water cuts the alluvial banks of the “lower” river into Natchez was in charge of that veteran Southern boatman, deep horseshoe curves; so deep, indeed, that in some places Captain Thomas P. Leathers.
if you were to get ashore at one extremity of the horseshoe and walk across the neck, half or three quarters of a mile, you could sit down and rest a couple of hours while your Chapter 17
steamer was coming around the long elbow, at a speed of ten miles an hour, to take you aboard again. When the river is Cut-offs and Stephen
rising fast, some scoundrel whose plantation is back in the country, and therefore of inferior value, has only to watch THESE DRY DETAILS ARE OF IMPORTANCE in one particular. They his chance, cut a little gutter across the narrow neck of land give me an opportunity of introducing one of the Mississippi’s some dark night, and turn the water into it, and in a won-oddest peculiarities,—that of shortening its length from time derfully short time a miracle has happened: to wit, the whole to time. If you will throw a long, pliant apple-paring over Mississippi has taken possession of that little ditch, and placed your shoulder, it will pretty fairly shape itself into an average the countryman’s plantation on its bank (quadrupling its section of the Mississippi River; that is, the nine or ten hun-value), and that other party’s formerly valuable plantation dred miles stretching from Cairo, Illinois, southward to New finds itself away out yonder on a big island; the old water-Orleans, the same being wonderfully crooked, with a brief course around it will soon shoal up, boats cannot approach straight bit here and there at wide intervals. The two hun-within ten miles of it, and down goes its value to a fourth of dred-mile stretch from Cairo northward to St. Louis is by its former worth. Watches are kept on those narrow necks, 108
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain at needful times, and if a man happens to be caught cutting 84; and at Hale’s Point. These shortened the river, in the a ditch across them, the chances are all against his ever hav-aggregate, seventy-seven miles.
ing another opportunity to cut a ditch.
Since my own day on the Mississippi, cut-offs have been Pray observe some of the effects of this ditching business.
made at Hurricane Island; at island 100; at Napoleon, Ar-Once there was a neck opposite Port Hudson, Louisiana, kansas; at Walnut Bend; and at Council Bend. These short-which was only half a mile across, in its narrowest place. You ened the river, in the aggregate, sixty-seven miles. In my could walk across there in fifteen minutes; but if you made own time a cut-off was made at American Bend, which short-the journey around the cape on a raft, you traveled thirty-ened the river ten miles or more.
five miles to accomplish the same thing. In 1722 the river Therefore, the Mississippi between Cairo and New Or-darted through that neck, deserted its old bed, and thus short-leans was twelve hundred and fifteen miles long one hun-ened itself thirty-five miles. In the same way it shortened dred and seventy-six years ago. It was eleven hundred and itself twenty-five miles at Black Hawk Point in 1699. Below eighty after the cut-off of 1722. It was one thousand and Red River Landing, Raccourci cut-off was made (forty or forty after the American Bend cut-off. It has lost sixty-seven fifty years ago, I think). This shortened the river twenty-miles since. Consequently its length is only nine hundred eight miles. In our day, if you travel by river from the south-and seventy-three miles at present.
ernmost of these three cut-offs to the northernmost, you go Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific only seventy miles. To do the same thing a hundred and people, and ‘let on’ to prove what had occurred in the re-seventy-six years ago, one had to go a hundred and fifty-mote past by what had occurred in a given time in the recent eight miles!—shortening of eighty-eight miles in that tri-past, or what will occur in the far future by what has oc-fling distance. At some forgotten time in the past, cut-offs curred in late years, what an opportunity is here! Geology were made above Vidalia, Louisiana; at island 92; at island never had such a chance, nor such exact data to argue from!
109
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain Nor “development of species,” either! Glacial epochs are great the time the ditch has become twelve or fifteen feet wide, things, but they are vague—vague. Please observe:—
the calamity is as good as accomplished, for no power on In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower earth can stop it now. When the width has reached a hun-Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two dred yards, the banks begin to peel off in slices half an acre miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third wide. The current flowing around the bend traveled for-per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or merly only five miles an hour; now it is tremendously in-idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a creased by the shortening of the distance. I was on board the million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River first boat that tried to go through the cut-off at American was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles Bend, but we did not get through. It was toward midnight, long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-and a wild night it was—thunder, lightning, and torrents of rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven rain. It was estimated that the current in the cut-off was hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Missis-making about fifteen or twenty miles an hour; twelve or sippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo thirteen was the best our boat could do, even in tolerably and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and slack water, therefore perhaps we were foolish to try the cut-be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a off. However, Mr. Brown was ambitious, and he kept on mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating trying. The eddy running up the bank, under the ‘point,’
about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjec-was about as swift as the current out in the middle; so we ture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
would go flying up the shore like a lightning express train, When the water begins to flow through one of those ditches get on a big head of steam, and ‘stand by for a surge’ when I have been speaking of, it is time for the people thereabouts we struck the current that was whirling by the point. But all to move. The water cleaves the banks away like a knife. By our preparations were useless. The instant the current hit us 110
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain it spun us around like a top, the water deluged the fore-mile wide, and boats passed up through it without much castle, and the boat careened so far over that one could hardly difficulty, and so saved ten miles.
keep his feet. The next instant we were away down the river, The old Raccourci cut-off reduced the river’s length twenty-clawing with might and main to keep out of the woods. We eight miles. There used to be a tradition connected with it.
tried the experiment four times. I stood on the forecastle It was said that a boat came along there in the night and companion way to see. It was astonishing to observe how went around the enormous elbow the usual way, the pilots suddenly the boat would spin around and turn tail the monot knowing that the cut-off had been made. It was a grisly, ment she emerged from the eddy and the current struck her hideous night, and all shapes were vague and distorted. The nose. The sounding concussion and the quivering would have old bend had already begun to fill up, and the boat got to been about the same if she had come full speed against a running away from mysterious reefs, and occasionally hit-sand-bank. Under the lightning flashes one could see the ting one. The perplexed pilots fell to swearing, and finally plantation cabins and the goodly acres tumble into the river; uttered the entirely unnecessary wish that they might never and the crash they made was not a bad effort at thunder.
get out of that place. As always happens in such cases, that Once, when we spun around, we only missed a house about particular prayer was answered, and the others neglected. So twenty feet, that had a light burning in the window; and in to this day that phantom steamer is still butting around in the same instant that house went overboard. Nobody could that deserted river, trying to find her way out. More than stay on our forecastle; the water swept across it in a torrent one grave watchman has sworn to me that on drizzly, dismal every time we plunged athwart the current. At the end of nights, he has glanced fearfully down that forgotten river as our fourth effort we brought up in the woods two miles he passed the head of the island, and seen the faint glow of below the cut-off; all the country there was overflowed, of the specter steamer’s lights drifting through the distant gloom, course. A day or two later the cut-off was three-quarters of a and heard the muffled cough of her ‘scape-pipes and the 111
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain plaintive cry of her leadsmen.
never suspected that Stephen’s promise to pay promptly at In the absence of further statistics, I beg to close this chapter the end of the week was a worthless one. Yates called for his with one more reminiscence of “Stephen.” money at the stipulated time; Stephen sweetened him up Most of the captains and pilots held Stephen’s note for and put him off a week. He called then, according to agree-borrowed sums, ranging from two hundred and fifty dollars ment, and came away sugar-coated again, but suffering un-upward. Stephen never paid one of these notes, but he was der another postponement. So the thing went on. Yates very prompt and very zealous about renewing them every haunted Stephen week after week, to no purpose, and at last twelve months.
gave it up. And then straightway Stephen began to haunt Of course there came a time, at last, when Stephen could Yates! Wherever Yates appeared, there was the inevitable no longer borrow of his ancient creditors; so he was obliged Stephen. And not only there, but beaming with affection to lie in wait for new men who did not know him. Such a and gushing with apologies for not being able to pay. By and victim was good-hearted, simple natured young Yates (I use by, whenever poor Yates saw him coming, he would turn a fictitious name, but the real name began, as this one does, and fly, and drag his company with him, if he had company; with a Y). Young Yates graduated as a pilot, got a berth, and but it was of no use; his debtor would run him down and when the month was ended and he stepped up to the clerk’s corner him. Panting and red-faced, Stephen would come, office and received his two hundred and fifty dollars in crisp with outstretched hands and eager eyes, invade the conver-new bills, Stephen was there! His silvery tongue began to sation, shake both of Yates’s arms loose in their sockets, and wag, and in a very little while Yates’s two hundred and fifty begin—
dollars had changed hands. The fact was soon known at pi-
“My, what a race I’ve had! I saw you didn’t see me, and so lot headquarters, and the amusement and satisfaction of the I clapped on all steam for fear I’d miss you entirely. And here old creditors were large and generous. But innocent Yates you are! there, just stand so, and let me look at you! just the 112
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain same old noble countenance.” [To Yates’s friend:] “Just look then it seemed to me that the whole world had turned against at him! Look at him! Ain’t it just good to look at him! AIN’T
me, and it wasn’t any use to live any more; and coming along it now? Ain’t he just a picture! Some call him a picture; I call an hour ago, suffering no man knows what agony, I met Jim him a panorama! That’s what he is—an entire panorama.
Wilson and paid him the two hundred and fifty dollars on And now I’m reminded! How I do wish I could have seen account; and to think that here you are, now, and I haven’t you an hour earlier! For twenty-four hours I’ve been saving got a cent! But as sure as I am standing here on this ground up that two hundred and fifty dollars for you; been looking on this particular brick,—there, I’ve scratched a mark on for you everywhere. I waited at the Planter’s from six yester-the brick to remember it by,—I’ll borrow that money and day evening till two o’clock this morning, without rest or pay it over to you at twelve o’clock sharp, tomorrow! Now, food; my wife says, ‘Where have you been all night?’ I said, stand so; let me look at you just once more.”
‘This debt lies heavy on my mind.’ She says, ‘In all my days And so on. Yates’s life became a burden to him. He could I never saw a man take a debt to heart the way you do.’ I not escape his debtor and his debtor’s awful sufferings on said, ‘It’s my nature; how can I change it?’ She says, ‘Well, account of not being able to pay. He dreaded to show him-do go to bed and get some rest.’ I said, ‘Not till that poor, self in the street, lest he should find Stephen lying in wait for noble young man has got his money.’ So I set up all night, him at the comer.
and this morning out I shot, and the first man I struck told Bogart’s billiard saloon was a great resort for pilots in those me you had shipped on the ‘Grand Turk’ and gone to New days. They met there about as much to exchange river news as Orleans. Well, sir, I had to lean up against a building and to play. One morning Yates was there; Stephen was there, too, cry. So help me goodness, I couldn’t help it. The man that but kept out of sight. But by and by, when about all the pilots owned the place come out cleaning up with a rag, and said had arrived who were in town, Stephen suddenly appeared in he didn’t like to have people cry against his building, and the midst, and rushed for Yates as for a long-lost brother.
113
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain
“Oh, I am so glad to see you! Oh my soul, the sight of you
“Well, the Y’s stand a gaudy chance. He won’t get any is such a comfort to my eyes! Gentlemen, I owe all of you further than the C’s in this world, and I reckon that after a money; among you I owe probably forty thousand dollars. I good deal of eternity has wasted away in the next one, I’ll want to pay it; I intend to pay it every last cent of it. You all still be referred to up there as ‘that poor, ragged pilot that know, without my telling you, what sorrow it has cost me to came here from St. Louis in the early days!’” remain so long under such deep obligations to such patient and generous friends; but the sharpest pang I suffer—by far Chapter 18
the sharpest—is from the debt I owe to this noble young man here; and I have come to this place this morning espe-I Take a Few Extra
cially to make the announcement that I have at last found a Lessons
method whereby I can pay off all my debts! And most especially I wanted him to be here when I announced it. Yes, my DURING THE TWO OR TWO AND A HALF YEARS of my appren-faithful friend,—my benefactor, I’ve found the method! I’ve ticeship, I served under many pilots, and had experience of found the method to pay off all my debts, and you’ll get many kinds of steamboatmen and many varieties of steam-your money!” Hope dawned in Yates’s eye; then Stephen, boats; for it was not always convenient for Mr. Bixby to beaming benignantly, and placing his hand upon Yates’s head, have me with him, and in such cases he sent me with some-added, “I am going to pay them off in alphabetical order!” body else. I am to this day profiting somewhat by that expe-Then he turned and disappeared. The full significance of rience; for in that brief, sharp schooling, I got personally Stephen’s ‘method’ did not dawn upon the perplexed and and familiarly acquainted with about all the different types musing crowd for some two minutes; and then Yates mur-of human nature that are to be found in fiction, biography, mured with a sigh—
or history. The fact is daily borne in upon me, that the aver-114
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain age shore-employment requires as much as forty years to I still remember the first time I ever entered the presence equip a man with this sort of an education. When I say I am of that man. The boat had backed out from St. Louis and still profiting by this thing, I do not mean that it has consti-was ‘straightening down;’ I ascended to the pilot-house in tuted me a judge of men—no, it has not done that; for judges high feather, and very proud to be semi-officially a member of men are born, not made. My profit is various in kind and of the executive family of so fast and famous a boat. Brown degree; but the feature of it which I value most is the zest was at the wheel. I paused in the middle of the room, all which that early experience has given to my later reading.
fixed to make my bow, but Brown did not look around. I When I find a well-drawn character in fiction or biography, thought he took a furtive glance at me out of the corner of I generally take a warm personal interest in him, for the his eye, but as not even this notice was repeated, I judged I reason that I have known him before—met him on the river.
had been mistaken. By this time he was picking his way The figure that comes before me oftenest, out of the shad-among some dangerous ‘breaks’ abreast the woodyards; there-ows of that vanished time, is that of Brown, of the steamer fore it would not be proper to interrupt him; so I stepped
‘Pennsylvania’—the man referred to in a former chapter, whose softly to the high bench and took a seat.
memory was so good and tiresome. He was a middle-aged, There was silence for ten minutes; then my new boss turned long, slim, bony, smooth-shaven, horse-faced, ignorant, stingy, and inspected me deliberately and painstakingly from head malicious, snarling, fault hunting, mote-magnifying tyrant. I to heel for about—as it seemed to me—a quarter of an hour.
early got the habit of coming on watch with dread at my heart.
After which he removed his countenance and I saw it no No matter how good a time I might have been having with more for some seconds; then it came around once more, and the off-watch below, and no matter how high my spirits might this question greeted me—
be when I started aloft, my soul became lead in my body the
“Are you Horace Bigsby’s cub?”
moment I approached the pilot-house.
“Yes, sir.”
115
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain After this there was a pause and another inspection. Then—
and contemptuously, scratching his head thoughtfully, tilt-
“What’s your name?”
ing his high sugar-loaf hat well forward to facilitate the op-I told him. He repeated it after me. It was probably the eration, then ejaculated, ‘Well, I’ll be dod derned!’ and reonly thing he ever forgot; for although I was with him many turned to his wheel.
months he never addressed himself to me in any other way What occasion there was to be dod derned about it is a than ‘Here!’ and then his command followed.
thing which is still as much of a mystery to me now as it was
“Where was you born?”
then. It must have been all of fifteen minutes—fifteen min-
“In Florida, Missouri.”
utes of dull, homesick silence—before that long horse-face A pause. Then—
swung round upon me again—and then, what a change! It
“Dern sight better staid there!”
was as red as fire, and every muscle in it was working. Now By means of a dozen or so of pretty direct questions, he came this shriek—
pumped my family history out of me.
“Here!—You going to set there all day?” The leads were going now, in the first crossing. This interI lit in the middle of the floor, shot there by the electric rupted the inquest. When the leads had been laid in, he suddenness of the surprise. As soon as I could get my voice I resumed—
said, apologetically:— “I have had no orders, sir.”
“How long you been on the river?”
“You’ve had no orders! My, what a fine bird we are! We I told him. After a pause—
must have orders! Our father was a gentleman—owned
“Where’d you get them shoes?”
slaves—and we’ve been to school. Yes, we are a gentleman, I gave him the information.
too, and got to have orders! Orders, is it? Orders is what you
“Hold up your foot!”
want! Dod dern my skin, I’ll learn you to swell yourself up I did so. He stepped back, examined the shoe minutely and blow around here about your dod-derned orders! G’way 116
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain from the wheel!” (I had approached it without knowing it.) some venom on me. Preliminarily he would say—
I moved back a step or two, and stood as in a dream, all
“Here! Take the wheel.”
my senses stupefied by this frantic assault.
Two minutes later—
“What you standing there for? Take that ice-pitcher down
“Where in the nation you going to? Pull her down! pull to the texas-tender-come, move along, and don’t you be all her down!”
day about it!”
After another moment—
The moment I got back to the pilot-house, Brown said—
“Say! You going to hold her all day? Let her go—meet her!
“Here! What was you doing down there all this time?” meet her!”
“I couldn’t find the texas-tender; I had to go all the way to Then he would jump from the bench, snatch the wheel the pantry.”
from me, and meet her himself, pouring out wrath upon me
“Derned likely story! Fill up the stove.” all the time.
I proceeded to do so. He watched me like a cat. Presently George Ritchie was the other pilot’s cub. He was having he shouted—
good times now; for his boss, George Ealer, was as kind-
“Put down that shovel? Deadest numskull I ever saw—
hearted as Brown wasn’t. Ritchie had steeled for Brown the ain’t even got sense enough to load up a stove.” season before; consequently he knew exactly how to enter-All through the watch this sort of thing went on. Yes, and tain himself and plague me, all by the one operation. When-the subsequent watches were much like it, during a stretch ever I took the wheel for a moment on Ealer’s watch, Ritchie of months. As I have said, I soon got the habit of coming on would sit back on the bench and play Brown, with continual duty with dread. The moment I was in the presence, even in ejaculations of “Snatch her! snatch her! Derndest mud-cat I the darkest night, I could feel those yellow eyes upon me, ever saw!” “Here! Where you going now? Going to run over and knew their owner was watching for a pretext to spit out that snag?’ ‘Pull her down! Don’t you hear me? Pull her down!” 117
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain
“There she goes! just as I expected! I told you not to cramp He would scold you for shaving a shore, and for not shaving that reef G’way from the wheel!”
it; for hugging a bar, and for not hugging it; for “pulling So I always had a rough time of it, no matter whose watch down” when not invited, and for not pulling down when it wa