A mile and a half above the mouth of Turkey River, in the very worst place of all, we found a big log raft in trouble, hung up on the sand, with a steamboat at each end working at it. They occupied so much of the river that it took Mr. Link over an hour to get past the obstruction, the search-light in the meantime turning night into day, and enabling him to look down on the timber and see just where the edge of the raft was. By backing and flanking he finally squeezed past, but not without scraping the sand and taking big chances of getting hung up himself. Coming back, we did hang up for an hour or more in the same place, a mile above the foot of Cassville Slough. Without the aid of the search-light it would have been impossible to have worked the steamer past the raft until daylight came. It is a wonderful aid to navigation, and it is as easy to run crooked places by night as by day, with its assistance.
In St. Louis, after seeing Shaw's Garden and tasting the old French market, the best thing you can do is to go back to the levee and watch the river, the big Eads bridge, the boats, and the darkies. There may be no boats other than the one you came on and are going back upon, but you will not miss seeing the bridge, and you must not miss seeing the darkies. They are worth studying—much better than even imported shrubbery.
There was an Anchor Line boat moored just below us the day we were there, a big side-wheeler, in the New Orleans trade, sixteen hundred tons. The "Mary Morton" was four hundred and fifty, and had shrunk perceptibly since the big liner came alongside. There were two or three other boats, little ones, ferries and traders, sprinkled along the three miles of levee. In 1857 I have seen boats lying two deep, in places, and one deep in every place where it was possible to stick the nose of a steamboat into the levee—boats from New Orleans, from Pittsburg, from the upper Mississippi, from the Missouri, from the Tennessee and the Cumberland, the Red River and the Illinois, loaded with every conceivable description of freight, and the levee itself piled for miles with incoming or outgoing cargoes. Now, it was enough to make one sick at heart. It seemed as if the city had gone to decay. The passage of a train over the bridge every five minutes or less, each way, reassured one on that point, however, and indicated that there was still plenty of traffic, and that it was only the river that was dead, and not the city.
In old times the steamboat crews were comprised principally of white men—that is, deck hands and roustabouts (or stevedores). The firemen may have been darkies, and the cabin crews were more than likely to have been, but the deck crews were generally white. Now, the deck crews are all colored men. They are a happy-go-lucky set, given to strong drink and craps, not to mention some other forms of vice. In old times the crews were hired by the month. The members of a modern deck crew never make two trips consecutively on the same boat. The boat does not lay long enough in St. Louis to give them time to spend ten days' wages, and then get sober enough, or hungry enough, to reship for another trip. Therefore, as soon as the last package of freight is landed, the crew marches to the window of the clerk's office opening out onto the guards, and gets what money is coming to each individual after the barkeeper's checks have been deducted. With this wealth in hand the fellow makes a straight wake for one of the two or three score dives, rum-holes, and bagnios that line the levee. He seldom leaves his favorite inn until his money is gone and he is thrown out by the professional "bouncer" attached to each of these places of entertainment.
The boat does not remain without a crew, however. While one of the clerks is paying off the old crew, another has gone out on the levee with a handful of pasteboard tickets, one for each man he desires to ship for the next round trip to St. Paul. Mounting the tallest snubbing post at hand, he is instantly surrounded by a shouting, laughing, pushing, and sometimes fighting mass of negroes, with an occasional alleged white man. This mob of men are clothed in every conceivable style of rags and tatters, and all are trying to get near the man on the post.
After a minute's delay the clerk cries out: "All set! Stand by"! and gives his handful of tickets a whirl around his head, loosening them a few at a time, and casting them to every point of the compass so as to give all a fair chance to draw a prize. The crowd of would-be "rousters" jump, grab, wrestle, and fight for the coveted tickets, and the man who secures one and fights his way victoriously to the gang plank is at once recorded in the mate's book as one of the crew. The victorious darky comes up the gang plank showing every tooth in his head. It is the best show to be seen in St. Louis.
"Why do they not go out and pick out the best men and hire them in a business-like and Christian-like manner?" inquires the unacclimated tourist.
"Because this is a better and very much quicker way", says the mate, who knows whereof he speaks. "The nigger that can get a ticket, and keep it until he gets to the gang plank, is the nigger for me. He is the 'best man'; if he wasn't he wouldn't get here at all. Some of 'em don't get here—they carry 'em off to the hospital to patch 'em up; sometimes they carry 'em off and plant 'em. There wasn't much of a rush to-day. You ought to see 'em in the early spring, when they are pretty hungry after a winter's freezing and fasting, and they want to get close to a steamboat boiler to get warm. There was not more'n three hundred niggers out there to-day. Last April there was a thousand, and they everlastingly scrapped for a chance to get close to the post. Some of 'em got their 'razzers', and sort of hewed their way in. The clerk got a little shaky himself. He was afraid they might down him and take the whole pack."
"I shouldn't think that you would care to ship the men with 'razzers' as you call them."
"Oh, I don't mind that if they can tote well. Anyway, they all have 'em. They don't use them much on white men, anyhow. And then we look out for them. After we back out from here they will get enough to do to keep them busy. They don't carry any life insurance, and they don't want to fool with white folks, much."