I cannot drop the river, and stories of river gambling, without referring to one more tale which is a classic. It is a long story about a big poker game, and to tell it properly one must know the exact words. I do not know them, and therefore shall not attempt to tell the whole story, but shall give you only the beginning.
It is supposed to be told by a Virginian.
"There was me," he says, "and another very distinguished gentleman from Virginia and a gentleman from Kentucky, and a man from Ohio, and a fellow from New York, and a blankety-blank from Boston—"
That is all I know of the story, but I can guess who got the money in that game.
CHAPTER XLIX
WHAT MEMPHIS HAS ENDURED
An article on Memphis, published in the year 1855, gives the population of the place as about 13,000 (one quarter of the number slaves), and calls Memphis "the most promising town in the Southwest." It predicts that a railroad will some day connect Memphis with Little Rock, Arkansas, and that a direct line between Memphis and Cincinnati may even be constructed. This article begins the history of Memphis in the year 1820, when the place had 50 inhabitants. In 1840 the settlement had grown to 1,700, and fifteen years thereafter it was almost eight times that size.
Your Memphian, however, is not at all content to date from 1820. He begins the history of Memphis with the date May 8, 1541—a time when Henry VIII was establishing new matrimonial records in England, when Queen Elizabeth was a little girl, and Shakespeare, Bacon, Galileo and Cromwell were yet unborn. For that was the date when a Spanish gentleman bearing some personal resemblance to "Uncle Joe" Cannon—though he was younger, had black hair and beard, was differently dressed and did not chew long black cigars—arrived at the lower Chickasaw Bluffs, from which the city of Memphis now overlooks the Mississippi River. This gentleman was Hernando De Soto, and with his soldiers and horses he had marched from Tampa Bay, Florida, hunting for El Dorado, but finding instead, a lot of poor villages peopled by savages whom he killed in large numbers, having been brought up to that sort of work by Pizarro, under whom he served in the conquest of Peru. It seems to be well established, through records left by De Soto's secretary, and other men who were with him, and through landmarks mentioned by them, that De Soto and his command camped where Memphis stands, crossed the Mississippi at this point in boats which they built for the purpose, and marched on to an Indian village situated on the mound, a few miles distant, which now gives Mound City, Arkansas, its name. One hundred and thirty-two years later Marquette passed by on his way down the river, and nine years after him La Salle, but so far as is known, neither stopped at the site of Memphis, though they must have noticed as they passed, that the river is narrower here than at any point within hundreds of miles, and that the Chickasaw Bluffs afford about as good a place for a settlement as may be found along the reaches of the lower river, being high enough for safety, and flat on top. The first white man known to have visited the actual site of Memphis after De Soto, was De Bienville, the French Governor of Louisiana, who came in 1739. De Bienville found the Chickasaw village where De Soto had found it two centuries earlier; but whereas De Soto managed to avoid battle with the inhabitants of this particular village, De Bienville came to attack them. He fought them near their village, was defeated, and retired to Mobile.
Thus this part of the United States belonged first to Spain, and then to France; but in 1762 France ceded it back to Spain, and in the year following, Spain and France together ceded their territory in the eastern part of the continent to England. The next change came with the Revolution, when the United States came into being. The Spanish were, however, still in possession of the vast territory of Louisiana, to the west of the Mississippi. In 1795, Gayoso, Spanish Governor of Louisiana, came across and built a fort on the east side of the river, but was presently ousted by the United States. In 1820, as has been said, the settlement of Memphis had begun, one of the early proprietors having been Andrew Jackson. Some of the first settlers wished to name the place Jackson, in honor of the general, but Jackson himself, it is said, decided on the name Memphis, because the position of the town suggested that of ancient Memphis, on the Nile.