The area of land on both sides of the Mississippi subjected to annual overflow, like the country surrounding the Nile, in Egypt, is very large. There are localities thirty or forty miles away from the river where the height of the overflow of the previous year is plainly registered upon the trunks of the trees by a coating of yellow mud, which sometimes reaches as high as a man's head. This great region possesses vast tracts of rich land, as well as millions of acres of low swamps and bayou bottoms.
The traveller, the hunter, the zologist, and the botanist can all find here in these rich river bottoms a ready reward for any inconveniences experienced on the route. Strange types of half- civilized whites, game enough to satisfy the most rapacious, beast and bird of peculiar species, and over all the immense forests of cypress, sweet-gums, Spanish-oaks, tulip-trees, sycamores, cotton-woods, white- oaks, &c., while the most delicate wild-flowers "waste their sweetness on the desert air." Across all this natural beauty the whisper of desolation casts a cloud, for here during most of the year arises the health-destroying malaria.
Upon the high lands the squatter builds his log cabin, and makes his clearing where the rich soil and warm sun assist his rude agricultural labors, and he is rewarded with a large crop of maize and sweet potatoes. These, with bacon from his herd of wandering pigs, give sustenance to his family of children, who, hatless and bonnetless, roam through the woods until the sun bleaches their hair to the color of flax. With tobacco, whiskey, and ammunition for himself, and an ample supply of snuff for his wife, he drags out an indolent existence; but he is the pioneer of American civilization, and as he migrates every few years to a more western wilderness, his lands are frequently occupied by a more intelligent and industrious class, and his improvements are improved upon. The new-comer, with greater ambition and more ample means, raises cotton instead of corn, and depends upon the Ohio valley for a supply of that cereal.
Wednesday, January 5th, was a sunny and windy day. The Arkansas shores afforded me a protection from the wind as I rowed down towards Fort Pillow, which, according to the map of the United States Engineer Corps, is situated upon Chickasaw Bluff No. 1, though some writers and map-makers designate the Columbus Bluff, below the mouth of the Ohio, as the first Chickasaw Bluff. The site of Fort Pillow is about thirty feet above the water. It commands the low country opposite, and two reaches of the river for a long distance. A little below the fort, on the right bank of the river, was an extensive cotton-field, still white with the flossy cellulose. Here I landed under the shady trees, and gathered cotton, the result of peaceful labor. Truly had the sword been beaten into the ploughshare, and the spear into a pruning-hook, for above me frowned down Fort Pillow, the scene of the terrible negro massacre in our late war. Now the same sun shone so brightly upon the graves scattered here and there, and warmed into life the harvest sown in peace.
At intervals I caught glimpses of negro cabins, with their clearings, and their little crops of cotton glistening in the sun. The island tow-heads and sand-bars were numerous, and in places the Mississippi broadened into lake-like areas, while the yellow current, now heavily charged with mud, arose in height every hour. The climate was growing delightful. It was like a June day in the northern states. Each soft breeze of the balmy atmosphere seemed to say, as I felt its strange, fascinating influence, "You are nearing the goal!" The shadows of the twilight found me safely ensconced behind the lower end of Island No. 33, where in the bayou between it and the Tennessee shore I lazily watched fair Luna softly emerging from the clouds, and lending to the grand old woods her tender light.
I proceeded southward the next day, rowing comfortably after having divested myself of all superfluous apparel. The negroes, on their one- horse plantations, gave a hearty hail as I passed, but I noted here a feature I had remarked when upon my "Voyage of the Paper Canoe," on the eastern coast. It was the silence in which these people worked. The merry song of the darky was no longer heard as in the "auld lang syne." Then he was the slave of a white master. Now he is the slave of responsibilities and cares which press heavily upon his heretofore unthinking nature. To-day he has a future IF he can make it.
During the day, a lone woman on a shanty-boat, which was securely fastened to an old stump, volunteered much information in regard "her man," and the money he expected to receive for the skins he had been collecting during the winter. She said he would get in New Orleans thirty-five cents apiece for his coon-skins, one dollar for minks, and one dollar and a half each for beaver and otter skins. She informed me that the sunken country below Memphis, on the Arkansas side, was full of deer and bears.
By rowing briskly I was able to pass Memphis, the principal river port of Tennessee, at five o'clock in the afternoon. This flourishing city is situated upon one of the Chickasaw bluffs, thirty feet above the river. At the base of the bluff a bed of sandstone projects into the water, it being the only known stratum of rock along the river between Cairo and the Gulf. From the Ohio River to Vicksburg, a distance of six hundred miles, it is asserted that there is no other site for a commercial city: so Memphis, though isolated, enjoys this advantage, which has, in fact, made her the busy cotton-shipping port she is to- day. Her population is about forty thousand. As Memphis is connected by railroads with the towns and villages of all the back country, in addition to her water advantages, she may be called the business centre of an immense area of cultivated land. The view of the city from the river is striking. Her esplanade, several hundred feet in width, sweeps along the bluffs and is covered with large warehouses.
Pushing steadily southward, I looked out anxiously for a good camping- ground for the night, feeling that a rest had been well earned, for I had rowed sixty-one miles that day. Soon after passing Horn Lake Bend, the thickets of Crow Island attracted my attention, for along the muddy, crumbling bank the mast of a little sloop arose from the water, and a few feet inland the bright blaze of a camp-fire shone through the mists of evening. A cheery hail of; "I say, stranger, pull in, and tie up here," came from a group of three roughly-clad men, who were bending over the coals, busily engaged in frying salt pork and potatoes. The swift current forced me into an eddy close to the camp. One of the men caught my painter, and drew me close under the lee of their roughly constructed sloop of about two tons' burden. When seated by the bright fire, "the boys" told me their history. They were out of work; so, investing sixty dollars in an old sloop, putting on board a barrel of pork, a barrel of flour, some potatoes, coffee, salt, and molasses, (which cargo was to last three months,) they started to cut canes in the canebrakes of White River, Arkansas. These canes were to be utilized as fishing-poles, and being carefully assorted and fastened into bundles, were to be shipped to Cincinnati by steamer, and from there by rail to Cleveland, Ohio, where Mr. Farrar, their consignee, would dispose of them for the party. They had come down the Mississippi from Keokuk, Iowa, having left that place December 13th, and had experienced various delays, having several times been frozen up in creeks. They would be able to cut, during the winter, twenty- five thousand fishing-rods, enough, one would think, to clear the streams of all the finny tribe. Mr. F. C. Stirling, of Painesville, Ohio, was the principal of the party, and I found him an unusually intelligent young man. He had passed the previous winter alone upon White River in an experimental sort of way, and had succeeded in obtaining the finest lot of fishing-rods that had ever been sent north.
There was so much to be talked about, and so many experiences in voyaging to be exchanged, that we decided to remain that night on Crow Island, as there was not much risk of. my being deluged by the passing steamers, for it was evident that the steamboat channel hugged the bank of the opposite side of the river. I took ashore chocolate, canned milk, white sugar, and some of the Hickman mince-pies, while the boys rolled logs of wood on to the fire, and buried potatoes in the hot ashes. Stirling went to work at bread-making, and putting his dough in one of those flat-bottomed, three-legged, iron-covered vessels, which my reader will now recognize as the bake-pan, or Dutch oven, placed it on the coals, and loaded its cover with hot embers. The potatoes were soon baked, and possessed a mealiness not usually found in those served up by the family cook. Stirling's bread was a success, and my chocolate disappeared down the throats of the hearty western boys as fast as its scalding temperature would admit.