DESCENT OF THE MISSISSIPPI TO NEW ORLEANS
A FLATBOAT BOUND FOR TEXAS.— A FLAT-MAN ON RIVER PHYSICS.— ADRIFT AND ASLEEP.— SEEKING THE EARTH'S LITTLE MOON.— VICKSBURGH.— JEFFERSON DAVIS'S COTTON PLANTATION, AND ITS NEGRO OWNER.— DYING IN HIS BOAT.— HOW TO CIVILIZE CHINESE.— A SWIM OF ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY MILES ON THE MISSISSIPPI.— TWENTY-FOUR HOURS IN THE WATER.— ARRIVAL IN THE CRESCENT CITY.
DURING the afternoon, while rowing out of the cut-off behind an island, I caught sight of a flatboat floating in the contour of a distant bend. There was something familiar in her appearance, and, as I drew nearer, I recognized the pile of nets, the rusty stove, and the civil but silent crew. She was the same flat which had left Hickman, Kentucky, the morning I had departed from that town with my basket of pies. This time the crew seemed like old friends. River life makes all men equal. A pleasant hail now greeted me, and the duck-boat was soon moored to the side of the flat. As we floated along with the current, sipping our coffee, the captain told me his history. The war had reduced him from affluence to poverty, and in order to support his family, he had built a scow and penetrated the weird waters of Reelfoot Lake, from which he was able, for several years, to supply the citizens of Hickman with excellent fish. The enterprise was a novelty at that time, and there being no competition, he made four thousand dollars the first year. After that others went into the business, and it became profitless. His mind was now bent upon a new field. Hearing that the people of northern Texas were destitute of a regular fish-market, he had provisioned his flat for a winter's campaign, and intended floating with his men down to the mouth of Red River, where he would be towed by a steamer through the state of Louisiana to the northeastern end of Texas. There entering Caddo Lake, which is from fifty to sixty miles long, and where game, ducks, and fish abound, he would camp upon the shores and set his nets. The railroads which penetrated that section would afford means for the rapid distribution of his fish.
The party, anxious to arrive at their scene of action, floated night and day. The society of an educated man was so delightful at the time that I remained beside the flat all night. A lantern was hung above the bow of the boat to show the pilots of steamers our position. Whenever one of these disturbers of our peace passed the flat, I was obliged to cast off and pull into the stream, as the swash would almost ingulf me if I remained tied to the side of the large boat. I could only sleep by snatches, for just as I would be dropping off into the land of Nod, the watch upon the flat would call out, "Here comes another steamer," which was the signal for me to take to my oars.
The next day was Sunday, but the flat kept on her way. I cooked my meals upon the rusty stove, and we floated side by side, conversing hour after hour. The low banks of the river showed the presence of levees, or artificial dikes, built to keep out the freshets. Upon these dikes the grass was putting forth its tender blades, and the willows were bursting into leaf. We passed White River and the Arkansas, both of which pour their waters out of the great wilderness of the state of Arkansas. Below the mouth of the last-named river was the town of Napoleon, with its deserted houses, the most forlorn aspect that had yet met my eye. The banks were caving into the river day by day. Houses had fallen into the current, which was undermining the town. Here and there chimneys were standing in solitude, the buildings having been torn down and removed to other localities to save them from the insatiable maw of the river. These pointed upward like so many warning cenotaphs of the river's treachery, and contrasted strongly in the mind's eye with the many happy family circles which had once gathered at their bases around the cheerful hearths.
About ten o'clock in the forenoon the proprietor of the flatboat decided, as it was Sunday, to run into a bend of the river and tie up for the day. That night the banks caved in so frequently that I was in danger of being entombed in my sneak-box; and I rejoiced when morning came and the dangerous quarters were left behind. My flatboat companions made known to me a curious feature of river physics well known to the great floating population of the western streams. If you start with a flat-boat or raft of timber from any point on the Ohio or Mississippi rivers at the moment a rise in the water takes place, and continue floating night and day without interruption, you will in a few days overrun the effects of the rise, or freshet, and get below it. A little later you will discover, at some point a few hundred miles down-stream, that the river is just commencing to swell, as the result of the freshet upon which you originally started.
During Tuesday and Wednesday of January 11 and 12, I was at times with the flat, and at times miles away from it. Near Skipwith Landing, Mississippi, we passed large and well-cultivated cotton-plantations, but the river country in its vicinity was almost a wilderness.
My sleep had been much broken by night-travelling, and about nine o'clock on Wednesday evening I fastened my boat to the flat, and determined to have two or three hours of refreshing slumber. An hour's peaceful rest followed, and then a snorting, screeching stern-wheel steamer crossed the river with its tow of barges, and demoralized all my surroundings, driving me against the flat, and shooting water over the deck of my craft. Only half awake, I cast off from the flat, and thought that I was rowing down-river as usual; but I had dropped back into my nest just for one moment, and was in the land of Nod. I felt in my sleep that I was floating down the Mississippi. I was conscious that I had left the flatboat, and that steamers, snags, and eddies must be looked out for, or disaster would come quickly upon me.
I knew I was asleep, and tried to rouse myself. I seemed to be watching the moon, which shone with silver glory upon the glistening waters, and made the dark forests, rising wall-like on the banks, even darker by comparison. Then I seemed to enter the fields of astronomy, moving through the atmosphere still pulling at my oars. My mental vision stretched across the Atlantic, and enveloped the old astronomical observatory of the French city of Toulouse. It was the hour of sunset, and the learned Director Petit was at his post carefully adjusting his telescope, eager with the hope of identifying an undiscovered meteorite, the presence of which had been suggested by certain disturbances among the celestial bodies. The savant carefully pointed his instrument to the neighboring regions of the setting sun, when suddenly I saw him start, and heard him mutter, like a philosopher of old, "Eureka, I have found it!" Only a ray of light had flashed across the field of his telescope as an asteroid shot into the gloam of the sun. Its movements were so rapid, its disappearance so sudden, that it was impossible to obtain another glimpse of the unknown body. The god of day had enveloped the satellite in curtains of powerful light, so that no eye but that of its Creator could gaze again that night upon the little stranger which had been seen for the first time by man.
The astronomer moved away from his instrument and the wonderful machinery that had guided it in its search for the asteroid, slowly muttering. "The sun robbed me of a second sight of my discovery, yet only at this hour can I hope to get a glimpse of it. The difficulties attending this observation are the tremendous velocity with which it travels, its very small mass, and the rapidity with which, at the hour of sunset, it passes into the shadow of the earth. I will, however, calculate its orbit, and search for it again; for I have this evening seen what no human eye has ever beheld, I HAVE SEEN THE EARTH'S LITTLE MOON." While I watched, entranced, the astronomer, aided by his assistants, labored over multitudes of figures hour after hour, day after day; and from these computations an orbit was constructed for the Little Moon.