A SOUTHERN RIVER BOAT RACE.
"Hurry, my boy! Pack up your traps and get ready for the boat," cried Styles Staple, bursting into my room in his usual sudden fashion the day we got the news from Virginia. "All's fixed. The colonel, you and I are to have a trip of a week, stop at Mobile and then run down t' Orleans!"
So by sundown we were quietly smoking our cigars on the topmost deck of the "Southern Republic."
Nowhere in the world can be found just such boats as those that navigate our south-western rivers. Great three or four-storied constructions, built upon mere flats of the lightest possible draught, with length and breadth of beam sufficient to allow storage room for an immense number of cotton bales and barrels upon the lowest deck; with their furnaces, boilers and machinery all above the water line, they look like up-country hotels that, having got out of their element, contemplate a down-trip for the benefit of their health—or cuisine.
The "Southern Republic" was a new boat, built after the most approved plan, on a scale of size and magnificence unequaled on the river. Sitting flat and square upon the water, her four decks rising one above the other—with the thousand doors and windows of her state-rooms seeming to peer like eyes over the balconies around them—she seemed more like some fabled marine monster than a vessel meant for speed and comfort. Her length was immense, and her draught necessarily very light—not four feet when full loaded; for the Alabama is subject to many vagaries and what was a clear channel yesterday may be only a two-foot shoal to-day. Of course, with solidity and strength sacrificed to this extreme lightness, when the powerful engines are put to any strain, the high, thin fabric thrills from stem to stern with their every puff, like a huge card-house.
The speed of a first-class high-pressure boat is very great in the longer "reaches;" but, the Alabama is a most tortuous stream. Often you stand by the pilot-house and see, right under the quarter, a gleaming streak of water across a neck of land over which you might toss a stone; and yet you may steam on miles around the point that juts ahead, before you get into it.
The "Southern Republic," from her immense size and unusually handsome equipment, was a novelty even to the river people; and each afternoon of her starting, crowds came aboard to bid farewell to friends and roam over the vessel, or collected on the bluffs above to see her swing out to the shrill notes of her "calliope," the best and least discordant on the river. A few evenings before we left, a large party had collected in honor of General Earl Van Dorn. He had recently resigned; and the commission as colonel of the only regiment of regular cavalry in the Confederacy was tendered him. Now, on the eve of departure for his well-known expedition to Texas—then considered a momentous and desperate one—numbers of fair women thronged the bluffs to catch a glimpse of the hero of the hour, while friends gathered round to grasp the hand, than which no firmer ever drew blade!
Few men had started in the war with brighter auspices and more ardent well-wishings—none could have had a sadder ending! I remember well the last sight I ever had of his neat but powerfully-knit figure, as he stood with one hand resting on the rail of the upper deck and the other raising his broad sombrero over the clear, sharp features, with the peaked moustache and beard of the cuirassier. A brilliant and handsome staff surrounded him; from the bluffs, the ladies waved their handkerchiefs and the men their hats; the wild notes of the calliope echoed back the "Marseillaise;" but in memory's photograph of the scene, his figure alone—the proud swell of the thin nostril and the deep, smothered flame in the cold gray eye—stands out clear and sharp.
We are aboard the "Southern Republic;" the last bell has sounded, the last belated trunk has been trundled over the plank; and we are off, the calliope screaming "Dixie" like ten thousand devils, the crowds on the bank waving us bon voyage!
The main saloon of the boat was a spacious apartment, a hundred feet long by thirty in breadth, gorgeously decorated with modern paint and brilliantly lighted; the galleries leading to the state-rooms rising tier upon tier entirely around it, while above, a skylight of tinted glass shed a soft, warm light.