In a few moments our lucky boat swung round and came down for us, leaving the less fortunate “Louis Philippe” to get off as she could, and her passengers to learn not to halloo before they got out of the wood. And now—now, by the first light of the morning for this grand, this terrible Mississippi!
It was a misty moonlight night when we came to the confluence of the Ohio with the Mississippi. We had come down a tedious, and in some degree a perilous, course of one thousand miles; we had still a thousand miles to go before arriving at New Orleans, which is the next stage of our Southern journey.
The Mississippi and the Ohio come together at an acute angle, and their waters flow down in unmingled currents, differing in color, for a long distance. Even at night we could distinguish the line which divides them. The Ohio water is filled with fine sand and loam; the Mississippi is discolored with clay besides, and the water looks like a tub of soapsuds after a hard day’s washing.
Whoever looks upon the map with a utilitarian eye sees at the confluence of these great rivers a favorable point for a great city. A few years since an English company took possession of or purchased this site, and, with a capital of nearly a million of pounds sterling, commenced operations. They lithographed plans of the city and views of the public buildings. There were domes, spires, and cupolas, hotels, warehouses, and lines of steamboats along both rivers. How fair, how magnificent it all looked on the India paper! You should see the result as I saw it in the misty miasma, by the pale moonlight. Cairo is a swamp, overflowed by every rise of either river. The large hotel, one of the two buildings erected, is slowly sinking beneath the surface. Piles will not stand up, and, however deep they are driven, sink still deeper. The present business of the place, consisting of selling supplies to steamboats, and transferring passengers from the down- to the up-river boats, is done on floating store-boats, made fast to the shore. Cairo has since been built into a considerable town by dyking out the rivers, and was an important naval and military point during the Civil War....
This is my thirteenth day of steamboating,—the usual time across the Atlantic,—and I have four days more at least. You may well suppose that a hundred passengers are put to their trumps for amusement. The “Wandering Jew” did very well as long as it lasted. Some keep on reading novels, having laid in a stock or exchanged with other passengers, but cards are the resource of the majority. The centre-tables, as soon as breakfast is over, are occupied with parties playing poker or loo, and are covered with bank-notes and silver. Many who do not play look on to see the frolics of fortune. Several of these players are professional gamesters, and quite cool, as men who hope to win by chance or skill ought to be. Others, in their flushing cheeks and trembling hands and voices, show how the passion is fastening upon them. These are driven by weariness and tempted by the smallness of the game to commence playing. The passion increases day by day, and so do the stakes, until, before reaching New Orleans, the verdant ones have lost all their money, and with it their self-respect and their confidence in the future. Depressed by shame, disheartened at being in a strange city without money, they are in a miserable condition, and ready to throw themselves away. They become dependent upon the blacklegs who have led them on, are instructed in their evil courses, made their tools and catspaws, and perhaps induced to enter upon courses of crime of a more dangerous character. All this comes of playing cards to kill time on the Mississippi.
While those who need the excitement of betting play at games of bluff and poker, some amuse themselves with whist, and old-fashioned fellows get into a corner and have a bout at old sledge; and now at eleven o’clock the great cabin of our boat presents a curious appearance. Playing around the tables, with noisy, joyous laughter, are half a dozen merry little boys and girls. These have all got well acquainted with each other, and seem to enjoy themselves thoroughly.
I can give you little idea of this portion of the Mississippi. The river is very low, and does not seem large enough to be the outlet of the thousand streams above; for the waters on which we float come not only from the melting snows of the Rocky Mountains, but there are mingled with them the bright springs of Western New York, a large part of Pennsylvania, part of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and a large portion of the Western States. Yet, with all the waters of this vast area, our boat can sometimes scarcely keep the channel. Last night, running at her full speed, she went crashing into a snag, with a concussion and scraping which woke us all up, and made the timid ones spring out of their berths. Our safety was in our going down-stream instead of up,—the difference of rubbing the back of a hedgehog the right and the wrong way. These snags are great trees which cave off and are washed down the current; the roots become embedded in the bottom; and the stem and branches, pointing down-stream, and half or wholly covered with water, form a terrible steamboat de frise, which tears an ascending steamboat to pieces, but generally allows those going with the current to pass over or through them with safety.
The river is full of islands, so that you often see but a small portion of its waters; it winds along in so many convolutions that you must steam a hundred miles often to make twenty in a straight line. Many of these bends may be avoided at high water by taking the cross cuts, called “running a chute” when the whole country for twenty miles on each side is submerged.
Usually, on one side or the other, there is a perpendicular bank of clay and loam some thirty feet high, and here and there are small plantations. The river gradually wears them off, carrying down whole acres in a season. From this bank the land descends back to the swamps which skirt nearly the whole length of the river. These in very low water are comparatively dry, but as the river rises they fill up, and the whole country is like a great lake, filled with a dense growth of timber. These curving banks, the rude and solitary huts of the wood-cutters, the vast bars of sand, covered gradually with cane-brake, and the range of impenetrable forest for hundreds of miles, comprise a vast gloomy landscape, which must be seen to be realized....
While the scene is fresh in my memory let me describe to you my last morning upon the Mississippi. But why do I speak thus of a scene which can never fade from my remembrance, but in all future years will glow the brightest picture which nature and civilization have daguerreotyped upon my heart?