Life On The Mississippi, Part 5. by Twain, Mark, 1835-1910

LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI, Part 5
BY MARK TWAIN
LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI, Part 5 1

Twain, Life on the Mississippi, Part 5
BY MARK TWAIN 2
BY MARK TWAIN 3
BY MARK TWAIN 4
Click on the Image to Enlarge
BY MARK TWAIN 5
BY MARK TWAIN 6
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER XXI.
I get my License.—The War Begins.—I become a Jack-of-all-trades.
CHAPTER XXII.
I try the Alias Business.—Region of Goatees—Boots begin to Appear.
—The River Man is Missing.—The Young Man is Discouraged.—
Specimen Water.—A Fine Quality of Smoke.—A Supreme Mistake.
—We Inspect the Town.—Desolation Way-traffic.—A Wood-yard.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Old French Settlements.—We start for Memphis.—Young Ladies and
Russia-leather Bags.
CHAPTER XXIV.
I receive some Information.—Alligator Boats.—Alligator Talk.
—She was a Rattler to go.—I am Found Out.
CHAPTER XXV.
The Devil's Oven and Table.—A Bombshell falls.—No Whitewash.
—Thirty Years on the River.-Mississippi Uniforms.—Accidents and
Casualties.—Two hundred Wrecks.—A Loss to Literature.—Sunday-
Schools and Brick Masons.
Chapter 21
TABLE OF CONTENTS 7
A Section in My Biography
IN due course I got my license. I was a pilot now, full fledged. I dropped into casual employments; no
misfortunes resulting, intermittent work gave place to steady and protracted engagements. Time drifted
smoothly and prosperously on, and I supposed—and hoped—that I was going to follow the river the rest of
my days, and die at the wheel when my mission was ended. But by and by the war came, commerce was
suspended, my occupation was gone.
I had to seek another livelihood. So I became a silver miner in Nevada; next, a newspaper reporter; next, a
gold miner, in California; next, a reporter in San Francisco; next, a special correspondent in the Sandwich
Islands; next, a roving correspondent in Europe and the East; next, an instructional torch-bearer on the lecture
platform; and, finally, I became a scribbler of books, and an immovable fixture among the other rocks of New
England.
In so few words have I disposed of the twenty-one slow-drifting years that have come and gone since I last
looked from the windows of a pilot-house.
Let us resume, now.
Chapter 22
I Return to My Muttons
AFTER twenty-one years' absence, I felt a very strong desire to see the river again, and the steamboats, and
such of the boys as might be left; so I resolved to go out there. I enlisted a poet for company, and a
stenographer to 'take him down,' and started westward about the middle of April.
As I proposed to make notes, with a view to printing, I took some thought as to methods of procedure. I
reflected that if I were recognized, on the river, I should not be as free to go and come, talk, inquire, and spy
around, as I should be if unknown; I remembered that it was the custom of steamboatmen in the old times to
load up the confiding stranger with the most picturesque and admirable lies, and put the sophisticated friend
off with dull and ineffectual facts: so I concluded, that, from a business point of view, it would be an
advantage to disguise our party with fictitious names. The idea was certainly good, but it bred infinite bother;
for although Smith, Jones, and Johnson are easy names to remember when there is no occasion to remember
them, it is next to impossible to recollect them when they are wanted. How do criminals manage to keep a
brand-new ALIAS in mind? This is a great mystery. I was innocent; and yet was seldom able to lay my hand
on my new name when it was needed; and it seemed to me that if I had had a crime on my conscience to
further confuse me, I could never have kept the name by me at all.
A Section in My Biography 8
We left per Pennsylvania Railroad, at 8 A.M. April 18.
'EVENING. Speaking of dress. Grace and picturesqueness drop gradually out of it as one travels away from
New York.'
I find that among my notes. It makes no difference which direction you take, the fact remains the same.
Whether you move north, south, east, or west, no matter: you can get up in the morning and guess how far you
have come, by noting what degree of grace and picturesqueness is by that time lacking in the costumes of the
new passengers,—I do not mean of the women alone, but of both sexes. It may be that CARRIAGE is at the
bottom of this thing; and I think it is; for there are plenty of ladies and gentlemen in the provincial cities
whose garments are all made by the best tailors and dressmakers of New York; yet this has no perceptible
effect upon the grand fact: the educated eye never mistakes those people for New-Yorkers. No, there is a
godless grace, and snap, and style about a born and bred New-Yorker which mere clothing cannot effect.
'APRIL 19. This morning, struck into the region of full goatees—sometimes accompanied by a mustache, but
only occasionally.'
It was odd to come upon this thick crop of an obsolete and uncomely fashion; it was like running suddenly
across a forgotten acquaintance whom you had supposed dead for a generation. The goatee extends over a
wide extent of country; and is accompanied by an iron-clad belief in Adam and the biblical history of creation,
which has not suffered from the assaults of the scientists.
I Return to My Muttons 9
'AFTERNOON. At the railway stations the loafers carry BOTH hands in their breeches pockets; it was
observable, heretofore, that one hand was sometimes out of doors,—here, never. This is an important fact in
geography.'
If the loafers determined the character of a country, it would be still more important, of course.
'Heretofore, all along, the station-loafer has been often observed to scratch one shin with the other foot; here,
these remains of activity are wanting. This has an ominous look.'
By and by, we entered the tobacco-chewing region. Fifty years ago, the tobacco-chewing region covered the
Union. It is greatly restricted now.
Next, boots began to appear. Not in strong force, however. Later—away down the Mississippi—they became
the rule. They disappeared from other sections of the Union with the mud; no doubt they will disappear from
the river villages, also, when proper pavements come in.
We reached St. Louis at ten o'clock at night. At the counter of the hotel I tendered a hurriedly-invented
fictitious name, with a miserable attempt at careless ease. The clerk paused, and inspected me in the
compassionate way in which one inspects a respectable person who is found in doubtful circumstances; then
he said—
'It's all right; I know what sort of a room you want. Used to clerk at the St. James, in New York.'
An unpromising beginning for a fraudulent career. We started to the supper room, and met two other men
whom I had known elsewhere. How odd and unfair it is: wicked impostors go around lecturing under my
NOM DE GUERRE and nobody suspects them; but when an honest man attempts an imposture, he is exposed
at once.
One thing seemed plain: we must start down the river the next day, if people who could not be deceived were
going to crop up at this rate: an unpalatable disappointment, for we had hoped to have a week in St. Louis.
The Southern was a good hotel, and we could have had a comfortable time there. It is large, and well
conducted, and its decorations do not make one cry, as do those of the vast Palmer House, in Chicago. True,
the billiard-tables were of the Old Silurian Period, and the cues and balls of the Post-Pliocene; but there was
refreshment in this, not discomfort; for there is rest and healing in the contemplation of antiquities.
The most notable absence observable in the billiard-room, was the absence of the river man. If he was there he
had taken in his sign, he was in disguise. I saw there none of the swell airs and graces, and ostentatious
displays of money, and pompous squanderings of it, which used to distinguish the steamboat crowd from the
dry-land crowd in the bygone days, in the thronged billiard-rooms of St. Louis. In those times, the principal
saloons were always populous with river men; given fifty players present, thirty or thirty-five were likely to be
from the river. But I suspected that the ranks were thin now, and the steamboatmen no longer an aristocracy.
Why, in my time they used to call the 'barkeep' Bill, or Joe, or Tom, and slap him on the shoulder; I watched
for that. But none of these people did it. Manifestly a glory that once was had dissolved and vanished away in
these twenty-one years.
When I went up to my room, I found there the young man called Rogers, crying. Rogers was not his name;
neither was Jones, Brown, Dexter, Ferguson, Bascom, nor Thompson; but he answered to either of these that a
body found handy in an emergency; or to any other name, in fact, if he perceived that you meant him. He
said—
'What is a person to do here when he wants a drink of water?—drink this slush?'
'Can't you drink it?'
'I could if I had some other water to wash it with.'
Here was a thing which had not changed; a score of years had not affected this water's mulatto complexion in
the least; a score of centuries would succeed no better, perhaps. It comes out of the turbulent, bank-caving
Missouri, and every tumblerful of it holds nearly an acre of land in solution. I got this fact from the bishop of
the diocese. If you will let your glass stand half an hour, you can separate the land from the water as easy as
Genesis; and then you will find them both good: the one good to eat, the other good to drink. The land is very
nourishing, the water is thoroughly wholesome. The one appeases hunger; the other, thirst. But the natives do
not take them separately, but together, as nature mixed them. When they find an inch of mud in the bottom of
a glass, they stir it up, and then take the draught as they would gruel. It is difficult for a stranger to get used to
this batter, but once used to it he will prefer it to water. This is really the case. It is good for steamboating, and
good to drink; but it is worthless for all other purposes, except baptizing.
Next morning, we drove around town in the rain. The city seemed but little changed. It WAS greatly changed,
but it did not seem so; because in St. Louis, as in London and Pittsburgh, you can't persuade a new thing to
look new; the coal smoke turns it into an antiquity the moment you take your hand off it. The place had just
about doubled its size, since I was a resident of it, and was now become a city of 400,000 inhabitants; still, in
the solid business parts, it looked about as it had looked formerly. Yet I am sure there is not as much smoke in
St. Louis now as there used to be. The smoke used to bank itself in a dense billowy black canopy over the
town, and hide the sky from view. This shelter is very much thinner now; still, there is a sufficiency of smoke
there, I think. I heard no complaint.
However, on the outskirts changes were apparent enough; notably in dwelling-house architecture. The fine
new homes are noble and beautiful and modern. They stand by themselves, too, with green lawns around
them; whereas the dwellings of a former day are packed together in blocks, and are all of one pattern, with
windows all alike, set in an arched frame-work of twisted stone; a sort of house which was handsome enough
when it was rarer.
There was another change—the Forest Park. This was new to me. It is beautiful and very extensive, and
has the excellent merit of having been made mainly by nature. There are other parks, and fine ones, notably
Tower Grove and the Botanical Gardens; for St. Louis interested herself in such improvements at an earlier
day than did the most of our cities.
The first time I ever saw St. Louis, I could have bought it for six million dollars, and it was the mistake of my
life that I did not do it. It was bitter now to look abroad over this domed and steepled metropolis, this solid
expanse of bricks and mortar stretching away on every hand into dim, measure-defying distances, and
remember that I had allowed that opportunity to go by. Why I should have allowed it to go by seems, of
course, foolish and inexplicable to-day, at a first glance; yet there were reasons at the time to justify this
course.
A Scotchman, Hon. Charles Augustus Murray, writing some forty-five or fifty years ago, said—'The
streets are narrow, ill paved and ill lighted.' Those streets are narrow still, of course; many of them are ill
paved yet; but the reproach of ill lighting cannot be repeated, now. The 'Catholic New Church' was the only
notable building then, and Mr. Murray was confidently called upon to admire it, with its 'species of Grecian
portico, surmounted by a kind of steeple, much too diminutive in its proportions, and surmounted by sundry
ornaments' which the unimaginative Scotchman found himself 'quite unable to describe;' and therefore was
grateful when a German tourist helped him out with the exclamation—'By —, they look exactly
like bed-posts!' St. Louis is well equipped with stately and noble public buildings now, and the little church,
which the people used to be so proud of, lost its importance a long time ago. Still, this would not surprise Mr.
Murray, if he could come back; for he prophesied the coming greatness of St. Louis with strong confidence.
The further we drove in our inspection-tour, the more sensibly I realized how the city had grown since I had
seen it last; changes in detail became steadily more apparent and frequent than at first, too: changes uniformly
evidencing progress, energy, prosperity.
But the change of changes was on the 'levee.' This time, a departure from the rule. Half a dozen sound-asleep
steamboats where I used to see a solid mile of wide-awake ones! This was melancholy, this was woeful. The
absence of the pervading and jocund steamboatman from the billiard-saloon was explained. He was absent
because he is no more. His occupation is gone, his power has passed away, he is absorbed into the common
herd, he grinds at the mill, a shorn Samson and inconspicuous. Half a dozen lifeless steamboats, a mile of
empty wharves, a negro fatigued with whiskey stretched asleep, in a wide and soundless vacancy, where the
serried hosts of commerce used to contend!{footnote [Capt. Marryat, writing forty-five years ago says: 'St.
Louis has 20,000 inhabitants. THE RIVER ABREAST OF THE TOWN IS CROWDED WITH
STEAMBOATS, LYING IN TWO OR THREE TIERS.']} Here was desolation, indeed.
'The old, old sea, as one in tears,

Comes murmuring, with foamy lips,
And knocking at the vacant piers,
Calls for his long-lost multitude of ships.'
The towboat and the railroad had done their work, and done it well and completely. The mighty bridge,
stretching along over our heads, had done its share in the slaughter and spoliation. Remains of former
steamboatmen told me, with wan satisfaction, that the bridge doesn't pay. Still, it can be no sufficient
compensation to a corpse, to know that the dynamite that laid him out was not of as good quality as it had
been supposed to be.
The pavements along the river front were bad: the sidewalks were rather out of repair; there was a rich
abundance of mud. All this was familiar and satisfying; but the ancient armies of drays, and struggling throngs
of men, and mountains of freight, were gone; and Sabbath reigned in their stead. The immemorial mile of
cheap foul doggeries remained, but business was dull with them; the multitudes of poison-swilling Irishmen
had departed, and in their places were a few scattering handfuls of ragged negroes, some drinking, some
drunk, some nodding, others asleep. St. Louis is a great and prosperous and advancing city; but the river-edge
of it seems dead past resurrection.
Mississippi steamboating was born about 1812; at the end of thirty years, it had grown to mighty proportions;
and in less than thirty more, it was dead! A strangely short life for so majestic a creature. Of course it is not
absolutely dead, neither is a crippled octogenarian who could once jump twenty-two feet on level ground; but
as contrasted with what it was in its prime vigor, Mississippi steamboating may be called dead.
It killed the old-fashioned keel-boating, by reducing the freight-trip to New Orleans to less than a week. The
railroads have killed the steamboat passenger traffic by doing in two or three days what the steamboats
consumed a week in doing; and the towing-fleets have killed the through-freight traffic by dragging six or
seven steamer-loads of stuff down the river at a time, at an expense so trivial that steamboat competition was
out of the question.
Freight and passenger way-traffic remains to the steamers. This is in the hands—along the two
thousand miles of river between St. Paul and New Orleans—-of two or three close corporations well
fortified with capital; and by able and thoroughly business-like management and system, these make a
sufficiency of money out of what is left of the once prodigious steamboating industry. I suppose that St. Louis
and New Orleans have not suffered materially by the change, but alas for the wood-yard man!
He used to fringe the river all the way; his close-ranked merchandise stretched from the one city to the other,
along the banks, and he sold uncountable cords of it every year for cash on the nail; but all the scattering boats
that are left burn coal now, and the seldomest spectacle on the Mississippi to-day is a wood-pile. Where now
is the once wood-yard man?
Chapter 23
Traveling Incognito
MY idea was, to tarry a while in every town between St. Louis and New Orleans. To do this, it would be
necessary to go from place to place by the short packet lines. It was an easy plan to make, and would have
been an easy one to follow, twenty years ago—but not now. There are wide intervals between boats,
these days.
I wanted to begin with the interesting old French settlements of St. Genevieve and Kaskaskia, sixty miles
below St. Louis. There was only one boat advertised for that section—a Grand Tower packet. Still, one
boat was enough; so we went down to look at her. She was a venerable rack-heap, and a fraud to boot; for she
was playing herself for personal property, whereas the good honest dirt was so thickly caked all over her that
she was righteously taxable as real estate. There are places in New England where her hurricane deck would
be worth a hundred and fifty dollars an acre. The soil on her forecastle was quite good—the new crop
of wheat was already springing from the cracks in protected places. The companionway was of a dry sandy
character, and would have been well suited for grapes, with a southern exposure and a little subsoiling. The
soil of the boiler deck was thin and rocky, but good enough for grazing purposes. A colored boy was on watch
here—nobody else visible. We gathered from him that this calm craft would go, as advertised, 'if she
got her trip;' if she didn't get it, she would wait for it.
'Has she got any of her trip?'
'Bless you, no, boss. She ain't unloadened, yit. She only come in dis mawnin'.'
Chapter 23 19
He was uncertain as to when she might get her trip, but thought it might be to-morrow or maybe next day.
This would not answer at all; so we had to give up the novelty of sailing down the river on a farm. We had
one more arrow in our quiver: a Vicksburg packet, the 'Gold Dust,' was to leave at 5 P.M. We took passage in
her for Memphis, and gave up the idea of stopping off here and there, as being impracticable. She was neat,
clean, and comfortable. We camped on the boiler deck, and bought some cheap literature to kill time with.
The vender was a venerable Irishman with a benevolent face and a tongue that worked easily in the socket,
and from him we learned that he had lived in St. Louis thirty-four years and had never been across the river
during that period. Then he wandered into a very flowing lecture, filled with classic names and allusions,
which was quite wonderful for fluency until the fact became rather apparent that this was not the first time,
nor perhaps the fiftieth, that the speech had been delivered. He was a good deal of a character, and much
better company than the sappy literature he was selling. A random remark, connecting Irishmen and beer,
brought this nugget of information out of him—
Traveling Incognito 20
They don't drink it, sir. They can't drink it, sir. Give an Irishman lager for a month, and he's a dead man. An
Irishman is lined with copper, and the beer corrodes it. But whiskey polishes the copper and is the saving of
him, sir.'
At eight o'clock, promptly, we backed out and crossed the river. As we crept toward the shore, in the thick
darkness, a blinding glory of white electric light burst suddenly from our forecastle, and lit up the water and
the warehouses as with a noon-day glare. Another big change, this—no more flickering, smoky,
pitch-dripping, ineffectual torch-baskets, now: their day is past. Next, instead of calling out a score of hands to
man the stage, a couple of men and a hatful of steam lowered it from the derrick where it was suspended,
launched it, deposited it in just the right spot, and the whole thing was over and done with before a mate in the
olden time could have got his profanity-mill adjusted to begin the preparatory services. Why this new and
simple method of handling the stages was not thought of when the first steamboat was built, is a mystery
which helps one to realize what a dull-witted slug the average human being is.
We finally got away at two in the morning, and when I turned out at six, we were rounding to at a rocky point
where there was an old stone warehouse—at any rate, the ruins of it; two or three decayed
dwelling-houses were near by, in the shelter of the leafy hills; but there were no evidences of human or other
animal life to be seen. I wondered if I had forgotten the river; for I had no recollection whatever of this place;
the shape of the river, too, was unfamiliar; there was nothing in sight, anywhere, that I could remember ever
having seen before. I was surprised, disappointed, and annoyed.
We put ashore a well-dressed lady and gentleman, and two well-dressed, lady-like young girls, together with
sundry Russia-leather bags. A strange place for such folk! No carriage was waiting. The party moved off as if
they had not expected any, and struck down a winding country road afoot.
But the mystery was explained when we got under way again; for these people were evidently bound for a
large town which lay shut in behind a tow-head (i.e., new island) a couple of miles below this landing. I
couldn't remember that town; I couldn't place it, couldn't call its name. So I lost part of my temper. I suspected
that it might be St. Genevieve—and so it proved to be. Observe what this eccentric river had been
about: it had built up this huge useless tow-head directly in front of this town, cut off its river
communications, fenced it away completely, and made a 'country' town of it. It is a fine old place, too, and
deserved a better fate. It was settled by the French, and is a relic of a time when one could travel from the
mouths of the Mississippi to Quebec and be on French territory and under French rule all the way.
Presently I ascended to the hurricane deck and cast a longing glance toward the pilot-house.
Chapter 24
My Incognito is Exploded
AFTER a close study of the face of the pilot on watch, I was satisfied that I had never seen him before; so I
went up there. The pilot inspected me; I re-inspected the pilot. These customary preliminaries over, I sat down
on the high bench, and he faced about and went on with his work. Every detail of the pilot-house was familiar
to me, with one exception,—a large-mouthed tube under the breast-board. I puzzled over that thing a
considerable time; then gave up and asked what it was for.
'To hear the engine-bells through.'
It was another good contrivance which ought to have been invented half a century sooner. So I was thinking,
when the pilot asked—
'Do you know what this rope is for?'
I managed to get around this question, without committing myself.
Chapter 24 25
'Is this the first time you were ever in a pilot-house?'
I crept under that one.
'Where are you from?'
'New England.'
'First time you have ever been West?'
I climbed over this one.
'If you take an interest in such things, I can tell you what all these things are for.'
I said I should like it.
'This,' putting his hand on a backing-bell rope, 'is to sound the fire-alarm; this,' putting his hand on a go-ahead
bell, 'is to call the texas-tender; this one,' indicating the whistle-lever, 'is to call the captain'—and so he
went on, touching one object after another, and reeling off his tranquil spool of lies.
My Incognito is Exploded 26
I had never felt so like a passenger before. I thanked him, with emotion, for each new fact, and wrote it down
in my note-book. The pilot warmed to his opportunity, and proceeded to load me up in the good old-fashioned
way. At times I was afraid he was going to rupture his invention; but it always stood the strain, and he pulled
through all right. He drifted, by easy stages, into revealments of the river's marvelous eccentricities of one sort
and another, and backed them up with some pretty gigantic illustrations. For instance—
'Do you see that little boulder sticking out of the water yonder? well, when I first came on the river, that was a
solid ridge of rock, over sixty feet high and two miles long. All washed away but that.' [This with a sigh.]
I had a mighty impulse to destroy him, but it seemed to me that killing, in any ordinary way, would be too
good for him.
Once, when an odd-looking craft, with a vast coal-scuttle slanting aloft on the end of a beam, was steaming by
in the distance, he indifferently drew attention to it, as one might to an object grown wearisome through
familiarity, and observed that it was an 'alligator boat.'
'An alligator boat? What's it for?'
'To dredge out alligators with.'
'Are they so thick as to be troublesome?'
'Well, not now, because the Government keeps them down. But they used to be. Not everywhere; but in
favorite places, here and there, where the river is wide and shoal-like Plum Point, and Stack Island, and so
on—places they call alligator beds.'
'Did they actually impede navigation?'
'Years ago, yes, in very low water; there was hardly a trip, then, that we didn't get aground on alligators.'
It seemed to me that I should certainly have to get out my tomahawk. However, I restrained myself and
said—
'It must have been dreadful.'
'Yes, it was one of the main difficulties about piloting. It was so hard to tell anything about the water; the
damned things shift around so—never lie still five minutes at a time. You can tell a wind-reef, straight
off, by the look of it; you can tell a break; you can tell a sand-reef—that's all easy; but an alligator reef
doesn't show up, worth anything. Nine times in ten you can't tell where the water is; and when you do see
where it is, like as not it ain't there when YOU get there, the devils have swapped around so, meantime. Of
course there were some few pilots that could judge of alligator water nearly as well as they could of any other
kind, but they had to have natural talent for it; it wasn't a thing a body could learn, you had to be born with it.
Let me see: there was Ben Thornburg, and Beck Jolly, and Squire Bell, and Horace Bixby, and Major
Downing, and John Stevenson, and Billy Gordon, and Jim Brady, and George Ealer, and Billy
Youngblood—all A 1 alligator pilots. THEY could tell alligator water as far as another Christian could
tell whiskey. Read it?—Ah, COULDN'T they, though! I only wish I had as many dollars as they could
read alligator water a mile and a half off. Yes, and it paid them to do it, too. A good alligator pilot could
always get fifteen hundred dollars a month. Nights, other people had to lay up for alligators, but those fellows
never laid up for alligators; they never laid up for anything but fog. They could SMELL the best alligator
water it was said; I don't know whether it was so or not, and I think a body's got his hands full enough if he
sticks to just what he knows himself, without going around backing up other people's say-so's, though there's a
plenty that ain't backward about doing it, as long as they can roust out something wonderful to tell. Which is
not the style of Robert Styles, by as much as three fathom—maybe quarter-LESS.'
[My! Was this Rob Styles?—This mustached and stately figure?-A slim enough cub, in my time. How
he has improved in comeliness in five-and-twenty year and in the noble art of inflating his facts.] After these
musings, I said aloud—
'I should think that dredging out the alligators wouldn't have done much good, because they could come back
again right away.'
'If you had had as much experience of alligators as I have, you wouldn't talk like that. You dredge an alligator
once and he's CONVINCED. It's the last you hear of HIM. He wouldn't come back for pie. If there's one thing
that an alligator is more down on than another, it's being dredged. Besides, they were not simply shoved out of
the way; the most of the scoopful were scooped aboard; they emptied them into the hold; and when they had
got a trip, they took them to Orleans to the Government works.'
'What for?'
'Why, to make soldier-shoes out of their hides. All the Government shoes are made of alligator hide. It makes
the best shoes in the world. They last five years, and they won't absorb water. The alligator fishery is a
Government monopoly. All the alligators are Government property—just like the live-oaks. You cut
down a live-oak, and Government fines you fifty dollars; you kill an alligator, and up you go for misprision of
treason—lucky duck if they don't hang you, too. And they will, if you're a Democrat. The buzzard is
the sacred bird of the South, and you can't touch him; the alligator is the sacred bird of the Government, and
you've got to let him alone.'
'Do you ever get aground on the alligators now?'
'Oh, no! it hasn't happened for years.'
'Well, then, why do they still keep the alligator boats in service?'
'Just for police duty—nothing more. They merely go up and down now and then. The present
generation of alligators know them as easy as a burglar knows a roundsman; when they see one coming, they
break camp and go for the woods.'
After rounding-out and finishing-up and polishing-off the alligator business, he dropped easily and
comfortably into the historical vein, and told of some tremendous feats of half-a-dozen old-time steamboats of
his acquaintance, dwelling at special length upon a certain extraordinary performance of his chief favorite
among this distinguished fleet—and then adding—
'That boat was the "Cyclone,"—last trip she ever made—she sunk, that very trip—captain
was Tom Ballou, the most immortal liar that ever I struck. He couldn't ever seem to tell the truth, in any kind
of weather. Why, he would make you fairly shudder. He WAS the most scandalous liar! I left him, finally; I
couldn't stand it. The proverb says, "like master, like man;" and if you stay with that kind of a man, you'll
come under suspicion by and by, just as sure as you live. He paid first-class wages; but said I, What's wages
when your reputation's in danger? So I let the wages go, and froze to my reputation. And I've never regretted
it. Reputation's worth everything, ain't it? That's the way I look at it. He had more selfish organs than any
seven men in the world—all packed in the stern-sheets of his skull, of course, where they belonged.
They weighed down the back of his head so that it made his nose tilt up in the air. People thought it was
vanity, but it wasn't, it was malice. If you only saw his foot, you'd take him to be nineteen feet high, but he
wasn't; it was because his foot was out of drawing. He was intended to be nineteen feet high, no doubt, if his
foot was made first, but he didn't get there; he was only five feet ten. That's what he was, and that's what he is.
You take the lies out of him, and he'll shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice out of him, and he'll
disappear. That "Cyclone" was a rattler to go, and the sweetest thing to steer that ever walked the waters. Set
her amidships, in a big river, and just let her go; it was all you had to do. She would hold herself on a star all
night, if you let her alone. You couldn't ever feel her rudder. It wasn't any more labor to steer her than it is to
count the Republican vote in a South Carolina election. One morning, just at daybreak, the last trip she ever
made, they took her rudder aboard to mend it; I didn't know anything about it; I backed her out from the
wood-yard and went a-weaving down the river all serene. When I had gone about twenty-three miles, and
made four horribly crooked crossings—'
'Without any rudder?'
'Yes—old Capt. Tom appeared on the roof and began to find fault with me for running such a dark
night—'
'Such a DARK NIGHT ?—Why, you said—'
'Never mind what I said,—'twas as dark as Egypt now, though pretty soon the moon began to rise,
and—'
'You mean the SUN—because you started out just at break of—look here! Was this BEFORE
you quitted the captain on account of his lying, or—'
'It was before—oh, a long time before. And as I was saying, he—'
'But was this the trip she sunk, or was—'
'Oh, no!—months afterward. And so the old man, he—'
'Then she made TWO last trips, because you said—'
He stepped back from the wheel, swabbing away his perspiration, and said—
'Here!' (calling me by name), 'YOU take her and lie a while—you're handier at it than I am. Trying to
play yourself for a stranger and an innocent!—why, I knew you before you had spoken seven words;
and I made up my mind to find out what was your little game. It was to DRAW ME OUT. Well, I let you,
didn't I? Now take the wheel and finish the watch; and next time play fair, and you won't have to work your
passage.'
Thus ended the fictitious-name business. And not six hours out from St. Louis! but I had gained a privilege,
any way, for I had been itching to get my hands on the wheel, from the beginning. I seemed to have forgotten
the river, but I hadn't forgotten how to steer a steamboat, nor how to enjoy it, either.
Chapter 25
From Cairo to Hickman
Chapter 25 35
THE scenery, from St. Louis to Cairo—two hundred miles—is varied and beautiful. The hills
were clothed in the fresh foliage of spring now, and were a gracious and worthy setting for the broad river
flowing between. Our trip began auspiciously, with a perfect day, as to breeze and sunshine, and our boat
threw the miles out behind her with satisfactory despatch.
We found a railway intruding at Chester, Illinois; Chester has also a penitentiary now, and is otherwise
marching on. At Grand Tower, too, there was a railway; and another at Cape Girardeau. The former town gets
its name from a huge, squat pillar of rock, which stands up out of the water on the Missouri side of the
river—a piece of nature's fanciful handiwork—and is one of the most picturesque features of the
scenery of that region. For nearer or remoter neighbors, the Tower has the Devil's Bake Oven—so
called, perhaps, because it does not powerfully resemble anybody else's bake oven; and the Devil's Tea
Table—this latter a great smooth-surfaced mass of rock, with diminishing wine-glass stem, perched
some fifty or sixty feet above the river, beside a beflowered and garlanded precipice, and sufficiently like a
tea-table to answer for anybody, Devil or Christian. Away down the river we have the Devil's Elbow and the
Devil's Race-course, and lots of other property of his which I cannot now call to mind.
The Town of Grand Tower was evidently a busier place than it had been in old times, but it seemed to need
some repairs here and there, and a new coat of whitewash all over. Still, it was pleasant to me to see the old
coat once more. 'Uncle' Mumford, our second officer, said the place had been suffering from high water, and
consequently was not looking its best now. But he said it was not strange that it didn't waste white-wash on
itself, for more lime was made there, and of a better quality, than anywhere in the West; and
added—'On a dairy farm you never can get any milk for your coffee, nor any sugar for it on a sugar
plantation; and it is against sense to go to a lime town to hunt for white-wash.' In my own experience I knew
the first two items to be true; and also that people who sell candy don't care for candy; therefore there was
plausibility in Uncle Mumford's final observation that 'people who make lime run more to religion than
whitewash.' Uncle Mumford said, further, that Grand Tower was a great coaling center and a prospering
place.
From Cairo to Hickman 36

Cape Girardeau is situated on a hillside, and makes a handsome appearance. There is a great Jesuit school for
boys at the foot of the town by the river. Uncle Mumford said it had as high a reputation for thoroughness as
any similar institution in Missouri! There was another college higher up on an airy summit—a bright
new edifice, picturesquely and peculiarly towered and pinnacled—a sort of gigantic casters, with the
cruets all complete. Uncle Mumford said that Cape Girardeau was the Athens of Missouri, and contained
several colleges besides those already mentioned; and all of them on a religious basis of one kind or another.
He directed my attention to what he called the 'strong and pervasive religious look of the town,' but I could not
see that it looked more religious than the other hill towns with the same slope and built of the same kind of
bricks. Partialities often make people see more than really exists.
Uncle Mumford has been thirty years a mate on the river. He is a man of practical sense and a level head; has
observed; has had much experience of one sort and another; has opinions; has, also, just a perceptible dash of
poetry in his composition, an easy gift of speech, a thick growl in his voice, and an oath or two where he can
get at them when the exigencies of his office require a spiritual lift. He is a mate of the blessed old-time kind;
and goes gravely damning around, when there is work to the fore, in a way to mellow the ex-steamboatman's
heart with sweet soft longings for the vanished days that shall come no more. 'GIT up there you! Going to be
all day? Why d'n't you SAY you was petrified in your hind legs, before you shipped!'
He is a steady man with his crew; kind and just, but firm; so they like him, and stay with him. He is still in the
slouchy garb of the old generation of mates; but next trip the Anchor Line will have him in uniform—a
natty blue naval uniform, with brass buttons, along with all the officers of the line—and then he will be
a totally different style of scenery from what he is now.

Uniforms on the Mississippi! It beats all the other changes put together, for surprise. Still, there is another
surprise—that it was not made fifty years ago. It is so manifestly sensible, that it might have been
thought of earlier, one would suppose. During fifty years, out there, the innocent passenger in need of help
and information, has been mistaking the mate for the cook, and the captain for the barber—and being
roughly entertained for it, too. But his troubles are ended now. And the greatly improved aspect of the boat's
staff is another advantage achieved by the dress-reform period.
Steered down the bend below Cape Girardeau. They used to call it 'Steersman's Bend;' plain sailing and plenty
of water in it, always; about the only place in the Upper River that a new cub was allowed to take a boat
through, in low water.
Thebes, at the head of the Grand Chain, and Commerce at the foot of it, were towns easily rememberable, as
they had not undergone conspicuous alteration. Nor the Chain, either—in the nature of things; for it is a
chain of sunken rocks admirably arranged to capture and kill steamboats on bad nights. A good many
steamboat corpses lie buried there, out of sight; among the rest my first friend the 'Paul Jones;' she knocked
her bottom out, and went down like a pot, so the historian told me—Uncle Mumford. He said she had a
gray mare aboard, and a preacher. To me, this sufficiently accounted for the disaster; as it did, of course, to
Mumford, who added—
'But there are many ignorant people who would scoff at such a matter, and call it superstition. But you will
always notice that they are people who have never traveled with a gray mare and a preacher. I went down the
river once in such company. We grounded at Bloody Island; we grounded at Hanging Dog; we grounded just
below this same Commerce; we jolted Beaver Dam Rock; we hit one of the worst breaks in the 'Graveyard'
behind Goose Island; we had a roustabout killed in a fight; we burnt a boiler; broke a shaft; collapsed a flue;
and went into Cairo with nine feet of water in the hold—may have been more, may have been less. I
remember it as if it were yesterday. The men lost their heads with terror. They painted the mare blue, in sight
of town, and threw the preacher overboard, or we should not have arrived at all. The preacher was fished out
and saved. He acknowledged, himself, that he had been to blame. I remember it all, as if it were yesterday.'

That this combination—of preacher and gray mare—should breed calamity, seems strange, and
at first glance unbelievable; but the fact is fortified by so much unassailable proof that to doubt is to dishonor
reason. I myself remember a case where a captain was warned by numerous friends against taking a gray mare
and a preacher with him, but persisted in his purpose in spite of all that could be said; and the same
day—it may have been the next, and some say it was, though I think it was the same day—he got
drunk and fell down the hatchway, and was borne to his home a corpse. This is literally true.
No vestige of Hat Island is left now; every shred of it is washed away. I do not even remember what part of
the river it used to be in, except that it was between St. Louis and Cairo somewhere. It was a bad
region—all around and about Hat Island, in early days. A farmer who lived on the Illinois shore there,
said that twenty-nine steamboats had left their bones strung along within sight from his house. Between St.
Louis and Cairo the steamboat wrecks average one to the mile;—two hundred wrecks, altogether.

I could recognize big changes from Commerce down. Beaver Dam Rock was out in the middle of the river
now, and throwing a prodigious 'break;' it used to be close to the shore, and boats went down outside of it. A
big island that used to be away out in mid-river, has retired to the Missouri shore, and boats do not go near it
any more. The island called Jacket Pattern is whittled down to a wedge now, and is booked for early
destruction. Goose Island is all gone but a little dab the size of a steamboat. The perilous 'Graveyard,' among
whose numberless wrecks we used to pick our way so slowly and gingerly, is far away from the channel now,
and a terror to nobody. One of the islands formerly called the Two Sisters is gone entirely; the other, which
used to lie close to the Illinois shore, is now on the Missouri side, a mile away; it is joined solidly to the shore,
and it takes a sharp eye to see where the seam is—but it is Illinois ground yet, and the people who live
on it have to ferry themselves over and work the Illinois roads and pay Illinois taxes: singular state of things!

Near the mouth of the river several islands were missing—washed away. Cairo was still
there—easily visible across the long, flat point upon whose further verge it stands; but we had to steam
a long way around to get to it. Night fell as we were going out of the 'Upper River' and meeting the floods of
the Ohio. We dashed along without anxiety; for the hidden rock which used to lie right in the way has moved
up stream a long distance out of the channel; or rather, about one county has gone into the river from the
Missouri point, and the Cairo point has 'made down' and added to its long tongue of territory correspondingly.
The Mississippi is a just and equitable river; it never tumbles one man's farm overboard without building a
new farm just like it for that man's neighbor. This keeps down hard feelings.
Going into Cairo, we came near killing a steamboat which paid no attention to our whistle and then tried to
cross our bows. By doing some strong backing, we saved him; which was a great loss, for he would have
made good literature.
Cairo is a brisk town now; and is substantially built, and has a city look about it which is in noticeable
contrast to its former estate, as per Mr. Dickens's portrait of it. However, it was already building with bricks
when I had seen it last—which was when Colonel (now General) Grant was drilling his first command
there. Uncle Mumford says the libraries and Sunday-schools have done a good work in Cairo, as well as the
brick masons. Cairo has a heavy railroad and river trade, and her situation at the junction of the two great
rivers is so advantageous that she cannot well help prospering.
When I turned out, in the morning, we had passed Columbus, Kentucky, and were approaching Hickman, a
pretty town, perched on a handsome hill. Hickman is in a rich tobacco region, and formerly enjoyed a great
and lucrative trade in that staple, collecting it there in her warehouses from a large area of country and
shipping it by boat; but Uncle Mumford says she built a railway to facilitate this commerce a little more, and
he thinks it facilitated it the wrong way—took the bulk of the trade out of her hands by 'collaring it
along the line without gathering it at her doors.'
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Life On The Mississippi, Part 5.

by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
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Life On The Mississippi, Part 5. by Twain, Mark, 1835-1910

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LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI, Part 5

LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI, Part 5 1

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Let us resume, now.

'What is a person to do here when he wants a drink of water?&mdash;drink this slush?'

'Can't you drink it?'

'I could if I had some other water to wash it with.'

'The old, old sea, as one in tears,

'Has she got any of her trip?'

'To hear the engine-bells through.'

'Do you know what this rope is for?'

I managed to get around this question, without committing myself.

'Is this the first time you were ever in a pilot-house?'

I crept under that one.

'Where are you from?'

'First time you have ever been West?'

I climbed over this one.

I said I should like it.

'An alligator boat? What's it for?'

'To dredge out alligators with.'

'Are they so thick as to be troublesome?'

'Did they actually impede navigation?'

'It must have been dreadful.'

'Do you ever get aground on the alligators now?'

'Oh, no! it hasn't happened for years.'

'Without any rudder?'

'Such a DARK NIGHT ?&mdash;Why, you said&mdash;'

'But was this the trip she sunk, or was&mdash;'

'Oh, no!&mdash;months afterward. And so the old man, he&mdash;'

'Then she made TWO last trips, because you said&mdash;'

From Cairo to Hickman

From Cairo to Hickman 36

From Cairo to Hickman 37

From Cairo to Hickman 38

From Cairo to Hickman 39

From Cairo to Hickman 40

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'What is a person to do here when he wants a drink of water?—drink this slush?'

'Such a DARK NIGHT ?—Why, you said—'

'But was this the trip she sunk, or was—'

'Oh, no!—months afterward. And so the old man, he—'

'Then she made TWO last trips, because you said—'

* This file should be named 8475-h.htm or 8475-h.zip *

* START: FULL LICENSE *