American citizen. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 1864-1890, 1875-04-03
VOL. XIV.

ways thought was solid land; We'll dart
through the woods and leave twenty five
miles off to one side; we'll see the hind
side of every island between New Or
leans and Cairo"
"Then I've got to go to work and learn
just as much more river as l already
know"
"Jus. about twice as much more, as
near as you can come to it."
"Weli, one lives to find cut. / think
| was fool when l went into this busl-
ness
Yes, that is true. And you are right.
But you'll not be when you've learned
it."
"Ah, I never can learn it."
Il will see that you do
BY and by | ventured again:
Have l got to learn all this thing just
as know the rest of the river-shapes
and all-and SO l can run it at night?"
"Yes. And you've got to have good,
fair marks from one end of the river to
the other, that will help the bank to tell
you when there is water enough in each
of these countless places-like that
stump, you know. When the river first
begins to rise you can run half dozen
of the deepest of them; when it rises
foot more you can run another dozen !;
the next foot will add couple of dozen,
and So on; SO you see you have to know
your banks and marks to a dead moral
certainty and never get them mixed; for
when you start through one of those
cracks there's no backing out again as
there is in the big river; you've got to
go through or stay there six months if
you get caught on a falling river. There
are about fifty of these cracks which
you can't run at all except when the
river is brim full and over the banks"
This new lesson is a cheerful pros
pect."
Cheerful enough. And mind just
what I've told you: when you start into
one of those places you've got to go
through. They are too narrow to turn
round in, too crooked to back out of and
the shoal water is always up at the head !:
never elsewhere. And the head of them
is always likely to be filling up, little by
little, SO that the marks you reckon their
depth by this season may not answer for
next"
Learn new set, then, every year,"
Exactly. Cramp her up to the bar!
What are you standing up through the
middle of the river for?"
The next few months showed me
strange things. On the same day that
we held the conversation above narrated
d
river. The whole vast face of the stream
was black with drifting dead logs, broken
boughs and great trees that had caved in
and been washed away. 1t required the
incest steering to pick ones way through
this rushing raft, even in the daytime,
when crossing from point to point; and
at night the difficulty was nightly in
creased; every now and then huge
log, lying deep in the water, would sud
denly appear right on our bows, coming
headon; no use to try to avoid it then;
we could only stop the eng ines and one
wheel would walk over the log from one
end to the other, keeping up thunder
ing racket, and careening the boat in
way that was very uncomfortable to pas
sengers. Now and then we would hit
one of these sunken logs rafting bang,
dead in the center, with full head of
steam, and it would stun the boat as if
she had hit continent. Sometimes this
log would lodge and stay right across
our nose, and back the Mississippi up
before it; we would have to do little
craw-tishing then to get away from the
obstruction. We often hit achite logs in
the dark, for we could not see them till
we were right on them; but a black log
is a pretty distinct object at night. A
white snag is an ugly customer when
the daylight is gone.
Of course, on the great rise. down came
a swarm Of prodigious timber, RATS from
the head waters of the Mississippi, coal
barges from Pittsburgh, little trading
scows from everywhere, and broad horns
from '' Posey County," Indiana, freighted
with " fruit and furniture"--the usual
term for describing it, though in English
the freight thus aggrandiZed was hoop
poles and pumpkins. Pilots bore
mortal hatred to these craft; and it was
returned with usury. The law required
all such helpless traders to keep a light
burning, but it was law that was often
broken. All of a sudden, on a murky
night, light would hop up right under
our bows, almost, and an agoniZed voice,
with the backwOods "whang" to it,
would wall out:
"Whar you goin' tot Can't you see
nothin', you dash dashed aig- suckin',
sheep-stealin', one-eyed son of a stuffed
monkeyw
Then for an instant, as we whistled by,
the red glare from our furnaces would
reveal the scow and the form of the
gesticulating orator as if under a light
ming flash, and in that instant our fire
men and deck-hands would send and re-
ceive tempest of missiles and profanity,
one of our wheels would walk off with
the crashing fragments of steering oar,
and down the dead blackness would shut
out again. And that fiatboatman would
be sure to go into New Orleans and sue
our boat, swearing stoutly that he had
light burning all the time, when in
truth his gang had the lantern down be-
low, to sing and lie and drink and gam
BILE by, and no watch on deck. Once, at
night, in one of those forest bOrdered
crevices (behind an island) which steam
boatmen intensely describe with the
phrase, g as dark as the inside of cow"
we should have eaten up a Posey County
family, fruit, furniture and all, but that
they happened to be fiddling down be-
low, and we just caught the sound of the
music in time to sheer off, doing no seri-
Gus damage, unfortunately, but coming
SO near it that we had good hopes for
moment. These people brought up their
lanterns then, of course; and as we
cious family stood in the light of it
both sexes, and various ages-and cursed
us till everything turned blue. Once a
coalboatman sent bullet through our
Pilot-house when we borrowed a steer
ing-oar of him in very narrow place.
During this big rise these small-fry
crafts were an intolerable nuisance. We
were running chute after chute-a new
world to me and if there was partic-
uiar cramped place in "a chute we would
be pretty sure to meet a broad horn
there; and if he failed to be there we
would Ind him in still worse locality,
| namely, the head of the chute, on the
shoal water. And then there would be
no end OF profane cordialities ex-
changed.
Sometimes, in the big river, when we
| would be feeling our way cautiously