The Wilmington daily Republican. (Wilmington, Del.) 1890-1902, 1892-07-27
RIVER INHABITANTS.
FLOATING VILLAGE WHERE PEo-
PIE PASS THEIR LIVES.

A Wandering Settlement of Strange Folks
Who Make Their Homes One of tho
Tributaries of the Mississippi-They
Fay No Rent and Spend Little.
Up where Wolf river, treacherous and
fnsatiate as the animal for which 1t is
named, empties its yellow waters into
the great flood of tho Mississippi, is o
| cluster Of odd looking craft, half house,
! half boat, that lie moored to the bank
and form part Of o great floating sub
orb of Memphis, of whose existence the
average citizen is totally unaware.
Nevertheless, strange rs it may seem,
the inhabitants of this floating village
are born, live, marry and die in their
movable homes in much the same man.
ner as people in similar walks of life
whose houses have firmer foundation,
and, stranger still, they like their river
life and would be extremely loath to
give 1t up.
Who they are and where they came
from, whittier they go and how they
live, were questions that aroused the Gu
riosity OF the writer and induced him to
make tour of inquiry among the house,
boats, as they are called.
These are of all shapes and sizes, from
the more pretentious home of the we'll
to do shipbuilder to tho humble abode
OF the itinerant fisherman. Some of
them are named and some are not.
Many are neatly painted and show
glimpses Of interiors in which lace cur
tains, carpets and pictures combine to
make not inharmonious settings. Social
lines are not very tightly drawn in the
village of the houseboats, and the homes
Of whites and blacks lie mixed indis-
criminately, without regard to race, col
or or prev Jus condition of servitude.
Wanderers by nature, the term water
gypsies may be applied not inaptly to
the inhabitants of the village. II is not
to be wondered at therefore that the
colony is by no means composed of those
who are to the manner born. On tho
contrary, it is made up of representa-
tives from nearly all of the twenty odd
states that are drained by the Missis-
gippi or its tributaries. Were census
of the floating village taken tomorrow
1t would show some interesting statistics
concerning the birthplaces OF its inhab-
itants. Here one can find man who
has drifted down from the Black Hills
of Montana side by side with native Of
Pittsburg or Cincinnati, while their next
neighbor may be from st. Paul or Knox
vile.
From far up the Missouri, the Missis-
sippi, the Ohio and the Tennessee rivers
they come, resting here like birds of
passage for o time, till, moving ever
southwark with the current, they become
merged with the cosmopolitan popula-
ton of the Crescent City, hundreds of
miles below, even as the waters of the
Mississippi become lost in the great Gulf
Of Mexico.
There is but little doubt that the
dweller in the Mississippi houseboat
has successfully solved the problem of
living on next to nothing. Believing
that the river is free, and that it owes
him living, the waif of the father Of
waters does not find it very difficult to
collect the debt. Just what the ice fields
are to the Eskimo the desert to the
Arab, the plains to the Indian, the river
ts to him. It is at once his place of
abode and his means of support, Land
lords, or, more properly speaking, water
lords, are unknown to him, and rent
day, that nightmare Of the poor, is
fraught with no terrors to his mind be-
eause he pays no rent.
The law provides that any ono moor
ing boat to the bank Of river is SUBJ
ject to rental at the option Of the
owner, but in the case of the houseboat
dweller this is rarely enforced. For fuel
hs catches the driftwood brought down
by the river or gathers that which ao-
STIMULATES along the bank. His princi-
pal article of food is fish, for which he
Burns once more to tho river, and from
Its yellow bosom draws the juicy cat
ksh, the buffalo, the perch and innumer-
Able other varieties that abound therein.
Only his clothes and few other bare
accessories OF life arc not supplied by
the river, and the means to obtain these
Is readily secured by the thousand pur.
suits opeaf b the sturdy longshoi4man.
Scattered among the housebcat colony
are here and there a family who have
sirtually taken to the river out of neces-
atty. These are refugees from the flooded
districts Of the upper Mississippi, who
have been rendered homeless by freshets.
Ruined by the encroachment of the
river, they have collected such of their
Bhects as the waters left and embarked
on hastily constructed craft, built as
likely as not from the debris of their
former homes.-Memphis Appeal
hnche.