Idaho semi-weekly world. [volume] (Idaho City, Idaho Territory) 1875-1908, 1892-12-09
RIVER INHABITANTS.
loATlNG VILLAGE WHERE PEG
PIE PASS THEIR LIVES.

A Wandering Settlement OF Strange r''A'
who Make Their Homes On One oil the
rv,,,tar,es of the Mississippi--They
Pay No Rent and Spend Little
I'm where Wolf river, treacherous ana
;nsatiate as the animal for which u Is
named, empties its yellow waters in'o
the great flood of the Mississippi Is "
clnster of odd looking craft, half mousse
balf ho,t that lie moored to the pahk
and form part of great fioating SUI
,rb of Memphis, of whose existence tle
AVERAGE citizen is totally unaware.
Nevertheless, strange as 1t may seein'
the inhabitants of this floating village
are horn. live, marry and die in their
movable homes in much the same man
ner as people in similar walks Oh ile
whose houses have firmer foundatloh'
and, stranger still, they like their f,Ver
life and would be extremely ioath 10
give it up. 49,. ,,,.a
Who they are and where they came
from, whittier they go and now they
live. were questions that aroused the Gu
riosity of the writer and induced HIM TO
make tour of inquiry among the mousse
boats, as they are called.
These are of all shapes and sizes, from
the more pretentious home of the Wen
TO do shipbuilder to the humble apode
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 Households, and the homes
of whites and blacks lie mixed indis-
criminately, without regard to race, col
or or previous condition of servitude.
Wanderers by nature, the term water
, gypsies may be applied not inaptly to
the inhabitants of the village. 1t Is not
to be wondered at therefore that the
COLONY is by no means composed OF those
who are to the manner born. On the
contrary, it is made up of representa-,
tives from nearly all of the twenty Dad
states that are drained by the Missis-
sippi or its tributaries. Were census
of the floating village taken tomorrow
it 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 o
Pittsburg or Cincinnati, while their mex
neighbor may be from st. Paul or Knox
vile.
From far up the Missouri, the Missis
sippi, the Ohio and the Tennessee liver
they come, resting here like birds o
passage for a time, till, moving eve
southwark with the current, they become
merged with the cosmopolitan popula
ton of the Crescent City, hundreds o
miles below, even as the waters of tn,
Mississippi become lost in the great Gul
of Mexico
There is but little doubt that tn
dweller in the Mississippi houseboa
has successfully solved the problem o
living on next to nothing. Believing
that the river is free, and that it owe
, him living, the waif of the father o
waters does not find it very difficult t
collect the debt. Just what the ice field
are to the Eskimo, the desert to tn
! Arab, the plains to the Indian, the rive
is to him. 1t is at once his place O
abode and his means of support. Land
lords, or, more properly speaking, water
, lords, are unknown to him, and rem
/ day, that nightmare of the poor,
| fraught with no terrors to his mind, be
cause he pays no rent.
The law provides that any one mool
} ing boat to the bank of river is sui
} ject to a rental at the option of tn
!, owner, but in the case of the houseboa
5 dweller this is rarely enforced. For fr.e
he catches the driftwood brought dow
2 by the river or gathers that which az
| cumulates along the bank. His prime
} pal article of food is fish, for which h
turns once more to the river, and fro1
its yellow bosom draws the juicy CA
3 fish, the buffalo, the perch and innumel
able other varieties that abound therein
e Only his clothes and few other bar
necessaries of life are not supplied b
l the river, and the means to obtain thes
e is readily secured by the thousand pul
: suits open to the sturdy longshorema,
Scattered among the household colon
are here and there a family who hay
virtually taken to the river out of nece
a sity. These are refugees from the fioode
districts of the upper Mississippi, VIII
S have been rendered homeless by freshet
l Ruined by the encroachment of til
h river, they have collected such of the
effects as the waters left and embarke
6 on hastily constructed craft, built {
+ likely as not from the debris of the
e former homes.-Memphis Appeal-Av;
lanche.