WE left for St.Louis in the 'City of Baton Rouge,'on a delightfully hot day,but with the main purpose of my visit but lamely accomplished.
I had hoped to hunt up and talk with a hundred steamboatmen,but got so pleasantly involved in the social life of the town that Igot nothing more than mere five-minute talks with a couple of dozen of the craft.
I was on the bench of the pilot-house when we backed out and 'straightened up'for the start--the boat pausing for a 'good ready,'in the old-fashioned way,and the black smoke piling out of the chimneys equally in the old-fashioned way.Then we began to gather momentum,and presently were fairly under way and booming along.
It was all as natural and familiar--and so were the shoreward sights--as if there had been no break in my river life.There was a 'cub,'and I judged that he would take the wheel now;and he did.
Captain Bixby stepped into the pilot-house.Presently the cub closed up on the rank of steamships.He made me nervous,for he allowed too much water to show between our boat and the ships.
I knew quite well what was going to happen,because I could date back in my own life and inspect the record.The captain looked on,during a silent half-minute,then took the wheel himself,and crowded the boat in,till she went scraping along within a band-breadth of the ships.It was exactly the favor which he had done me,about a quarter of a century before,in that same spot,the first time I ever steamed out of the port of New Orleans.
It was a very great and sincere pleasure to me to see the thing repeated--with somebody else as victim.
We made Natchez (three hundred miles)in twenty-two hours and a half--much the swiftest passage I have ever made over that piece of water.
The next morning I came on with the four o'clock watch,and saw Ritchie successfully run half a dozen crossings in a fog,using for his guidance the marked chart devised and patented by Bixby and himself.
This sufficiently evidenced the great value of the chart.
By and by,when the fog began to clear off,I noticed that the reflection of a tree in the smooth water of an overflowed bank,six hundred yards away,was stronger and blacker than the ghostly tree itself.
The faint spectral trees,dimly glimpsed through the shredding fog,were very pretty things to see.
We had a heavy thunder-storm at Natchez,another at Vicksburg,and still another about fifty miles below Memphis.They had an old-fashioned energy which had long been unfamiliar to me.
This third storm was accompanied by a raging wind.We tied up to the bank when we saw the tempest coming,and everybody left the pilot-house but me.
The wind bent the young trees down,exposing the pale underside of the leaves;and gust after gust followed,in quick succession,thrashing the branches violently up and down,and to this side and that,and creating swift waves of alternating green and white according to the side of the leaf that was exposed,and these waves raced after each other as do their kind over a wind-tossed field of oats.
No color that was visible anywhere was quite natural--all tints were charged with a leaden tinge from the solid cloud-bank overhead.
The river was leaden;all distances the same;and even the far-reaching ranks of combing white-caps were dully shaded by the dark,rich atmosphere through which their swarming legions marched.
The thunder-peals were constant and deafening;explosion followed explosion with but inconsequential intervals between,and the reports grew steadily sharper and higher-keyed,and more trying to the ear;the lightning was as diligent as the thunder,and produced effects which enchanted the eye and sent electric ecstasies of mixed delight and apprehension shivering along every nerve in the body in unintermittent procession.
The rain poured down in amazing volume;the ear-splitting thunder-peals broke nearer and nearer;the wind increased in fury and began to wrench off boughs and tree-tops and send them sailing away through space;the pilot-house fell to rocking and straining and cracking and surging,and I went down in the hold to see what time it was.
People boast a good deal about Alpine thunderstorms;but the storms which I have had the luck to see in the Alps were not the equals of some which I have seen in the Mississippi Valley.
I may not have seen the Alps do their best,of course,and if they can beat the Mississippi,I don't wish to.
On this up trip I saw a little towhead (infant island)half a mile long,which had been formed during the past nineteen years.
Since there was so much time to spare that nineteen years of it could be devoted to the construction of a mere towhead,where was the use,originally,in rushing this whole globe through in six days?It is likely that if more time had been taken,in the first place,the world would have been made right,and this ceaseless improving and repairing would not be necessary now.
But if you hurry a world or a house,you are nearly sure to find out by and by that you have left out a towhead,or a broom-closet,or some other little convenience,here and there,which has got to be supplied,no matter how much expense and vexation it may cost.
We had a succession of black nights,going up the river,and it was observable that whenever we landed,and suddenly inundated the trees with the intense sunburst of the electric light,a certain curious effect was always produced:hundreds of birds flocked instantly out from the masses of shining green foliage,and went careering hither and thither through the white rays,and often a song-bird tuned up and fell to singing.We judged that they mistook this superb artificial day for the genuine article.
We had a delightful trip in that thoroughly well-ordered steamer,and regretted that it was accomplished so speedily.By means of diligence and activity,we managed to hunt out nearly all the old friends.
