Life on The Mississippi (33 page)

“That’s what he says.”

“Great Caesar’s ghost!”

Uncle Mumford approached along the deck. The captain said—

“Uncle, here’s a friend of yours wants to get off at Napoleon!”

“Well, by—!”

I said—

“Come, what is all this about? Can’t a man go ashore at Napoleon if he wants to?”

“Why, hang it, don’t you know? There
isn’t
any Napoleon anymore. Hasn’t been for years and years. The Arkansas River burst through it, tore it all to rags, and emptied it into the Mississippi!”

“Carried the
whole
town away?—banks, churches, jails, newspaper offices, courthouse, theater, fire department, livery stable—
everything
?”

“Everything. Just a fifteen-minute job, or such a matter. Didn’t leave hide nor hair, shred nor shingle, of it, except the fag-end of a shanty and one brick chimney. This boat is paddling along right now where the dead-center of that town used to be; yonder is the brick chimney—all that’s left of Napoleon. These dense woods on the right used to be a mile back of the town. Take a look behind you—upstream—now you begin to recognize this country, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do recognize it now. It is the most wonderful thing I ever heard of; by a long shot the most wonderful—and unexpected.”

Mr. Thompson and Mr. Rogers had arrived, meantime, with satchels and umbrellas, and had silently listened to the captain’s news. Thompson put a half-dollar in my hand and said softly:

“For my share of the chromo.”

Rogers followed suit.

Yes, it was an astonishing thing to see the Mississippi rolling between unpeopled shores and straight over the spot where I used to see a good big self-complacent town twenty years ago. Town that was county seat of a great and important county; town with a big United States Marine hospital; town of innumerable fights—an inquest every day; town where I had used to know the prettiest girl, and the most accomplished in the whole Mississippi Valley; town where we were handed the first printed news of the
Pennsylvania
’s mournful disaster a quarter of a century ago; a town no more—swallowed up, vanished, gone to feed the fishes; nothing left but a fragment of a shanty and a crumbling brick chimney!

In regard to Island 74, which is situated not far from the former Napoleon, a freak of the river here has sorely perplexed the laws of men and made them a vanity and a jest. When the State of Arkansas was charted, she controlled “to the center of the river”—a most unstable line. The State of Mississippi claimed “to the channel”—another shifty and unstable line. No. 74 belonged to Arkansas. By and by a cutoff threw this big island out of Arkansas, and yet not
within
Mississippi. “Middle of the river” on one side of it, “channel” on the other. That is as I understand the problem. Whether I have got the details right or wrong, this
fact
remains: that here is this big and exceedingly valuable island of four thousand acres, thrust out in the cold, and belonging to neither the one state nor the other; paying taxes to neither, owing allegiance to neither. One man owns the whole island, and of right is “the man without a country.”

Island 92 belongs to Arkansas. The river moved it over and joined it to Mississippi. A chap established a whisky shop there, without a Mississippi license, and enriched himself upon Mississippi custom under Arkansas protection (where no license was in those days required).

We glided steadily down the river in the usual privacy—steamboat or other moving thing seldom seen. Scenery as always: stretch upon stretch of almost unbroken forest, on both sides of the river; soundless solitude. Here and there a cabin or two, standing in small openings on the gray and grassless banks—cabins which had formerly stood a quarter or half-mile farther to the front, and gradually been pulled farther and farther back as the shores caved in. As at Pilcher’s Point, for instance, where the cabins had been moved back three hundred yards in three months, so we were told; but the caving banks had already caught up with them, and they were being conveyed rearward once more.

Napoleon had but small opinion of Greenville, Mississippi, in the old times; but behold, Napoleon is gone to the catfishes, and here is Greenville full of life and activity, and making a considerable flourish in the Valley; having three thousand inhabitants, it is said, and doing a gross trade of $2,500,000 annually. A growing town.

There was much talk on the boat about the Calhoun Land Company, an enterprise which is expected to work wholesome results. Colonel Calhoun, a grandson of the statesman, went to Boston and formed a syndicate which purchased a large tract of land on the river, in Chicot County, Arkansas—some ten thousand acres—for cotton-growing. The purpose is to work on a cash basis: buy at first hands, and handle their own product; supply their Negro laborers with provisions and necessaries at a trifling profit, say 8 or 10 per cent; furnish them comfortable quarters, etc., and encourage them to save money and remain on the place. If this proves a financial success, as seems quite certain, they propose to establish a banking house in Greenville, and lend money at an unburdensome rate of interest—6 percent is spoken of.

The trouble heretofore has been—I am quoting remarks of planters and steamboatmen—that the planters, although owning the land, were without cash capital; had to hypothecate both land and crop to carry on the business. Consequently, the commission dealer who furnishes the money takes some risk and demands big interest—usually 10 percent, and 2½ percent for negotiating the loan. The planter has also to buy his supplies through the same dealer, paying commissions and profits. Then when he ships his crop, the dealer adds his commissions, insurance, etc. So, taking it by and large, and first and last, the dealer’s share of that crop is about 25 percent.
¹⁷

A cotton planter’s estimate of the average margin of profit on planting, in his section: One man and mule will raise ten acres of cotton, giving ten bales of cotton, worth, say, $500; cost of producing, say $350; net profit, $150, or $15 per acre. There is also a profit now from the cottonseed, which formerly had little value—none where much transportation was necessary. In sixteen hundred pounds of crude cotton, four hundred are lint, worth, say, ten cents a pound; and twelve hundred pounds of seed, worth $12 or $13 per ton. Maybe in future even the
stems
will not be thrown away. Mr. Edward Atkinson says that for each bale of cotton there are fifteen hundred pounds of stems, and that these are very rich in phosphate of lime and potash; that when ground and mixed with ensilage or cottonseed meal (which is too rich for use as fodder in large quantities), the stem mixture makes a superior food, rich in all the elements needed for the production of milk, meat, and bone. Heretofore the stems have been considered a nuisance.

Complaint is made that the planter remains grouty toward the former slave, since the war; will have nothing but a chill business relation with him, no sentiment permitted to intrude; will not keep a “store” himself, and supply the Negro’s wants and thus protect the Negro’s pocket and make him able and willing to stay on the place and an advantage to him to do it, it but lets that privilege to some thrifty Israelite, who encourages the thoughtless Negro and wife to buy all sorts of things which they could do without—buy on credit, at big prices, month after month, credit based on the Negro’s share of the growing crop; and at the end of the season, the Negro’s share belongs to the Israelite, the Negro is in debt besides, is discouraged, dissatisfied, restless, and both he and the planter are injured; for he will take steamboat and migrate, and the planter must get a stranger in his place who does not know him, does not care for him, will fatten the Israelite a season, and follow his predecessor per steamboat.

It is hoped that the Calhoun Company will show, by its humane and protective treatment of its laborers, that its method is the most profitable for both planter and Negro; and it is believed that a general adoption of that method will then follow.

And where so many are saying their say, shall not the barkeeper testify? He is thoughtful, observant, never drinks; endeavors to earn his salary, and
would
earn it if there were custom enough. He says the people along here in Mississippi and Louisiana will send up the river to buy vegetables rather than raise them, and they will come aboard at the landings and buy fruits of the barkeeper. Thinks they “don’t know anything but cotton”; believes they don’t know how to raise vegetables and fruit—“at least the most of them.” Says “a nigger will to H for a watermelon” (“H” is all I find in the stenographer’s report—means Halifax probably, though that seems a good way to go for a watermelon). Barkeeper buys watermelons for five cents up the river, brings them down and sells them for fifty. “Why does he mix such elaborate and picturesque drinks for the nigger hands on the boat?” Because they won’t have any other. “They want a
big
drink; don’t make any difference what you make it of, they want the worth of their money. You give a nigger a plain gill of half-a-dollar brandy for five cents—will he touch it? No. Ain’t size enough to it. But you put up a pint of all kinds of worthless rubbish, and heave in some red stuff to make it beautiful—red’s the main thing—and he wouldn’t put down that glass to go to a circus.” All the bars on this Anchor Line are rented and owned by one firm. They furnish the liquors from their own establishment, and hire the barkeepers “on salary.” Good liquors? Yes, on some of the boats, where there are the kind of passengers that want it and can pay for it. On the other boats? No. Nobody but the deck hands and firemen to drink it. “Brandy? Yes, I’ve got brandy, plenty of it; but you don’t want any of it unless you’ve made your will.” It isn’t as it used to be in the old times. Then everybody traveled by steamboat, everybody drank, and everybody treated everybody else. “Now most everybody goes by railroad, and the rest don’t drink.” In the old times, the barkeeper owned the bar himself, “and was gay and smarty and talky and all jeweled up, and was the toniest aristocrat on the boat; used to make $2,000 on a trip. A father who left his son a steamboat bar left him a fortune. Now he leaves him board and lodging; yes, and washing, if a shirt a trip will do. Yes, indeedy, times are changed. Why, do you know, on the principal line of boats on the Upper Mississippi, they don’t have any bar at all! Sounds like poetry, but it’s the petrified truth.”

Stack Island. I remembered Stack Island; also Lake Providence, Louisiana—which is the first distinctly Southern-looking town you come to, downward bound, lies level and low, shade trees hung with venerable gray beards of Spanish moss; “restful, pensive, Sunday aspect about the place,” comments Uncle Mumford, with feeling—also with truth.

A Mr. H. furnished some minor details of fact concerning this region which I would have hesitated to believe if I had not known him to be a steamboat mate. He was a passenger of ours, a resident of Arkansas City, and bound to Vicksburg to join his boat, a little Sunflower packet. He was an austere man, and had the reputation of being singularly unworldly, for a river man. Among other things, he said that Arkansas had been injured and kept back by generations of exaggerations concerning the mosquitoes there. One may smile, said he, and turn the matter off as being a small thing; but when you come to look at the effects produced, in the way of discouragement of immigration, and diminished values of property, it was quite the opposite of a small thing, or thing in any wise to be coughed down or sneered at. These mosquitoes had been persistently represented as being formidable and lawless; whereas “the truth is, they are feeble, insignificant in size, diffident to a fault, sensitive”—and so on, and so on; you would have supposed he was talking about his family. But if he was soft on the Arkansas mosquitoes, he was hard enough on the mosquitoes of Lake Providence to make up for it—“those Lake Providence colossi,” as he finally called them. He said that two of them could whip a dog, and that four of them could hold a man down; and except help come, they would kill him—“butcher him,” as he expressed it. Referred in a sort of casual way—and yet significant way—to “the fact that the life policy in its simplest form is unknown in Lake Providence—they take out a mosquito policy besides.” He told many remarkable things about those lawless insects. Among others, said he had seen them try to
vote
. Noticing that this statement seemed to be a good deal of a strain on us, he modified it a little: said he might have been mistaken, as to that particular, but knew he had seen them around the polls “canvassing.”

There was another passenger—friend of H.’s—who backed up the harsh evidence against those mosquitoes, and detailed some stirring adventures which he had had with them. The stories were pretty sizeable, merely pretty sizeable; yet Mr. H. was continually interrupting with a cold, inexorable “Wait—knock off twenty-five percent of that; now go on”; or, “Wait—you are getting that too strong; cut it down, cut it down—you get a leetle too much costumery on to your statements: always dress a fact in tights, never in an ulster”; or, “Pardon, once more: if you are going to load anything more on to that statement, you want to get a couple of lighters and tow the rest, because it’s drawing all the water there is in the river already; stick to the facts—just stick to the cold facts; what these gentlemen want for a book is the frozen truth—ain’t that so, gentlemen?” He explained privately that it was necessary to watch this man all the time, and keep him within bounds; it would not do to neglect this precaution, as he, Mr. H. “knew to his sorrow.” Said he, “I will not deceive you; he told me such a monstrous lie once, that it swelled my left ear up and spread it so that I was actually not able to see out around it; it remained so for months, and people came miles to see me fan myself with it.”