His story is
historical, but his insight is personal.
I was pleasantly surprised by this little volume that is probably only
available in used bookstores. If you
find it, buy it, but in the meantime, here are some fun quotes to savor the
flavor of the book and the river.
“Ascending rapids was most trying of all. The entire crew was put to it to hold the
boat in place while one at a time each man shifted his pole to place of better
advantage. The slightest error in
pushing or steering the boat exposed her to be thrown across the current, and
to be brought sideways in contact with rocks would mean her destruction. Or, if she escaped injury, a crew who had let
their boat swing in the rapids would have lost caste. A boatman who could not boast that he had
never swung or backed in a chute was regarded with contempt, and never
trusted with the head pole, the place of
honor above keelboatmen.”
“After 1763, when France lost the war with the British in
America, many of the French moved to the west side of the Mississippi to escape
English rule, and so Saint Louis was founded.
Fort Chartres was abandoned.
Kaskaskia dwindled.”
“The French on the Mississippi were not conquerors. They were petite bourgeoisie and peasant
farmers who placated the Indians, mixed with them, and married them.”
“It was Father Allouez, founder of the mission of Pointe du
Saint Esprit in 1665, who first sent out the name – Missipi.”
“New Orleans was the crowning experiences for these rustics
from the back country. If Saint Louis
was still a raw, beginning town, New Orleans in 1825 was a city of compact
elegance.”
“With the development of the steamboat, New Orleans advanced
from year to year , almost month to month, at a rate extraordinary even for
America.”
“As early as the five-year period from 1822-1827\ the
property loss was $1,362,500. In 1841
there were forty nine boats lost on the Mississippi and its tributaries; in
1842, sixty eight; in 1846, thirty six.”
“In 1839 the number of steamboat arrivals at Saint Louis was
1476 representing a total of 213193 tons.
Seven years later this had increased to 2412 boats representing 467824
tons.”
”The Clemens had not been long in Florida [MO] when, on
November 30, a fifth child, a son they named Samuel was born.”
“Appealing very deeply to something that is, or was, at the
root of many Americans, and rare in our literature, there is, in particular in Huckleberry Finn an appreciation of the
solitude of the river.”
Ultimately the battle that emerged was about commerce and
transportation and not the river itself.
It was a battle waged by the Railroads before the civil war and then in
full attack after when the financiers of the war used their acquired powers
since they were also the financiers of the RRs.
“Railroad rate structures were ingeniously designed with the
sole purpose of taking trade from the packets.
Special low rates often below the cost of the haul, were offered to lure
freight from the Mississippi. Inland
towns, where the railroads had an unquestioned monopoly, paid through the nose
to make up for these proffers of bait that were constantly held out, but this
was not too obvious.”
The response was the loss of riverboats, but the advancement
of barges. This did not overcome the
natural forces of the river. “In
December of 1867 there were twenty boats aground in one short stretch of the river below Cape
Girardeau, most of them towboats.
Barges, many of them cut adrift, were hard aground too.”
“Congress in 1875 accepted Captain Ead’s plan to open the
mouth of the Mississippi with a twenty-eight foot channel that could be so
maintained that large oceangoing boats might dock at the port of New Orleans.”
“Hardly had the comet faded out, the strange twilight it had
created over the forest dimming from night to night, when there occurred the
first of the New Madrid earthquakes, A
pall darkened the air, the smell of sulphur was strong, geysers of steam and
hot water shot up thirty feet high, hell’s mouth gaped.
“From the perspective of the present, the naval engagements
on the Mississippi have a curious, half-mad, half-pathetic quality – brother fighting
brother in bubs armored with tin, pilothouses that were called slaughter pens
because there was no escape from death, great engagements in swampy bayous and narrow
reaches where men fought win the sound of each other’s’ voices, cracker-box
flotillas that burned like rushlights, sealing the crew and officers within
small floating hells.”
“White Pine that today would go into the finish of a fine
interior was put into hog pens and cow barns.
While the shrewder ones may have foreseen the end, the illusion of the
inexhaustible pineries persisted.”
“Iowa was dry in earnest, but Fairview, across the
Mississippi in Illinois, was dripping wet, and a stream of thirsty Iowans
poured through Winslow and over the high bridge. Returning very drunk, they gave to Main
Street a faint semblance of the wild and bloody past. …liquor was smuggled across in wheelbarrows,
baby buggies, pushcarts , anything on wheels.”
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