216 Crossing the Line 



1810, continued 



and about six hundred miles above its confluence with the Mississippi. This 

 broad but shallow stream flows for an immense distance through a wide and 

 verdant valley, scooped out of boundless prairies. It draws its main supplies, 

 by several forks or branches, from the Rocky mountains. The mouth of this 

 river is established as the dividing point between the upper and lower Mis- 

 souri; and the earlier voyagers, in their toilsome ascent, before the introduc- 

 tion of steam-boats, considered one half of their labors accomplished when 

 they reached this place. The passing of the mouth of the Nebraska, there- 

 fore, was equivalent among boatmen to the crossing of the line among sailors, 

 and was celebrated with like ceremonials of a rough and waggish nature, 

 practised upon the uninitiated; among which was the old nautical joke of 

 shaving. The river dieties, however, like those of the sea, were to be propi- 

 tiated by a bribe, and the infliction of these rude honors to be parried by a 

 treat to the adepts. 



(Washington Irving. Astoria, or anecdotes of an enterprise beyond the 

 Rocky Mountains. Philadelphia, 1836. vol. 1, p. 165. ) 



1811 



Saturday, May 11. The river Platte is regarded by the navigators of the 

 Missouri as a point of as much importance, as the equinoctial line amongst 

 mariners. All those who had not passed it before, were required to be shaved, 

 unless they could compromise the matter by a treat. Much merriment was 

 indulged on the occasion. From this we enter what is called the Upper 

 Missouri. Indeed the change is perceptible and great. 



( Hugh Henry Brackenridge. Views of Louisiana, together with a Journal 

 of a voyage up the Missouri river, in 1811. Pittsbiurgh, 1814. p. 226. ) 



No changes appear in later editions until v. 6 of Early Western Travels (edited by Reuben 

 Gold Thwaites, Cleveland, 1904) which adds "for the open bare plains, now prevail" to the 

 last sentence. 



Bradbury went up the river about the same time, but his journal notes only his breakfasting 

 "on one of the islands formed by La Platte Riviere, the largest river that falls into the Missouri," 

 on the 28th of April, 1811. Perhaps the good Scot said nothing about such frivolity because he 

 kept his men too busy for trifles, since he stopped here to lay in a new supply of oars and poles, 

 no ash being found on the upper river. 



ca. 1811 



The mouth of the Platte River was, in these early days, the division point 

 between the upper and lower Missoinri. So important a landmark was it then 

 considered that the voyageurs came to treat it as the Equator of the Mis- 

 soru-i, and it was a regular thing to subject the uninitiated to the rude jokes 

 which are familiar to the navigator upon the high seas as an incident of 

 crossing the 'line." 



(Hiram Martin Chittenden. The American fur trade of the far west. 



New York, 1902. vol. 2, p. 768-769.) 



