£82 
FOREST AND STREAM, 
April 13, 1896. 
'he §$orten\mt $j[aumi. 
UP THE TOMBIGBEE. 
If Charles Dickens were alive and could take a trip up 
the Tombigbee River on a cotton steamboat, he would 
find some of the same kind of people he describes in his 
"American notes," written nearly fifty years ago. He 
would still find the man on board who shovels food into 
his mouth with a table knife and cuts butter from the 
butter dish with the same knife, and he would also find 
the vulgar politician making "spread eagle" speeches. 
Mr. C. F. Clarke, from Des Moines, Iowa, and >our 
correspondent shared a stateroom on a "cotton steam- 
boat" plying between Mobile and a little town called 
Pickens, situated on the Tombigbee River, four hundred 
miles from Mobile. We were seven days making the 
round trip, and had an excellent opportunity of studying 
the planter, lumberman, stock-grower and moonshiner. 
Our steamer was old. and had run on the Tombigbee 
and Alabama for the past twenty years. She wan 160 
feet long and 27 feet wide, and could carry 1,200 bales of 
cotton at one load. She had a cabin on the upper deck, 
running nearby the whole length of the boat. The front 
end of the cabin was left for the smokers and chewers. 
A long line of state rooms on each side of the cabin was 
headed by a barroom on the starboard and the purser's 
office on the port side. The after part of the cabin was 
cut off by curtains, forming the ladies' cabin, and when 
this was occupied the oaths and obscene stories were 
somewhat curtailed, for the roughest specimen of the 
whiskey-drinking cracker will lower his voice to a 
whisper when told "there's laiies in the cabin." On top 
of the cabin there was another cabin called the "Texan," 
which the darkey passengers occupied, and on top of the 
Texas the pilot house was located. 
The captain, who was part owner of the boat, was 
about fifty years ol3, and "put together to stay." His 
good nature bubbled over in every speech and story. We 
said we were from Iowa, and wished to see the Alabama 
"elephant," that the antives kept hid on the Tombigbee 
River, and we especially wanted access to the pilot house, 
•where we could see the bottom land and wild game up 
and down the river. "That's all right," said he, "come 
on board; you may eat, drink and sleep as much as you 
please; you may occupy the pilot house or any other 
part of the boat, and you may play draw-poker all the 
time you can spare from eating and sleeping." He was 
a good story-teller, knew everybody from the Mobile to 
the head of the river, and generally called them by their 
given names. 
The mate was a large, muscular man, about iorty-five 
years old, had been many years on the Red and Missis- 
sippi Rivers, had recently killed a dusky roustabout on 
the Mississippi River, and was now in hiding for that 
overt act. He had a bad face, with eyes that would drop 
when talking to you, and a voice that sounded like a. 
"siren fog horn." The darkies stood in mortal dread of 
this fiendish officer, and would scramble up the steep, 
slippery, clay bank, carrying barrels and other packages 
weighing S'OO pounds and upward. Often he would load 
heavy boxes on the shoulders of four darkies and make 
them carry the same over two springy, twelve-inch 
planks, to the shore, and then up a slippery clay bank to 
the top, forty feet above the water, cursing them from 
start to finish. 
We had a pilot who could make the mammoth steamer 
do his own "sweet will." He had manipulated the wheel 
of this steamer for twenty consecutive years. This pilot 
was the coolest man we ever met on a boat. He was 
making a difficult landing, and at the same time telling 
us a story. The captain, who was of a nervous tempera- 
ment, sang out: "look out for that stump!" "There's no 
stump there," said the pilot. "There's a stump right 
dead ahead, covered up by the high water, I saw it on 
the down trip," said the captain. "The stump you are 
talking about is about twenty feet above," said the pilot, 
who now finished his story, and the boat in the mean- 
time softly touches the bank, as if landing upon a cushion 
of feathers. 
We steam up the river towards a high bluff of vertical 
rocks, upon which a negro boy is waving his hat. The 
pilot steers the boat straight for the rocky bluff, and tells 
the mate to get the "post office" ready. We were ap- 
proaching the rocks at full speed. We got nervous, and 
anxiously wished the pilot would ring the slow bell. He 
is telling us about his boy, who is an expert cyclist. We 
think he is forgetting his stop bell. He holds the hell 
cord in his hand and continues to talk about that boy, 
while we, with bated breath, calculate the time it would 
take to get our boots, coat and vest off, that we might be 
in shimming costume. At that he rings: we draw a long 
breath, the boat slows down and touches the rock so 
lightly that there is no jar perceptible. The mate pro- 
duces a long, bamboo pole, with a canvas bag attached 
to the tip, in which the darkey puts a letter. We back 
up, and are soon on our course, losing but a few moments 
in taking on the letter. "Do all of the boats stop for a 
letter?" we ask. "Certainly. That letter may contain 
an order for goods that this "boat will bring on the next 
up trip. " 
fi^The pilot blows the whistle three times for a railroad 
bridge, which we soon approach. He rings the speed 
bell, and steers straight for the pier that held the draw- 
bridge. What does he mean to do? He will certainly 
strike the pier! He said "I have the best violin in the 
State. It's a charmer! If I had it here I would play you 
'After the Ball,' keeping the jack-staff pointed for the 
pier with provoking coolness. The captain became 
nervous and said, "I think— for this high stage of water — 
you are running too devilish near that pier. ; ' "No danger 
of striking the pier. There is more danger of striking the 
"butment on the ^starboard, than hitting the pier." And 
turning to us he said, "I think that After the Ball is the 
sweetest music that has been written in twenty 
years." At this point we were within fifty feet of the 
pier. The pilot still held the wheel hard over to port, 
but the current, to our surprise, carried the boat away 
from the pier, and when we passed through we were 
nearer the shore abutment than the pier. 
"While you boys were sweetly sleeping last night," 
said the pilot, "the engineer came very near killing this 
old boat." 
"What was the matter?" we inquired. 
"I gave the back bell in the middle of Rattlesnake 
bend, and just then the engineer caught the shaft on the 
centre. She was headed for a rocky bluff, and all I could 
do was to try and find a soft place on the rocks. I just 
missed a sharp rock by a few feet, and seeing something 
darker than the rocks, I put the cut water into it and 
saved the boat. It was some mud that the late rains had 
brought over the rocks. Had she struck that sharp rock, 
or bucked her brains out on the bluff, she would have 
sunk before you could have got into your pants." 
"Close call for the passengers. Why didn't you wake 
us up?" we said. 
' There wasn't time. It was all over in thirty seconds. ' ' 
"How deep was the water at that bluff?" 
"Twenty feet; 'twould about cover the deck over your 
state room." Then he told us of burned and wrecked 
steamboats, wherein many people were burned or 
drowned, until we were convinced that we were on a 
treacherous and dangerous river, and began to speculate 
as to chances of getting out of our state room in case 
the boat sank or burned. The pilot seemed to read our 
minds, for he broke out again in this wise: "Do you see 
that old wreck in the mud, and those boilers on the bank? 
That is all there is left of the steamer Wm. H. Gardner. 
She caught fire among ner cotton bales, and they ran her 
ashore on that mud bank. Twenty-one people lost their 
lives. A great many were saved by clinging to tne float- 
ing bales of cotton. This boat was close behind, but we 
could not] pass the burning boat. We tied up to tne 
bank and went after the floating passengers with the 
yawl. Our captain swam out and saved two ladies. It 
was a dreadful scene." 
The guard, or rail of tne main deck of a loaded cotton 
steamboat, is only six inches above the water, and should 
the boat take a list, or roll from any cause, sufncien t to 
take in water, she would sink so rapidly that people in 
their berths would be caught and drowned without a mo- 
ment's warning. From that time until the trip was over 
we slept in pantaloons, stockings and vest, that we might 
be ready for a swim at any moment. 
Every county, save one, from Mobile to Pickens, a dis- 
tance of 400 miles, voted "dry" on the temperance ques- 
tion. In our unsophisticated verdancy we expected to 
find, at least, a small majority of the people living in 
these dry counties temperate, but strange to say, from 
"all sorts and conditions of men" living in counties 
bordering on the Tombigbee River, ninety -nine per cent, 
drink whiskey. We counted over one hundred jugs, 
holding from one to three gallons of whiskey stowed 
in the front end of the cabin. As each jug was delivered 
to white men living in these "dry" counties, we concluded 
that the planters voted dry to keep the whiskey from the 
darkies. 
Every man whom we saw from Mobile to Pickens and 
back used tobacco. We started with about one hundred 
passengers, only two of whom were ladies, both of them 
getting off at the first landing. The men were planters, 
lumbermen, cattle and hog buyers, all of whom patron- 
ized the bar and played "draw poker" by turns. When 
nob playing or drinking they sat in a great circle around 
a hot stove, talking about the low price of cotton, the 
mistakes of the Cleveland administration, and the way 
Kolbe was cheated out of the gubernatorial office. As 
they talked they spit on the stove, the steam from which 
filled the cabin with an odor that was nauseating. 
The young Alabamians wore modern clothing and 
"tooth-pick" shoes, but the older men still wear the 
broad-brimmed "cow boy" hat, broad-toed Doots, and 
allow their whiskers to grow very long, ending in a long 
"goatee." We had just come from Florida, where the 
natives were tall, lank, lean and bilious, but we found 
the people of Alabama were short, fat, vigorous and 
healthy. 
Among the passengers was a cotton-seed buyer, who 
was the personification of vulgarity. He was rotund, 
robust and ruddy, was a great talker and enjoyed a prac- 
tical joke — on the other fellow — immensely. He weighed 
330 pounds, wore long whiskers and a frilled shirt, both 
of which were stained with much tobacco juice. When 
sitting down his knees projected only about four inches 
from his enormous abdomen and he seemed to be help- 
less; but once on his feet, he could kick the boys' hats 
off and walk the deck for hours with any of us. He had 
been a steamboat captain "before the wah," in the palmy 
days when cotton was king, and sighed for the good old 
days when cotton was twenty cents per pound. He was 
a Democrat of the "deepest dye," and had many word 
"scraps" w T ith the Populist farmers on board. While tell- 
ing a story he had a far-away look in his eyes and talked 
in a profound and dignified tone of voice, until he reached 
the culminating point, when he would burst into a laugh 
that not only shook his sides, but the stove and desk as 
well. 
All day long did we steam up this beautiful river, 
changing the scenery with every revolution of the wheel. 
At one place we went ten miles around a bend to make 
one mile on our course. We passed several plantations 
that were owned by negroes, one of whom owned a plan- 
tation of 1,500 acres, which he bought soon after the war 
— "on time" for $6,000, and paid the last dollar within 
three years from the date of the [purchase. This planta- 
tion is now worth $15,000. He is'the wealthiest negro on 
the Tombigbee River. Many times did the river seem to 
be stopped by a limestone bluff, running at a right angle 
of the stream. Then we made reverse courses like a 
mammoth letter S, with the bank lined with a dense 
growth of maple, beech, birch, oak and other hard wood 
trees. Many of these trees are decked out with the mis- 
tletoe, an air plant that clings to the branches of trees 
that stand in or near the water. 
The bottom lands on the Tombigbee are fertile, and 
grow from forty to fifty bushels of com to the acre. Each 
planter has a landing at which he ships his products, and 
receives his merchandise, though it be only a pint of 
whiskey; for all of the boats land on call, if only to take 
on or leave a letter. 
Among the men on board. who took too much fire water 
was a cattle buyer from Mobile. He had $1,000 which 
he exhibited recklessly and. was anxious to bet on this, 
that and the other. He bad a loaded revolver, with 
which he kept everybody extremely nervous. Our cap- 
tain finally captured the revolver, and we felt more 
secure. The bar-room had a window that opened out on 
deck, called the "nigger hole," where only the darkies 
drank. Here the cattle buyer would stand and treat the 
darkies, but drunk as he was, he would not drink with a. 
nigger. He soon got "drowsy" and fell asleep in his 
chair. At the next landing he was to get off, and the 
captain had great flifficulty in getting him ashore. He 
said he would not go, and wanted another drink. The 
captain had the bar-room locked up, and took a bottle of 
whiskey, with which the drunken brute was induced to 
go ashore. 
The Tombigbee is the home of many geese, ducks and 
other wild game. We saw many wild turkeys, of which 
we will write in our next letter. R. P. Beul. 
SPORT IN IRELAND. 
In happy soldiering days in old Ireland, an infantry reg- 
iment on the line of march from the garrison town of 
Athlone to that of Birr, twenty-two miles distant, halted 
for "ten minutes of refreshments" at the gate-lodge of 
the extensive demesne of "The Doon," lying midway be- 
tween the old castle and the large square mansion, the 
residence of the head of the O'Moinagh family, Anglice 
the O 'Moony, himself a very chieftain of the soil, a no- 
bleman of noblemen. The most unromantic member of 
the large family of Tommy Atkins of the British army 
could not fail to be struck with the peculiar beauty of the 
landscape. Having left behind en route many miles of 
fiat and comparatively uninteresting peat bog, here we 
found a veritable oasis in the desert. 
It was with regret that we all heard the bugle sound, 
"fall in, "after this too brief period of refreshment. The 
colonel resumed his place, the band struck up, the colors 
floated in the summer breeze, the regiment continued its 
march, and again the prosaic bog succeeded the poetic 
oasis. 
Since that time I have more than once renewed my 
acquaintance with men (not men only) and things, in 
this most picturesque part of old Ireland. It is of this 
spot, its ancient history, its peculiar features, as an 
introduction to its sport, that I now propose to speak. 
Situated in the centre of Ireland, in the heart of the 
great bog of Allan, several "Eskers," or gravel-hills— 
■ ■ ■ I S r. - 
nOON CASTLE. 
running east and west as far as the river Shannon— seem 
to rise abruptly from the surrounding bog. These Esken, 
a puzzle to the geologist, are apparently an eccentricity 
of the glacial period. On one of these stands the strong 
castle of the Doon, the home of some of the old kings of 
Ireland, the architecture of which dates back to unknown 
ages. On another Esker near the mountain is a so- 
called Danish fort, surrounded by a double-ringed foss, 
and connected with the castle by a series of subter- 
ranean chambers of the rudest masonry, intended, ap- 
parently, to enable the king or chieftain, with his re- 
tamers, to retreat from castle to fortress, or vice-versa, 
as he was pressed by an opposing force. From this castle 
they were wont to sally forth, accompanied by wolf dogs, 
to assist at a faction fight, or other tribal struggle. 
On another of these Eskers, named Bunthulli, "the 
world's end," on the bank of the silvery Shannon, eight 
miles distant, was built in days still further back, when 
Ireland was called "the Isle of Saints," one of the great 
colleges under the protection of the clergy called "Clon- 
macnoise," anglice— "The retreat of the sons of the' 
nobles"— where were afterwards built seven churches. 
From the castle of Clonmacnoise ran a road from Tara, 
named the "Pilgrim's road," (The celebrated Hilt of 
Tara, in the county of Meath, twenty miles from Dublin, 
is supposed to be the site of a magnificent royal palace. )' 
Through woodland and over bog, this "Pilgrim's road" 
ran— constructed on piles or beams of oak, which to this | 
day are found in the bog, blackened and hardened by | 
long immersion in its preservative moisture. The Pil- 
grims who traveled on this road in those barbarous days 
