14 2 
— ^ 
FOREST AND STREAM 
[[FEBi 20j 1904. 
Floating Down the Mississippi. 
v.— Some People of the River. 
Jack Stevenson was one of the thousands who had 
lost his home in a flood. Last spring the high watei" 
swept in on his httle clearing on Kaskaskia Island, took 
away his house, his field and chicken coops, leaving only 
a barren waste. He saved and sold his poultry — 300 or 
400 chickens— his tools— planes, saws, drills, and what 
not of a Jack-of-all-trades, and these were in a big chest. 
During the summer he had lived in- the warehouse, work- 
ing a little for the local blacksmith, but now that fall was 
come, he found himself obliged to go somewhere and earn 
money. _ A brother at Carruthersville, 150 odd miles be- 
low Cairo, and rumor said that wages were booming at 
that place, and to it Jack decided to go. He would join 
the human migrants of the Mississippi River and go to 
a better land. 
First of all he built himself a Jo-boat 18 feet long, with 
a. wider stern than bow, flaring sides 16 inches wide and 
able to carry about a ton in smooth water. It was in the 
Avater at the place I landed, and when we became ac- 
quainted, Jack said he was going down the river, too, 
and we could be company for each other. While I was 
at the old account books in the warehouse. Jack built 
an awning to cover his boat. It was old machine cover 
canvas, with slats crosswise to stiffen, and four sticks in 
a rectangle 5 by 9 feet square, to hold it over the boat, 
and swabbed with soft tar with which every landing and 
fisherrnan seems to be- provided, to keep out the rain. If 
the wind struck it there was no danger because it merely 
rested on four posts high enough to clear Jack's head; it 
weighed only about ten pounds, and on hot days I envied 
him his shade. 
Just after noon on October 10 Jack and I, with our 
duffle on board our boats, pulled out from Menard Land- 
ing, and the current took us more or less in charge. At 
Chester, a few miles below, is the Illinois State prison, 
and it is the most impressive spectacle along the river. 
There is a wide green lawn in front, the building is big, 
built of greenish stone, and behind it is a stockade of 
loers set on end, with sentry boxes at intervals along it. 
Within this stockade I could see men in striped suits 
shoveling sand on a big heap— a brilliant fashion of mak- 
ing useful citizens of worse than useless men. Fancy the 
ennobling ideas, the new life and character that a convict 
can get out of shifting sand from one side of a jail yard 
to, another! Possibly these responsible for this would 
gain by a week or so at the same pastime. 
^ We started hopeful of passing Grand Tower before 
nightfall, but little we knew of the river. It was coming 
on 4. P. M. when Jack began to suggest stopping some- 
where, and then one feature of the man became apparent. 
He was fussy. He would think a place looked all right 
for camping, but next minute it would appear that the 
willows were too thick, the mud too deep, the place too 
exposed to the wind. Finally it came out that he was 
looking for sand, and I pointed across the river to- a sand- 
bar there, but he couldn't see it till we had dropped 
down_ half a mile, and then, "We'll go over there." By 
this time the current was setting away toward us, and in 
trying to cross straight over we were practically going 
diagonally up stream. My clinker skifif, hitherto not built 
right, nor the kind of a boat to have, according to Jack, 
would have done the distance fairly easily, but the heavy 
Jo-boat Avith tool chest and stove in it, was too much, 
and we hit land half a mile below our object, yet to me 
it seemed a better place, for behind the sandbar was a 
bay, with an entrance a foot deep. "No," Jack said, "I'll 
not go in there. River might, fall and where'd we be?" 
"But the Chester bulletin said the river is risinsf." I sug- 
gested. "Can't tell anything about it! We'll find a 
good place down below." 
By this time the sun was setting; nevertheless we went 
afloat, and pretty soon came to a wide chute, into which 
the water was pouring. I warned Jack that he'd be on 
the' head of the island (?) or towhead, but he did not 
look nor alter his course till just too late, and went 
slashing dovvn among the bushes and light drift. Mean- 
time, being in some doubt as to Avhere he was going, I 
hung back, and then went outside, only to be called in- 
shore and up stream to a sandbar below the head of the 
island, and there we made camp; took out his stove and 
built a fire with wood gathered by lantern light, made 
coffee, and pot roasted a chicken — last of the old man's 
flock. He was jovial and cheerful, and each night there- 
after he was so, no matter what the irritations of the day 
had been. Not long afterwards I tucked down in the 
stern of my boat, he in the bow of his, and we slept. 
Come morning and we ate biscuits and gravy and chicken, 
a delicious dish to the taste, but Jack put upwards of a 
pound of lard in every three-pound batch of biscuits, and 
this, with the coffee, invariably gave me a feeling of 
nausea for hours after every meal. 
I have said that Jack was a riverman in the making. 
He came down to Kaskaskia five or six years ago in a 
house-boat of his own construction, after many years in 
northern parts, but subsequent years on land had ren- 
der^d jiim nervous on the water. Below, Liberty Bar, 
where '^we camped, were the 'Missouri Bluffs, and what 
js ?a}Ie4 the W^ter Level Road had tlirown some rocl< 
down, round which the water rippled fiercely enough iio 
the ears. Jack started for the opposite side of the river 
at this, and then, it becoming apparent that the wind was 
coming from the west, we hustled back to the Missouri 
side, only to hang on the anxious seat because a steamer 
whistled ten miles away. Until that steamer came along 
we went dodging around wondering where the channel 
was, and finally crossed astern of the boat Cape Giradeau 
in the highest waves of the trip without anxiety. 
I became nervous and irritable, for not knowing the 
river, nor what was to be expected, I had to follow the 
lead of one who knew what a wash a steamer Could 
throw, and yet when the steamer waves came they were 
harmless, and we rode them safely. Nevertheless each 
time Jack would say, "I hear a whistle — it's one of them 
Lee Liners, we'd better go ashore somewhere/' I'd follow 
— uselessly, I believed. 
"Let's get in shore now, the current's bettet there,'* 
Jack would assert, and he would hug the land. Three 
or four rods out my skiff would fUn away ffdm hirtl 
when floating, save m bends where the water fan best 
close ashore. In spite of the fact that I had to back up 
frequently to keep within speaking distance of him, 
"it's a better ^ current in shore" was constantly being 
heard. Sometimes we ran into an eddy, and it was days 
before Jack would give heed to my warning of "Eddy 
ahead !" ' Although running within fifteen feet of land, 
he would row steadily, and not look ahead once an hour. 
I did that for him, for since I discovered that the water 
had swelled the nose of my boat till it was crooked, and 
some of the side boards had pulled their nails loose, 
necessitating Jack's fixing it, I had feared for snags with 
constant attention. Time and again Jack told me or 
snags, " 'Twoh't hurt nothing !" and I suppose he felt the 
same way in regard to my pet aversion, the snags, as 
I did toward his, the wash of steamers. It is plain that 
we were neither one of us clay-lined rivermen. 
The wind was blowing pretty hard when we neared 
Grand Tower and Tower Rock, at which geologists have 
guessed there was once a fall, over which the Mississippi 
poured in some previous age. Nowadays instead of a 
fall, the place is known to river people because of the 
suck there — and a suck is a fearful place. It is a whirl- 
pool where the water races round, and in big ones tim- 
bers stand on end and are drawn down out of sight. 
Tell a riverman that there is a suck ahead, and instant 
attention is commanded. 
We had been looking ahead to Tower Rock Suck ever 
since we started, and now that we were within a few 
miles of it, we stopped repeatedly to assure ourselves 
that we were not running into it unawares at the next 
bend. A cabin boatman told us to keep to the Missouri 
side. "That's the best way, and you'll be all right there" 
— a deliberate lie, but one rectified at Wittenberg by a 
storekeeper. A moderate wind and the suck ahead were 
enough to send us into Owl Creek for an afternoon, 
rather than run the risk of being caught by bad winds 
among the bad waters. While we waited I walked back 
on the bluffs, and saw hickory and oak and walnut trees 
in plenty, heard the cry of gray squirrels spite of the 
wind, and quite enjoyed myself. When I returned Jack 
had fixed up my hammock ' and put in two sticks, of 
which I had not thought, greatly increasing the comfort of 
my bed. 
After a night on a dry mud bank under trees that kept 
off the cold and dampness, we went on down the river. 
It was a place full of interest. The bluffs coming to- 
gether not far ahead, the possibilities of that suck, and 
the legends connected with the locality, combined to in- 
crease any feelings one might have in regard to the place, 
and not long afterwards we were in sight of the rocks 
and waters of our fears. 
The keelboatmen, who used to tow their craft up the 
Illinois side at the Tower in tedious cordelling, have 
given way to steamboats, which in turn were driven out 
by the railroads. The Indians who waylaid the keelboats 
in the shadow of the cliffs to the east were succeeded by 
less violent whites. The slash of a railroad has forever 
destroyed the wildness of the Missouri side, and a 
whiskey advertisement, done in white on green, is on the 
most conspicuous part of the Tower Rock, but the suck 
is just as wild, treacherous and innocent appearing as 
ever. Jack laughed at it, and said he could go through 
it with his Jo-boat. Two or three years ago another man 
thought the same, and with his wife, two children, and a 
negress went into the whirl. The negress came out more 
dead than alive, but the bodies of the others were not 
recovered. 
The Government sent a man to blow Tower Rock out 
of the place a few years ago, and he set off a charge or 
two of dynamite, but the natives of the region served un- 
mistakable notice on the workmen, and the Tower was 
not destroyed. But these same natives permit a whiskey 
advertisement to remain unmolested in the most con- 
spicuous place upon it. 
The one place that led Jack to express a sense of 
beauty is just below the Tower Rock a couple or three 
miles. Here the railroad in going along the bank of the 
river cut into earth (clay?) almost white, and this cut 
contrasts vividly, with the trees han.sring to the brink 
above, making a scene - that is impressive of just what a 
railroad can do when it gets at natural conditions. "Now, 
ain't that ppetty scenery?" Jack asked. 
But even this "pretty scenery" was forgotten when a 
boat was seen five miles away. We ran into a bfook 
outlet, and after half an hour Jack decided we could risk 
it if we got to the far side of the river. The steamer was 
a snagboat, and I could only just tell them when her 
waves reached us, and yet within half an hour Jack heard 
a whistle ten miles away, and, seizing his oars, began to 
look for a good place to run to. "One of them Lee 
Liners is coming, he said, "and she'll be hell-whoopin' 
when she gets to this reaCh." 
No matter what the day, usually about noon Jack 
would begin to eye the shore, and though the water was 
without a riprle, and bread and cold meat were in the 
gfub caiiSj we had to go ashore, take out the stove, mstle 
wood and a fire in order to get Jack his coffee and have 
hot biscuit. My oil stove wouldn't do. In this way two 
hours were taken out of the day's run, though Jack 
claimed to be in a hurry to get down to Carruthersville; 
he really was, yet would make no sacrifice to that fact, 
a ^^ep toward the real river life. 
On the evening of October 13 we were ashore at Buf- 
falo Island. It had just come dusk when Jack came and 
touched me on my shoulder as I leaned to fix my boat 
for the night. He pointed across the water -and I saw 
dimly a skiff being rowed rapidly down stream, but out 
and around us. 
"He's a river rat. When he seen us he commenced 
Dialling out, though he'd intended to land here," Jack 
said. 
I am quite certain that most of the river people are as 
respectable as the average villager, but there are a few 
much worse than a village hears of once in forty years. 
One branch of this, evil class is known as river rats. The 
sneaking, hurried motions of the one we saw at Buffalo 
Island being quite in keeping with their character. They 
are river tramps, living for a chance of theft for the most 
part, Avaylaying and murdering on occasion, but, as a rule, 
merely begging and petty stealing their way up and down 
the river. A most unpleasant feeling it gives one to . 
know that one of these creatures is nearby, provided with 
a skiff whose oar-locks are noiseless. The cabin boat 
people do not hesitate to kill them on slight provocation, 
and farmers are only too glad to catch one oi them at his 
tricks. With all hands raised against them, they survive, 
nevertheless, accursed of half the crimes of the river. 
Old Jack never failed to keep a fresh charge in his per- 
cussion cap Kentucky rifle ready for instant use at night, 
and he could shoot it, too, with astonishing accuracy up 
to fifty or sixty yards, killing mud hens from a wind- 
joggled boat, and hitting sticks stuck in the mud. 
_ The proper season of the year to go down the Mis- 
sissippi in a skiff is, without a doubt, the fall. There are 
then upwards of two months during which "pretty days" 
may be expected several times a week. A "pretty day" is 
one on which the sun shines warm, but not hot, the only 
breath that is felt is caused by being thrust through the 
air by the current. The enjoyment is not care-free, nor 
is it without stimulating effects, for there are snags in 
the wide, shallow portions as well as the sandbars ; but 
the majesty of a river a mile wide, moving onward noise- 
lessly, oil-smooth for the most part, and with the inertia 
of a million tons, cannot but enter into the mind of 
travelers with sundry and divers effects. 
To the man who loves the wide sweep of a wooded 
valley, the far lines of the deep seas, and the wastes of 
desert sands, who has never seen the unimaginable power 
and send of the Mississippi, there is a new kindred sensa- 
tion awaiting. The desert is a still, dusty waste, the 
wooded valley quivers, but only quivers, under the winds ; 
the ocean waves, storm-driven, pound the beaches, but 
the Mississippi is its own power . and motion gathered 
from the storms of a hundred thousand tributaries, and 
looks it! 
And yet there is a meanness and smallness to it all, a 
malignant, harpy spitefulness shown in the ripples over 
the sandbars, in the hiss among the worn roots and 
branches of snags, and especially along the caving banks, 
where one may see that the water wears fastest among 
the roots of trees, sometimes so rapidly that eddies are 
formed, one most conspicuously in the upper -reach of the 
bend below Commerce, where a great lone oak tree, beau- 
tifully formed, had been reached long before its time. It 
shows in the little chutes and bayous, in the swirls and 
boils indicating the unevenness of the bottom, and, above 
all, in the sediment, which, seen close at hand as it flows, 
is in a constantly changing series of viscera-like convolu- 
tions. Nor is it possible for one to overlook these un- 
pleasant features ; they are a part of the river, as the 
river rats are a part of the river people ; but they do not 
detract from the interest with which the stream is to be 
regarded. That caution which Jack showed in regard to, 
the waves of the river steamers is typical of it all. For 
a long time the wash of steamers may be harmless, lulling 
one into the belief of security, but each time one must 
watch out, for there is no telling when the Spirit of the 
Stream will add its own force to the steamer's waves and 
send them far to destroy what they can. Whatever I 
may have thought and felt when Jack was hunting the 
yon side of the stream, he was right. The- word 
"fussy" expresses one phase of the river better than any 
other, and the man on it must be fus.sy him- 
self. 
^YMOND S. 3p§AR§, 
