484 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[May 28, 1904. 
Floating Down the Mississippi. 
VI.— Senof Carlos, Student of Soclologyt Political Exile. 
Morning conies cold in late autumn on a Mississippi 
sand bar. Evaporation from the water, cold zephyrs 
of night and one's warm, moist breath, combined in al- 
ternate shivers and clamny discomfort. I drew under 
my canvas after my little glance at the dawn, and waited 
for the slanting rays of sunlight, unconsciously imi- 
tating the old river man who says if a man keeps- out 
the night air on the water, he'll never get the malaria. 
The diseases of the river — the horrible, yellow ones like 
chills and malaria are of summer growth. Cold weather 
on the Big River is not imhealthy, unless one is caught 
by pneumonia, or swallows a couple of mated typhoid 
germs just below some city. 
I ale a cold breakfast — biscuits, canned meat, and be- 
gan it after I pulled out from the shore. It was a 
foolish thing to do; to start out without something hot, 
though it be only a cup of coffee. A cup of cocoa goes 
better still. The result was, I traveled on with an un- 
comfortable feeling of haste, and going somewhere m 
a hurry — not commensurate with the hundreds of miles 
ahead — and the months likely to elapse. : 
Just above Carruthersville I made some photographs 
of the dredge Iota, and of the pile-line which the Gov- 
erment put in to narrow the channel, and save the 
bank on which Carruthersville depends for safety in 
high water. The bar was formed, and the Iota was 
having a nice time pumping up the sand and putting it 
somewhere else. 
At Carruthersville, I intended to see Jack Stevenson, 
but, while talking to the watchman, living in the eddy 
at the landing, heard of the Sugg and Poole outfit 
somewhere not far ahead. I went on looking for them, 
but failed to overtake them at Kennemore, or just 
below. 
Having hoped to meet friends, I was a bit put out 
at the thought of going on alone. Below Cottonwood 
my map showed a long island chute, and I ran down 
this, seeking a place to tie up. It was quite a long 
chute— more than a mile, and as I got toward the foot, 
I saw a boat tied in. It had on a tent over the top, 
and I thought of the two men who had come down from 
Cairo to Tiptonville, apparently on the one trail. It bemg 
near night and the open river not far beyond, I felt 
dismayed, but ran down close to take a look. When 
I got nearer to it the boat was a puzzler. It had two 
hulls— so it wasn't my fearsome D-liner— and on the 
bank was a little old man, with a gray mustache, very 
long hair and a slow smile. "An old-timer!" I thought, 
having in mind only the river people. But one finds 
more than these on the river.- As I have already said, 
there are many has-beens on the river. Carlos J. San 
to Carlos is not only a has-been, but a man who is. 
I greeted him. He greeted me. Could I drop in 
below him for the night? I could, and use his fire and 
wood if I wished for supper. His boat is a center- 
wheel catamaran, run by crank shaft, with the wheel 
box painted with red stripes on one side and blue on 
the other, like a sunburst, the body and back- 
ground being white. Where had I seen that boat be- 
fore? After a time I remembered. On the day I 
pulled out of St. Louis with Jimmie, in a little eddy 
just above one of the rip-rap piles, I had seen that 
curious craft as we bounced along in the tumble of 
waves. Four hundred miles below, and six weeks later, 
we had met. After all, the river is not so wide. One can 
see across it, and even find a man if he sticks to the 
looking. 
One does not know what to make of some people— 
who or what or why they are. Carlos seems to be some- 
body; he is a good deal more than anyone else that T have 
met on the river. I can tell the story he tells me — I would 
like to know that it is true. I believe it is— and yet this 
man is on the river. He explains it quite as plausibly 
as I. do my own presence here. Personally, I am not 
doubting him, but each one who reads what I tell of 
his sayings must judge for himself. It was entertain- 
ing to me, and illustrates one fact about the Missis- 
sippi. There is no kind of man who does not get to 
it sooner or later, from orphan boys to learned men. 
The winter of 1902-3, Carlos spent, at Toronto. He 
built seven or eight catamarans there, with a paddle 
wheel between the hulls, and a deck 14^2 feet long by 
nearly 6 wide. He sold all but one, and this he had to 
keep because the man who ordered it was unable to 
pay.. On the sixth of last June he left Toronto in this 
catamaran and went to Montreal, going the length of 
Lake Ontario and down the St. Lawrence. He had lost 
the money he received for his other catamarans, and 
started with but $42. He had been rnaking certain 
studies of Americans to find from which locality it 
would be best to take colonists for Cuba. He now 
started westward along the Great Lakes, passing 
through the Welland Canal, among the Islands of 
Georgian Bay, through the Soo, into Lake Michigan, into 
Green Bay, up the Fox River, down the Wisconsin and 
jnto the Mississippi, fie y^as ori his way down the Mig^ 
sissippi when I met him. When he reached Memphis on 
November 20, he said he had $2 left, and had not earned 
a cent on the way. Here at Memphis he went to work 
on a house-boat to get more money with which to con- 
tinue his journey to Cuba. 
"I am ^2 years old," he said one day, "I can't get 
around like I used to when I was young." He meant 
in physical alertness. "I have grown thin," he said, 
"See! My waistband." He could lap it almost half way 
around him a second time. 
"My home is in the United States of Colombia, but 
in the Revolution of 1892, I was obliged to leave. I 
had shops, a plantation, I had been Senator for many 
years. I came away in the night. A man brought me 
silver to a little stream side by appointment and this 
was about $2,000 — all he could carry of silver. I went 
to Panama." 
"For three years I was teacher of manual training — the 
use of tools — in the State school of Vermont." A bill 
head that Carlos gave me shows that "C. St. Charles 
& Co." v.'ere manufacturers of Revolutionary flags of 
Cuba, Porto Rico and the Philippines. He talked with 
so easy a familiarity of South American streams that 
I could not help suspecting he was a very sophisticated 
river wanderer, rather than the "educator" he claimed 
to be. Sometimes he shrugged his shoulders in good 
Spanish-American style, and his use of the English Ian-: 
guage showed him to he a native of the South Ameri- 
can continent, and the topics he chose to discuss in- 
dicated the cultivated gentleman. Where there are so 
many has-beens as are found on the Mississippi, one 
need not be surprised at finding anything or anyone, or 
any kind. It was the violence of the contrast that 
brought suspicion to one's mind. Had the man's 
dreams and hopes been all very high, it would have 
been dififerent. But in connection with his project of 
colonizing some section of Cuba, he planned to use his 
catamaran in conveying steamer passengers to and from 
the boats in Havana Harbor — "might so make four of 
five, dollars a day." However much one may try to 
associate labor with vast enterprises, a colonizer run- 
ning a 15-foot ferry boat does not jibe — unless anything 
is possible on this river where the high and low meet 
and there is nothing but harmony— as one finds har- 
mony in a sand beach, though some of the grains are 
black, some white, some yellow and some red. 
"I happen to be the man who discovered the preser- 
vative qualities of boracic acid," Carlos, or St. Charles, 
remarked, "It v/as far up in the Andes Mountains, near 
the head of the Amazon River, where I found the 
native Indians making a precipitating solution of the 
crystal of borax and dipping their meat in the solution. 
They hung their meat up and it was preserved indefin- 
itely from the germs of decay. This was in 1863. After- 
ward I introduced the subject to the attention of the 
learned world and carried on my experiments in Brook- 
lyn, in the presence of such men as old Dr. Bryant, and 
laany others"- — he named several, whom the writer has 
forgotten — ^"and they offered all kinds of suggestions. 
They said it did this and that and some other thing to 
the human system, but we failed to- detect any of them. 
Indeed, I made the oflfer to take a dram of the pre- 
cipitating — about 6% — solution daily for any period they 
might name, and did so for upward of forty days, and 
not a single ill effect could they determine to have come 
to me from this wholesale absorption of borax." 
One morning after we had been together several days, 
St. Charles served a cup of milk apiece. I knew he had 
not been ashore or near a cow, and yet this milk was 
sweet, rich, uncurdled. It was this sweet milk that 
brought out the borax talk. I don't know whether 
borax is harmful or not, save as I've read the news- 
papers and listened to this man, but I've a solution of 
borax in my skifif now, and I use it in milk, and shall 
use it on meat, washed with the solution, should oc- 
casion arise. I can't detect the flavor of the stuff in the 
milk, though I use a liberal amount of it. 
Here is my solution^ — as per the St. Charles direc- 
tions: I bought a pound box of powdered borax for 
fifteen cents. I put about an ounce and a quarter in 
a quart whiskey bottle, and filled the bottle up with 
Vv-ater slightly warm. A tablespoonful of this solution in 
a quart of milk kept the milk Carlos served for six or 
eight days so well that it seemed to my taste to have 
been only just cooled from the cow. I shall try it on 
meat one of these days. A slab of meat is merely 
thoroughly covered with the solution — 6% is about all 
that will dissolve in water — and then hung up in a 
shady place covered from the flies. 
This little matter of the borax, however, was only a 
circumstance to what Carlos had done in the medicinal 
line. His name must be familiar in medical liter- 
ature, for he says that he verified the use of upward of 
160 different kinds of herbs and things used by natives 
of South America for their curative or preventative 
properties. I was over my head in mere spelling when 
he came to tell the names of some of these. Just fancy 
the experiences of a man who went among the Indians 
of the mountain and lowland South America, and 
learned what they chewed up, or stewed or applied for 
^ugs and germs and cuts, H$ told me soine of them. 
and there were indications that he was in some measure 
like the learned professor of tradition. 
He called a "cabin boat," or "house-boat" a "boat- 
house" showing a bit of the foreigner's misapplication 
of words. This was puzzling to the unaccustomed. We 
came down behind Island 41, looking for what he called 
"a hole to hide in" — a "pocket" or "eddy" in river 
nomenclature. We found a toderable place alongside 
the "boat-house" of a negro couple.' St. Charles did 
not notice the color, but chucked the "chilluns" under 
the chin and cooked "a stew" on their stove. It was a 
pretty strong smelling boat, but the stew was good 
enough to quite make the odor forgetable. After we 
had eaten at the table, the Sefior, as usual, began to 
explain to the colored people certain things political, 
economical and liberal to the man, woman, a colored 
visitor and the "chilluns." 
"The temperature of my country, 34 miles north of 
the Equator and among the Andean Mountains is 
equable," he said, "By the thermometer the variation 
is only a couple of degrees — from 60 to 62 — what would . 
you think, if I were to describe to you a country almost 
under the sun where we must have a fire, for the pur- 
poses of warmth, and in order that we may be com- 
fortable, all the year around?" 
"Well, I declare!" one darky said, "Well, I de-clare!" 
"Our institutions are different. Our political man- 
ners are dissimilar. In my country we change our gov- 
ernment by revolutions — here you exercise the right of 
franchise." 
"Well, I declare!" 
Later, when we bunked in on the floor of his cata- 
maran — ought one say deck? — he remarked: 
"When I'm in the parlor. I want to be right there, 
and when I'm somewhere else, I want to be right there, 
too. When I'm home, I'm pretty particular, and here" 
—an inimitable shrug. On another occasion, among 
people scarcely more literate than the darkies, he talked 
for a long while far away above his listeners, and later 
said, with a dry little smile: "They do not understand 
what I'm talking about. They have some native wit, 
but it is uncultivated." 
Sometimes I had the uncomfortable suspicion that 
the little old man was having a little fun with me, there 
being a curious twinkle in his eyes, as he drew his 
brows down and looked me fair in the face — clear, 
limpid, blue (?) eyes, giving one the impression that 
their owner lived just a little above those with whom he 
met up, pleasing himself, by showing others through a 
sort of intuition, that there were heights to which it 
would be pleasing and profitable to attain. I wondered, 
afterwood, what the old man could have done that 
would have pleased those darkies more, than that dis- 
course on topics, thousands of miles away from their 
comprehension ? 
"When I left Toronto there were some of my friends 
there, and one of them was a cigar store keeper," St. 
Charles said. "He gave me a lot of pipes, and said 
that there would be people I'd meet on my way who 
would appreciate one of those pipes more than money." 
He gave away a pipe now and then at cabin boats, and 
also knives for paring vegetables to the women folks. 
There was no begging on his part, and he paid his way, 
though coming close to his last dollar. He was under 
obligations to no one, and pursued his sociological 
studies in a way that caused him to arrive at some con- 
clusions very uncomplimentary to some of the nation. 
"You will hear it said that such and such a place is rich ; 
that they never use anything less than five cents in their 
financial affairs. They are not rich. It is the poor 
region that has no small change. You go to a store 
here and ask for a pound of sugar, or two pounds of 
beef, and what do they say? They answer, 'Ten cents 
worth?' 'Twenty-five cents worth?' If you want a 
penny-worth of shoemakers' wax you must buy four 
cents worth for which you have no use." 
On the Majdelava River, In the United States of 
Colombia, Carlos built a bridge 54 meters long to stand 
a strain of the weight of ten pairs of oxen — 16 feet 
clear inside rails — of timber eight feet long, which a 
tribe of Indians brought on their backs from distances 
up to sixty miles. The wood is called "Juanprieto," or 
"Black John" wood— a wood like dark cherry. It sinks 
in water and was both, sawed and hewed for the con- 
tract. The hewing was done with hand-adzes, with 
which the native is expert, making a surface almost like 
planed wood. When tested the bridge sprung 3^^ 
inches. 
Traveling with a man who could do such things, was 
more than interesting — it was an education. When a 
little twister of a hurricane came along, it became even 
an experience. It is cheering to have along a man who 
has met emergencies, when one is up against one him- 
self. - 
Carlos J. San Carlos, as I have said, was in a cata- 
maran, or, in. Mississippi parlance, "a double-hull" boat. 
At St. Louis there is a cata;maran ferryboat, with a pad- 
dle-wheel in the center of the craft, and at the mouth of 
the St. Francis River a store boat of the same clumsy de- 
sign, but the model of the boat used by Carlos was a 
long, lean one for the hulls, instead of clvimsy s.cows, an4 
