88 
We. used 12-bores for the ducks and double 8-bores for 
the geese. We both shot Schultze powder, and we prefer 
it to all others we have ever used. Nos. 4 and 5 shot did 
all we wanted it to do at the ducks, but in the 8-bores we 
used No. 1, and found it too light for the long distances 
at which we killed the geese, from goto 120 yards. An- 
other time seven drams of Schultze and three ounces of 
BB would be far preferable. As my gun weighs fifteen 
pounds, it would take this load with ease. 
On arriving at Shanghai, another pleasure connected 
with a trip like this was in store for us; I mean the 
pleasure given by sending presents of game to friends. 
This pleasure we had to the full, and it was a fitting 
wind-up to the most successful as well as the pleasantest 
shooting trip I think I ever took part in. 
Floating [Down the Mississippi. 
A Cyclone 
On November 16, Carlos, the Spanish-American, and 
I were at Forked Deer Island waiting for the waves that 
drove up the chute to' cease running so high. 
There was a bluish haze in the air; no soft mountain 
mist, nor moist fog, but a hard-looking opaque thing that 
shut out the distance. Overhead the clouds came as scat- 
tered vapors and tangled mares' tails which slowly veiled 
the sun. It was warm, but a kind of feel was in the air 
as if it would be a pleasure to shiver. The wildfowl 
were uneasy, flying fast and low, or yelping on the sand- 
bars. One great flock of mud-hens was feeding opposite 
Gold Dust Landing, from which I shot one bird. I saw 
a cabin boat tied at the landing which looked familiar. 
Later I heard some interesting details of what happened 
to this boat an hour later. 
According to my map, a bayou was at the foot of the 
crossing, but when a gentle sprinkling drove us to land, 
only a little bay was formed there, the bayou being 
several feet above the level of the water. In the bayou, 
on beams, were cabin boats, and in the bay were several 
others. We ran into the west bank above the uppermost 
and tied to the stakes driven in the mud. I was a couple 
rods above an unkempt craft, built of rough boards and 
full of rat holes, cracks and a shacky roof. Carlos was 
above me. 
I went down to visit the cabin boats on skids, and 
found that their occupants were engaged in cotton _ or 
lumber work, while on the bank some men were putting 
a new bottom under a store boat. I found the way 
tedious and muddy, so turned back as the rain began to 
increase rapidly. I found shelter under the tent Carlos 
had raised over his catamaran. But I remained with him 
for only a few moments, as the downpour increased in 
volume beyond anything I had ever heard before. I went 
into it, however, in order to bail my boat. The boat was 
only half covered with my canvas. The skiff was quarter 
full when I reached it, and I bailed a dozen gallons out in 
a minute. Then i gust of wind came dancing up the 
stream and whipped down over the top of the cabin boat, 
and the air grew white. 
I had heard the expression "It rained so hard it was 
white," many times since coming to the river, but till 
then I did not understand it. The first fall fairly beat 
me to my knees. I recovered and bailed for a moment, 
but waves came under the cabin boat and began to lap 
over the side of the skiff, so I started out from the bank 
to run up the bay and get end on to the gale if possible. 
But I started too late. The cabin boat tore loose, break- 
ing an inch-and-a-half rope, and swung round against 
me. I succeeded in working the skiff toward the bank 
as the cabin boat swung, and when my skiff ran into 
the mud I jumped for the chain, seized it, and went over 
the bow in a leap for the bank. The wind caught me in 
the face, and instead of landing on top the foot-high 
mud step, I landed in the quivering, wave-washed mud 
sloping under the water. The first plunge was to my 
knees, and my struggle to climb out only resulted m my 
going down deeper and deeper, until I was up to my 
waist. The cabin boat meantime swung against my skiff, 
and the skiff went under, with all my stuff in it. Then 
the cabin boat had only to come a little further to_be 
against the hands I pushed against it to prevent being 
borne under in that awful slime. 
I yelled, of course, and in a voice that neither winds 
nor waves nor pound of sheeted rain stifled. At the first 
yell there was a commotion under the A-tent of the cata- 
maran, and the bulge of a back showed going stiffly along 
toward the bow. Soon the frowsy head and wide, round 
eyes of Senor came from under. "Yes, yes!" he called 
out, and jumping to the bank, seized his own boat's line, 
and by stout pulling eased the strain of the cabin boat 
from my arms. A moment later a man with whiskers 
and hair of a tawny color appeared hanging fast to his 
cabin boat's line. Their two strains swung their craft 
clear of mine, and from me. , 
The rain came down on the thre of us in white shrouds 
—an ashy white— as we stood there. The heels of Carlos 
sank in the mud as he leaned back, the water pouring out 
of his long gray hair as if from lichens or moss, and the 
cabin boat man set his muscles, first to the lines and then 
his shoulders to the cabin boat to keep it frorn whelming 
over me. He was a big, bony man, and the sight of his 
muscles rounding up in humps under his stained shirt 
was welcome to my eyes. . 
The wind blew in from all directions, it seemed to me, 
and I think it was so, for I saw the water rise in foot- 
high peaks and the tops jump up in spurting fountains, 
while my mackintosh flapped straight up m the air and 
whipped about for seconds at a time. The very mud m 
which I was three-fourths submerged oozed up around 
and rolled me further into it. My elbows, almost at right 
angles to my backbone, were on the surface of the mud. 
Then the twisting winds gave a final kick down over the 
top of the cabin boat, sent a ripping gust of ram against 
us, and then the white grew gray slowly. I got a pur- 
chase on the sunken bow of my boat, and slowly wormed 
my way up and out of the mud. . . 
The rain still came down in torrents, and as I bailed 
my boat the thick ooze with which I was covered was 
washed from me, and later on the only particle of the 
stuff I could find on my clothes was a thin, flat slab in 
the bottom of each shoe. 
FOH£sT_AKp_ STREAM/ 
As the sides of my boat rose above the water, I could 
see the mess my things were in. As always, everything 
had been tied to the boat, so nothing was missing. I 
lifted up my typewriter, the water poured from the box. 
My camera was soused, and my trunk was completely 
full — maps, papers, clothing, were all saturated, including 
many negatives. My note-book, though wrapped in oiled 
muslin, and tightly tied, seemed so hopeless a mess that 
I didn't undo the covering, merely handing it to Carlos 
to put on the catamaran till another time. 
The cabin boatman, Robertson, told me to come aboard 
his boat for the night, and I did so with my canvas ham- 
mock in which were the quilt and blanket. They had 
been clear under water, and I supposed saturated. On 
opening the hammock bag, however, there was only a 
space the size of my hand that was wet. I was so wet 
that I crinkled all over, but Robertson built a hot fire, 
which dried my clothes and warmed the boat. 
The weather had changed. The blue haze was all gone. 
The storm passed swiftly by, and in two hours the rain 
ceased. Night found the stars shining, and a cold wind 
blowing from the north. The dry bed clothes were most 
cheering, and I slept my full night wrapped in them, 
curled up in a big old-fashioned rocking chair. In the 
morning, on unwrapping the note-book, I found only one 
sheet of thin insert paper stained by the water and run- 
ning ink, but the letters were not illegible. Most of my 
foodstuffs were spoiled — peas, beans, flour, cornmeal, 
sugar, etc., either bursting their cloth sacks or dissolving. 
But thanks to the stout cords that tied things to the boat, 
1 lost nothing of great consequence, though my camera 
needed the tinkering it got at Memphis from a jeweler. 
At Gold Dust Landing, the familiar-appearing cabin 
boat was torn loose, swung around against the bank and 
saved from swamping only by the lively work of the 
crew, consisting of three men, two of whom I met up the 
river, and was to meet again, weeks later. I heard that 
other cabin boats were sunk in this same storm, but saw 
none of them. 
The Government was putting in some matting just be- 
low Rosa, with the intention of preventing a cut-off at 
that point. A cut-off would make the river some 
straighter, but would wear away a few square miles of 
plantations, hence the solicitude. A great gang of men 
was at work tying wire rope around willow sapiings, 
forming a rectangle hundreds of feet long and a quarter 
as wide. Finally, when the thing was wide enough and 
long enough, the whole business would be loaded with 
rip-rap rock and sunk against the wearing bank — if the 
crew had good luck. Sometimes the mats begin to weave, 
then the upper end ducks under and rolls up like a carpet, 
more or less, whereupon they do the work all over again. 
Robertson went down past the mat one day in his skiff. 
As he cleared the lower end, he was caught in the swirl, 
his boat was sucked under, and he himself sloshed about. 
He had the struggle of his life, while the workers looked 
on, unable to do anything for him, till finally he reached 
the end of a rope thrown from the top of a caving bank. 
He warned us of the danger at the mat when we pulled 
out in the morning, and stood watching our boats as we 
cut across the current to clear the sucks at the mat. 
This was one of the hardest day's that I experienced on 
the trip. I was lame with the strain undergone the day 
before, and the day was a cold one — a white, sunshiny 
day, the river being swept by a gale of north wind which 
penetrated the clothes, chapped the hands and dulled the 
brain. We tried to find a place where I could spread out 
my clothes to dry, and with this in view ran down close 
to Plum Point, perhaps the most noted strictly river fea- 
ture passed on the journey. John A. Murrel's gang had 
its hiding place at this locality, and countless produce 
boats were here attacked and captured previous to the 
breaking up of the gang, which numbered over 2,000, and 
covered a dozen States. 
Plum Point sands contain unnumbered wrecks, and the 
Government has put piles there to hold the channel, an 
ugly looking point it is now, and we found no landing 
there. We tried to make a bayou opposite the head of 
Yankee Bar, only to be carried past by a sawing current 
of ferocious swiftness. Then, as the tyvilight of night 
came on, we hastened on down the long bend at the end 
of which is all that is left of Fort Pillow. Countless 
ducks were headed toward Yankee Bar and occasional 
flocks of geese lettered the sky. The spray from the yel- 
low waves froze where it struck. 
The map said that Cold Creek came into the river at 
Fort Pillow, but Cold Creek proved to be only a paper- 
thin stream trickling over the black ooze that was formed 
when Fort Pillow bluff caved off a few years ago. 
Formerly the water there was 200 feet deep, and it was 
into this eddy the defenders of the fort sprang from the 
brink when they could resist no longer. A fisherman, 
Pete McKay, had his cabin boat there on the mud, and 
he told us that veterans still lived in the neighborhood 
who participated in the battle, and being from both sides, 
still were fighting the war in occasional rough-and- 
tumbles that hurt no one, and eased pent-in feelings 
considerably. 
There was no pocket to run into, and we had to haul 
our boats a few feet out of the water at the bows, put 
up our canvas, and make ready for the night; it was 
dark already. Then we heated some supper on McKey's 
stove, he telling us what we might expect for a few 
miles down the river. He looked prosperous, and so he 
was. He gave me some old fish bills showing that he 
sent four or five dollars worth of fish to market on four 
davs a week, and this was the off-season. He made over 
a thousand dollars a year. The greatest catch he ever 
heard of was made when the Chickasaw Bluffs caved in 
and made the bar we were camped on. The water rose 
in a wave sixty feet high, and swept across the river, 
over the bank on the far side, and for miles back from 
the river flooded everything. When the water subsided, 
hundreds of wagonloads of fish were forked out of the 
mud puddles by natives thereabouts. ' 
Carlos and I were too tired to listen for long, and we 
went to our boats to sleep. But we didn't very much. 
The wind was out of the north, and came quartering 
against our boats. The wavelets splashed against the 
sides and the spray flew up on the canvas, where it froze 
and creaked as the boats rocked. I crawled down into 
my hammock, rolled quilt and blanket around me, and 
tried to sleep. But the waves came three or four little 
[Nov. 5, 1064. 
Jappmg ones, followed by a souser that shook the sleep 
from our eyes. The catamaran was worked around, and 
our boats rubbed and bumped at intervals all night, the 
mud being too deep to get out on to make a shift. Some- 
times sleep came— hammered in, and it was thumped out 
again. Tiny threads of clammy chill wriggled down 
among the warm folds of my bedding, and percolated 
through the system of the encased victim, hitting the back, 
of the neck, glancing around under one arm, and down 
across the stomach in narrow spirals of goose pimples, 
and the next streak would dart up the leg, on a through 
line to the chattering teeth. 
Of the three uncomfortable nights I remember, this 
was the worst. One night in the Adirondacks I laid, 
coverless, wet to the skin, under a lean-to bark camp, 
while the fire sizzled in a storm of snow and sleet ; an- 
other night I slept on a frozen sandbar of the Holston; 
out they did not compare to the one I passed at Fort 
Pillow. 
All the day that followed the old man would fre- 
quently speak of his native land, and his eyes looked far 
away when he thought of Utah, the woman who found 
him lost m the forests of the Amazon, and prepared 
herbs to mend his spirits, and snails, lizards, grubs, 
monkeys, rats, and spiders to appease his appetite. "She 
danced about," he said, "her face beaming with womanlv 
tenderness, her eyes flashing messages no educated man 
(sic) can misunderstand. Painted as a devil, she looked 
a saint, for no matter how savage the creature, no matter 
how barbarous the customs, the sacred fire which burns 
m the true woman's heart is just as sublime in the squaw 
as in the queen. It took me a year and a half to learn 
their language sufficiently to persuade them to take me 
to civilization, and then they did only on my promise to 
return." 
Carlos was not speechless when he found that instead 
of mutton, the butcher at Luxora had given him pickled 
pigs feet, when it came noon, and I doubt not that he 
regretted returning to the sort of civilization we were 
enduring, when a Utah was doubtless waiting for his 
return on the banks of the sunny Amazon. 
Although this was a stretch of river exceedingly inter- 
esting to historians, a better view of it is had through 
the written accounts that are found far from these 
regions. The river has changed its course so frequently 
that in many instances the present lay of the land would 
be actually misleading to an investigator; as in front of 
Vicksburg, for instance. But this is not to say the his- 
torian could write a better account for not having seen 
the canebrakes, cypress and gum bottoms, and murky 
sloughs through which the explorers and armies forced 
their ways. He would not see the precise things his sub- 
jects encountered, but the conditions are there. I pre- 
ferred to enter trappers' huts and fishermen's shacks to 
viewing national cemeteries. 
When we pulled out of Beef Island Chute on Novem- 
ber 20, the smoke of Memphis sawmills was to be seen, 
and it was not long afterward that we descried the 
"red bank" marking the head of Ash Slough that leads 
down to Memphis, and promises some day to become the 
main channel of the river when the "red bank" is worn 
back a little further. Memphis hopes this will happen. 
There is a sandbar across the upper part of Memphis' 
water front. The eddy there flows up stream, but the 
sand and mud of the bar is a wave that flows against the 
current, threatening to make Memphis an inland town, 
and destroy the cotton and lumber industries. 
Ash Slough proved to be a deep, narrow cut, down 
which a fast current sped to Wolf River, thereby saving 
us many miles around the Mound City Bend just above 
town. We came to the Ash Slough shantyboat town, 
and at the little blue cabin boat stopped to get our bear- 
ings. As we came alongside, a woman came out to look 
over her spectacles at the catamaran. "Land sakes !" she 
exclaimed, "What do you call that?" 
It warmed the ice away, and Carlos, always good at 
explaining, began. As he tied in he talked of "leverage," 
increased floor surface in proportion to displacement, and 
advantage of the broad beam. Soon, however, the in- 
evitable soup pail was produced, and then the "lady of 
the house" allowed us to come in and cook. 
The woman was Mrs. Lottie Haney, who lived there 
with her son Jesse, the night watchman on the Govern- 
ment dredge that keeps Wolf River open to the log tow- 
boats owned by sawmills up the stream. I was looking 
for a place to stop for a while, and Carlos was so short 
of money that he needed work. I struck a bargain with 
Mrs. Haney for food at ten cents a meal, while Carlos 
asked about furniture shops. A part of his cargo on the 
catamaran consisted of folding chairs of his own inven- 
tion, and he was going to try and find a manufacturer to 
make them. 
It was Saturday, November 21, when Carlos went look- 
ing for work and I for my mail. We dropped down Ash 
Slough to the sawdust pile across Wolf River, and went 
up this to the main street. Carlos wore a broad-brimmed 
hat, a vivid pink shirt, and clothes that had been made 
for a man of much larger waist measurement. He went 
hunting a barber who would cut his hair for fifteen 
cents — and found him, as he told me later on ; but of his 
adventures that day he said nothing. I saw him return 
toward night. The bit of jauntiness that marked his 
bearing in the morning was gone, and it was plain to be 
seen that he was dead tired. 
Sam Cole, Mrs. Haney's son-in-law, was building a 
64-foot store boat in the slough, and wanted help. He 
got Carlos that night, and agreed to pay him $1.25 a day 
— half a carpenter's wages- — and board. Carlos thought 
the board was to be free, but Cole charged him $3.50 a 
week when it came to settling. 
Tt was at Mrs. Haney's that I first became really ac- 
quainted with river_ people of the cabin boats. There 
are not so many cabin boats as there used to be, and the 
number is growing less year by year, it is said. But I 
have no doubt that the time will come when people will 
go down the river in cabin boats for the sake of the fun 
and weather they find in the lower reaches. This was 
done a few years back by people who had nothing else to 
do, nor other place to live._ Certain it is that anyone 
looking for a novel experience, a pleasant time and 
travel, will do much worse than to go oh the river at St. 
Louis or Cairo in a staunch cabin boat and drift to New 
Orleans. Raymond S. Spears. 
