FOREST AND STREAM. 
266 
[Sept. 30, 1905. 
Floating Down the Mississippi. 
Looisiana Bayous — Final Chapter, 
A PIROGUE is the horse, bicycle and legs of the 
Louisiana “back country.” It has, to the casual ob- 
server, the maximum of tippiness and minimum of 
comfort. It is so narrow that a cat-hipped man hangs 
over both gunwales as he sits in one. With just a man 
in, there is two inches freeboard, but when laden with a 
mattress, a dog and a gun the water is within half an 
inch of the topsides of the boat. There were scores 
of them in the swamp. At every house was a fleet of 
them, and they were of many patterns. 
Young, whose acquaintance I made a few miles above 
Grand River on Atchafalaya, was in a plank pirogue. 
It was II feet long, 5 inches deep and 16 or 17 inches 
wide. He sat on the bottom on a block of wood. In 
the bow, the mass of pink mattress was in startling 
contrast with the worn shades on all sides. _ It was 
really delightful tO' observe the pink reflection from 
that homely mass of bedding. Others make their 
pirogues of a single billet of wood. Some take a sec- 
tion of “natural tree trunk” for the bottom and lay a 
gunwale along each side. The effect is the same— the 
tippiest American: craft results,_ and in these things 
hundreds of men, women and children do their coming 
and going — crossing lakes fourteen miles wide and 
thirty-odd long, subject to as sudden storms as any 
region in the world. 
Young gets his mail at Plaquemine, on the Missis- 
sippi. “Theh was fish’men come yeh, spot’in’ once. 
Theh tole stories— I knowed of them. Everybody yea- 
haway has yearn on ’em.” One of this party was Fred 
Mather. Among the swamp people, he left an im- 
pression that will not soon be forgotten there. Mr. 
Mather’s oral yarns were marvels in swamp ears, just 
as his written ones were among the best narratives of 
sport ever printed. 
Suddenly, as we floated down stream, gunwale to gun- 
■vvale, with the current. Young betrayed signs of anxiety. 
He asked me to pull my starboard oar, and then he 
wriggled his paddle in the water, and his craft darted 
clear of my boat. 
“La Grand,” he explained. “You see that lit’ bayou? 
Hit’s Little Atchafalaya — go down hit, lak I tole you — 
then Le Romp — lak the rest I tole you. You tell them, 
I set you right? You do that? Tell yo’ people I set 
you right?” 
I told him I sure would. He cut through a tiny 
twenty-foot bayou, or delta, a short cut into the river, 
while I kept to the main current and ran out into the 
great Louisiana swamp bayou. Grand River. 
It was several times wider than the bayou I had been 
in for more than a hundred miles. A swamp settlement 
was' there— Butte La Rose. Considerable land was 
cleared, but the opens were mere patches in a dense, 
encroaching wilderness. The houses were pn stilts, 
and the occupations of the people were plainly indi- 
cated by black moss hanging on poles, and flsh nets 
close to the water’s edge. A swell rolling up stream 
gave me a glimpse of a fish tug just making a landing. 
If was a small, stern propeller boat, much weather 
beaten, and similar to a tiny New York Harbor craft 
of, the same name— but probably earning four times the 
money. 
Little Atchafalaya proved to be an awesome place. 
I had no sooner entered it than I was swept down 
stream by a rapid current into an arcade of tropic 
verdure. Trees overhung the place, and it was shady, 
though the leaves were not fully started yet. _ The 
ground had the bad appearance of land which is dry 
at the surface, but is still soggy from a recent inunda- 
tion. From this 30-foot wide stream little trinklets of 
bayous branched to the right and left like artificial 
ditches— some of them dry, and some just begmnmg to 
flow with water which carried along leaves and twigs 
and had a wave of dusty water at the end as the rising 
flood gained a new level. It seemed as though such 
a narrow place must be filled with drift, as many other 
bayous were, but the swamp man had told me true, and 
though the way was only a few yards wide between; 
ends of gathering drift at times, a couple miles of sub- 
arboreal passage carried me into another bayou of pre- 
tentious dimensions — the Romp. Its current was less 
strong than in the other bayous I had entered. ^ A 
clearing was on the far side of it— a weedy, grubbing- 
hoe sort of farm, with a growth of palmetto ferns 
around it, for which a northern cottager would have' 
given much more to have than the farmer here could 
have afforded to pay to get rid of them. I followed the 
current. It carried me close to a boat 40 feet long, 
5 feet wide and having vast oars, like a cabin-boat’s, 
swung by rawhide thongs. A man and woman were in it, 
and her face was the homeliest one that I ever saw. 
Her skin was the color of ashes and was crinkled like 
paper, and looked as dry; her eyes were_ a faded green, 
and her expression was that of a stupid, ugly kitten. 
She was a tiny woman, clothed in a single garment of 
thin, printed cotton, much faded and unclean. The man 
'was a lank, unshaven, red-haired individual with saffron 
complexion. He recommended that I trade my skiff 
for his 40-foot galley, because of the large lakes I had 
to cross on my way to Morgan City. 
Not far beyond was the winter home of R. H. Sea- 
bold, a Maryland German, who fishes the Louisiana 
bayous winters and goes to Maryland for the summer- — 
he was the healthiest looking man I saw on the trip. 
He expected to soon go north for the summer. _ He 
had a fish box half full of fish as a result of a morning’s 
haul of hoop nets, and the fishing business paid him 
so well, that he had hired a boy to help him with the 
work. He said that he hadn’t fallen under 1,000 pounds 
a trip of the tug, which came every five days — say $35 
to $50. 
The time was when the fish buyers at Morgann City 
would give any kind of a man $75 worth of tackle and 
set him up in the fishing business, with as good grub 
as any one ever had to eat. This was a joy to the 
swamp people. Some of them fished, and reaped un- 
heard of rewards. Some men who had never seen $100 
in a year -now secured as much for a few days’ work. 
For a time they lived extravagantly, felt the lust of 
greed and did things without regard to the climate. 
But most of the people, after a spasm of unheard of 
activity, a vacation of medium hard work, felt the little 
tired aches in; their arms, and the joys of just sitting 
became keener than mere loaded tables and gaudy 
clothing. They disposed of their fishing tackle to 
others and lived on the price of the sale. Then some 
of them went tO‘ another fish dealer, and secured a new 
outfit, which sold for a year’s provender. In time, the 
fish buyers ceased giving the would-be fishers their 
outfit. Men like Seabold come into the swamp and 
work all winter, earning high wages. In the summer, 
the wise ones, for the sake of their ambition, travel 
into cooler, less vigor-sapping climate. Those who re- 
main, see things not down in- the books. It is one thing 
to read of the humidity in the tropics in mid-summer. 
The reality, even for a day, is a drag on the spirits 
ever after. 
The air is hazy and warm. Everything seems 
showered with gleaming yellow in flecks and flakes. 
Even the horrid green creature which rolls up out of 
the water has a bar of bright saffron on each rough 
scale where the sun strikes it. The water is literally 
dusty with the pollen blown from flowering trees. The 
rowed boat plows through the , water without noise, 
rolling the gummy film on the surface. The eyes roam 
the banks for high places, and the mind thinks of 
“resting” the “tired” arms in a sunny place. Trees 
seem to have grown especially that hammocks might 
be swung from them. 
“A man from up north comes down here and thinks 
everybody is shif’less. He goes to work, lumbering, 
or fishing, or something. First along he does a 
plenty, but by and by he lets up. There’s an awful 
protest ’way inside at first. That’s the soul trying to 
spunk up the heart— ’tain’ no use. It jes’ happens a 
man’s drappin’ an’ a-drappin’. Fus’ he knows, he’s 
settiiT yeah— lak I be, pretty damned comfortable. 
What’s the use? We got chickens, _ cows, a garden. 
Everything grows. A man gets satisfied down yeah. 
It’s in the air. Up north it ain’t. I wouldn’t go back 
to Ohio. If it’s hot, you sit in the shade ; if it’s cold, 
you sit in the sun — that’s all there is to hit.” 
A new oil derrick was going up on the Romp. Men 
were there hammering, sawing and chopping wood for 
the boiler. Beyond them, the Romp seemed suddenly 
to end.' Green willows were growing in the obvious 
course, banked against which was drifted debris in, 
semi-circular lines, in interstices of which green grass 
was growing, showing that the current did not pile 
the stuff up in awing jams as a white water stream 
would do. Uninstructed, this place would have been an 
ominous one, for the water flowed under that mass. 
But to the left was a little chute, a rod wide and three 
long. Here the water poured through, and a man in 
a dug-out on the point between this Devil’s Pass and 
Big Tensas bayou, pointed the way down. Over the 
sunlit gold of Big Tensas swooped a thousand of our 
forked-tail swallows, their backs metallic blue, and their 
breasts were redder than robins’, or white as flower 
petals. It really seemed to me that these birds were 
more delicate in their flight than when over Adiron- 
dack meadows before a summer shower. They were 
in a sort of circular basin, surrounded by trees, and 
they turned in shorter curves, and undulated and flut- 
tered and caromed from the water^ — did a thousand 
antics, and not one insect was there, though they 
opened their bills in the astonishingly cavernous man- 
ner these, birds have. The bird student who has not 
seen the migrants in the Louisiana swamps, should 
follow them from the Gulf to Red River at least. It 
would be a revelation to the lawn-observers. 
There are ten bayous come into the head of Lake 
Mongoulois from Grand River, and eleven islands are 
at its north end. The lake is formed by seventeen 
islands. I ran into it from Big Tensas (Devil’s Chute), 
and found myself threading my way down a shallow bay, 
where the current from the bayous flowed swiftly, and 
rippled noisily in acres of debris which had washed out 
of the bayous only tO' be stranded in the mud, the 
deposit of the Mississippi water. The lake was long, 
wide and forbidding. It looked and was mostly shal- 
low, and there were ugly snags scattered over its sur- 
face. The shores seemed to be of trees growing up 
out of the water — as indeed many of them were. My 
map indicated that I should strike boldly across the 
center of it, toward the southwest, but I hugged the 
shore for a mile, and then came to a fisherman’s cabin- 
boat and house. He told me to cross the lake, as my 
map said I should do. I had only to go to the utter- 
most southeast end, he said, and I did this and ran 
safely into a narrow bayou, Du Chien. With neither 
map nor guide, the tourist would find these depths full 
of terror. Only one course would be open to him, and 
that would be following the current. But in the swamp 
men tell the way and describe the features, so that one 
knows when to turn from the broad, open way and 
enter the narrow arcade. 
Bayou Chien, four miles long, took me to Lake 
Chicot, at the head of which I found two fishermen, 
evidently partners, but strangely contrasted. One was 
old, the other young, one gray and large-boned, the 
other black-haired and dark with lithe figure. The old 
man had the long, rough hands of much net pulling and 
line hauling. He was an acclimated northerner. The 
other was a Creole, remarkably suave and polished_ in 
his bearing and wearing a sprightly, skin-deep smile. 
They were moving camp “in the cool of the day,” but they 
had time to show me the way down Chicot, six miles. 
“Follow the Government lights,” they said. The 
Government lights were white-washed frames from 
which swung lamps that regularly appointed keepers 
kept burning for the fish tugs, and timber floMers. 
Chicot proved shallow, like Mongoulois, with the cur- 
rent flowing in my direction through it. I rowed with 
the lights, watching the sun as it sank visibly toward 
the horizon of dense cypress forest. The forest, as I 
could see, was standing in the water itself. It was a 
dismal place, but I couldn’t get out of it that night if 
I tried. Why I should not camp_ at the head of the 
lake, as well as at the foot, I did not know. There 
were islands around Chicot — it is formed by seven — and 
those at the foot had people living on them. I sought 
the house in Steamboat Chute, dreading a_ night alone 
in that place, now that I had seen it. I picked up the 
three or four lights as a man watches the blaze marks 
on trees in a forest. Gradually the Steamboat Chute 
showed itself, and I ran into it, feeling better in the 
narrow water way, than in the wide water. The look 
of cypress trees growing out of the water is chilling 
to the unaccustomed gaze. Not even the long lines 
of stakes marking set lines took away the loneliness of 
the scene. As I ran into the chute. I caught, sight 
of a light across the water— the night was very close 
at hand.' 
A few rods down, I disturbed some buzzards which 
were at an uncanny feast, and then a white house, sur- 
rounded by a fence, rose bushes in bloom, a flower 
garden rich with posies, and altogether a very com- 
fortable, home-like place, appeared. Beyond it was a 
forest of trees, under which the underbrush was not in 
the snaky thicket of uncared for land up the lake. 
Three dogs of assorted sizes and colors came down 
to meet me, and had I been a bear they would have 
stopped me just as effectually as they did. The large 
one bellowed in front of me, and the two little ones 
nipped at my heels, as they jumped and barked. After 
a time a large, -heavy set man appeared slowly, smiling 
softly, and in subdued tones ordered the dogs away. 
He was Mr. Weaggley. His wife returned laterjrom 
lighting a Government light on Grand Lake, Louisiana 
-Swamp’s largest body of fresh water, west of the Mis- 
sissippi. She pounded up the chute with her oars, 
jumped ashore, and fairly jumped into_ view. She was 
a small, middle-aged woman, with hair of an auburn 
hue, and a face of determined features. 
“I don’t pretend to be handsome, or dressed up-to- 
day,” she said, “just be’n tending my light. Got to 
get my cows in now. Here Flip! Here Jack! Rustle 
them cows out now!” . 
The noise of the cows being rustled soon ensued. 
Mrs. Weaggley lifted a pail from the floor as though 
she ’lowed to bust the bails, and she flaxed around in 
lively fashion, and supper was spread out on the table 
— the cold evening meal ' of the swamps, but with 
coffee hot and so- strong that it would curdle sweet 
milk. It was delicious with brown- sugar, however. 
“When I first came to this island, in ’86,” Mrs. Weag- 
gley said, “it took two weeks to clear back three rods 
for the house, then it took two years to get up a kitchen. 
We was afraid of the water at first. You see we didn’t 
know but what ’twould come up and float us into the 
Gulf of Mexico some spring, but latterly we seen we had 
high ground, so we put up this here house, and now 
that the Government has took hold of the levee, she 
don’t break like it used to do, and we don’t have wet 
feet when we get out of bed. 
“They call our island Mill Island. The foot of this 
lake is all islands — three islands and four chutes. The 
deer cross from island to island every day— have 
reg’lar runways. I got my rifle there. That’s the gun 
that' stands by me!” 
Mrs. Weaggley is probably as accurate a shot as there 
is in the Louisiana Swamps. She kills squirrels at long 
range, and drops other game with a certainty that 
would be the pride of many men. One time there was 
trouble brewed by an unscrupulous man of the region. 
He tried to impose- on the Weaggleys, and Mrs. 
Weaggley ordered him to never set foot on her island. 
She found him down Steamboat Chute on the island one 
day. He started toward her with evil intent in his eye. 
