Bedrooms with rag carpets; bedsteads of the ‘corded’ sort,
with a sag in the middle, the cords needing tightening;
snuffy feather-bed–not aired often enough; cane-seat chairs,
splint-bottomed rocker; looking-glass on wall, school-slate size,
veneered frame; inherited bureau; wash-bowl and pitcher, possibly–
but not certainly; brass candlestick, tallow candle, snuffers.
Nothing else in the room. Not a bathroom in the house;
and no visitor likely to come along who has ever seen
one.
That was the residence of the principal citizen, all the way from
the suburbs of New Orleans to the edge of St. Louis. When he stepped
aboard a big fine steamboat, he entered a new and marvelous world:
chimney-tops cut to counterfeit a spraying crown of plumes–
and maybe painted red; pilot-house, hurricane deck, boiler-deck guards,
all garnished with white wooden filigree work of fanciful patterns;
gilt acorns topping the derricks; gilt deer-horns over the big bell;
gaudy symbolical picture on the paddle-box, possibly; big roomy
boiler-deck, painted blue, and furnished with Windsor armchairs;
inside, a far-receding snow-white ‘cabin;’ porcelain knob and oil-picture
on every stateroom door; curving patterns of filigree-work touched
up with gilding, stretching overhead all down the converging vista;
big chandeliers every little way, each an April shower of
glittering glass-drops; lovely rainbow-light falling everywhere
from the colored glazing of the skylights; the whole a long-drawn,
resplendent tunnel, a bewildering and soul-satisfying spectacle!
In the ladies’ cabin a pink and white Wilton carpet, as soft as mush,
and glorified with a ravishing pattern of gigantic flowers.
Then the Bridal Chamber–the animal that invented that idea was still
alive and unhanged, at that day–Bridal Chamber whose pretentious
flummery was necessarily overawing to the now tottering intellect
of that hosannahing citizen. Every state-room had its couple
of cozy clean bunks, and perhaps a looking-glass and a snug closet;
and sometimes there was even a washbowl and pitcher, and part
of a towel which could be told from mosquito netting by an expert–
though generally these things were absent, and the shirt-sleeved
passengers cleansed themselves at a long row of stationary bowls
in the barber shop, where were also public towels, public combs,
and public soap.
Take the steamboat which I have just described, and you have her
in her highest and finest, and most pleasing, and comfortable,
and satisfactory estate. Now cake her over with a layer
of ancient and obdurate dirt, and you have the Cincinnati
steamer awhile ago referred to. Not all over–only inside;
for she was ably officered in all departments except the steward’s.
But wash that boat and repaint her, and she would be about the
counterpart of the most complimented boat of the old flush times:
for the steamboat architecture of the West has undergone no change;
neither has steamboat furniture and ornamentation undergone any.
Chapter 39
Manufactures and Miscreants
WHERE the river, in the Vicksburg region, used to be corkscrewed,
it is now comparatively straight–made so by cut-off;
a former distance of seventy miles is reduced to thirty-five. It
is a change which threw Vicksburg’s neighbor, Delta, Louisiana,
out into the country and ended its career as a river town.
Its whole river-frontage is now occupied by a vast sand-bar,
thickly covered with young trees–a growth which will magnify
itself into a dense forest by-and-bye, and completely hide
the exiled town.
In due time we passed Grand Gulf and Rodney, of war fame, and reached Natchez,
the last of the beautiful hill-cities–for Baton Rouge, yet to come,
is not on a hill, but only on high ground. Famous Natchez-under-the-hill
has not changed notably in twenty years; in outward aspect–
judging by the descriptions of the ancient procession of foreign tourists–
it has not changed in sixty; for it is still small, straggling, and shabby.
It had a desperate reputation, morally, in the old keel-boating and
early steamboating times–plenty of drinking, carousing, fisticuffing,
and killing there, among the riff-raff of the river, in those days.
But Natchez-on-top-of-the-hill is attractive; has always been attractive.
Even Mrs. Trollope (1827) had to confess its charms:
‘At one or two points the wearisome level line is relieved
by bluffs, as they call the short intervals of high ground.
The town of Natchez is beautifully situated on one of those high spots.