with a better digestion, and no catfish dinner aboard, and feels as follows–
‘The Mississippi! It was with indescribable emotions that I first felt myself
afloat upon its waters. How often in my schoolboy dreams, and in my waking
visions afterwards, had my imagination pictured to itself the lordly stream,
rolling with tumultuous current through the boundless region to which it
has given its name, and gathering into itself, in its course to the ocean,
the tributary waters of almost every latitude in the temperate zone!
Here it was then in its reality, and I, at length, steaming against its tide.
I looked upon it with that reverence with which everyone must regard a great
feature of external nature.’
So much for the emotions. The tourists, one and all, remark upon
the deep, brooding loneliness and desolation of the vast river.
Captain Basil Hall, who saw it at flood-stage, says–
‘Sometimes we passed along distances of twenty or thirty miles without
seeing a single habitation. An artist, in search of hints for a painting
of the deluge, would here have found them in abundance.’
The first shall be last, etc. just two hundred years ago,
the old original first and gallantest of all the foreign tourists,
pioneer, head of the procession, ended his weary and tedious
discovery-voyage down the solemn stretches of the great river–
La Salle, whose name will last as long as the river itself shall last.
We quote from Mr. Parkman-
‘And now they neared their journey’s end. On the sixth
of April, the river divided itself into three broad channels.
La Salle followed that of the west, and D’Autray
that of the east; while Tonty took the middle passage.
As he drifted down the turbid current, between the low
and marshy shores, the brackish water changed to brine,
and the breeze grew fresh with the salt breath of the sea.
Then the broad bosom of the great Gulf opened on his sight,
tossing its restless billows, limitless, voiceless, lonely as when
born of chaos, without a sail, without a sign of life.’
Then, on a spot of solid ground, La Salle reared a column ‘bearing
the arms of France; the Frenchmen were mustered under arms;
and while the New England Indians and their squaws looked on
in wondering silence, they chanted the TE DEUM, THE EXAUDIAT,
and the DOMINE SALVUM FAC REGEM.’
Then, whilst the musketry volleyed and rejoicing shouts burst forth,
the victorious discoverer planted the column, and made proclamation
in a loud voice, taking formal possession of the river and
the vast countries watered by it, in the name of the King.
The column bore this inscription-
LOUIS LE GRAND, ROY DE FRANCE ET DE NAVARRE, REGNE; LE NEUVIEME AVRIL,
1682.
New Orleans intended to fittingly celebrate, this present year,
the bicentennial anniversary of this illustrious event;
but when the time came, all her energies and surplus money were
required in other directions, for the flood was upon the land then,
making havoc and devastation everywhere.
Chapter 28
Uncle Mumford Unloads
ALL day we swung along down the river, and had the stream almost
wholly to ourselves. Formerly, at such a stage of the water,
we should have passed acres of lumber rafts, and dozens of big
coal barges; also occasional little trading-scows, peddling
along from farm to farm, with the peddler’s family on board;
possibly, a random scow, bearing a humble Hamlet and Co.
on an itinerant dramatic trip. But these were all absent.
Far along in the day, we saw one steamboat; just one, and no more.
She was lying at rest in the shade, within the wooded mouth
of the Obion River. The spy-glass revealed the fact that she
was named for me–or HE was named for me, whichever you prefer.
As this was the first time I had ever encountered this species
of honor, it seems excusable to mention it, and at the same time
call the attention of the authorities to the tardiness of my
recognition of it.
Noted a big change in the river, at Island 21. It was a very large island,
and used to be out toward mid-stream; but it is joined fast to the main
shore now, and has retired from business as an island.