Old Times on the Upper Mississippi

Chapter XXX. Living It Over Again 240

LIVING IT OVER AGAIN 240

Appendix

A. LIST OF STEAMBOATS ON THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI RIVER, 1823-1863 257

B. OPENING OF NAVIGATION AT ST. PAUL, 1844-1862 295

C. TABLE OF DISTANCES FROM ST. LOUIS 296

D. IMPROVEMENT OF THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI, 1866-1876 299

E. INDIAN NOMENCLATURE AND LEGENDS 300

Index 305

Illustrations

MOUTH OF THE WISCONSIN RIVER. The ancient highway between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi. This scene gives some idea of the multitude of islands which diversify both the Wisconsin and the Mississippi Rivers Frontispiece

PRESCOTT LEVEE IN 1876. Showing Steamer "Centennial" and the little Hastings ferry, "Plough Boy." The double warehouse, showing five windows in the second story and four in the third, was the building in which the author lived when a boy 32

PRESCOTT LEVEE IN 1908. But one business building, one of the old Merrick warehouses, left intact. Dunbar's Hall gutted by fire recently. The large steamboat warehouse next to it destroyed some years ago. All the shipping business gone to the railroad, which runs just back of the buildings shown 32

ALMA, WISCONSIN. A typical river town in the fifties 54

ABOVE TREMPEALEAU, WISCONSIN. In the middle foreground, at the head of the slough, is the site of the winter camp of Nicolas Perrot, in the winter of 1684-5, as identified in 1888 by Hon. B. F. Heuston and Dr. Reuben Gold Thwaites of the Wisconsin State Historical Society 68

DANIEL SMITH HARRIS. Steamboat Captain, 1833-1861 82

CAPTAIN THOMAS BURNS. Pilot on the Upper Mississippi River from 1856 to 1889. Inspector of Steamboats under President Cleveland and President McKinley 82

CHARLES G. HARGUS. Chief Clerk on the "Royal Arch," "Golden State," "Fanny Harris," "Kate Cassell" and many other fine steamers on the Upper Mississippi 82

GEORGE B. MERRICK. "Cub" Pilot, 1862 82

TYPICAL PORTION OF THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI. Map of the river between Cassville, Wis., and Guttenberg, Iowa, showing the characteristic winding of the stream 98

STEAMER "WAR EAGLE," 1852; 296 TONS 120

STEAMER "MILWAUKEE," 1856; 550 TONS 120

WINONA, MINNESOTA. The Levee in 1862 134

THE LEVEE AT ST. PAUL, 1859. Showing the Steamer "Grey Eagle" (1857; 673 tons), Capt. Daniel Smith Harris, the fastest and best boat on the Upper River, together with the "Jeanette Roberts" (1857; 146 tons), and the "Time and Tide" (1853; 131 tons), two Minnesota River boats belonging to Captain Jean Robert, an eccentric Frenchman and successful steamboatman. (Reproduced from an old negative in possession of Mr. Edward Bromley of Minneapolis, Minn.) 146

STEAMER "KEY CITY," 1857; 560 TONS 154

STEAMER "NORTHERN LIGHT," 1856; 740 TONS 154

FACSIMILES OF EARLY TICKETS AND BUSINESS CARD 166

MCGREGOR, IOWA. Looking north, up the river 178

ALTON, ILLINOIS. Looking down the river facing p. 188

RED WING, MINNESOTA. Showing Barn Bluff in the background, with a glimpse of the river on the left 198

BAD AXE (NOW GENOA), WISCONSIN. Scene of the last battle between the United States forces and the Indians under Chief Black Hawk, August 21, 1832. The steamer "Warrior," Captain Joseph Throckmorton, with soldiers and artillery from Fort Crawford, Prairie du Chien, took an active and important part in this battle 218

REED'S LANDING, MINNESOTA. At the foot of Lake Pepin. During the ice blockade in the Lake, in the spring of each year before the advent of railroads to St. Paul; all freight was unloaded at Reed's Landing, hauled by team to Wacouta, at the head of the Lake, where it was reloaded upon another steamboat for transportation to St. Paul and other ports above the Lake 236

STEAMER "MARY MORTON," 1876; 456 TONS. Lying at the levee, La Crosse, Wisconsin. (From a negative made in 1881.) 244

STEAMER "ARKANSAS," 1868; 549 TONS. With tow of four barges, capable of transporting 18,000 sacks--36,000 bushels of wheat per trip. The usual manner of carrying wheat in the early days, before the river traffic was destroyed by railroad competition 244

MAP OF THE MISSISSIPPI BETWEEN ST. LOUIS AND ST. PAUL facing p. 304

Prelude

The majesty and glory of the Great River have departed; its glamour remains, fresh and undying, in the memories of those who, with mind's eye, still can see it as it was a half-century ago. Its majesty was apparent in the mighty flood which then flowed throughout the season, scarcely diminished by the summer heat; its glory, in the great commerce which floated upon its bosom, the beginnings of mighty commonwealths yet to be. Its glamour is that indefinable witchery with which memory clothes the commonplace of long ago, transfiguring the labors, cares, responsibilities, and dangers of steamboat life as it really was, into a Midsummer Night's Dream of care-free, exhilarating experiences, and glorified achievement.

Of the river itself it may be said, that like the wild tribes which peopled its banks sixty years ago, civilization has been its undoing. The primeval forests which spread for hundreds of miles on either side, then caught and held the melting snows and falling rains of spring within spongy mosses which carpeted the earth; slowly, throughout the summer, were distilled the waters from myriad springs, and these, filling brooks and smaller rivers, feeders of the Great River, maintained a mighty volume of water the season through. Upon the disappearance of the forests, the melting snows and early rains having no holding grounds, are carried quickly to the river, which as quickly rises to an abnormal stage in the early part of the season, to be followed by a dearth which later reduces the Mississippi to the dimensions of a second-rate stream, whereon navigation is impossible for great steamers, and arduous, disheartening and unprofitable for boats of any class.

To most men of our day, the life of those who manned the steamers of that once mighty fleet is legendary, almost mythical. Its story is unwritten. To the few participants who yet remain, it is but a memory. The boats themselves have disappeared, leaving no token. The masters and the mates, the pilots and the clerks, the engineers and the men of humbler station have likewise gone. Of the thousands who contributed to give life and direction to the vessels themselves, a meager score of short biographies is all that history vouchsafes.

The aim of the present volume is to tell something of these men, and of the boats that they made sentient by their knowledge and power; to relate something of the incidents of river life as seen by a boy during eight years of residence by the riverside, or in active service on the river itself. While it may not literally be claimed, "All of which I saw," it is with satisfaction, not unmixed with pride, that the writer can truthfully assert, "A part of which I was."

G. B. M.

The several quotations from "Mark Twain" which herein appear are from Life on the Mississippi (copyright, 1903), by Samuel L. Clemens, permission for the use of which is kindly granted for the present purpose by the publishers, Messrs. Harper & Brothers, New York.

Chapter I. _early Impressions_

Early Impressions

Descent from an ancestry whose members built and sailed ships from Salem, Newburyport, and Nantucket two hundred years ago, and even down to the early days of the nineteenth century, ought to give an hereditary bias toward a sailor's life, on waters either salt or fresh. A score-and-a-half of men of my name have "died with their boots on" at sea, from the port of Nantucket alone. They went for whales, and the whales got them. Perhaps their fate should have discouraged the sea-going instinct, but perversely it had the opposite effect. A hundred men are lost out of Gloucester every year, yet their boys are on the "Banks" before they are fairly weaned.

I was born at Niles, Michigan, on the historic St. Joseph River, which in those days was of considerable importance commercially. Scores of keel boats plied between South Bend and the mouth of the river at St. Joseph, on Lake Michigan. Keel boats drifted down the river, and after unloading were towed back by little steamboats, about eighty feet long by eighteen feet beam. These were propelled by side wheels attached to a single shaft, driven by a horizontal engine of indifferent power. These steamers towed four "keels" upstream at the rate of five or six miles an hour. The former had no upper cabin answering to the "boiler deck" of the Mississippi River boats--only a roof covering the main deck, with the passenger cabin aft, and the quarters of the crew forward of the boiler and engine.

It was, I suppose, a quarter of a mile from my birthplace to the river bank where we boys of the neighborhood went to see the steamboats pass. In the opposite direction, around a sharp bend and across the low-lying, alluvial land, which comprised the home farm, the river was discernible a mile away. When a boat was seen coming up river, the alarm was given, and we little shavers of the neighborhood raced for the nearest point of view, a high bank of blue clay, rising probably seventy-five feet above the river. We used to think it was as many hundreds of feet; and what I now know as the quarter mile, then stretched away into interminable distances as it was measured by the stubby yet sturdy little legs of six-year-old runners. On the edge of this blue-clay bank, I received my first impressions in river piloting.

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