A good many steamboat corpses lie buried there,out of sight;among the rest my first friend the 'Paul Jones;'she knocked her bottom out,and went down like a pot,so the historian told me--Uncle Mumford.He said she had a gray mare aboard,and a preacher.
To me,this sufficiently accounted for the disaster;as it did,of course,to Mumford,who added--'But there are many ignorant people who would scoff at such a matter,and call it superstition.But you will always notice that they are people who have never traveled with a gray mare and a preacher.I went down the river once in such company.
We grounded at Bloody Island;we grounded at Hanging Dog;we grounded just below this same Commerce;we jolted Beaver Dam Rock;we hit one of the worst breaks in the 'Graveyard'behind Goose Island;we had a roustabout killed in a fight;we burnt a boiler;broke a shaft;collapsed a flue;and went into Cairo with nine feet of water in the hold--may have been more,may have been less.I remember it as if it were yesterday.
The men lost their heads with terror.They painted the mare blue,in sight of town,and threw the preacher overboard,or we should not have arrived at all.The preacher was fished out and saved.
He acknowledged,himself,that he had been to blame.
I remember it all,as if it were yesterday.'
That this combination--of preacher and gray mare--should breed calamity,seems strange,and at first glance unbelievable;but the fact is fortified by so much unassailable proof that to doubt is to dishonor reason.
I myself remember a case where a captain was warned by numerous friends against taking a gray mare and a preacher with him,but persisted in his purpose in spite of all that could be said;and the same day--it may have been the next,and some say it was,though I think it was the same day--he got drunk and fell down the hatchway,and was borne to his home a corpse.
This is literally true.
No vestige of Hat Island is left now;every shred of it is washed away.
I do not even remember what part of the river it used to be in,except that it was between St.Louis and Cairo somewhere.
It was a bad region--all around and about Hat Island,in early days.
A farmer who lived on the Illinois shore there,said that twenty-nine steamboats had left their bones strung along within sight from his house.
Between St.Louis and Cairo the steamboat wrecks average one to the mile;--two hundred wrecks,altogether.
I could recognize big changes from Commerce down.Beaver Dam Rock was out in the middle of the river now,and throwing a prodigious 'break;'it used to be close to the shore,and boats went down outside of it.
A big island that used to be away out in mid-river,has retired to the Missouri shore,and boats do not go near it any more.
The island called Jacket Pattern is whittled down to a wedge now,and is booked for early destruction.Goose Island is all gone but a little dab the size of a steamboat.The perilous 'Graveyard,'among whose numberless wrecks we used to pick our way so slowly and gingerly,is far away from the channel now,and a terror to nobody.
One of the islands formerly called the Two Sisters is gone entirely;the other,which used to lie close to the Illinois shore,is now on the Missouri side,a mile away;it is joined solidly to the shore,and it takes a sharp eye to see where the seam is--but it is Illinois ground yet,and the people who live on it have to ferry themselves over and work the Illinois roads and pay Illinois taxes:singular state of things!
Near the mouth of the river several islands were missing--washed away.
Cairo was still there--easily visible across the long,flat point upon whose further verge it stands;but we had to steam a long way around to get to it.Night fell as we were going out of the 'Upper River' and meeting the floods of the Ohio.We dashed along without anxiety;for the hidden rock which used to lie right in the way has moved up stream a long distance out of the channel;or rather,about one county has gone into the river from the Missouri point,and the Cairo point has 'made down'and added to its long tongue of territory correspondingly.
The Mississippi is a just and equitable river;it never tumbles one man's farm overboard without building a new farm just like it for that man's neighbor.
This keeps down hard feelings.
Going into Cairo,we came near killing a steamboat which paid no attention to our whistle and then tried to cross our bows.
By doing some strong backing,we saved him;which was a great loss,for he would have made good literature.
Cairo is a brisk town now;and is substantially built,and has a city look about it which is in noticeable contrast to its former estate,as per Mr.Dickens's portrait of it.However,it was already building with bricks when I had seen it last--which was when Colonel (now General)Grant was drilling his first command there.
Uncle Mumford says the libraries and Sunday-schools have done a good work in Cairo,as well as the brick masons.
Cairo has a heavy railroad and river trade,and her situation at the junction of the two great rivers is so advantageous that she cannot well help prospering.
When I turned out,in the morning,we had passed Columbus,Kentucky,and were approaching Hickman,a pretty town,perched on a handsome hill.
Hickman is in a rich tobacco region,and formerly enjoyed a great and lucrative trade in that staple,collecting it there in her warehouses from a large area of country and shipping it by boat;but Uncle Mumford says she built a railway to facilitate this commerce a little more,and he thinks it facilitated it the wrong way--took the bulk of the trade out of her hands by 'collaring it along the line without gathering it at her doors.'