Readers familiar with the life of Mark Twain know that none of the would-be adventurers found their way to the Amazon: His two associates gave up the plan, probably for lack of means.Young Clemens himself found a fifty-dollar bill one bleak November day blowing along the streets of Keokuk, and after duly advertising his find without result, set out for the Amazon, by way of Cincinnati and New Orleans.
"I advertised the find and left for the Amazon the same day," he once declared, a statement which we may take with a literary discount.
He remained in Cincinnati that winter (1856-57) working at his trade.No letters have been preserved from that time, except two that were sent to a Keokuk weekly, the Saturday Post, and as these were written for publication, and are rather a poor attempt at burlesque humor--their chief feature being a pretended illiteracy--they would seem to bear no relation to this collection.He roomed that winter with a rugged, self-educated Scotchman--a mechanic, but a man of books and philosophies, who left an impress on Mark Twain's mental life.
In April he took up once more the journey toward South America, but presently forgot the Amazon altogether in the new career that opened to him.All through his boyhood and youth Samuel Clemens had wanted to be a pilot.Now came the long-deferred opportunity.On the little Cincinnati steamer, the Paul Jones, there was a pilot named Horace Bixby.Young Clemens idling in the pilot-house was one morning seized with the old ambition, and laid siege to Bixby to teach him the river.The terms finally agreed upon specified a fee to Bixby of five hundred dollars, one hundred down, the balance when the pupil had completed the course and was earning money.But all this has been told in full elsewhere, and is only summarized here because the letters fail to complete the story.
Bixby soon made some trips up the Missouri River, and in his absence turned his apprentice, or "cub," over to other pilots, such being the river custom.Young Clemens, in love with the life, and a favorite with his superiors, had a happy time until he came under a pilot named Brown.Brown was illiterate and tyrannical, and from the beginning of their association pilot and apprentice disliked each other cordially.
It is at this point that the letters begin once more--the first having been written when young Clemens, now twenty-two years old, had been on the river nearly a year.Life with Brown, of course, was not all sorrow, and in this letter we find some of the fierce joy of adventure which in those days Samuel Clemens loved.
To Onion Clemens and Wife, in Keokuk, Iowa:
SAINT LOUIS, March 9th, 1858.
DEAR BROTHER AND SISTER,--I must take advantage of the opportunity now presented to write you, but I shall necessarily be dull, as I feel uncommonly stupid.We have had a hard trip this time.Left Saint Louis three weeks ago on the Pennsylvania.The weather was very cold, and the ice running densely.We got 15 miles below town, landed the boat, and then one pilot.Second Mate and four deck hands took the sounding boat and shoved out in the ice to hunt the channel.They failed to find it, and the ice drifted them ashore.The pilot left the men with the boat and walked back to us, a mile and a half.Then the other pilot and myself, with a larger crew of men started out and met with the same fate.
We drifted ashore just below the other boat.Then the fun commenced.We made fast a line 20 fathoms long, to the bow of the yawl, and put the men (both crews) to it like horses, on the shore.Brown, the pilot, stood in the bow, with an oar, to keep her head out, and I took the tiller.We would start the men, and all would go well till the yawl would bring up on a heavy cake of ice, and then the men would drop like so many ten-pins, while Brown assumed the horizontal in the bottom of the boat.
After an hour's hard work we got back, with ice half an inch thick on the oars.Sent back and warped up the other yawl, and then George (the first mentioned pilot,) and myself, took a double crew of fresh men and tried it again.This time we found the channel in less than half an hour, and landed on an island till the Pennsylvania came along and took us off.
The next day was colder still.I was out in the yawl twice, and then we got through, but the infernal steamboat came near running over us.We went ten miles further, landed, and George and I cleared out again--found the channel first trial, but got caught in the gorge and drifted helplessly down the river.The Ocean Spray came along and started into the ice after us, but although she didn't succeed in her kind intention of taking us aboard, her waves washed us out, and that was all we wanted.
We landed on an island, built a big fire and waited for the boat.She started, and ran aground! It commenced raining and sleeting, and a very interesting time we had on that barren sandbar for the next four hours, when the boat got off and took us aboard.The next day was terribly cold.We sounded Hat Island, warped up around a bar and sounded again--but in order to understand our situation you will have to read Dr.Kane.
It would have been impossible to get back to the boat.But the Maria Denning was aground at the head of the island--they hailed us--we ran alongside and they hoisted us in and thawed us out.We had then been out in the yawl from 4 o'clock in the morning till half past 9 without being near a fire.There was a thick coating of ice over men, yawl, ropes and everything else, and we looked like rock-candy statuary.We got to Saint Louis this morning, after an absence of 3 weeks--that boat generally makes the trip in 2.
Henry was doing little or nothing here, and I sent him to our clerk to work his way for a trip, by measuring wood piles, counting coal boxes, and other clerkly duties, which he performed satisfactorily.He may go down with us again, for I expect he likes our bill of fare better than that of his boarding house.