CHAPTER 17

Cut-offs and Stephen

THESE dry details are of importance in one particular. They give me

an opportunity of introducing one of the Mississippi's oddest

peculiarities,--that of shortening its length from time to time. If

you will throw a long, pliant apple-paring over your shoulder, it will

pretty fairly shape itself into an average section of the Mississippi

River; that is, the nine or ten hundred miles stretching from Cairo,

Illinois, southward to New Orleans, the same being wonderfully crooked,

with a brief straight bit here and there at wide intervals. The two

hundred-mile stretch from Cairo northward to St. Louis is by no means so

crooked, that being a rocky country which the river cannot cut much.

The water cuts the alluvial banks of the 'lower' river into deep

horseshoe curves; so deep, indeed, that in some places if you were to

get ashore at one extremity of the horseshoe and walk across the neck,

half or three quarters of a mile, you could sit down and rest a couple

of hours while your steamer was coming around the long elbow, at a speed

of ten miles an hour, to take you aboard again. When the river is

rising fast, some scoundrel whose plantation is back in the country, and

therefore of inferior value, has only to watch his chance, cut a little

gutter across the narrow neck of land some dark night, and turn the

water into it, and in a wonderfully short time a miracle has happened:

to wit, the whole Mississippi has taken possession of that little ditch,

and placed the countryman's plantation on its bank (quadrupling its

value), and that other party's formerly valuable plantation finds itself

away out yonder on a big island; the old watercourse around it will soon

shoal up, boats cannot approach within ten miles of it, and down goes

its value to a fourth of its former worth. Watches are kept on those

narrow necks, at needful times, and if a man happens to be caught

cutting a ditch across them, the chances are all against his ever having

another opportunity to cut a ditch.

Pray observe some of the effects of this ditching business. Once there

was a neck opposite Port Hudson, Louisiana, which was only half a mile

across, in its narrowest place. You could walk across there in fifteen

minutes; but if you made the journey around the cape on a raft, you

traveled thirty-five miles to accomplish the same thing. In 1722 the

river darted through that neck, deserted its old bed, and thus

shortened itself thirty-five miles. In the same way it shortened itself

twenty-five miles at Black Hawk Point in 1699. Below Red River Landing,

Raccourci cut-off was made (forty or fifty years ago, I think). This

shortened the river twenty-eight miles. In our day, if you travel by

river from the southernmost of these three cut-offs to the northernmost,

you go only seventy miles. To do the same thing a hundred and

seventy-six years ago, one had to go a hundred and fifty-eight

miles!--shortening of eighty-eight miles in that trifling distance.

At some forgotten time in the past, cut-offs were made above Vidalia,

Louisiana; at island 92; at island 84; and at Hale's Point. These

shortened the river, in the aggregate, seventy-seven miles.

Since my own day on the Mississippi, cut-offs have been made at

Hurricane Island; at island 100; at Napoleon, Arkansas; at Walnut

Bend; and at Council Bend. These shortened the river, in the aggregate,

sixty-seven miles. In my own time a cut-off was made at American Bend,

which shortened the river ten miles or more.

Therefore, the Mississippi between Cairo and New Orleans was twelve

hundred and fifteen miles long one hundred and seventy-six years ago.

It was eleven hundred and eighty after the cut-off of 1722. It was

one thousand and forty after the American Bend cut-off. It has lost

sixty-seven miles since. Consequently its length is only nine hundred

and seventy-three miles at present.

Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and

'let on' to prove what had occurred in the remote past by what had

occurred in a given time in the recent past, or what will occur in the

far future by what has occurred in late years, what an opportunity is

here! Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact data to argue

from! Nor 'development of species,' either! Glacial epochs are great

things, but they are vague--vague. Please observe:--

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi

has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average

of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm

person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic

Silurian Period,' just a million years ago next November, the Lower

Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand

miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod.

And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and

forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and

three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their

streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor

and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about

science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a

trifling investment of fact.

When the water begins to flow through one of those ditches I have been

speaking of, it is time for the people thereabouts to move. The water

cleaves the banks away like a knife. By the time the ditch has become

twelve or fifteen feet wide, the calamity is as good as accomplished,

for no power on earth can stop it now. When the width has reached a

hundred yards, the banks begin to peel off in slices half an acre wide.

The current flowing around the bend traveled formerly only five miles

an hour; now it is tremendously increased by the shortening of the

distance. I was on board the first boat that tried to go through the

cut-off at American Bend, but we did not get through. It was toward

midnight, and a wild night it was--thunder, lightning, and torrents of

rain. It was estimated that the current in the cut-off was making about

fifteen or twenty miles an hour; twelve or thirteen was the best our

boat could do, even in tolerably slack water, therefore perhaps we were

foolish to try the cut-off. However, Mr. Brown was ambitious, and he

kept on trying. The eddy running up the bank, under the 'point,' was

about as swift as the current out in the middle; so we would go flying

up the shore like a lightning express train, get on a big head of steam,

and 'stand by for a surge' when we struck the current that was whirling

by the point. But all our preparations were useless. The instant the

current hit us it spun us around like a top, the water deluged the

forecastle, and the boat careened so far over that one could hardly keep

his feet. The next instant we were away down the river, clawing with

might and main to keep out of the woods. We tried the experiment

four times. I stood on the forecastle companion way to see. It was

astonishing to observe how suddenly the boat would spin around and turn

tail the moment she emerged from the eddy and the current struck her

nose. The sounding concussion and the quivering would have been about

the same if she had come full speed against a sand-bank. Under the

lightning flashes one could see the plantation cabins and the goodly

acres tumble into the river; and the crash they made was not a bad

effort at thunder. Once, when we spun around, we only missed a house

about twenty feet, that had a light burning in the window; and in

the same instant that house went overboard. Nobody could stay on our

forecastle; the water swept across it in a torrent every time we plunged

athwart the current. At the end of our fourth effort we brought up

in the woods two miles below the cut-off; all the country there was

overflowed, of course. A day or two later the cut-off was three-quarters

of a mile wide, and boats passed up through it without much difficulty,

and so saved ten miles.

The old Raccourci cut-off reduced the river's length twenty-eight miles.

There used to be a tradition connected with it. It was said that a boat

came along there in the night and went around the enormous elbow the

usual way, the pilots not knowing that the cut-off had been made. It was

a grisly, hideous night, and all shapes were vague and distorted. The

old bend had already begun to fill up, and the boat got to running

away from mysterious reefs, and occasionally hitting one. The perplexed

pilots fell to swearing, and finally uttered the entirely unnecessary

wish that they might never get out of that place. As always happens

in such cases, that particular prayer was answered, and the others

neglected. So to this day that phantom steamer is still butting around

in that deserted river, trying to find her way out. More than one grave

watchman has sworn to me that on drizzly, dismal nights, he has glanced

fearfully down that forgotten river as he passed the head of the island,

and seen the faint glow of the specter steamer's lights drifting through

the distant gloom, and heard the muffled cough of her 'scape-pipes and

the plaintive cry of her leadsmen.

In the absence of further statistics, I beg to close this chapter with

one more reminiscence of 'Stephen.'

Most of the captains and pilots held Stephen's note for borrowed sums,

ranging from two hundred and fifty dollars upward. Stephen never paid

one of these notes, but he was very prompt and very zealous about

renewing them every twelve months.

Of course there came a time, at last, when Stephen could no longer

borrow of his ancient creditors; so he was obliged to lie in wait for

new men who did not know him. Such a victim was good-hearted, simple

natured young Yates (I use a fictitious name, but the real name began,

as this one does, with a Y). Young Yates graduated as a pilot, got a

berth, and when the month was ended and he stepped up to the clerk's

office and received his two hundred and fifty dollars in crisp new

bills, Stephen was there! His silvery tongue began to wag, and in a very

little while Yates's two hundred and fifty dollars had changed hands.

The fact was soon known at pilot headquarters, and the amusement and

satisfaction of the old creditors were large and generous. But innocent

Yates never suspected that Stephen's promise to pay promptly at the

end of the week was a worthless one. Yates called for his money at the

stipulated time; Stephen sweetened him up and put him off a week. He

called then, according to agreement, and came away sugar-coated again,

but suffering under another postponement. So the thing went on. Yates

haunted Stephen week after week, to no purpose, and at last gave it

up. And then straightway Stephen began to haunt Yates! Wherever Yates

appeared, there was the inevitable Stephen. And not only there, but

beaming with affection and gushing with apologies for not being able to

pay. By and by, whenever poor Yates saw him coming, he would turn and

fly, and drag his company with him, if he had company; but it was of

no use; his debtor would run him down and corner him. Panting and

red-faced, Stephen would come, with outstretched hands and eager eyes,

invade the conversation, shake both of Yates's arms loose in their

sockets, and begin--

'My, what a race I've had! I saw you didn't see me, and so I clapped on

all steam for fear I'd miss you entirely. And here you are! there, just

stand so, and let me look at you! just the same old noble countenance.'

[To Yates's friend:] 'Just look at him! _Look _at him! Ain't it just

_good _to look at him! _ain't_ it now? Ain't he just a picture! _Some

_call him a picture; I call him a panorama! That's what he is--an entire

panorama. And now I'm reminded! How I do wish I could have seen you an

hour earlier! For twenty-four hours I've been saving up that two hundred

and fifty dollars for you; been looking for you everywhere. I waited at

the Planter's from six yesterday evening till two o'clock this morning,

without rest or food; my wife says, “Where have you been all night?”

I said, “This debt lies heavy on my mind.” She says, “In all my days I

never saw a man take a debt to heart the way you do.” I said, “It's my

nature; how can I change it?” She says, “Well, do go to bed and get some

rest.” I said, “Not till that poor, noble young man has got his money.”

So I set up all night, and this morning out I shot, and the first man

I struck told me you had shipped on the “Grand Turk” and gone to New

Orleans. Well, sir, I had to lean up against a building and cry. So help

me goodness, I couldn't help it. The man that owned the place come

out cleaning up with a rag, and said he didn't like to have people cry

against his building, and then it seemed to me that the whole world had

turned against me, and it wasn't any use to live any more; and coming

along an hour ago, suffering no man knows what agony, I met Jim Wilson

and paid him the two hundred and fifty dollars on account; and to think

that here you are, now, and I haven't got a cent! But as sure as I am

standing here on this ground on this particular brick,--there, I've

scratched a mark on the brick to remember it by,--I'll borrow that money

and pay it over to you at twelve o'clock sharp, tomorrow! Now, stand so;

let me look at you just once more.'

And so on. Yates's life became a burden to him. He could not escape his

debtor and his debtor's awful sufferings on account of not being able

to pay. He dreaded to show himself in the street, lest he should find

Stephen lying in wait for him at the corner.

Bogart's billiard saloon was a great resort for pilots in those days.

They met there about as much to exchange river news as to play. One

morning Yates was there; Stephen was there, too, but kept out of sight.

But by and by, when about all the pilots had arrived who were in town,

Stephen suddenly appeared in the midst, and rushed for Yates as for a

long-lost brother.

'_Oh_, I am so glad to see you! Oh my soul, the sight of you is such a

comfort to my eyes! Gentlemen, I owe all of you money; among you I owe

probably forty thousand dollars. I want to pay it; I intend to pay it

every last cent of it. You all know, without my telling you, what sorrow

it has cost me to remain so long under such deep obligations to such

patient and generous friends; but the sharpest pang I suffer--by far

the sharpest--is from the debt I owe to this noble young man here; and I

have come to this place this morning especially to make the announcement

that I have at last found a method whereby I can pay off all my debts!

And most especially I wanted _him _to be here when I announced it. Yes,

my faithful friend,--my benefactor, I've found the method! I've found

the method to pay off all my debts, and you'll get your money!' Hope

dawned in Yates's eye; then Stephen, beaming benignantly, and placing

his hand upon Yates's head, added, 'I am going to pay them off in

alphabetical order!'

Then he turned and disappeared. The full significance of Stephen's

'method' did not dawn upon the perplexed and musing crowd for some two

minutes; and then Yates murmured with a sigh--

'Well, the Y's stand a gaudy chance. He won't get any further than the

C's in _this _world, and I reckon that after a good deal of eternity has

wasted away in the next one, I'll still be referred to up there as “that

poor, ragged pilot that came here from St. Louis in the early days!”