Chapter I

_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.

My teacher in these matters was a man whom I greatly envied. Kimball

Lyon lived in a house three times as large as that in which I was

born. His father had left a big farm and a bank account of fabulous

dimensions. We knew it was large, because "Kim" never worked as other

young men of twenty-five or thirty years did in those days. His

mother always kept a "hired man", while Kim toiled not; but he spun.

It was not his riches, however, nor his immunity from toil, that

common lot of other men, which excited the envy of the six-year-olds.

He could, and did, play on the accordion. Lying on his back in the

shade and resting one corner of his instrument upon his bosom, with

irresistible power and pathos he sang and played

"A life on the ocean wave,

A home on the rolling deep."

It appealed to all the natural impulses of our being, and the dormant

instincts inherited from generations of whale-hunting ancestors were

aroused by the power of music, reinforced by the suggestive words of

the song itself; and then and there we vowed that when we were men

like Kimball Lyon, we too would own and play upon accordions, and

do all else that he had done; for marvelous tales he told, of his

experiences in great storms at sea and of deeds of aquatic prowess.

We learned in after years that "Kim" once sailed from St. Joseph

to Chicago in a sawed-off lumber hooker, when the wind was west

nor'west, down the lake, and that he did actually lie on the deck,

but not on his back, and that it was not music which he emitted, and

that the sailors railed at him, and that he came back from Chicago by

stage coach to Niles. But we didn't know this when he was awakening

our viking instincts, as we lay on the banks of the old St. Joe in

the sunny summer days of long ago.

"Kim" Lyon knew all about steamboats, as well as about deep sea

ships, and when we asked questions he could answer out of the

fullness of his knowledge. We wondered what made the wheels go

'round, and he told us. I have forgotten _what_ made them go 'round,

but my recollection is that it was a peculiar mechanical process

of which I have never seen the like in any other service on river,

lake or ocean. His answer to the query as to "what is the man in the

little house on top of the boat doing?" I have never forgotten, as it

afterward came more in my line of business. The man was twisting the

wheel as all pilots before and since that time twist it, a spoke or

two to port, a half dozen to starboard, hard up and hard down, there

being a shallow piece of river just there, beset with big boulders

and reefs of gravel, through which he was cautiously worming his boat

and its kite-tail of keels.

"That man," said Kimball, "is drawing water from a well in the bottom

of the boat and emptying it into the boiler, just as your father

draws water from his well with a rope, a bucket and a crank. If he

should stop for a minute the boiler would burst for want of water,

the boat would blow up, and we should all be killed by the explosion."

This definition at once gave us a personal interest in the work of

the man at the wheel; we all felt that our lives depended upon this

man's devotion to his duty. Had he struck a piece of "easy water" at

that time, and centred his wheel, there is no doubt that we would

have scurried for home before the inevitable explosion should occur.

That was my first lesson in piloting. Perhaps this childish concern

that the man "drawing water for the boilers" should faithfully

perform his duty, was but a prefigurement of the interest with which

the writer, and hundreds of others, in later years, have watched the

pilot work his boat through a tangled piece of river, knowing that

the safety of all depended upon the knowledge and faithfulness of the

"man at the wheel."

The steamboats plying on the St. Joe were crude little affairs, and

there were but four or five of them, all alike. I remember the name

of but one, the "Algoma"; the others are quite forgotten. Doubtless

they were commonplace, and did not appeal to the poetic side of the

boy. But "Algoma"! The word has a rhythmical measure, and conjures up

visions of wigwams, council fires, dusky maidens, and painted braves.

An Indian name would stick when all the saints in the calendar were

forgotten. The "Algoma" and her consorts have gone the way of all

steamboats. The railroad came and killed their business, just as a

few years later, it did on the Great River.

A few years later I saw the Mississippi River for the first time,

at Rock Island, Illinois; and through the kindness of another

well-posted bystander to whom the then twelve-year-old boy appealed,

I received my first impressions of a stern-wheel boat. There were two

steamboats lying at the levee--the "Minnesota Belle", a side-wheeler,

upon which we had taken passage, while just above lay the "Luella",

a stern-wheeler. I knew about the former variety from observation on

the St. Joe, but I had never seen even a picture of one of the latter

sort, so it was a novelty. I wasn't certain that it was a steamboat

at all, and after referring the matter to my stranger friend, I

learned definitely that it wasn't. The "Luella's" wheel was slowly

turning over as she lay at the levee, and as I did not comprehend the

mechanical details of that kind of craft I began asking questions.

My mentor assured me that the "Luella" was not a steamboat at all,

but a water power sawmill. The big wheel then moving was driven by

the current, and it in turn operated the sawmill machinery on the

inside of the boat. As I could not figure any other use for a wheel

out in the open, at the end of the boat, instead of on the side where

it ought to be, and as I had no reason to doubt the statement of my

informant, I readily accepted the sawmill explanation, and hastened

to confide my newly-acquired knowledge to my brother and other

members of the family. A few hours later both boats pulled out for

St. Paul. After she had rounded the first point, ahead of us, we saw

nothing more of the "Luella" until we met her coming down the river

on her return trip. She was a heavily-powered boat, and showed her

heels to the larger and slower "Minnesota Belle". The sight of the

"Luella" kicking her way upstream at the rate of two miles to our

one, not only dissipated the sawmill impression, but taught me not

to accept at face value all information communicated by glib-tongued

and plausible strangers.

That steamboat trip from Rock Island to Prescott was one long holiday

excursion for us two small and lively boys from Michigan. There was

so much to see and in so many different directions at once, that it

was impossible to grasp it all, although we scampered over the deck

to get differing view points. We met dozens of boats, going back to

St. Louis or Galena after further loads of immigrants and freight;

and there were other boats which came up behind us, gaining slowly

but surely, and finally passing the deeply-laden "Belle". There were

landings to be made, and freight and passengers to be disembarked.

There were strange Indians to be seen--we were familiar enough with

Michigan tribesmen, having been born within a mile or two of old

Pokagon's tribal village. There were boys with fish for sale, fish

larger than any inhabiting the waters of Michigan streams, sturgeons

only excepted, and this promised well for the fun in store when we

should reach our journey's end.

Finally, on a bright June day in the year 1854, the writer, then a

boy of twelve, with his brother, three years younger, were fully

transplanted from their Michigan birthplace to the row of stores

and warehouses which fronted on the "levee" at Prescott, Wisconsin,

where the waters of St. Croix River and Lake join the Mississippi.

The town was then a typical frontier settlement. Two hundred white

people were planted among five hundred Chippewa Indians; with as many

more Sioux, of the Red Wing band, across the river in Minnesota, a

few miles lower down the river. The not infrequent outbreaks of the

hereditary enmity existing between these ancient foes, would expend

itself on the streets of the town in war whoops, gunpowder, and

scalping knives, enlivening the experience of the average citizen as

he dodged behind the nearest cover to avoid stray bullets; while the

city marshal was given an opportunity to earn his salary, by driving

out both bands of hostiles at the point of his revolver.