第63章 From Cairo to Hickman(1)

THE scenery,from St.Louis to Cairo--two hundred miles--is varied and beautiful.The hills were clothed in the fresh foliage of spring now,and were a gracious and worthy setting for the broad river flowing between.

Our trip began auspiciously,with a perfect day,as to breeze and sunshine,and our boat threw the miles out behind her with satisfactory despatch.

We found a railway intruding at Chester,Illinois;Chester has also a penitentiary now,and is otherwise marching on.At Grand Tower,too,there was a railway;and another at Cape Girardeau.

The former town gets its name from a huge,squat pillar of rock,which stands up out of the water on the Missouri side of the river--a piece of nature's fanciful handiwork--and is one of the most picturesque features of the scenery of that region.

For nearer or remoter neighbors,the Tower has the Devil's Bake Oven--so called,perhaps,because it does not powerfully resemble anybody else's bake oven;and the Devil's Tea Table--this latter a great smooth-surfaced mass of rock,with diminishing wine-glass stem,perched some fifty or sixty feet above the river,beside a beflowered and garlanded precipice,and sufficiently like a tea-table to answer for anybody,Devil or Christian.

Away down the river we have the Devil's Elbow and the Devil's Race-course,and lots of other property of his which I cannot now call to mind.

The Town of Grand Tower was evidently a busier place than it had been in old times,but it seemed to need some repairs here and there,and a new coat of whitewash all over.

Still,it was pleasant to me to see the old coat once more.

'Uncle'Mumford,our second officer,said the place had been suffering from high water,and consequently was not looking its best now.But he said it was not strange that it didn't waste white-wash on itself,for more lime was made there,and of a better quality,than anywhere in the West;and added--'On a dairy farm you never can get any milk for your coffee,nor any sugar for it on a sugar plantation;and it is against sense to go to a lime town to hunt for white-wash.'

In my own experience I knew the first two items to be true;and also that people who sell candy don't care for candy;therefore there was plausibility in Uncle Mumford's final observation that 'people who make lime run more to religion than whitewash.'

Uncle Mumford said,further,that Grand Tower was a great coaling center and a prospering place.

Cape Girardeau is situated on a hillside,and makes a handsome appearance.

There is a great Jesuit school for boys at the foot of the town by the river.

Uncle Mumford said it had as high a reputation for thoroughness as any similar institution in Missouri 'There was another college higher up on an airy summit--a bright new edifice,picturesquely and peculiarly towered and pinnacled--a sort of gigantic casters,with the cruets all complete.

Uncle Mumford said that Cape Girardeau was the Athens of Missouri,and contained several colleges besides those already mentioned;and all of them on a religious basis of one kind or another.He directed my attention to what he called the 'strong and pervasive religious look of the town,'

but I could not see that it looked more religious than the other hill towns with the same slope and built of the same kind of bricks.

Partialities often make people see more than really exists.

Uncle Mumford has been thirty years a mate on the river.

He is a man of practical sense and a level head;has observed;has had much experience of one sort and another;has opinions;has,also,just a perceptible dash of poetry in his composition,an easy gift of speech,a thick growl in his voice,and an oath or two where he can get at them when the exigencies of his office require a spiritual lift.He is a mate of the blessed old-time kind;and goes gravely damning around,when there is work to the fore,in a way to mellow the ex-steamboatman's heart with sweet soft longings for the vanished days that shall come no more.'GIT up there you!Going to be all day?

Why d'n't you SAY you was petrified in your hind legs,before you shipped!'

He is a steady man with his crew;kind and just,but firm;so they like him,and stay with him.He is still in the slouchy garb of the old generation of mates;but next trip the Anchor Line will have him in uniform--a natty blue naval uniform,with brass buttons,along with all the officers of the line--and then he will be a totally different style of scenery from what he is now.

Uniforms on the Mississippi!It beats all the other changes put together,for surprise.Still,there is another surprise--that it was not made fifty years ago.It is so manifestly sensible,that it might have been thought of earlier,one would suppose.

During fifty years,out there,the innocent passenger in need of help and information,has been mistaking the mate for the cook,and the captain for the barber--and being roughly entertained for it,too.But his troubles are ended now.

And the greatly improved aspect of the boat's staff is another advantage achieved by the dress-reform period.

Steered down the bend below Cape Girardeau.They used to call it 'Steersman's Bend;'plain sailing and plenty of water in it,always;about the only place in the Upper River that a new cub was allowed to take a boat through,in low water.

Thebes,at the head of the Grand Chain,and Commerce at the foot of it,were towns easily rememberable,as they had not undergone conspicuous alteration.Nor the Chain,either--in the nature of things;for it is a chain of sunken rocks admirably arranged to capture and kill steamboats on bad nights.