'"Yes," he says, a-leaning over it, "yes, it is my own lamented darling,my poor lost Charles William Allbright deceased," says he,--for he couldcurl his tongue around the bulliest words in the language when he was amind to, and lay them before you without a jint started, anywheres.Yes, he said he used to live up at the head of this bend, and one nighthe choked his child, which was crying, not intending to kill it,--whichwas prob'ly a lie,--and then he was scared, and buried it in a bar'l,before his wife got home, and off he went, and struck the northern trailand went to rafting; and this was the third year that the bar'l hadchased him. I had beenreading about the recent exploration of the river Amazon by anexpedition sent out by our government. Both of these river towns have been retired to the country by that cut-off. I was not consciousthat it was a matter of any interest to me.

', 'I had better water than that, and ran it lower down; started out fromthe false point--mark twain--raised the second reef abreast the big snagin the bend, and had quarter less twain.

And so on.

]}would mention that we were in such-and-such a bend, and say we wereabreast of such-and-such a man's wood-yard or plantation. /FontStretch /Normal says another. I supposed that all a pilot had to dowas to keep his boat in the river, and I did not consider that thatcould be much of a trick, since it was so wide. 'It done it though--that's allI know about it.'. I stood up and shook my rags off and jumped into the river, and struckout for the raft's light.

If a rag-picker had offered to do a diplomatic service for the Emperorof Russia, the monarch could not have been more astounded than the matewas.

Then hestraightened, and jumped up and cracked his heels together three times,before he lit again (that made them cheer), and he begun to shout likethis--, 'Whoo-oop!

On thecontrary, their narratives when they reached home, did not excite thatamount of curiosity. Pretty soonthe watchman was back again, and this time he was gruff. If the landsman should wish the gang-plank moved a footfarther forward, he would probably say: 'James, or William, one of youpush that plank forward, please;' but put the mate in his place and hewould roar out: 'Here, now, start that gang-plank for'ard!

We had a fine company of these river-inspectors along, this trip. So Mr.Bixby gave him no greeting whatever, but simply surrendered the wheeland marched out of the pilot-house without a word. 's defeat atPavia; the death of Raphael; the death of Bayard, SANS PEUR ET SANSREPROCHE; the driving out of the Knights-Hospitallers from Rhodes by theTurks; and the placarding of the Ninety-Five Propositions,--the actwhich began the Reformation. He was huge and muscular, hisface was bearded and whiskered all over; he had a red woman and a bluewoman tattooed on his right arm,--one on each side of a blue anchor witha red rope to it; and in the matter of profanity he was sublime. The storm come on again, aftermidnight. They found them,by and by, and were hospitably received and well treated--if to bereceived by an Indian chief who has taken off his last rag in order toappear at his level best is to be received hospitably; and if to betreated abundantly to fish, porridge, and other game, including dog, andhave these things forked into one's mouth by the ungloved fingers ofIndians is to be well treated. But I drankin his words hungrily, and with a faith that might have moved mountainsif it had been applied judiciously.

I was a cipher in this august company, and felt subdued, not to saytorpid. Sired by a hurricane,dam'd by an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly related tothe small-pox on the mother's side! {footnote [1.

43 0 obj Blood's my natural drink, and the wails of the dying is musicto my ear! The fertile plains of Texas; the vast basin of theMississippi, from its frozen northern springs to the sultry borders ofthe Gulf; from the woody ridges of the Alleghanies to the bare peaks ofthe Rocky Mountains--a region of savannas and forests, sun-crackeddeserts and grassy prairies, watered by a thousand rivers, ranged by athousand warlike tribes, passed beneath the scepter of the Sultan ofVersailles; and all by virtue of a feeble human voice, inaudible at halfa mile.'. We do ofcourse know that there are several comparatively old dates in Americanhistory, but the mere figures convey to our minds no just idea, nodistinct realization, of the stretch of time which they represent.

Well, we swung down into thecrossing, and the thing floated across the bright streak of themoonshine, and, by George, it was bar'l. They made fun of him till he got mad andjumped up and begun to cuss the crowd, and said he could lame any thiefin the lot. You can go up inside the old sycamore-snag, now. But what did you hide for? Ifirst wanted to be a cabin-boy, so that I could come out with a whiteapron on and shake a tablecloth over the side, where all my old comradescould see me; later I thought I would rather be the deckhand who stoodon the end of the stage-plank with the coil of rope in his hand, becausehe was particularly conspicuous. My late voyage's note-booking was but a confusion ofmeaningless names.

When he gotthrough, he jumped up and cracked his heels together three times, andlet off a roaring 'Whoo-oop! http://pinkmonkey.com/dl/library1/missisip.pdf, Mark Twain. Presently he turned on me and said:--, 'What's the name of the first point above New Orleans?'. Then there's your pitch-dark night; the river is a very different shape on a pitch-dark nightfrom what it is on a starlight night. A cut-off plays havoc with boundary lines and jurisdictions: forinstance, a man is living in the State of Mississippi to-day, a cut-offoccurs to-night, and to-morrow the man finds himself and his land overon the other side of the river, within the boundaries and subject to thelaws of the State of Louisiana!

Another time he said, 'Thisis Nine-Mile Point.' Chief amongthem was the privilege to explore, far and wide, and build forts, andstake out continents, and hand the same over to the king, and pay theexpenses himself; receiving, in return, some little advantages of onesort or another; among them the monopoly of buffalo hides. and jumped back. It was about twenty foot off.

He says--, '"Well, I knowed it was a bar'l; I've seen it before; lots has seen it;they says it's a haunted bar'l.". Instantly Mr. Bixby set a lot of bells ringing,shouted through the tube, 'NOW, let her have it--every ounce you'vegot!' Huck and Tom are called to Arkansas because something mysterious is happening to Uncle Silas. >> Have I got to learn the shape of theriver according to all these five hundred thousand different ways? I crept away, and courted solitude for the rest of the day. 'Mark three' is three fathoms.]}

Tosay that De Soto, the first white man who ever saw the MississippiRiver, saw it in 1542, is a remark which states a fact withoutinterpreting it: it is something like giving the dimensions of a sunsetby astronomical measurements, and cataloguing the colors by theirscientific names;--as a result, you get the bald fact of the sunset, butyou don't see the sunset.

By and byone of our boys went away.