The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0139/01395.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 16KB | 269 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01395}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Life On The Mississippi
Chapter XXXV}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{vicksburg
first
cave
shell
river
still
streets
three
time
come}
$Date{1917}
$Log{}
Title:       Life On The Mississippi
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1917

Chapter XXXV

Vicksburg During The Trouble

     We used to plow past the lofty hill-city, Vicksburg, down-stream; but we
cannot do that now.  A cut-off has made a country town of it, like Osceola,
St. Genevieve, and several others.  There is currentless water - also a big
island - in front of Vicksburg now.  You come down the river the other side of
the island, then turn and come up to the town, that is, in high water: in low
water you can't come up, but must land some distance below it.

     Signs and scars still remain, as reminders of Vicksburg's tremendous war
experiences; earthworks, trees crippled by the cannon-balls, cave refuges in
the clay precipices, etc.  The caves did good service during the six weeks'
bombardment of the city - May 18 to July 4, 1863.  They were used by the
non-combatants - mainly by the women and children; not to live in constantly,
but to fly to for safety on occasion.  They were mere holes, tunnels driven
into the perpendicular clay-bank, then branched Y-shape, within the hill.
Life in Vicksburg during the six weeks was perhaps - but wait; here are some
materials out of which to reproduce it:

     Population, twenty-seven thousand soldiers and three thousand non-
combatants; the city utterly cut off from the world - walled solidly in, the
frontage by gunboats, the rear by soldiers and batteries; hence, no buying and
selling with the outside; no passing to and fro; no godspeeding a parting
guest, no welcoming a coming one; no printed acres of world-wide news to be
read at breakfast, mornings - a tedious dull absence of such matter, instead;
hence, also, no running to see steamboats smoking into view in the distance up
or down, and plowing toward the town - for none came, the river lay vacant and
undisturbed; no rush and turmoil around the railway-station, no struggling
over bewildered swarms of passengers by noisy mobs of hackmen - all quiet
there; flour two hundred dollars a barrel, sugar thirty, corn ten dollars a
bushel, bacon five dollars a pound, rum a hundred dollars a gallon, other
things in proportion; consequently, no roar and racket of drays and carriages
tearing along the streets; nothing for them to do, among that handful of
non-combatants of exhausted means; at three o'clock in the morning, silence -
silence so dead that the measured tramp of a sentinel can be heard a seemingly
impossible distance; out of hearing of this lonely sound, perhaps the
stillness is absolute: all in a moment come ground-shaking thunder-crashes of
artillery, the sky is cobwebbed with the crisscrossing red lines streaming
from soaring bombshells, and a rain of iron fragments descends upon the city,
descends upon the empty streets - streets which are not empty a moment later,
but mottled with dim figures of frantic women and children scurrying from home
and bed toward the cave dungeons - encouraged by the humorous grim soldiery,
who shout "Rats, to your holes!" and laugh.

     The cannon-thunder rages, shells scream and crash overhead, the iron rain
pours down, one hour, two hours, three, possibly six, then stops; silence
follows, but the streets are still empty; the silence continues; by and by a
head projects from a cave here and there and yonder, and reconnoitres
cautiously; the silence still continuing, bodies follow heads, and jaded,
half-smothered creatures group themselves about, stretch their cramped limbs,
draw in deep draughts of the grateful fresh air, gossip with the neighbors
from the next cave; maybe straggle off home presently, or take a lounge
through the town, if the stillness continues; and will scurry to the holes
again, by and by, when the war- tempest breaks forth once more.

     There being but three thousand of these cavedwellers - merely the
population of a village - would they not come to know each other, after a week
or two, and familiarly; insomuch that the fortunate or unfortunate experiences
of one would be of interest to all?

     Those are the materials furnished by history.  From them might not almost
anybody reproduce for himself the life of that time in Vicksburg? Could you,
who did not experience it, come nearer to reproducing it to the imagination of
another nonparticipant than could a Vicksburger who did experience it?  It
seems impossible; and yet there are reasons why it might not really be.  When
one makes his first voyage in a ship, it is an experience which
multitudinously bristles with striking novelties; novelties which are in such
sharp contrast with all this person's former experiences that they take a
seemingly deathless grip upon his imagination and memory.  By tongue or pen he
can make a landsman live that strange and stirring voyage over with him; make
him see it all and feel it all.  But if he wait?  If he make ten voyages in
succession - what then?  Why, the thing has lost color, snap, surprise; and
has become commonplace.  The man would have nothing to tell that would quicken
a landsman's pulse.

     Years ago I talked with a couple of the Vicksburg non-combatants - a man
and his wife.  Left to tell their story in their own way, those people told it
without fire, almost without interest.

     A week of their wonderful life there would have made their tongues
eloquent forever perhaps; but they had six weeks of it, and that wore the
novelty all out; they got used to being bombshelled out of home and into the
ground; the matter became commonplace.  After that, the possibility of their
ever being startlingly interesting in their talks about it was gone.  What the
man said was to this effect:

     It got to be Sunday all the time.  Seven Sundays in the week - to us,
anyway.  We hadn't anything to do, and time hung heavy.  Seven Sundays, and
all of them broken up at one time or another, in the day or in the night, by a
few hours of the awful storm of fire and thunder and iron.  At first we used
to shin for the holes a good deal faster than we did afterward.  The first
time I forgot the children, and Maria fetched them both along.  When she was
all safe in the cave she fainted.  Two or three weeks afterward, when she was
running for the holes, one morning, through a shell-shower, a big shell burst
near her and covered her all over with dirt, and a piece of iron carried away
her game-bag of false hair from the back of her head.  Well, she stopped to
get that game-bag before she shoved along again!  Was getting used to things
already, you see.  We all got so that we could tell a good deal about shells;
and after that we didn't always go under shelter if it was a light shower. Us
men would loaf around and talk; and a man would say, "There she goes!" and
name the kind of shell it was from the sound of it, and go on talking - if
there wasn't any danger from it.  If a shell was bursting close over us, we
stopped talking and stood still; uncomfortable, yes, but it wasn't safe to
move.  When it let go, we went on talking again, if nobody was hurt - maybe
saying "That was a ripper!" or some such commonplace comment before we
resumed; or, maybe, we would see a shell poising itself away high in the air
overhead.  In that case, every fellow just whipped out a sudden "See you
again, gents!" and shoved.  Often and often I saw gangs of ladies promenading
the streets, looking as cheerful as you please, and keeping an eye canted up
watching the shells; and I've seen them stop still when they were uncertain
about what a shell was going to do, and wait and make certain; and after that
they sa'ntered along again, or lit out for shelter, according to the verdict.
Streets in some towns have a litter of pieces of paper, and odds and ends of
one sort or another lying around.  Ours hadn't; they had iron litter.
Sometimes a man would gather up all the iron fragm