Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0137/01377.txt

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$Unique_ID{bob01377}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Life On The Mississippi
Chapter XVII}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{miles
hundred
river
stephen
cut-off
time
yates
pay
now
bend}
$Date{1917}
$Log{}
Title:       Life On The Mississippi
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1917

Chapter XVII

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 on board 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 - a
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 upward 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 companionway 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 drizzling, 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 eyes; 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!'"