The Last of the Flatboats

by George Cary Eggleston

  CHAPTER XII

  THE WONDERFUL RIVER'S WORK

  "Now, then," said Phil, wrapping a blanket around his person, for theair was indeed very chill, and prostrating himself over the map, "now,then, let the 'interpretative brain' get in its work! I interrupted theproceedings just to take a personal observation of the river we are tohear all about. Go on, Ed!"

  "Wait a bit--I'm counting," said Ed; "twenty-five, twenty-six,twenty-seven, twenty-eight. There. If you'll look at the map, you'll seethat the water which the Mississippi carries down to the sea through achannel about half a mile wide below New Orleans, comes fromtwenty-eight states besides the Indian Territory."

  "What! oh, nonsense!" were the exclamations that greeted this statement.

  "Look, and count for yourselves," said Ed, pointing to various parts ofthe map as he proceeded. "Here they are: New York, Pennsylvania, WestVirginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee,Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa,Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado,Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, and the IndianTerritory. Very little comes from New York or South Carolina or Texas,and not a great deal from some others of the states named, but somedoes, as you will see by following up the lines on the map. The rest ofthe states mentioned send the greater part of all their rainfall to thesea by this route."

  "Well, you could at this moment knock me down with a feather," saidIrving Strong. "Aren't you glad, Phil, that we jumped in away up herebefore the water got such a mixing up?"

  "But that isn't the most important part of it," said Ed, after hiscompanions had finished their playful discussion of the subject.

  "What is it, then? Go on," said Irv. "I'm all ears, though Mrs. Dupontalways thought I was all tongue. What is the most important part of it,Ed?"

  "Why, that this river _created_ most of the states it drains."

  "How do you mean?"

  "Why, I mean that but for this great river system it would have taken ahundred or more years longer than it did to settle this vastest valleyon earth and build it up into great, populous states that produce thebest part of the world's food supply."

  "Go on, please," said Will Moreraud, speaking the eager desire of all.

  "You see," said Ed, "in order to settle a country and bring it intocultivation, you must have some way of getting into it, and still more,you must have some way of getting the things it produces out of it,so as to sell them to people that need them. Nobody would have takenthe trouble to raise the produce we now have on board this boat, forinstance,--the hay, grain, flour, apples, cornmeal, onions, potatoes,and the rest,--if there had been no way of sending the things away andselling them somewhere. Unless there is a market within reach, nobodywill produce more of anything than he can himself use."

  "Oh, I see," said Irv. "That's why I don't think more than I do. I'veno market for my crop of thoughts."

  "You're mistaken there," said Constant, who was slow of speech andusually had little to say. "There's always a market for thoughts."

  "Where?"

  "Right around you. What did we go into this flatboat business for exceptto be with Ed? He can't do half as much as any one of us at an oar, orat anything else except thinking, and yet we would never have come onthis voyage--"

  "Oh, dry up!" said Ed, seeing the compliment that was impending. "I wasgoing to say--"

  "And so was I going to say," said Constant; "and, in fact, I _am_ goingto say. What I'm going to say is that there isn't a fellow here whowould be here but for you, Ed. There isn't a fellow here that wouldn'tbe glad to do all of your share of the work, if Phil would let him, justfor the sake of hearing what you think. Anyhow, that's why ConstantThiebaud is a member of this crew."

  It was the longest speech that Constant Thiebaud had ever been known tomake, and it was the most effective one he could have made, because itput into words the thought that was in every one's mind. That is thevery essence of oratory and of effective writing. All the great speechesin the world have been those that cleverly expressed the thought and thefeeling of those who listened. All the great books have been those thatsaid for the vast, dumb multitudes that which was in their minds andsouls vainly longing for utterance.

  When Constant had finished, there was silence for a moment. Then IrvStrong said impressively:--

  "AMEN!"

  That exclamation ended the silence, and expressed the common sentimentof all who were present. For even Jim Hughes, who was listening, hadbegun to be interested.

  Ed was embarrassed, of course, and for the first time in his life wordscompletely failed him. He sat up; then he grasped Constant's hand, andsaid, "I thank you, fellows." And with that he retreated hurriedly tothe cabin for a little while.

  Constant went to the pump, and labored hard for a time to draw waterfrom a bilge that had no leak. Will went to inspect the anchor, as ifhe feared that something might be the matter with it. Phil and Irvingjumped overboard, and swam twice around the boat.

  Finally, all came on deck again, and Will said:--

  "Go on, Ed. We want to hear."

  Ed at once resumed, Jim Hughes meantime working with the steering-oar.

  "Well, this great river gave the people who came over the mountains,and afterward the people who came up it from New Orleans, not only anoutlet to the sea, but a sort of public road, over which they couldtravel and trade with each other. When the upper Ohio region began tobe settled, a great swarm of emigrants from the East poured over themountains, and made a highway of the river to get themselves and allthat belonged to them to the upper Mississippi, the lower Mississippi,and the Missouri River country. My father once told me, before he died,that in his boyhood you could tell a steamboat bound from Pittsburg orCincinnati to St. Louis from any other boat, because she was red allover with ploughs, wagons, and all that sort of thing. Agriculturalimplements were all painted red in those days, and as they weren't veryheavy freight they were bestowed all over the boat,--on the boiler deckguards, on the hurricane deck, and sometimes were in the cabin, and ontop of the Texas.[2] Now, without these ploughs, wagons, harrows, andso forth, how could the pioneers ever have brought the great Westerncountry under cultivation? And without the river how could they everhave got these necessary implements, or themselves, for that matter, tothe regions where they were needed?"

  [2] The "Texas" of a western river steamer is an extra cabin, built above the main cabin and under the pilot-house, for the accommodation of the boat's officers. It was named "Texas" because about the time of its naming Texas was added to the Union. This cabin was also something added.--_Author._

  "Couldn't they have taken them overland?"

  "Only in a very small and slow way. There were no railroads, noturnpikes, and even no dirt roads at that time. It would have cost tentimes more to take a wagonload of ploughs through the woods and acrossthe prairies, from Pittsburg or Cincinnati to Missouri or Iowa, than thewagon and the ploughs put together were worth when they got there. Butthe river came to the rescue. It carried the people and all theirbelongings cheaply and quickly, and then it carried their produce to NewOrleans; and so the great West was settled.

  "In the meantime the people in Pittsburg, Cincinnati, and other townssaw that they could make all the wagons, ploughs, and other thingswanted by the people further west much cheaper than the same thingscould be sent over the mountains from the East. Thus, factories andfoundries sprang up, new farms were opened and new towns built."

  "Were there steamboats from the first?" asked one of the boys.

  "No; when Vevay was settled, Fulton hadn't yet built the first steamboatthat ever travelled, and when steamboats did appear they were few andsmall. Flatboats, just like this one, carried most of the produce to NewOrleans; but as flatboats couldn't come back up the river, there were agood many keelboats that brought freight and passengers up as well asdown stream."

  "What are keelboats?"

  "Why, they were large bar
ges built with a keel, a sharp bow, and amodelled stern--in short, like a steamboat's hull. These keelboatsfloated down the river, and the men then pushed them back up streamwith long poles. When the current was too strong for that they got outon the bank and hauled the boat by ropes. That was called 'cordelling.'The steamboats grew, however, in number and size when they came, and aslong ago as 1835 there were more than three hundred of them on theMississippi alone. In 1850 there were more than four thousand on theserivers. They drove the keelboats out of business, but the flatboatscontinued because of their cheapness till after the Civil War, when thegreat towboats came into use. These, with their acres of barges, couldcarry freight even cheaper than flatboats could. For a long time thesteamboats carried all the passengers, too, and many of them werepalaces in magnificence. But the railroads came at last and took thepassenger business away, and much of the freight traffic also, becausethey are faster, and still more because they don't have to go so far toget anywhere."

  "Why, how's that? I don't understand," said Irv.

  "Yes, you do, if you'll think a bit," responded Ed.

  "Couldn't _think_ of thinking. I'm too tired or too lazy so tell me,"was Irv's rejoinder.

  "Well, you know the river is crooked, and the steamboats must follow allits windings, while the railroads can run nearly straight."

  "Yes, I know," said Irv, "but the crookedness of the river isn't enoughto make any very great difference."

  "Isn't it? Well, down in Chicot County, Arkansas, there is one bend inthe river so big that from the upper landing on a plantation to thelower landing on the same plantation, the distance by river is seventeenmiles, while you can walk across the neck from one landing to the otherin less than a mile and a half!"

  "Whew!" said Phil. "And are there many such trips round Robin Hood'sbarn for us to make on the way down?"

  "That's best answered by telling you that from Cairo to New Orleans thedistance by river is about one thousand and fifty miles, while by railit is a little over four hundred miles. But come. It's getting dark, andI've got to bake some corn pones for supper, so I must quit lecturing."