Finlay accepted this advice, but the more young Otto thought about the mysterious boats of steam that wandered down a thousand miles of river, the more obsessed he became with them, and he pestered his father: ‘Let’s go to Pittsburgh. Let’s take a boat. I’m tired of walking.’ And when Finlay reminded him of the dangers the traveler had pointed out, Otto said pleadingly: ‘But you would know how to fight those bad men.’
‘There’s the money, too. We’ll need all we have when we get to Cincinnati.’
With a melancholy the boy would never forget, the Macnabs rejected the steamboats and continued their way to Morgantown and on to Parkersburg, where at last they would join the Ohio River, along whose grassy banks they would walk the last three hundred miles to Cincinnati.
Otto was a thin, wiry lad who looked as if he might not grow into a tall or robust man. But he displayed, even at this untested age, a cool efficiency and a stubborn determination. He intended one day to sail down the river aboard a steam vessel, and as he walked he remained constantly aware that off to his right, somewhere, lay the great river, and he could imagine himself breaking away from his father, heading north and finding it. He was satisfied that if he ever did so, some boat would see him, stop, and pick him off the bank.
He was lost in such romantic thoughts one morning, when he let out a gasp which seemed to come from deep within, as if his heart had been touched: ‘Oh, Poppa!’
For there, in full majesty, rode the Ohio River, highway of the nation, bringer of good things to alien parts. Much bigger than he had imagined, more sinisterly dark, in its motion it bespoke its power and the fact that anyone who ventured upon it would be carried to strange and magnificent places like Cincinnati, Louisville and Paducah.
‘Poppa, look!’
From the opposite shore a small craft had set out, obviously intending to cross to where the Macnabs waited, and Finlay told his son: ‘That’s a ferry. It’ll come to our side and carry us across.’
‘We ride on it?’ the boy cried with delight, and when another traveler said: ‘We sure do, sonny,’ Otto kept his eyes riveted to this reassuring sight.
But as he waited for the little ferry to cross the river, he became aware that something of magnitude was approaching from the right, and just in time he turned to catch the majestic approach of a large river steamer. Belching smoke, its great paddles churning the water, it was a thrilling sight. Well-to-do passengers lined its two tiers, their fine clothes enhancing its magnificence.
It was the Climax out of Paducah, one of that grand, adventurous fleet which had started under the imaginative command of Nicholas Roosevelt in 1811 to bring steam navigation to the network of great rivers that bound the central areas of America together. ‘Oh, Poppa!’ Otto cried as the lovely boat passed, for he had seen his first riverboat and it had captured him.
On the ferry they crossed into Ohio, then followed country roads along the right bank of the river as it wound its way from Parkersburg through the empty wastes of southernmost Ohio and on to Portsmouth, where the Scioto River joins the Ohio. It was a journey of compelling beauty; the vistas changed constantly; at night solitary lights glowed on the opposite shore, indicating where some adventurous soul from settled Virginia had decided to test the wilderness in Kentucky.
Deer accompanied the travelers; and one evening a small bear approached their sleeping place when Finlay was absent, gathering sticks for a fire. Otto, who had never faced such an adversary before, hesitated for one frightened moment. Then, realizing instinctively that he must protect their belongings, he grabbed the nearest piece of wood and made right for the beast. Thrashing about with his little club, he bewildered the bear, but not for long. With a sweep of its paw the animal pushed the boy away, nudging him into a thicket.
Astonished at the insolence of the beast, Otto first shook his head, then glared at the animal. With a grunt to give him courage, he fought his way out of the brush, uttered a furious yell, and charged back at the little bear, who was now rummaging among the Macnab possessions.
Otto was prepared to do battle by himself, but his father, hearing the commotion, hurried back: ‘Otto, no!’
The warning was ineffective, for Otto was outraged by the brusque treatment the bear had handed him and was determined to drive the creature away, but before he could resume his assault, Finlay rushed up and with a much larger stick belabored the animal, who growled, studied his adversaries, and rumbled off.
Trembling, Finlay sat with his son beside the river, and there they remained as the long twilight waned. ‘You were very brave,’ Finlay said. ‘I’m proud of you.’
‘He was stealing our food.’
‘Never tangle with a bear.’
‘But it was only a little one.’
‘A bear’s a bear, son. Don’t ever tangle with one.’
‘But you did, Poppa.’
Finlay could think of a dozen appropriate, fatherly warnings: ‘Yes, but I’m a grown man.’ Or, ‘You were lucky it was a little bear.’ Or, ‘If you have to fight a bear, don’t use a stick. Get a gun.’ He stifled such admonition, for he believed that his son’s action had been proper. Once allow a boy to run away from a serious challenge, he could continue to do so through life.
Softly he said, as if Otto were his own age: ‘You were right, son. If you start to do something, keep going and finish the job.’
They followed the good road along the Ohio right in to Cincinnati, a growing town of more than twenty thousand where a few resolute Germans were already establishing firms to serve the various needs of the steamboats plying up and down the river. Three ferries crossed the river to service the citizens in Kentucky, and after several exciting days Otto told his father: ‘This is better than Baltimore.’
In many ways the little boy talked and acted like a grown man; as frontier boys did, he was skipping a whole decade of his growing up; he was already a mature young fellow who had walked six hundred miles through the wilderness and fought his bear. He knew what loneliness was, and how a great river served people.
Because of his waterfront experience in Baltimore, Finlay had no trouble finding a job with a German merchant who needed his expertise in buying cattle and hogs for the river traffic, and in pursuit of this work, he often visited the glamorous steamboats that docked at Cincinnati. Aboard these craft he heard for the first time about the real wonders of the river: ‘New Orleans! Finest city in America! Them Creole girls. Them great eatin’ houses.’
At the age of seven Otto began running errands for his father, learning the names of the steamboats and their home ports, and in doing so, he fell under the spell of a river town much different from New Orleans. He first heard of it from a tall bearded boatman with a poetic touch: ‘Tell you what, sonny, when you ship down the Mississip, as you surely will, the place you want to see is not New Orleans. The real spot is Natchez-under-the-Hill.’
‘That’s a funny name.’
‘It’s a golden name, like out of one of the Greek fables, like maybe the gods put it there to test men.’
He spoke with such music and strength that Otto leaned forward to catch his words, and as the man continued he became not an ordinary roustabout but a chronicler: ‘To make things flower perfect, the gods built Natchez-atop-the-Hill, with gleamin’ white houses and pillared porches and a score of slaves to keep things clean. That’s rich-folks country, and river folks like you and me, we ain’t allowed up there. For us the gods built Natchez-under-the-Hill, about the finest little spot in America.’
Aware that he had caught Otto’s attention, he moved his hands in ominous gestures to indicate knives and daggers and pistols and gallows-rope: ‘A man don’t watch out, they knife him. At night you hear screams, somebody’s bein’ murdered. You hear a splash! There goes a corpse into the Mississip. Men walk bent over, they’re smugglers. In the saloons you can get Tennessee whiskey, rots your gut, or a bullet, ends your gut. And there are girls, and dancin’ through the night.’
Otto missed not a word of
this report, but the riverman would have been astounded had he known the impact his words were having on this flaxen-haired lad. But in succeeding days, when Otto heard more about Under-the-Hill, and when he had time to weigh exactly what had been said, discarding the poetry, he was wise enough, even as a boy, to conclude that the lower Natchez was a sorry place frequented by men and women of a low degree. He could not have explained why he was reaching this conclusion, or what it signified, but he was developing a powerful rejection of goings-on; he was becoming a youthful conservative, in the best sense of that word, who deplored gambling, knifing, girls who danced all night … and general irresponsibility. He opposed them all.
His father was also hearing a new word, one that would exert an equal influence on his life. Because Cincinnati specialized in butchering hogs, it was known as Porkopolis, and one of Finlay’s duties was to provision riverboats with ham, bacon and sausage. One day after Finlay had loaded a boat bound for New Orleans with seventy salted carcasses, the satisfied captain paid him, then uttered a name Finlay had not heard before: ‘We find ourselves with extra cargo space, Macnab. Could you scurry about and find us some bolts of cloth? Doesn’t have to be fancy stuff, because it’ll be transshipped to Texas.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Surely you’ve heard of Texas? Garden spot of the continent.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Part of Mexico now, but not for long.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Texas is the ass end of Mexico, which don’t give a damn for it. Each trip I make down the Mississippi, I carry men from Kentucky and Tennessee who’s goin’ to Texas. Stands to reason that with their long rifles, they ain’t gonna be Mexicans for very long. They’s gonna bring Texas into the Union, and the sooner the better, I say.’
‘Why do people go there?’ Finlay asked.
‘To get rich! You plant cotton, it explodes in your face. You plant corn, you get two crops a year. Cows have twins in Texas, it’s the law. And you get a league-and-a-labor, that’s why.’
‘What are they?’
‘A league is four thousand four hundred and twenty-eight acres of pastureland, you get it free for cattle. A labor is a hundred and seventy-seven acres of better land you get for farming, also free.’
‘I can’t believe it.’
‘You get it the minute you step acrost the border and say—What’s your name? Finlay Macnab? When you step up and say “Here I am, Finlay Macnab” you get all those acres of the best land in America.’
‘You said it was Mexico.’
‘It’ll soon be America, you can count on that.’
Macnab asked so many questions about Texas that he became known along the waterfront as a prospective settler, and one day a Mr. Clendenning invited him to lunch aboard one of the steamboats docked at the wharves. ‘Can I bring my son?’ Finlay asked. ‘He dreams about steamboats.’
‘To be sure,’ Clendenning said expansively, and when they were seated in the spacious dining salon with its gold and silver ornamentation, the stranger told Otto: ‘This is how we live on the great boats, sonny.’
‘Do you live here?’
‘Up and down.’
‘You live on the river?’
‘For the time being.’
‘How long?’
‘Until I’ve visited all the ports of call.’ He now explained to Finlay that he was the traveling representative of the Texas Land and Improvement Company, headquartered in Boston, and his pleasant task was to sell future immigrants to Texas the best bargain this weary old world had ever seen. Pushing away the dinner plates, he spread an interesting series of documents on the table and said: ‘This is scrip, authorized by the Mexican government and fully backed by the Texas Land and Improvement Company of Boston, Massachusetts. Each unit of scrip you buy entitles you to one acre of the choicest land in North America. Buy yourself three or four thousand units, and you’re set for life.’
‘Did you say buy?’
‘Yes. You deliver this scrip to the Mexican officials, and presto—they invite you to go out and survey your three or four thousand acres.’
‘I was told I would get a league-and-a-labor free, something like four thousand acres.’
‘No, no! You’re entitled to the league-and-a-labor, and it’s there waiting for you. But you have to bring the scrip to prove your legality. My firm vouches for you, says you’re of good character, and you get the land.’
Macnab felt deflated. For some days now he had been visualizing his four thousand acres of choice land, his for the asking, and now to find that he must buy something in order to qualify was disheartening. He supposed the cost per acre would be something like a dollar or two, and so large a debt he would not be able to manage: ‘How much is this scrip?’
‘Five cents an acre.’ Clendenning, noticing the relief in his prospect’s face, said heartily: ‘That’s what I said. That’s what I meant. Five cents an acre, just to make it legal.’ While Finlay was congratulating himself on such a bargain, Clendenning added encouragingly: ‘So what our more responsible customers do, they put up one thousand dollars and get title to twenty thousand acres. Then they are really in business.’
‘Can I get so much?’
‘Dear friend! Mexico wants you to come. They want you to settle their vast empty spaces. You can have forty thousand acres if you wish, but I’ve been recommending only twenty. More manageable.’
‘Have you been there? Have you seen the land?’
‘Macnab, do you know the passage in the Holy Book, “A land flowing with milk and honey”? Some day we’ll find that a man from Texas wrote the Bible, for that describes the land precisely. One day I was walking beside the Trinity River—marvelous stream—and what did I see? A shattered old tree whose insides were filled with honey bees, millions of them. There was enough honey in there to feed a regiment. And right beside that tree one of the sturdiest cows ever you saw, aching to give milk. A land flowing with honey and milk, just like the Bible says.’
‘How many acres would you go for, if you were me?’
The salesman did not answer. Instead, he turned to Otto, and with a benign look suffusing his face, said: ‘I would think only of my son. If I could get twenty thousand acres securely in my hands, and improve it, when I died I would leave this lad’—and here he stroked Otto’s head—‘a fortune of incalculable wealth.’ In the pause which followed this sensible advice, he smiled at Otto, then added: ‘Can you imagine your son at age twenty, with his bride at his side, taking command of a farm of twenty thousand acres? The cattle? The fields of corn? The faithful slaves working the cotton? And you sitting on the porch, surveying it all like a proud patriarch in the Old Testament?’
Mr. Clendenning did not press Macnab to make a decision that day, but as the three left the boat Finlay did furnish a useful bit of information: ‘I could handle the thousand dollars, if your company guaranteed that I’d get the land.’
‘Guarantee?’ Clendenning cried as if his integrity had been impugned. ‘Look at these guarantees! These ironclad papers.’ He made no attempt to close the deal, but when the boat sailed next day for New Orleans, he did leave behind a set of handsomely printed papers which specifically ensured the legality of any sale which might develop.
Being a cautious Scot, Finlay carried them next morning to the office of a German lawyer with whom his employer did business to seek an opinion, but before the lawyer, a man with a high collar and long-tailed coat, would give it he handed Finlay a card on which was printed:
ALL A LAWYER HAS TO SELL
IS HIS TIME AND HIS JUDGMENT
THEY’RE AS VALUABLE TO HIM
AS THE BANKER’S GOLD COINS ARE TO HIM
‘How much?’
‘Two dollars.’
‘Good.’
The lawyer studied the documents left by the representative of the Texas Land and Improvement Company, then shrewdly pointed out: ‘This is a Boston company presuming to do business in Mexico. I find nothing
that binds the Mexican government to honor the promises made here. I’d be very reluctant to hand my good money over to such an agent, with so little to back his claims.’
‘I wondered.’
‘How much is he charging for the land?’
‘Five cents an acre.’
The lawyer was dumfounded, and showed it. Land touching Cincinnati was selling for two hundred dollars an acre, and he had during the past week supervised the sale of some four hundred acres. Five cents was meaningless.
‘How many acres …?’
‘Twenty thousand,’ Finlay said.
Again the lawyer gasped: ‘I can’t imagine such a piece of land.’ Taking a pen, he multiplied some figures and said: ‘One thousand dollars. I could find you some wonderful land here, out in the country to be sure. But one thousand dollars is a lot of money.’
‘Twenty thousand acres is a lot of land.’
‘And Texas is nowhere.’ The lawyer rose and placed his arm about Macnab’s shoulder: ‘It’s Mexico, remember, and from what we hear up here, that’s a most unstable country. It’s not like Prussia, even England … and God knows it’s not like the United States.’
‘They tell me it soon will be part of us.’
‘But you do not buy land on such a fragile expectation. Very dangerous, Macnab. Now, if you seek a farm, I know some excellent ones, but if you want full value for the two dollars you paid me, take my advice and buy several plots I know which abut on the river. Growth there is unavoidable.’ He even quit his office to show Finlay the land he had in mind, and it was a splendid pair of lots that fronted on the river, so for some days Finlay’s dreams deserted Texas and focused upon a chandler’s shop on the Ohio.
He never saw Mr. Clendenning again, but toward the end of January 1829, another salesman from the Boston firm came ashore from an upriver boat, and where Clendenning had been persuasive, this man was brutally forceful: ‘Macnab, the land’s selling like icicles in hell. You’d better grab your twenty thousand.’
‘I’ve heard bad reports about the influx of criminals. Men who’ve been there say it’s a madhouse.’
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