A MISSISSIPPI STEAMBOAT.

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CHAPTER XLIX.

DOWN THE MISSISSIPPI.

AT Memphis I took passage in a first-class Mississippi steampacket for Vicksburg. It was evening when I went on board. The extensive saloon, with its long array of state-rooms on each side, its ornamental gilt ceiling, and series of dazzling chandeliers, was a brilliant spectacle. A corps of light-footed and swift-handed colored waiters were setting the tables, bringing in baskets of table-cloths, and spreading them; immense baskets of crockery, and distributing it; and trays of silver, which added to the other noises its ringing and jingling accompaniment. About the stove and bar and captain's office, at the end of the saloon, was an astonishing crowd of passengers, mostly standing, talking, drinking, buying tickets, playing cards, swearing, reading, laughing, chewing, spitting, and filling the saloon, even to the ladies' cabin at the opposite end, with a thick blue cloud which issued from countless bad pipes and cigars, enveloped the supper-tables, and bedimmed the glitter of the chandeliers. In that cloud supper was to be

eaten.

At a signal known only to the initiated I noticed that pipes were put out and quids cast out, and a mighty rush began. Two lines of battle were formed, confronting each other, with the table between them, each dauntless hero standing with foot advanced, and invincible right hand laid upon the back of a chair. In this way every place was secured at least five minutes before the thundering signal was given for the beginning of the conflict. At last the gong-bearing steward, poising his dread right hand, anxiously watched by the hostile hosts, till the ladies were fairly seated, beat the terrible roll and, instantly, every chair was jerked back with a simulta

neous clash and clatter, every soldier plunged forward, every coat-tail was spread, and every pair of trousers was in its

seat.

Then, rallied by the gong from deck and state-room and stove, came the crowd of uninitiated ones, (quorum pars parva fui,) hungry, rueful-faced, dismayed, finding themselves in the unhappy position of the fifth calf that suckled the cow with but four teats, compelled to wait until the rest had fed.

After supper, there were music and dancing in the afterpart of the saloon, and gambling, and clicking glasses, and everlasting talk about Yankees and niggers and cotton, in the other part. There were a few Federal officers in their uniforms, and a good many Rebel officers in civil dress. I recognized a thin sprinkling of Northern capitalists and business men.. But the majority were Mississippi and Arkansas planters going down the river to their estates: a strongly marked, unrefined, rather picturesque class, hard swearers, hard drinkers, inveterate smokers and chewers, wearing sad-colored linen for the most part, and clad in coarse "domestic," slouching in their dress and manners, loose of tongue, free-hearted, good-humored, and sociable. They had been to Memphis to purchase supplies for their plantations, or to lease their plantations, or to hire freedmen, or to "buy Christmas" for their freedmen at home. They appeared to have plenty of money, if the frequency with which they patronized the bar was any criterion. Liquors on board the Mississippi steamers were twenty-five cents a glass, and the average cost of such dramdrinking as I witnessed could not have been less than three or four dollars a day for each man. A few did not seem to be much attracted by the decanters; while others made drafts upon them every hour, or two or three times an hour, from morning till bedtime, and were never sober, and never quite drunk.

How shall I describe the conversation of these men? Never a word did I hear fall from the lips of one of them concerning literature or the higher interests of life; but their talk was of mules, cotton, niggers, money, Yankees, politics, and the

Freedmen's Bureau, thickly studded with oaths, and garnished with joke and story.

Once only I heard the subject of education indirectly alluded to. Said a young fellow, formerly the owner of fifty niggers, "I've gone to school-keeping." "O Lord!" said his

companion, "you ha'n't come down to that!"

I judged that most were married men, from a remark made by one of them: "A married man thinks less of personal appearance than a bachelor. I've done played out on that since I got spliced."

There were a few Tennesseeans aboard, who envied the Mississippians their Rebel State government, organized militia, and power over the freedmen. "We might make a pile, if we

could only regulate the labor system. But that can't be done in this dog-goned Brownlow State. In Mississippi, if they can only carry out the laws they 've enacted, there 'll be a chance." It was impossible to convince these gentlemen that the freedmen could be induced to work by any other means than despotic compulsion.

Leaving the gamblers over their cards, and the tipplers over their glasses, I went to bed, -to be awakened at midnight by an inebriated gentleman (weight two hundred, as he thickly informed me) climbing into the berth above me.

After a night of fog, Christmas morning dawned. In the cabin, the generous steward gave to each passenger a glass of egg-nog before breakfast; not because it was Christmas, but because passengers were human, and egg-nog (especially the whiskey in it) was one of the necessities of life.

The morning was warm and beautiful. Mists were chasing each other on the river, and clouds were chasing each other in the sky. A rival steamer was passing us. The decks of both boats were black with spectators watching the race, and making comments upon it: "Look how she piles the water up ahead of her!" "She'll open a gap of a mile between us in an hour!" and so forth.

The river was about half a mile in breadth. We were running down the broad current between high banks covered

with forests, on one side, and sand-bars extending their broad yellow shelves out into the river, on the other. Sometimes the sand was on our right, then it shifted to our left; it was nearly always to be seen on one side, but never on both sides at once. The river is continually excavating one bank and making another opposite, now taking from Arkansas to give

to Mississippi, and now robbing Mississippi to pay Arkansas, and thus year after year forming and destroying plantations. I remember one point on the Arkansas shore where the bank rose forty feet above the water, and was covered with trees eighteen inches in thickness; of which a gentleman of the country said to me, "That is all a recent formation. Forty years ago the bed of the river was where that bank is." The water was now tearing away again what it had so suddenly built up, trying to get back into its old bed.

We were making landings at every plantation where passengers or freight were to be put off, or a signal was shown from the shore. Sometimes a newspaper or piece of cloth was fluttered by negroes among the trees on the bank; or a man who wished to come on board, stood on some exposed point and waved his handkerchief or hat. There was never a wharf, but the steamer, rounding to in the current, and heading up stream, went bunting its broad nose against the steep, yielding bank. The planks were pushed out; the passengers stepped aboard or ashore, and the deck-hands landed the freight.

Dirtier or more toilsome work than this landing of the freight I have seldom seen. Heavy boxes, barrels of flour and whiskey, had to be lifted and rolled up steep paths in the soft sand to the summit of the bank. Often the paths were so narrow that but one man could get hold of the end of a barrel and lift it, while another hauled it from above, their feet sinking deep at every step. Imagine a gang of forty or fifty men engaged in landing boxes, casks, sacks of corn and salt, wagons, live-stock, ploughs; hurrying, crowding, working in each other's way, sometimes slipping and falling, the lost barrel tumbling down upon those below; and the mate driving them with shouts and curses and kicks, as if they were so many brutes.

TOILSOME WORK AND BRUTAL TREATMENT.

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Here the plantations touched the river; and there the landing-place was indicated by blazed trees in the forest, where negroes and mules were in waiting.

Wooding-up was always an interesting sight. A long woodpile lines the summit of the bank, perhaps forty feet above the river. The steamer lands; a couple of stages are hauled out: fifty men rush ashore and climb the bank; the clerk accompanies them with pencil and paper and measuring-rod, to take account of the number of cords; then suddenly down comes the wood in an amazing shower, rattling, sliding, bounding, and sometimes turning somersaults into the river. The bottom and side of the bank are soon covered by the deluge; and the work of loading begins in equally lively fashion. The two stages are occupied by two files of men, one going ashore at a dog-trot, empty-handed, and another coming aboard with the wood. Each man catches up from two to four sticks, according to their size or his own inclination, shoulders them, falls into the current, not of water, but of men, crosses the plank, and deposits his burden where the corded-wood, that stood so lately on the top of the bank, is once more taking shape, divided into two equally-balanced piles on each side of the boiler-deck.

The men are mostly negroes, and the treatment they receive from the mate is about the same as that which they received when slaves. He stands on the shore between the ends of the two stages, within convenient reach of both. Not a laggard escapes his eye or foot. Often he brandishes a billet of wood, with which he threatens, and sometimes strikes ; and now he flings it at the head of some artful dodger who has eluded his blow. And all the while you hear his hoarse, harsh voice iterating with horrible crescendo: "Get along, get along! Out o' the way 'th that wood! out o' the way, OUT O' THE WAY! OUT O' THE WAY! Git on, GIT ON, GIT ON!"

Meanwhile the men are working as hard as men can reasonably be expected to work; and how they discipline their souls to endure such brutality is to me a mystery.