Old Times on the Upper Mississippi
St. Paul and the upper river, gave promise of being a big city, the
outlet and _entrepôt_ for the trade of a great territory. Her people
believed in her, and in her great future. A dozen steamboats might
be seen, on many occasions, loading merchandise from the railroad,
or unloading grain and produce, in sacks and packages, destined to
Milwaukee and Chicago. When I was second clerk I once checked out
twenty thousand sacks of wheat in something over thirty-six hours,
the cargo of boat and two barges. The wheat now goes through in bulk,
in box cars loaded in Iowa and Minnesota, and they do not even change
engines at Prairie du Chien, the roundhouse and division terminal
being located at McGregor, on the west side of the Mississippi.
At McGregor I saw Joseph Reynolds, at that time owner of five fine
steamers, and manager of the Diamond Jo Line. Captain Burns pointed
out a man dressed in a dark business suit, sitting on a snubbing
post, lazily and apparently indifferently watching the crew handling
freight, or looking over the steamer as if it were an unusual and
curious sight. He did not speak to any of the officers while we were
watching him, and Mr. Burns thought it very unlikely that he would.
He did not come on board the boat at all, but sat and whittled
the head of the post until we backed out and left him out of sight
behind. Mr. Burns allowed that "Jo" was doing a heap of thinking all
the time we were watching him, and that he probably did not think of
the boat, as a present object of interest, at all.
Joseph Reynolds began his river experience in 1867 with one small
boat, carrying his own wheat, and towing a barge when the steamer
could not carry it all. When we saw him holding down a snubbing post
at McGregor he owned and operated, under the title of the "Diamond Jo
Line", the "Mary Morton", "Libbie Conger", "Diamond Jo", "Josephine",
and "Josie", all well equipped and handsome steamers. Later, he added
the "Sidney", the "Pittsburg", the "St. Paul", and the "Quincy",
still larger and better boats.
That night I witnessed for the first time the operation of the
electric search-light as an aid to navigation. The night came on
dark and stormy, a thunder shower breaking over the river as we were
running the devious and dangerous Guttenburg channel, about five or
six miles below the town by that name. Instead of straining his eyes
out of his head, hunting doubtful landmarks miles away, as we used
to do, Mr. Link tooted his little whistle down in the engine-room,
and instantly the light was switched on to the lantern at the bow of
the boat. Lines running from the pilot house gave perfect control of
the light, and it was flashed ahead until it lighted up the diamond
boards and other shore-marks by which the crossings were marked and
the best water indicated to the pilot. Under a slow bell he worked
his way down the ugly piece of river without touching. He had the
leads two or three times, just to assure himself, but apparently he
could have made it just as well without them.
A mile and a half above the mouth of Turkey River, in the very worst
place of all, we found a big log raft in trouble, hung up on the
sand, with a steamboat at each end working at it. They occupied so
much of the river that it took Mr. Link over an hour to get past the
obstruction, the search-light in the meantime turning night into day,
and enabling him to look down on the timber and see just where the
edge of the raft was. By backing and flanking he finally squeezed
past, but not without scraping the sand and taking big chances of
getting hung up himself. Coming back, we did hang up for an hour or
more in the same place, a mile above the foot of Cassville Slough.
Without the aid of the search-light it would have been impossible to
have worked the steamer past the raft until daylight came. It is a
wonderful aid to navigation, and it is as easy to run crooked places
by night as by day, with its assistance.
In St. Louis, after seeing Shaw's Garden and tasting the old French
market, the best thing you can do is to go back to the levee and
watch the river, the big Eads bridge, the boats, and the darkies.
There may be no boats other than the one you came on and are going
back upon, but you will not miss seeing the bridge, and you must not
miss seeing the darkies. They are worth studying--much better than
even imported shrubbery.
There was an Anchor Line boat moored just below us the day we were
there, a big side-wheeler, in the New Orleans trade, sixteen hundred
tons. The "Mary Morton" was four hundred and fifty, and had shrunk
perceptibly since the big liner came alongside. There were two or
three other boats, little ones, ferries and traders, sprinkled along
the three miles of levee. In 1857 I have seen boats lying two deep,
in places, and one deep in every place where it was possible to stick
the nose of a steamboat into the levee--boats from New Orleans, from
Pittsburg, from the upper Mississippi, from the Missouri, from the
Tennessee and the Cumberland, the Red River and the Illinois, loaded
with every conceivable description of freight, and the levee itself
piled for miles with incoming or outgoing cargoes. Now, it was enough
to make one sick at heart. It seemed as if the city had gone to
decay. The passage of a train over the bridge every five minutes or
less, each way, reassured one on that point, however, and indicated
that there was still plenty of traffic, and that it was only the
river that was dead, and not the city.
In old times the steamboat crews were comprised principally of white
men--that is, deck hands and roustabouts (or stevedores). The firemen
may have been darkies, and the cabin crews were more than likely to
have been, but the deck crews were generally white. Now, the deck
crews are all colored men. They are a happy-go-lucky set, given to
strong drink and craps, not to mention some other forms of vice. In
old times the crews were hired by the month. The members of a modern
deck crew never make two trips consecutively on the same boat. The
boat does not lay long enough in St. Louis to give them time to
spend ten days' wages, and then get sober enough, or hungry enough,
to reship for another trip. Therefore, as soon as the last package
of freight is landed, the crew marches to the window of the clerk's
office opening out onto the guards, and gets what money is coming to
each individual after the barkeeper's checks have been deducted. With
this wealth in hand the fellow makes a straight wake for one of the
two or three score dives, rum-holes, and bagnios that line the levee.
He seldom leaves his favorite inn until his money is gone and he is
thrown out by the professional "bouncer" attached to each of these
places of entertainment.
The boat does not remain without a crew, however. While one of the
clerks is paying off the old crew, another has gone out on the levee
with a handful of pasteboard tickets, one for each man he desires
to ship for the next round trip to St. Paul. Mounting the tallest
snubbing post at hand, he is instantly surrounded by a shouting,
laughing, pushing, and sometimes fighting mass of negroes, with an
occasional alleged white man. This mob of men are clothed in every
conceivable style of rags and tatters, and all are trying to get near
the man on the post.
After a minute's delay the clerk cries out: "All set! Stand by"! and
gives his handful of tickets a whirl around his head, loosening them
a few at a time, and casting them to every point of the compass so
as to give all a fair chance to draw a prize. The crowd of would-be
"rousters" jump, grab, wrestle, and fight for the coveted tickets,
and the man who secures one and fights his way victoriously to the
gang plank is at once recorded in the mate's book as one of the crew.
The victorious darky comes up the gang plank showing every tooth in
his head. It is the best show to be seen in St. Louis.
"Why do they not go out and pick out the best men and hire them in a
business-like and Christian-like manner?" inquires the unacclimated
tourist.
"Because this is a better and very much quicker way", says the mate,
who knows whereof he speaks. "The nigger that can get a ticket, and
keep it until he gets to the gang plank, is the nigger for me. He is
the 'best man'; if he wasn't he wouldn't get here at all. Some of
'em don't get here--they carry 'em off to the hospital to patch 'em
up; sometimes they carry 'em off and plant 'em. There wasn't much of
a rush to-day. You ought to see 'em in the early spring, when they
are pretty hungry after a winter's freezing and fasting, and they
want to get close to a steamboat boiler to get warm. There was not
more'n three hundred niggers out there to-day. Last April there was a
thousand, and they everlastingly scrapped for a chance to get close
to the post. Some of 'em got their 'razzers', and sort of hewed their
way in. The clerk got a little shaky himself. He was afraid they
might down him and take the whole pack."
"I shouldn't think that you would care to ship the men with 'razzers'
as you call them."
"Oh, I don't mind that if they can tote well. Anyway, they all have
'em. They don't use them much on white men, anyhow. And then we look
out for them. After we back out from here they will get enough to
do to keep them busy. They don't carry any life insurance, and they
don't want to fool with white folks, much."
Having watched the mates handling the crew on the down trip one could
form a pretty clear judgment why the "niggers" were not solicitous to
"fool with" the white men with whom they were in contact while on the
river.
That night we steamed across to East St. Louis and took on three
thousand kegs of nails for different ports on the upper river. These
were carried on the shoulders of the newly-hired deck crew a distance
of at least two hundred feet from the railroad freight house to
the boat; every one of the forty men "toting" seventy-five kegs,
each weighing a hundred and seven pounds. At the conclusion of this
exercise it is safe to say that they were glad enough to creep under
the boilers so soon as the boat pulled out from the landing. The next
morning we were well on our way up the river. I steered most of the
daylight watches for Mr. Link all the way upstream. He had a terrible
cough, and was very weak, but had the hopefulness which always seems
to accompany that dread disease (consumption), that he "would soon
get over it". I was glad to relieve him of some hard work, and I was
also greatly pleased again to have an opportunity to handle a big
boat. Poor fellow, his hopefulness was of no avail. He died at his
home in Quincy within two years of that time.
We arrived at St. Paul on schedule time, with no mishaps to speak of,
and I parted with regret from old and new friends on the boat, none
of whom I have ever seen since that parting twenty-five years ago.
Thomas Burns, Henry Link, George McDonald, and Captain Boland are all
dead. Charles Mathers, the chief clerk, was living a few years ago at
Cairo, an old man, long retired from active service.
As we started to leave the boat, we were arrested by an outcry, a
pistol shot, and the shouting of the colored deck hands, followed
by the rush of the mate and the fall of one of the men, whom he had
struck with a club or billet. Still another colored man lay groaning
on the wharf, and a white man was binding up an ugly gash in his
neck made by the slash of a razor. In a few minutes the clang of
the patrol wagon gong was heard, as it responded to the telephone
call, and two darkies were carried off, one to the hospital and the
other to the jail. The slightly-interrupted work of toting nail
kegs was then resumed. Thus the last sights and sounds were fit
illustrations of river life as it is to-day, and as it was a half a