University of Virginia Library

LETTER XXX.

How shall I describe to you the profound impression of
sublimity, so that you may have some adequate conception
of it, which the sight of the “meeting of the waters” had
upon me yesterday? To see the union of the Mississippi
and Ohio is worth a voyage thus far. It is one of
the sublimest spectacles a traveler chances to meet with.

Everything was propitious to present to our view the
junction in all its grandest features. Both rivers were
of equal height: the Mississippi dark and turbid, the
Ohio clear and of a green tint. As our steamer entered
upon the last mile of the Ohio, I could see with a glass,
with which my good friend, the pilot, provided me, the
line which marked the boundary between the two
waters. As we drew nearer and nearer, and at length
passed out from between the arms of the Ohio into the
bosom of the Father of Waters, I was surprised and delighted
to find that we still were borne on the tide of the
former, although fairly within the shores of the latter.

For nearly two miles after we had entered the Mississippi,
we kept in the green waters of the Belle Riviere,
which, pushing and compressing the murky flood of the
other to half its breadth, contested the right of way to
the mile-broad channel with it. The line between the
waters that flowed from the Alleghanies and those which

had come from the Rocky Mountains was distinctly preserved
for a long distance by their different hues; and
in order to gratify Isabel, the helmsman, at one time,
steered so that we sailed directly on the line of demarkation—the
green tinted waves of the Ohio being on our
left, and the muddy, brown waves of the Mississippi being
on the right—the keel of our steamer dividing them
equally.

But after we had descended about two miles, the superior
strength of the Mississippi began to show itself.
The old Father of Rivers, as if he had merely out of
courtesy suffered the Belle Ohio to occupy his channel
for a little while, now began to assert his claims to the
whole breadth between the banks. Here and there the
turbid under current would force itself up to the surface
of the waters of the Ohio, and exhibit everywhere great
circular patches of floating mud. These soon flowed together
and commingled; and at length the green current
of the Belle Riviere became all muddy and turbid, lost its
individuality, and was absorbed in the mighty rolling
flood, whose domain it fain would have held in copartnership.
It was full a league below the mouth before
the union was so complete that we lost the last trace of
the peculiar tint of the lesser and clearer stream. It
was wonderful to see how completely one vast river had
been swallowed up by another; and yet neither had the
huge gormandizer grown larger, widened his banks, or
deepened his channels; and so this mammoth of rivers
goes on to the sea, a thousand miles southward, taking
in a score of rivers at a yawn, and never showing signs
of his voraciousness!

“Now, Miss,” said the old pilot, who seemed greatly

to enjoy my admiration of the spectacle, “now we are
fairly on the Mississippi! You'll find it a wild water,
marm; and the shores al'ays keep the same as you see
'em now,—forests, and nothing else. Five hundred
miles farther down you'll see no difference. A picture
of the river taken here, and one after we 've sailed on
it three days more, will look both exactly alike; it would
take a man pretty well used to the river, if he was taken
up from one place, and put in another a hundred miles
farther down, to know he'd changed places.”

The sun set with a splendor that I have never before
beheld. The river at the time was flowing west for full
five miles in a straight line, and the whole distance,
illumined redly by the sun at the end of the vista, shone
like a burnished lake of gold; while the black forests on
either shore formed a fine frame to the whole. These
“reaches” and bends of the river, which it forms every
few leagues as it flows now west, now east, now doubling
back northwardly, gives the Mississippi the character of
a chain of lakes, each from three to seven miles long,
and always the unvarying breadth of about four thousand
feet.

There is something terrific, as well as majestic in this
vast moving flood. Its surface is never quiet. Repose
it knows not. It is agitated by myriads of whirlpools,
and here and there rushes along without any apparent
cause, with additional velocity, and a roar like rapids;
yet there are nothing like rocks in its bed, and its depth
is fearful everywhere. I had heard that a person falling
into it, would never rise again. I therefore questioned
my friend the pilot upon this interesting point.

“They do say so, Miss,” politely answered a hale old

man who was steering, and removing his quid from his
mouth out of respect to me, and thrusting it for safe
keeping into the cuff of his drab jacket, the stained look
of which showed that it was an ordinary reception place
for such things; “but it an't al'ays true, 'cept in high
top floods. Then I'd be sorry to fall overboard. Most
usual there is an under current as sucks a man right
down, and before he can battle agen it and get up to the
top, its all over with him. Besides, the water is al'ays
so muddy, it chokes up a man 'mazin' quick. But in
low water, why a man can swim tolerable fair in this
river; but its better to keep on board if he can, and not
tempt it; for old Massassap is a mighty ugly customer to
trust oneself to, at any time,—'mazin' treacherous and
oncertain!”

Although the evening shades fell, and the supper bell
rung, I could not leave the deck. The western sky was
a paradise of glory, a heaven tinted with every hue of
beauty. Amid a clear space of pure green, the evening
star hung like an amethyst set in emerald. The waters
shone like living gold. The gloomy shores grew darker
and more mysterious. The stars came out overhead.
From our two tall black chimneys rolled, billow on billow,
sable clouds of smoke mixed with sparks, which, as
they covered the skies over us, gave one an idea of the
heavens on fire, and the stars loosened from their spheres.
The regular boom of the breathing engine echoing from
shore to shore, the dash of the monstrous wheels creating
a continual foaming cataract, which, mingling astern,
formed a mad wake of whirlpools—the onward, life-like,
ever-pressing-forward motion of the swift steamer, which
carried me with two hundred other souls through all this

scene of novel beauty and strange grandeur, bound me
to the deck, and forbade my thoughts and soul turning
to anything else.

At length night, in all the glittering glory of her
starry beauty, reigned. Leaning upon the arm of the
colonel, while Isabel hung upon the other, I walked the
upper deck till a late hour. Showers of sparks were
sailing away in the air every moment, and some of them,
keeping their brightness longer than others, we loved to
imagine shooting stars, which they closely resembled.
Many would descend in graceful curves to the surface of
the river far astern, and, lighting upon it, be at once
extinguished. Others would ascend and move in a
spiral path higher and higher, as if they fain would scale
heaven, and take their place among the fixed stars,
which looked no bigger than they. We also amused
ourselves in watching the woodmen's lights on the shore
—large fires built at the points where wood for steamers
was to be found. These signal fires, which were
visible on both sides from a mile to a league apart,
had a fine effect upon the imagination. It seemed as if
our midnight way was voluntarily lighted by some kind
beings of the main who wished us “good luck” on our
voyage, and desired that we should prosecute it in safety.
The pilot related to the colonel a very remarkable use
which he once made of these lights on the shore.

“We were coming up from Orleans in a thick fog,”
said he. “The night was dark as pitch. We could not
land in safety, as it blew hard. Our only chance was to
keep in the middle of the stream and run for it. These
woodmen at that time did not light their signal fires till
they heard a boat ring her bell, as a token that it wanted

wood. You would then see a score of fires kindled along
a stretch of four miles or so. We could discern no fires
to guide us, or tell us where either shore was; so I rang
the bell as a signal for wooding. The next minute a fire
blazed up through the fog on the left bank, quarter of a
mile ahead; and a half a mile above upon the other shore,
shone another like a star in the dog-days. By these we
were enabled to steer; and every quarter of an hour I
tolled my bell, as I ascended the river, and fire after fire
would blaze up, one on this shore, one on that. In this
way we ran all night, full a hundred miles, lighted by
these signal fires, which we made these poor fellows
kindle, supposing we were coming in to take in wood;
but the rogues ought to have done us this service, as they
live and get rich by steamboats.”

It was late when we left the deck to return to our
state-rooms. During the night I was awakened by the
noise of a steamer passing us. Looking from my state-room
door, I saw its red-mouthed furnaces glare through
the gloom, lighting up half the river's breadth, the dark
figures of the firemen looking like so many demons as
they cast the fuel into them. It was a magnificent sight,
and a fearful one, to see the huge, roaring, dashing,
booming, thundering monster go past, with noise enough
to awake the Seven Sleepers, while the shores and the
sides of our vessel re-echoed and redoubled the sublime
uproar. The next moment she was past, and darkness
and a rocking motion succeeded. I observed at the bow
of the boat two fiery red lanterns, elevated on high,
which serve as guides to the pilot, and to show the posisition
of the boat to other pilots in the night. Our boat
has a blue and a crimson one. Unaccustomed to the

motion and working of the machinery, it was long past
midnight ere I was able to fall to sleep.

This morning we found ourselves at New Madrid, once
the capital of the Spanish empire of the West, but now
a hamlet of a few houses. The place has been destroyed
by an earthquake, and what remains of it is falling into
the river by detachments. Street after street has broken
off and gone, until but one remains. The whole country
is deeply fissured by the shocks which occur every few
weeks. We learn that ten days ago there was so severe
a one that an acre of the front of the town fell into the
river, and chairs and tables in houses were thrown down.
Such, however, is the force of habit, and “getting accustomed
to shaking,” as the man said who had the ague
twenty-four years, that the citizens do not mind these
shocks; but take them as they come, as they do the
storms and wind, and the other ordinary phenomena of
nature.

We had a very amusing scene occur this morning, just
before day! There is a young bear on board, belonging
to a Missourian, who is taking him down to Arkansas, to
his sweetheart, he told me. The “exquisite” had evinced
some apprehension about him, and expressed it to me
more than once, that he feared he might “get loose and
perpetrate some mischief.”

Well, sure enough, at daylight this morning, the whole
cabin was aroused by such an uproar and screaming as
you never heard! “The bear! the bear! the bear is in
my state-room!” was shrieked in tones of mortal horror.

Upon flying to the scene of terror and to the rescue, it
proved to be, that a gentleman, who from a paralytic
stroke has not for several years been able to speak, was

now on his way to the Hot Springs to endeavor to effect
a cure. But there are times when, if he attempts to
laugh he sends forth the most appalling spasmodic sounds,
between a yell and a howl, with a sprinkling of awful groans,
all mixed up together in one,—sounds unearthly and
terrific, and therefore enough to alarm anybody of stout
nerves. This poor gentleman was put into the lower
berth of the state-room, which my exquisite occupied.
Towards morning, the paralytic being awake, heard his
neighbor in the next state-room, in stepping out of bed,
put his foot into his wash-pitcher, and at the accident
swear so oddly that it excited his risibles to an ungovernable
extent. The result was a laugh that was a
compound of the roar of a bear, the howl of a wolf, and
the yell of a hyena, which, the more he tried to suppress
it, the worse it became. The young fop was positive
the bear had got into his room, and calling on him, in
his best vernacular, to prepare to be eaten up.

When the facts became known there was a good hearty
laugh at the young man's expense, but the paralytic
gentleman being, as the colonel observed, maliciously
tempted by the enemy of our race to join in it, produced
a second and improved edition of his vocal performances,
that filled all who heard him with consternation.

To morrow, we expect to be at Memphis.