Nathaniel H. Bishop

“ The Santa Rosa Island shore was so desolate and unattractive that we left it, and crossed the narrow sound to the north shore of the mainland, where nature had been more prodigal in her drapery of foliage. Before noon a sail appeared on the horizon, and we gradually approached it. Close to the shore we saw a raft of sawed timbers being to wed by a yacht. The captain hailed us, and we were soon alongside his vessel. The refined features of a gentleman beamed upon us from under an old straw hat, as its owner trod, barefooted, the deck of his craft. ”

“ More than one quarrel usually occurs during the descent of the Mississippi, and by the time New Orleans is reached the shanty-boatman sets his quondam housekeeper adrift, where, in the swift current of life, she is caught by kindred spirits, and being introduced to city society as the Northern Lily, or Pittsburgh Rose, is soon lost to sight, and never returns to the far distant up-river country.
Another shanty-boat is built by a party of young men suffering from impecuniosity. They are "out of a job," and to them the charms of an independent life on the river is irresistible. ”

“ Back of the prairies the forests rose like a green wall in the distance. A heavy fog settled down upon the water and drove us into camp upon the prairie, where we endured again the torture caused by the myriads of bloodthirsty mosquitoes, and were only too glad to make an early start the next morning. A steady pull at the oars brought us to the end of a long cape in the marshes. About a mile and a half east of the land's end we saw a marshy island, of three or four acres in extent, out of the grass of which arose a small wooden light-house, resting securely upon its bed of piles. ”

“ Such is the sad story of Blennerhasset and his wife; and I thought, as I quietly moored my boat in a little creek that mingled its current with the great river, near the lower end of the island which was once such a happy home, of the uncertainty of all earthly prosperity, and the necessity there was for making the most of the present,—which last idea sent a sleepy sailor hastily under his hatch. ”

“ The winter climate of New Orleans is delightful, and many persons leave New England's cruel east winds to breathe its soft air and rejoice in its sunshine. These pale-faced invalids are strangely grouped in the quaint old streets with the peculiar people of the city, and add another to the many types already there. The New Orleans market furnishes, perhaps, the best opportunity for the ethnological student, for there strange motley groups are always to be found. Even the cries are in the quaint voices of a foreign city, and it seems almost impossible to imagine that one is in America. ”

“ I must not fail here to mention one characteristic feature possessed by the sneak-box which gives it an advantage over every other boat I have examined. Its deck is nowhere level, and if a person attempts to step upon it while it is afloat, his foot touches the periphery of a circle, and the spoon-shaped, keelless, little craft flies out as if by magic from under the pressure of the foot, and without further warning the luckless intruder falls into the water. ”

“ From the marshy shore spreads out the vast extent of the seemingly level carpet of vegetation,—a mat of plants, studded over with a host of beautiful flowers; through this green prairie runs a maze of water-ways, some just wide enough for a pirogue, some widening into pools of darkened water. All over this expanse rise the trunks of gigantic cypresses, shorn of all their limbs, and left like great obelisks, scattered so thickly that the distance is lost in the forest of spires. Some are whitened and some blackened by decay and fire; many rise to a hundred feet or more above the lake. ”

“ Cedar canoes, after being subjected to such use for some time, generally become leaky; so, to avoid this disaster, the canoeist, when threatened with wet weather, is forced to the disagreeable task of troubling some private householder for a shelter, or run the risk of injuring his boat by packing himself away in its narrow, coffin-like quarters and dreaming that he is a sardine, while his restless weight is every moment straining his delicate canoe, and visions of future leaks arise to disturb his tranquillity.
The one great advantage possessed by a canoe is its lightness. ”

“ We are, indeed, the children of habit, and singularly adaptable. It is, perhaps, best that it should be so, but I thought, as I brushed off the thin layer of soot with which the Wheeling cloud of enterprise had discolored the pure white deck of my little craft, that if this was civilization and enterprise, I should rather take a little less of those two commodities and a little more of cleanliness and quiet. ”

“ Swaggering and swearing, the roughs went ashore to refresh their thirsty throats at a low grog-shop. Having fired up, they soon returned to the bank of the canal, and, as ill luck would have it, in the darkness of the night caught a gleam of my little white boat resting so peacefully upon the foul water of the canal, made dark and heavy by the city's drainage. Then followed verbal shots, with various demonstrations, for half an hour.
The worst fellow in the crowd was a member of a fire-company, and being a city policeman was supposed to be a protector of the peace. ”

“ The appropriate surroundings of a surf-man's house were here, scattered on every side in delightful confusion. There were piles of old rigging, iron bolts and rings, tarred parcelling, and cabin-doors,—in fact, all the spoils that a treacherous sea had thrown upon the beach; a sea so disastrous to many, but so friendly to the Barnegat wrecker,—who, by the way, is not so black a character as Mistress Rumor paints him. ”

“ Leaving the busy, surging mass of humanity, each so eager to buy or sell, the visitor to New Orleans will find a great contrast of scene in the quiet cemeteries with their high walls of shelves, where the dead are laid away in closely cemented tombs built one over the other, and all above the ground, to be safe from the encroachment of water, the ever-pervading foe of New Orleans. Not only must the dead be stowed away above-ground, but the living must wage a daily war against this insidious foe, and watch with vigilance their levees. ”

“ The owner of a thousand cattle gave us a warm invitation to visit his orange grove in Apalachicola, and then retired with his man to their nest in the woods, while we slept in our boats, with porpoises and black-fish sounding their nasal calls all night in the sea which beat upon the strand at our feet.
In the morning the wind arose and sent the waves tumbling far in upon the beach. After breakfast I walked to the extremity of the cape, and dined with Mr. Robert Colman, the principal light-keeper. He was a most ingenious man, and an expert in the use of tools. ”

“ In this descent of the river, many persons, who have clubbed together to meet the expenses of a shanty-boat life for the first time, and who are of a sentimental turn of mind, look upon the voyage as a romantic era in their lives. Visions of basking in the sunlight, feasting, and sleeping, dance before their benighted eyes; for they are not all of the low, ignorant class I have described. Professors, teachers, musicians, all drift at times down the river; and one is often startled at finding in the apparently rough crew men who seem worthy of a better fate. ”

“ At the summer watering-places in Barnegat Bay it used to be a great source of amusement to the boatmen to tie a sneak-box to a landing, and wait quietly near by to see the city boys attempt to get into her. Instead of stepping safely and easily into the hold, they would invariably step upon the rounded deck, when away would shoot the slippery craft, and the unsuccessful boarder would fall into two feet of water, to the great amusement of his comrades. ”

“ The state of Ohio had furnished the Ohio River with a margin for four hundred and seventy-five miles. The Little Miami River joins the Ohio six miles above Cincinnati; the Big Miami enters it twenty miles below the city. These streams flow through rich farming regions, but they are not navigable. After passing the town of Aurora, which is six miles below the Big Miami, I caught sight of the mouth of a creek, whose thickets of trees, in the gloom of the fast approaching night, almost hid from view the outlines of a forlorn-looking shanty-boat. ”

“ Louis, which were gradually rising to our view, higher and higher above the tide. The piers of the summer watering-places, some of them one thousand feet in length, ran out into shoal water. Against these the waves beat in fury, enveloping the abutments in clouds of white spray. When within a mile of Shieldsboro the ominous thundering of the surf, pounding upon the shelving beach of hard sand, warned us of the difficulty to be experienced in passing through the breakers to the land. ”

“ Our survey of the portage gave encouraging results. The Gulf of Mexico was only four hundred feet from the bay, and the shortest route was the best one; so, starting energetically, we dragged the boats by main force across Crooked Island, and launched them in the surf without disaster. We then rowed as rapidly as the rough sea would permit along the coast towards the wide opening of St. Joseph's Bay, the wooded beaches of which rose like a cloud in the soft mists of a sunny day. ”

“ All day long carriages rolled out from New Orleans, bringing rollicking men and women to the lake, where, free from all restraint, the daily robe of hypocrisy was thrown aside, and poor humanity appeared at its worst. Little squads of roughs came also at intervals, but their attempts to find me or my boat proved fruitless. ”

“ On the morning of the 21st we rowed to the end of the sound, which narrowed as we approached the entrance to the next sheet of water, Choctawhatchee Bay. There were a few shanties along the narrow outlet on the main shore, where some settlers, beguiled to this desolate region by the sentimental idea of pioneer life in a fine climate, known as "FLORIDA FEVER," were starving on a fish diet, which, in the cracker dialect, was "powerful handy," and bravely resisting the attacks of insects, the bane of life in Florida. ”

“ The atmosphere was soft and mild, the evening was perfect. The great sheet of water extended far to the east. On the south it was bounded by marshes. A long, low prairie coast stretched away on the north; it was the southern end of the state of Mississippi. The light-houses flashed their bright beacon-lights over the water. All was tranquil save the ever- pervading, persistent mosquito. Thousands of these insects, of the largest size and of the most pertinacious character, came out of the high grass and "made night hideous." ”

“ The coons were fighting and squealing around my boat, which lay snugly ensconced in a bayou among the reeds, for, once under my hatch-cover, the presence of man was unheeded by these animals, and they sportively turned my deck into a species of amphitheatre.
The vices and virtues of the mosquito may be summed up in a few words, always remembering that it is the FEMALE, and not the MALE, to whom humanity is indebted for lessons of patience. ”

“ I saw far back in the distance an indomitable man, faint and discouraged, after the terrible sufferings of a winter at a bleak fort in the wilderness, drag his weary limbs to the spot where New Orleans now stands, and defiantly unfurling the flag of France, determined to establish the capital of Louisiana on the treacherous banks of the Mississippi. ”

“ The readers of my "Voyage of the Paper Canoe" may recognize in Mr. Bond, a member of this party, a gentleman whom I had met on board the Coast Survey vessel "Casswell," in Bull's Bay, on the South Carolina coast, the previous winter. Only those who have gone through similar experiences can imagine what I felt at being thus brought into contact with men of intelligence. It was as though a man had been pulling through a heavy fog, and suddenly the sun burst forth in all its glory. Nature is grand and restful, and green savannas and tranquil waters leave fair pictures in our memories ”

“ Having rowed along the beach on the open Gulf, a boat-load of fishermen, with their nets ready to cast, rested quietly upon their oars in the offing, while a sharp-eyed man walked along the coast, peering into the transparent water, searching for the schools of fish which feed near the strand. ”

“ The citizens of Pittsburgh gathered upon the banks of the Monongahela to witness the inception of the enterprise which was to change the whole destiny of the West. One can imagine the criticisms flung at the departing steamer as she left her moorings and boldly faced her fate. As the curious craft was borne along the current of the river, the Indians attempted to approach her, bent upon hostile attempts, and once a party of them pursued the boat in hot chase, but their endurance was not equal to that of steam. ”

“ THE MISSOURI IS THE LONGEST RIVER IN THE WORLD, AND THE MISSISSIPPI IS ONLY A BRANCH OF IT. The Mississippi River joins its current with that of the Missouri about two hundred miles above the mouth of the Ohio; consequently, as we are now to allow the largest stream (the Missouri) to bear its name from its source all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, it follows that the Ohio flows into the Missouri and not into the Mississippi River. The Missouri, and NOT the Mississippi, is the main stream of what has been called the Mississippi Basin. ”