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Library of Congress Mostly Mississippi, by Harold Speakman, with a number of drawings by Russell Lindsay Speakman and the author MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI BOOKS BY HAROLD SPEAKMAN MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI HERE'S IRELAND BEYOND SHANGHAI HILLTOPS IN GALILEE FROM A SOLDIER'S HEART THIS ABOVE ALL (A NOVEL) Girl, houseboat, river . MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI by HAROLD SPEAKMAN With a number of DRAWINGS by RUSSELL LINDSAY SPEAKMAN and the AUTHOR LC DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY New York : : : 1927 Mostly Mississippi, by Harold Speakman, with a number of drawings by Russell Lindsay Speakman and the author http://www.loc.gov/ resource/lhbum.24707 Library of Congress F354 .S74 COPYRIGHT, 1927 BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC. LC PRINTED IN U. S. A. MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, INC., BINGHAMTON, N. Y. DEC-2'27 ©ClA1010655 MBS. 6 Dec. 1927. TO MY WIFE AND FRIEND RUSSELL LINDSAY SPEAKMAN FOREWORD Three characters persist throughout the following pages—a man, a woman, and the Mississippi River. Of these three, only one is solid, consecutive, enduring. That one is the river. As long as the clouds are, and the forests are, its tawny-maned flood will go foaming down to the dark bowl of the sea. The story of its strength will be told again and again in books, and records, and charts, and relentless dates. The man and woman are impermanent, perishable. Their journeys will be short and few. They will be seen only for a moment on the face of the river. In that fact alone there may be a certain value—provided we look at them squarely, not as at a pair of wooden mannikins on which to hang a few gay ribbons of scenery. Mostly Mississippi, by Harold Speakman, with a number of drawings by Russell Lindsay Speakman and the author http://www.loc.gov/ resource/lhbum.24707 Library of Congress So, throwing off any embarrassment I may feel, as something quite aside and stupid, I shall look into the man's mind and to the other's responsive presence for the volatile essence of this adventure, always shielding my somewhat delicately exposed position behind the consoling thought that the river, by its sheer magnificent strength, is both the villain and the hero of this book. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I Ducks & Personae 1 II The Young River 14 III The Thicket 29 IV Lady Into Catfish 41 V Sss-Bang! 51 VI Some Who Stray 62 VII Good-By Canoe 82 VIII Shantyboat 97 IX Off 106 X A Wreck or Two 119 XI “You'll Tie Up—” 128 XII Slough, Bird, Model 138 Mostly Mississippi, by Harold Speakman, with a number of drawings by Russell Lindsay Speakman and the author http://www.loc.gov/ resource/lhbum.24707 Library of Congress XIII Cities 149 XIV Mormons 162 XV Becky and Ignition 173 XVI The Smoky Saint 191 XVII Land of Egypt 208 XVIII Here's Dixie 222 XIX Along the Levees 241 XX Color of the South 255 XXI Bugle Echo 273 XXII Memory Lane 283 XXIII Hobo Jungle 297 XXIV Drift 308 XXV The Tide 323 XXVI The Bayous 332 XXVII The Joyous City 345 ILLUSTRATIONS Girl, house-boat, river Frontispiece Mostly Mississippi, by Harold Speakman, with a number of drawings by Russell Lindsay Speakman and the author http://www.loc.gov/ resource/lhbum.24707 Library of Congress FACING PAGE Cohasset 32 Girl of the West Country 58 The Cathedral, St. Paul 98 Pete of the Mississippi 110 Old lady of Dubuque 146 An old knight of the river 160 “Becky Thatcher” 178 The Court House, St. Louis, where slaves were sold 200 The “Patonia,” Memphis 234 Poet of the delta 258 One of the last of the river showmen 284 Old Tom from Baton Rouge and Bayou Sara 310 Tombs in an ancient New Orleans cemetery 334 The “Quarter” of New Orleans abounds in mellow court yards 348 MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI 1 DUCKS & PERSONAE CHAPTER I Mostly Mississippi, by Harold Speakman, with a number of drawings by Russell Lindsay Speakman and the author http://www.loc.gov/ resource/lhbum.24707 Library of Congress 1 We drove the canoe forward. With a noise like the hiss of a breaking comber, the dark line on the water before us tore raggedly upward into flight. A hundred yards ahead, its component parts settled down again—mallard, teal, pintail—thousand after thousand in another broad, sinuous line, as speckled and dusky as though some one had scattered gunpowder far out on the glittering blue surface of the lake. Again and again, with that strange hiss of wings, it broke into flight, cutting the August sunlight into a weird geometry of patterns and shrill cries. The wilderness was about us. The forest was dark and unspoiled. It had no fear of the girl at the front paddle, nor of the man at the back. A clamorous host of waterfowl came wheeling and pirouetting about the canoe. Clouds of gulls sailed by, their white groups outlined against the dark of spruce and pine. A pair of blue cranes flapped lazily through the sunlight, while 2 whole families of snipe stalked in solemn conclave along the low shore beyond. There was a fresh, unfinished look to the scene, like Paradise, perhaps, on the evening of the fifth day. What was the reason for that mile-wide strip of bare, flat sand at the lake's edge before the forest began? Perhaps God had not put enough water into the lake. We waded ashore over the shallows and came to the village of Bena lying dry and disconsolate a mile to the south. God, they told us there, had put plenty of water in the lake, but the river commission had taken it out. To-morrow we would find a large dam at the place where the young river left the lake, whose name was Winnibigoshish.* A few years earlier, nine feet of water had been drawn off through the dam, they said, giving the lake a considerable space to rise in if the rains were heavy. Thus the flow of water into the river below could be controlled. Mostly Mississippi, by Harold Speakman, with a number of drawings by Russell Lindsay Speakman and the author http://www.loc.gov/ resource/lhbum.24707 Library of Congress * Locally pronounced, Winnibig???sh'. But it was bad for them at Bena. That evil-looking line of the whitened ribs and antlers of dead trees along the forest's edge marked the height of the old water level. Returning to the canoe with a few purchases we had made—some vegetables, a collapsible air mattress, honey in a mason jar, and particularly an additional 3 blanket, for the nights were cold—we set off for a promontory to the west. I watched the paddle blade in front of me sink noiselessly into the water, run along the side with a swift, even sweep, and, rising from its aqueous fold, send a silvery, funnelled eddy racing by. A good canoeist ahead! As for me, I knew nothing about canoes. I was at the back paddle, the important paddle, only by courtesy. Well, perhaps I'd learn. The vermilion canoe we rode in was of painted canvas with a double border of staring black-and-white checks along the gunwales. Its hilarious gayety had embarrassed us a little, when, three days before, we had left the town of Bemidji under considerable observation. Here on Winnibigoshish its color shrieked and giggled louder than ever under the solemnity of the wilderness. We would repaint it ourselves a little later on, when once the river had emerged from this adolescent tangle of lakes and connecting streamlets that marks its early course. Bemidji, on Lake Bemidji, where we had begun our journey, is at the most northerly point on this lake-and-streamlet combination. To travel from Bemidji up stream to the river's source, one does not go decently north as one might expect. Elk Lake, twenty-three miles as the crow flies, southwest of Bemidji, is frequently called the source. In a very dry season, there 4 are stretches of the dot-and-dash rivulet between Elk Lake and Bemidji that are not navigable for a canoe. Even down stream from Bemidji, we were forced to run for several rather breathless miles through a series of rushing, boulder-strewn rapids on an Mostly Mississippi, by Harold Speakman, with a number of drawings by Russell Lindsay Speakman and the author http://www.loc.gov/ resource/lhbum.24707 Library of Congress extra foot of water generously furnished by a power dam, located where the river leaves the lake! There have been many ponderous and rather futile arguments as to the true head of the Mississippi. For many years, Lake Itasca was called the source. Then Elk Lake was discovered up stream from Itasca. But the water from Elk Lake must come from somewhere too. In a wet season, there may even be a puddle that drains into the puddle that drains into the puddle that drains into Elk Lake. The whole subject is made a little less plethoric by a perfectly glorious old faker named Glazier who came that way in 1881, and “gathering his little band about him,” rechristened Elk Lake after himself and took possession of it in the name of the United States—just six years after it had been surveyed, named, and recorded at Washington by members of the United States Land Survey! 2 We paddled on. White clouds were marching in broken ranks up the afternoon sky, their farthest 5 stragglers lost beneath the tops of the forest.