To wit: -
1. Some believed in the Commission's scheme to arbitrarily and
permanently confine (and thus deepen) the channel, preserve threatened
shores, etc.
2. Some believed that the Commission's money ought to be spent only on
building and repairing the great system of levees.
3. Some believed that the higher you build your levee, the higher the
river's bottom will rise; and that consequently the levee system is a
mistake.
4. Some believed in the scheme to relieve the river, in flood-time, by
turning its surplus waters off into Lake Borgne, etc.
5. Some believed in the scheme of northern lake-reservoirs to replenish
the Mississippi in low-water seasons.
Wherever you find a man down there who believes in one of these theories
you may turn to the next man and frame your talk upon the hypothesis
that he does not believe in that theory; and after you have had
experience, you do not take this course doubtfully, or hesitatingly, but
with the confidence of a dying murderer - converted one, I mean. For you
will have come to know, with a deep and restful certainty, that you are
not going to meet two people sick of the same theory, one right after
the other. No, there will always be one or two with the other diseases
along between. And as you proceed, you will find out one or two other
things. You will find out that there is no distemper of the lot but is
contagious; and you cannot go where it is without catching it. You may
vaccinate yourself with deterrent facts as much as you please - it will
do no good; it will seem to 'take,' but it doesn't; the moment you rub
against any one of those theorists, make up your mind that it is time to
hang out your yellow flag.
Yes, you are his sure victim: yet his work is not all to your hurt -
only part of it; for he is like your family physician, who comes and
cures the mumps, and leaves the scarlet-fever behind. If your man is a
Lake-Borgne-relief theorist, for instance, he will exhale a cloud of
deadly facts and statistics which will lay you out with that disease,
sure; but at the same time he will cure you of any other of the five
theories that may have previously got into your system.
I have had all the five; and had them 'bad;' but ask me not, in mournful
numbers, which one racked me hardest, or which one numbered the biggest
sick list, for I do not know. In truth, no one can answer the latter
question. Mississippi Improvement is a mighty topic, down yonder. Every
man on the river banks, south of Cairo, talks about it every day, during
such moments as he is able to spare from talking about the war; and each
of the several chief theories has its host of zealous partisans; but, as
I have said, it is not possible to determine which cause numbers the
most recruits.
All were agreed upon one point, however: if Congress would make a
sufficient appropriation, a colossal benefit would result. Very well;
since then the appropriation has been made - possibly a sufficient one,
certainly not too large a one. Let us hope that the prophecy will be
amply fulfilled.
One thing will be easily granted by the reader; that an opinion from Mr.
Edward Atkinson, upon any vast national commercial matter, comes as near
ranking as authority, as can the opinion of any individual in the Union.
What he has to say about Mississippi River Improvement will be found in
the Appendix.{footnote [See Appendix B.]}
Sometimes, half a dozen figures will reveal, as with a lightning-flash,
the importance of a subject which ten thousand labored words, with the
same purpose in view, had left at last but dim and uncertain. Here is a
case of the sort - paragraph from the 'Cincinnati Commercial' -
'The towboat "Jos. B. Williams" is on her way to New Orleans with a tow
of thirty-two barges, containing six hundred thousand bushels (seventy-
six pounds to the bushel) of coal exclusive of her own fuel, being the
largest tow ever taken to New Orleans or anywhere else in the world.
Her freight bill, at 3 cents a bushel, amounts to $18,000. It would take
eighteen hundred cars, of three hundred and thirty-three bushels to the
car, to transport this amount of coal. At $10 per ton, or $100 per car,
which would be a fair price for the distance by rail, the freight bill
would amount to $180,000, or $162,000 more by rail than by river. The
tow will be taken from Pittsburg to New Orleans in fourteen or fifteen
days. It would take one hundred trains of eighteen cars to the train to
transport this one tow of six hundred thousand bushels of coal, and even
if it made the usual speed of fast freight lines, it would take one
whole summer to put it through by rail.'
When a river in good condition can enable one to save $162,000 and a
whole summer's time, on a single cargo, the wisdom of taking measures to
keep the river in good condition is made plain to even the uncommercial
mind.
Chapter 29 A Few Specimen Bricks
WE passed through the Plum Point region, turned Craighead's Point, and
glided unchallenged by what was once the formidable Fort Pillow,
memorable because of the massacre perpetrated there during the war.
Massacres are sprinkled with some frequency through the histories of
several Christian nations, but this is almost the only one that can be
found in American history; perhaps it is the only one which rises to a
size correspondent to that huge and somber title.
