Chapter 14 - Page 2

personage in the old steamboating days.
He was treated with marked courtesy by the captain and with marked
deference by all the officers and servants; and this deferential
spirit was quickly communicated to the passengers, too. I think
pilots were about the only people I ever knew who failed to show,
in some degree, embarrassment in the presence of traveling
foreign princes. But then, people in one's own grade of life
are not usually embarrassing objects.

By long habit, pilots came to put all their wishes in the form of commands.
It 'gravels' me, to this day, to put my will in the weak shape of
a request, instead of launching it in the crisp language of an order.
In those old days, to load a steamboat at St. Louis, take her to New
Orleans and back, and discharge cargo, consumed about twenty-five days,
on an average. Seven or eight of these days the boat spent at the wharves
of St. Louis and New Orleans, and every soul on board was hard at work,
except the two pilots; they did nothing but play gentleman up town,
and receive the same wages for it as if they had been on duty.
The moment the boat touched the wharf at either city, they were ashore;
and they were not likely to be seen again till the last bell was ringing and
everything in readiness for another voyage.

When a captain got hold of a pilot of particularly high reputation,
he took pains to keep him. When wages were four hundred dollars
a month on the Upper Mississippi, I have known a captain
to keep such a pilot in idleness, under full pay, three months
at a time, while the river was frozen up. And one must remember
that in those cheap times four hundred dollars was a salary
of almost inconceivable splendor. Few men on shore got such pay
as that, and when they did they were mightily looked up to.
When pilots from either end of the river wandered into our small
Missouri village, they were sought by the best and the fairest,
and treated with exalted respect. Lying in port under wages
was a thing which many pilots greatly enjoyed and appreciated;
especially if they belonged in the Missouri River in the heyday
of that trade (Kansas times), and got nine hundred dollars a trip,
which was equivalent to about eighteen hundred dollars a month.
Here is a conversation of that day. A chap out of the Illinois River,
with a little stern-wheel tub, accosts a couple of ornate and gilded
Missouri River pilots--

'Gentlemen, I've got a pretty good trip for the upcountry,
and shall want you about a month. How much will it be?'

'Eighteen hundred dollars apiece.'

'Heavens and earth! You take my boat, let me have your wages,
and I'll divide!'

I will remark, in passing, that Mississippi steamboatmen were
important in