Chapter 28

Chapter 28
Uncle Mumford Unloads

ALL day we swung along down the river, and had the stream almost
wholly to ourselves. Formerly, at such a stage of the water,
we should have passed acres of lumber rafts, and dozens of big
coal barges; also occasional little trading-scows, peddling
along from farm to farm, with the peddler's family on board;
possibly, a random scow, bearing a humble Hamlet and Co.
on an itinerant dramatic trip. But these were all absent.
Far along in the day, we saw one steamboat; just one, and no more.
She was lying at rest in the shade, within the wooded mouth
of the Obion River. The spy-glass revealed the fact that she
was named for me--or HE was named for me, whichever you prefer.
As this was the first time I had ever encountered this species
of honor, it seems excusable to mention it, and at the same time
call the attention of the authorities to the tardiness of my
recognition of it.

Noted a big change in the river, at Island 21. It was a very large island,
and used to be out toward mid-stream; but it is joined fast to the main
shore now, and has retired from business as an island.

As we approached famous and formidable Plum Point, darkness fell,
but that was nothing to shudder about--in these modem times.
For now the national government has turned the Mississippi
into a sort of two-thousand-mile torchlight procession.
In the head of every crossing, and in the foot of every
crossing, the government has set up a clear-burning lamp.
You are never entirely in the dark, now; there is always a beacon
in sight, either before you, or behind you, or abreast.
One might almost say that lamps have been squandered there.
Dozens of crossings are lighted which were not shoal
when they were created, and have never been shoal since;
crossings so plain, too, and also so straight, that a steamboat
can take herself through them without any help, after she has been
through once. Lamps in such places are of course not wasted;
it is much more convenient and comfortable for a pilot to hold
on them than on a spread of formless blackness that won't
stay still; and money is saved to the boat, at the same time,
for she can of course make more miles with her rudder
amidships than she can with it squared across her stern and
holding her back.

But this thing has knocked the romance out of piloting, to a large extent.
It, and some other things together, have knocked all the romance out of it.
For instance, the peril from snags is not now what it once was.
The government's snag-boats go patrolling up and down, in these
matter-of-fact days, pulling the river's teeth; they have rooted out
all the old clusters which made many localities so formidable; and they
allow no