Chapter 29

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.
We have the 'Boston Massacre,' where two or three people were killed;
but we must bunch Anglo-Saxon history together to find the fellow
to the Fort Pillow tragedy; and doubtless even then we must travel
back to the days and the performances of Coeur de Lion, that fine
'hero,' before we accomplish it.

More of the river's freaks. In times past, the channel used
to strike above Island 37, by Brandywine Bar, and down towards
Island 39. Afterward, changed its course and went from
Brandywine down through Vogelman's chute in the Devil's Elbow,
to Island 39--part of this course reversing the old order;
the river running UP four or five miles, instead of down,
and cutting off, throughout, some fifteen miles of distance.
This in 1876. All that region is now called Centennial Island.

There is a tradition that Island 37 was one of the principal abiding
places of the once celebrated 'Murel's Gang.' This was a colossal
combination of robbers, horse-thieves, negro-stealers, and counterfeiters,
engaged in business along the river some fifty or sixty years ago.
While our journey across the country towards St. Louis was in
progress we had had no end of Jesse James and his stirring history;
for he had just been assassinated by an agent of the Governor of Missouri,
and was in consequence occupying a good deal of space in the newspapers.
Cheap histories of him were for sale by train boys. According to these,
he was the most marvelous creature of his kind that had ever existed.
It was a mistake. Murel was his equal in boldness; in pluck; in rapacity;
in cruelty, brutality, heartlessness, treachery, and in general and
comprehensive vileness and shamelessness; and very much his superior
in some larger aspects. James was a retail rascal; Murel, wholesale.
James's modest genius dreamed of no loftier flight than the planning
of raids upon cars, coaches, and country banks; Murel projected
negro insurrections and the capture of New Orleans; and furthermore,
on occasion, this Murel could go into a pulpit and edify the congregation.
What are James and his half-dozen vulgar rascals compared with this
stately old-time criminal, with his sermons, his meditated insurrections
and city-captures, and his majestic following of ten