Chapter 30

Chapter 3O
Sketches by the Way

IT was a big river, below Memphis; banks brimming full, everywhere,
and very frequently more than full, the waters pouring out over
the land, flooding the woods and fields for miles into the interior;
and in places, to a depth of fifteen feet; signs, all about,
of men's hard work gone to ruin, and all to be done
over again, with straitened means and a weakened courage.
A melancholy picture, and a continuous one;--hundreds of miles of it.
Sometimes the beacon lights stood in water three feet deep,
in the edge of dense forests which extended for miles without farm,
wood-yard, clearing, or break of any kind; which meant that
the keeper of the light must come in a skiff a great distance
to discharge his trust,--and often in desperate weather.
Yet I was told that the work is faithfully performed,
in all weathers; and not always by men, sometimes by women,
if the man is sick or absent. The Government furnishes oil,
and pays ten or fifteen dollars a month for the lighting and tending.
A Government boat distributes oil and pays wages once a month.

The Ship Island region was as woodsy and tenantless as ever.
The island has ceased to be an island; has joined itself compactly
to the main shore, and wagons travel, now, where the steamboats used
to navigate. No signs left of the wreck of the 'Pennsylvania.'
Some farmer will turn up her bones with his plow one day, no doubt,
and be surprised.

We were getting down now into the migrating negro region.
These poor people could never travel when they were slaves;
so they make up for the privation now. They stay on a plantation till
the desire to travel seizes them; then they pack up, hail a steamboat,
and clear out. Not for any particular place; no, nearly any
place will answer; they only want to be moving. The amount
of money on hand will answer the rest of the conundrum for them.
If it will take them fifty miles, very well; let it be fifty.
If not, a shorter flight will do.

During a couple of days, we frequently answered these hails.
Sometimes there was a group of high-water-stained, tumble-down cabins,
populous with colored folk, and no whites visible; with grassless
patches of dry ground here and there; a few felled trees,
with skeleton cattle, mules, and horses, eating the leaves and
gnawing the bark--no other food for them in the flood-wasted land.
Sometimes there was a single lonely landing-cabin; near it
the colored family that had hailed us; little and big, old and young,
roosting on the scant pile of household goods; these consisting
of a rusty gun, some bed-ticks, chests, tinware, stools, a crippled
looking-glass, a venerable arm-chair, and six or eight base-born
and spiritless yellow