Chapter 33

Chapter 33
Refreshments and Ethics

IN regard to Island 74, which is situated not far from the former Napoleon,
a freak of the river here has sorely perplexed the laws of men and made
them a vanity and a jest. When the State of Arkansas was chartered,
she controlled 'to the center of the river'--a most unstable line. The State
of Mississippi claimed 'to the channel'--another shifty and unstable line.
No. 74 belonged to Arkansas. By and by a cut-off threw this big island out
of Arkansas, and yet not within Mississippi. 'Middle of the river' on one
side of it, 'channel' on the other. That is as I understand the problem.
Whether I have got the details right or wrong, this FACT remains:
that here is this big and exceedingly valuable island of four thousand acres,
thrust out in the cold, and belonging to neither the one State nor the other;
paying taxes to neither, owing allegiance to neither. One man owns
the whole island, and of right is 'the man without a country.'

Island 92 belongs to Arkansas. The river moved it over
and joined it to Mississippi. A chap established a whiskey
shop there, without a Mississippi license, and enriched
himself upon Mississippi custom under Arkansas protection
(where no license was in those days required).

We glided steadily down the river in the usual privacy--
steamboat or other moving thing seldom seen. Scenery as always:
stretch upon stretch of almost unbroken forest, on both sides
of the river; soundless solitude. Here and there a cabin or two,
standing in small openings on the gray and grassless banks--
cabins which had formerly stood a quarter or half-mile farther
to the front, and gradually been pulled farther and farther back
as the shores caved in. As at Pilcher's Point, for instance,
where the cabins had been moved back three hundred yards
in three months, so we were told; but the caving banks had
already caught up with them, and they were being conveyed
rearward once more.

Napoleon had but small opinion of Greenville, Mississippi, in the old times;
but behold, Napoleon is gone to the cat-fishes, and here is Greenville full
of life and activity, and making a considerable flourish in the Valley;
having three thousand inhabitants, it is said, and doing a gross trade of
$2,500,000 annually. A growing town.

There was much talk on the boat about the Calhoun Land Company,
an enterprise which is expected to work wholesome results.
Colonel Calhoun, a grandson of the statesman, went to Boston
and formed a syndicate which purchased a large tract of land on
the river, in Chicot County, Arkansas--some ten thousand acres--
for cotton-growing. The purpose is to work on a cash basis:
buy at first hands, and handle their own product; supply their