Chapter 48

Chapter 48
Sugar and Postage

ONE day, on the street, I encountered the man whom, of all men,
I most wished to see--Horace Bixby; formerly pilot under me--
or rather, over me--now captain of the great steamer 'City of
Baton Rouge,' the latest and swiftest addition to the Anchor Line.
The same slender figure, the same tight curls, the same springy step,
the same alertness, the same decision of eye and answering decision
of hand, the same erect military bearing; not an inch gained or lost
in girth, not an ounce gained or lost in weight, not a hair turned.
It is a curious thing, to leave a man thirty-five years old, and come
back at the end of twenty-one years and find him still only thirty-five.
I have not had an experience of this kind before, I believe.
There were some crow's-feet, but they counted for next to nothing,
since they were inconspicuous.

His boat was just in. I had been waiting several days for her,
purposing to return to St. Louis in her. The captain and I
joined a party of ladies and gentlemen, guests of Major Wood,
and went down the river fifty-four miles, in a swift tug,
to ex-Governor Warmouth's sugar plantation. Strung along below
the city, were a number of decayed, ram-shackly, superannuated
old steamboats, not one of which had I ever seen before.
They had all been built, and worn out, and thrown aside,
since I was here last. This gives one a realizing sense
of the frailness of a Mississippi boat and the briefness
of its life.

Six miles below town a fat and battered brick chimney, sticking above
the magnolias and live-oaks, was pointed out as the monument erected
by an appreciative nation to celebrate the battle of New Orleans--
Jackson's victory over the British, January 8, 1815. The war had ended,
the two nations were at peace, but the news had not yet reached New Orleans.
If we had had the cable telegraph in those days, this blood would
not have been spilt, those lives would not have been wasted;
and better still, Jackson would probably never have been president.
We have gotten over the harms done us by the war of 1812, but not over some
of those done us by Jackson's presidency.

The Warmouth plantation covers a vast deal of ground, and the hospitality
of the Warmouth mansion is graduated to the same large scale.
We saw steam-plows at work, here, for the first time. The traction engine
travels about on its own wheels, till it reaches the required spot;
then it stands still and by means of a wire rope pulls the huge plow toward
itself two or three hundred yards across the field, between the rows of cane.
The thing cuts down into the black mold a foot and a half deep.
The plow looks like a fore-and-aft brace of a Hudson river steamer, inverted.
When