Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field Part 37

The cotton-blossom is exceedingly delicate in its organization. It is, if in perfection, as we have stated, of a beautiful cream-color.

It unfolds in the night, remains in its glory through the morn--at meridian it has begun to decay. The day following its birth it has changed to a deep red, and ere the sun goes down, its petals have fallen to the earth, leaving inclosed in the capacious calyx a scarcely perceptible germ. This germ, in its incipient and early stages, is called "a form;" in its more perfected state, "a boll."

The cotton-plant, like the orange, has often on one stalk every possible growth; and often, on the same limb, may sometimes be seen the first-opened blossom, and the bolls, from their first development as "forms," through every size, until they have burst open and scattered their rich contents to the ripening winds.

The appearance of a well-cultivated cotton-field, if it has escaped the ravages of insects and the destruction of the elements, is of singular beauty. Although it may be a mile in extent, still it is as carefully wrought as is the mold of the limited garden of the coldest climate. The cotton-leaf is of a delicate green, large and luxuriant; the stalk indicates rapid growth, yet it has a healthy and firm look.

Viewed from a distance, the perfecting plant has a warm and glowing expression. The size of the cotton-plant depends upon the accident of climate and soil. The cotton of Tennessee bears very little resemblance to the luxuriant growth of Alabama and Georgia; but even in those favored States the cotton-plant is not everywhere the same, for in the rich bottom-lands it grows to a commanding size, while in the more barren regions it is an humble shrub. In the rich alluvium of the Mississippi the cotton will tower beyond the reach of the tallest "picker," and a single plant will contain hundreds of perfect "bolls;"

in the neighboring "piney-woods" it lifts its humble head scarcely above the knee, and is proportionably meager in its produce of fruit.

The growing cotton is particularly liable to accidents, and suffers immensely in "wet seasons" from the "rust" and "rot." The first named affects the leaves, giving them a brown and deadened tinge, and frequently causes them to crumble away. The "rot" attacks the "boll."

It commences by a black spot on the rind, which, increasing, seems to produce fermentation and decay. Worms find their way to the roots; the caterpillar eats into the "boll" and destroys the staple. It would be almost impossible to enumerate all the evils the cotton-plant is heir to, all of which, however, sink into nothingness compared with the scourge of the "army-worm."

The moth that indicates the advent of the army-worm has a Quaker-like simplicity in its light, chocolate-colored body and wings, and, from its harmless appearance, would never be taken for the destroyer of vast fields of luxuriant and useful vegetation.

The little, and, at first, scarcely to be perceived caterpillars that follow the appearance of these moths, can absolutely be seen to grow and swell beneath your eyes as they crawl from leaf to leaf. Day by day you can see the vegetation of vast fields becoming thinner and thinner, while the worm, constantly increasing in size, a.s.sumes at last an unctuous appearance most disgusting to behold. Arrived at maturity, a few hours only are necessary for these modern locusts to eat up all living vegetation that comes in their way. Leaving the localities of their birth, they will move from place to place, spreading a desolation as consuming as fire in their path.

All efforts to arrest their progress or annihilate them prove unavailing. They seem to spring out of the ground, and fall from the clouds; and the more they are tormented and destroyed, the more perceptible, seemingly, is their power. We once witnessed the invasion of the army-worm, as it attempted to pa.s.s from a desolated cotton-field to one untouched. Between these fields was a wide ditch, which had been deepened, to prove a barrier to the onward march of the worm. Down the perpendicular sides of the trench the caterpillars rolled in untold millions, until its bottom, for nearly a mile in extent, was a foot or two deep in a living ma.s.s of animal life. To an immense piece of unhewn timber was attached a yoke of oxen, and, as this heavy log was drawn through the ditch, it seemed absolutely to float on a crushed ma.s.s of vegetable corruption. The following day, under the heat of a tropical sun, the stench arising from this decaying ma.s.s was perceptible the country round, giving a strange and incomprehensible notion of the power and abundance of this destroyer of the cotton crop.

The change that has been effected by the result of the Rebellion, will not be confined to the social system alone. With the end of slavery there will be a destruction of many former applications of labor.

Innovations have already been made, and their number will increase under the management of enterprising men.

In Louisiana several planters were using a "drill" for depositing the cotton-seed in the ground. The labor of planting is reduced more than one-half, and that of "sc.r.a.ping" is much diminished. The saving of seed is very great--the drill using about a tenth of the amount required under the old system.

One man is endeavoring to construct a machine that will pick cotton from the stalks, and is confident he will succeed. Should he do so, his patent will be of the greatest value. Owners of plantations have recently offered a present of ten thousand dollars to the first patentee of a successful machine of this character.

CHAPTER XLIII.

THE MISSISSIPPI AND ITS PECULIARITIES.

Length of the Great River, and the Area it Drains.--How Itasca Lake obtained its Name.--The Bends of the Mississippi.--Curious Effect upon t.i.tles to Real Estate.--A Story of Napoleon.--A Steamboat Thirty-five Years under Water.--The Current and its Variations.--Navigating Cotton and Corn Fields.--Reminiscences of the Islands.

As railways are to the East, so are the rivers to the West. The Mississippi, with its tributaries, drains an immense region, traversed in all directions by steamboats. From the Gulf of Mexico one can travel, by water to the Rocky Mountains, or to the Alleghanies, at pleasure. It is estimated there are twenty thousand miles of navigable streams which find an outlet past the city of New Orleans. The Mississippi Valley contains nearly a million and a quarter square miles, and is one of the most fertile regions on the globe.

To a person born and reared in the East, the Mississippi presents many striking features. Above its junction with the Missouri, its water is clear and its banks are broken and picturesque. After it joins the Missouri the scene changes. The latter stream is of a chocolate hue, and its current is very rapid. All its characteristics are imparted to the combined stream. The Mississippi becomes a rapid, tortuous, seething torrent. It loses its blue, transparent water, and takes the complexion of the Missouri. Thus "it goes unvexed to the sea."

There is a story concerning the origin of the name given to the source of the Mississippi, which I do not remember to have seen in print.

A certain lake, which had long been considered the head of the Great River, was ascertained by an exploring party to have no claim to that honor. A new and smaller lake was discovered, in which the Mississippi took its rise. The explorers wished to give it an appropriate name. An old _voyageur_ suggested that they make a name, by coining a word.

"Will some of you learned ones tell me," said he, "what is the Latin word for _true_?"

"_Veritas_," was the response.

"Well, now, what is the Latin for _head_"

"_Caput_, of course."

"Now," suggested the _voyageur_, "write the two words together, by syllables."

A strip of birch bark was the tablet on which "_ver-i-tas-ca-put_" was traced.

"Read it out," was his next request.

The five syllables were read.

"Now, drop the first and last syllables, and you have a name for this lake."

In the Indian vernacular, "Mississippi" is said to signify "Great Water." "Missouri," according to some authorities, is the Indian for "Mud River," a most felicitous appellation. It should properly belong to the entire river from St. Louis to the Gulf, as that stream carries down many thousand tons of mud every year. During the many centuries that the Mississippi has been sweeping on its course, it has formed that long point of land known as the Delta, and shallowed the water in the Gulf of Mexico for more than two hundred miles.

Flowing from north to south, the river pa.s.ses through all the varieties of climate. The furs from the Rocky Mountains and the cereals of Wisconsin and Minnesota are carried on its bosom to the great city which stands in the midst of orange groves and inhales the fragrance of the magnolia. From January to June the floods of its tributaries follow in regular succession, as the opening spring loosens the snows that line their banks.

The events of the war have made the Mississippi historic, and familiarized the public with some of its peculiarities. Its tortuosity is well known. The great bend opposite Vicksburg will be long remembered by thousands who have never seen it. This bend is eclipsed by many others. At "Terrapin Neck" the river flows twenty-one miles, and gains only three hundred yards. At "Raccourci Bend" was a peninsula twenty-eight miles around and only half a mile across.

Several years ago a "cut-off" was made across this peninsula, for the purpose of shortening the course of the river. A small ditch was cut, and opened when the flood was highest.

An old steamboat-man once told me that he pa.s.sed the upper end of this ditch just as the water was let in. Four hours later, as he pa.s.sed the lower end, an immense torrent was rushing through the channel, and the tall trees were falling like stalks of grain before a sickle.

Within a week the new channel became the regular route for steamboats.

Similar "cut-offs" have been made at various points along the river, some of them by artificial aid, and others entirely by the action of the water. The channel of the Mississippi is the dividing line of the States between which it flows, and the action of the river often changes the location of real estate. There is sometimes a material difference in the laws of States that lie opposite each other.

The transfer of property on account of a change in the channel occasionally makes serious work with t.i.tles.

I once heard of a case where the heirs to an estate lost their t.i.tle, in consequence of the property being transferred from Mississippi to Louisiana, by reason of the course of the river being changed. In the former State they were heirs beyond dispute. In the latter their claim vanished into thin air.

Once, while pa.s.sing up the Mississippi, above Cairo, a fellow-pa.s.senger called my attention to a fine plantation, situated on a peninsula in Missouri. The river, in its last flood, had broken across the neck of the peninsula. It was certain the next freshet would establish the channel in that locality, thus throwing the plantation into Illinois. Unless the negroes should be removed before this event they would become free.

"You see, sir," said my informant, "that this great river is an Abolitionist."

The alluvial soil through which the Mississippi runs easily yields to the action of the fierce current. The land worn away at one point is often deposited, in the form of a bar or tongue of land, in the concave of the next bend. The area thus added becomes the property of whoever owns the river front. Many a man has seen his plantation steadily falling into the Mississippi, year by year, while a plantation, a dozen miles below, would annually find its area increased. Real estate on the banks of the Mississippi, unless upon the bluffs, has no absolute certainty of permanence. In several places, the river now flows where there were fine plantations ten or twenty years ago.

Some of the towns along the Lower Mississippi are now, or soon will be, towns no more. At Waterproof, Louisiana, nearly the entire town-site, as originally laid out, has been washed away. In the four months I was in its vicinity, more than forty feet of its front disappeared. Eighteen hundred and seventy will probably find Waterproof at the bottom of the Mississippi. Napoleon, Arkansas, is following in the wake of Waterproof. If the distance between them were not so great, their sands might mingle. In view of the character Napoleon has long enjoyed, the friends of morality will hardly regret its loss.

The steamboat captains have a story that a quiet clergyman from New England landed at Napoleon, one morning, and made his way to the hotel. He found the proprietor superintending the efforts of a negro, who was sweeping the bar-room floor. Noticing several objects of a spherical form among the _debris_ of the bar-room, the stranger asked their character.

"Them round things? them's _eyes_. The boys amused themselves a little last night. Reckon there's 'bout a pint-cup full of eyes this mornin'.

Sometimes we gets a quart or so, when business is good."

Curious people were those natives of Arkansas, ten or twenty years ago. Schools were rare, and children grew up with little or no education. If there was a "barbarous civilization" anywhere in the United States, it was in Arkansas. In 1860, a man was hung at Napoleon for reading _The Tribune_. It is an open question whether the character of the paper or the man's ability to read was the reason for inflicting the death penalty.

The current of the Mississippi causes islands to be destroyed in some localities and formed in others. A large object settling at the bottom of the stream creates an eddy, in which the floating sand is deposited. Under favorable circ.u.mstances an island will form in such an eddy, sometimes of considerable extent.

About the year 1820, a steamboat, laden with lead, was sunk in mid-channel several miles below St. Louis. An island formed over this steamer, and a growth of cotton-wood trees soon covered it. These trees grew to a goodly size, and were cut for fuel. The island was cleared, and for several successive years produced fine crops of corn.

About 1855, there was a change in the channel of the river, and the island disappeared. After much search the location of the sunken steamer was ascertained. By means of a diving-bell, its cargo of lead, which had been lying thirty-five years under earth and under water, was brought to light. The entire cargo was raised, together with a portion of the engines. The lead was uninjured, but the engines were utterly worthless after their long burial.

The numerous bends of the Mississippi are of service in rendering the river navigable. If the channel were a straight line from Cairo to New Orleans, the current would be so strong that no boat could stem it.