10. The island which I remembered was some three miles long and a quarter of a mile wide, heavily timbered, and lay near the Kentucky shore--within two hundred yards of it, I should say. Now, however, one had to hunt for it with a spy-glass. Nothing was left of it but an insignificant little tuft, and this was no longer near the Kentucky shore; it was clear over against the opposite shore, a mile away. In war times the island had been an important place, for it commanded the situation; and, being heavily fortified, there was no getting by it. It lay between the upper and lower divisions of the Union forces, and kept them separate, until a junction was finally effected across the Missouri neck of land; but the island being itself joined to that neck now, the wide river is without obstruction.
In this region the river passes from Kentucky into Tennessee, back into Missouri, then back into Kentucky, and thence into Tennessee again. So a mile or two of Missouri sticks over into Tennessee.
The town of New Madrid was looking very unwell;
but otherwise unchanged from its former condition and aspect.
Its blocks of frame-houses were still grouped in the same
old flat plain, and environed by the same old forests.
It was as tranquil as formerly, and apparently had neither grown
nor diminished in size. It was said that the recent high water
had invaded it and damaged its looks. This was surprising news;
for in low water the river bank is very high there (fifty feet), and
in my day an overflow had always been considered an impossibility.
This present flood of 1882 Will doubtless be celebrated
in the river's history for several generations before a deluge
of like magnitude shall be seen. It put all the unprotected
low lands under water, from Cairo to the mouth; it broke down
the levees in a great many places, on both sides of the river;
and in some regions south, when the flood was at its highest,
the Mississippi was SEVENTY MILES wide! a number of lives
were lost, and the destruction of property was fearful.
The crops were destroyed, houses washed away, and shelterless men
and cattle forced to take refuge on scattering elevations here
and there in field and forest, and wait in peril and suffering
until the boats put in commission by the national and local
governments and by newspaper enterprise could come and rescue them.
The properties of multitudes of people were under water for months,
and the poorer ones must have starved by the hundred if succor
had not been promptly afforded.
Chapter 27 Some Imported Articles
WE met two steamboats at New Madrid. Two steamboats in sight at once! an infrequent spectacle now in the lonesome Mississippi. The loneliness of this solemn, stupendous flood is impressive-- and depressing. League after league, and still league after league, it pours its chocolate tide along, between its solid forest walls, its almost untenanted shores, with seldom a sail or a moving object of any kind to disturb the surface and break the monotony of the blank, watery solitude; and so the day goes, the night comes, and again the day--and still the same, night after night and day after day--majestic, unchanging sameness of serenity, repose, tranquillity, lethargy, vacancy--symbol of eternity, realization of the heaven pictured by priest and prophet, and longed for by the good and thoughtless!
Immediately after the war of 1812, tourists began to come to America, from England; scattering ones at first, then a sort of procession of them--a procession which kept up its plodding, patient march through the land during many, many years. Each tourist took notes, and went home and published a book-- a book which was usually calm, truthful, reasonable, kind; but which seemed just the reverse to our tender-footed progenitors. A glance at these tourist-books shows us that in certain of its aspects the Mississippi has undergone no change since those strangers visited it, but remains to-day about as it was then. The emotions produced in those foreign breasts by these aspects were not all formed on one pattern, of course; they HAD to be various, along at first, because the earlier tourists were obliged to originate their emotions, whereas in older countries one can always borrow emotions from one's predecessors. And, mind you, emotions are among the toughest things in the world to manufacture out of whole cloth; it is easier to manufacture seven facts than one emotion.