NOTEBOOK
Those little books led the long procession that would
follow.
He had engaged himself to learn piloting—to familiarize
himself with twelve hundred miles of the Mississippi
River, "cub" of the great Horace Bixby. In Life on the
Mississippi he writes: "I entered upon the small enter-
prise of learning 12 or 13 hundred miles of the great
Mississippi River with the easy confidence of my time of
life. If I had really known what I was about to require
of my faculties I should not have had the courage to
begin. I supposed that all a pilot had to do was to keep
his boat in the river and I did not consider that that
could be much of a trick, since it was so wide."
A day or two later the easy confidence was all gone.
Bixby, asking him to repeat some of the instruction we
had furnished him, found that he could remember none
of it. His head was a mere jumble of "points" and "bends"
and "bars" and "crossings."
"My boy," said Mr. Bixby, "you must get a little
memorandum-book and every time I tell you a thing, put
it down, right away. There's only one way to be a pilot
and that is to get this entire river by heart. You have to
know it just like A B C."
He probably bought the little memorandum-book at
the next landing-place where such things were to be had
—at Cairo, most likely, for there his first entry appears to
have been made. He began with great diligence and en-
thusiasm. The first three or four pages are crowded with
confused entries, microscopic lead-pencil abbreviations,
today all but illegible. Later his enthusiasm waned, or he
recognized the futility of such a confusion. He systema-
tized his entries under blue pencil headings, and wrote
more legibly:
Delta to head 62 [small pencil sketch of steamboat with
the word "Bar," and picture of same]. Coming up, when
all the Bar is covered there is J4 less 2 in chute of