MARK TWAIN

Montezuma. Shape Bar till head of towhead & main point
open—then hold open to right of high trees on towhead
till get close enough to go up shore of towhead. Channel
out past head of towhead.

Outside of Montezuma—use 6 or 8 feet more water.
Shape Bar till high timber on tow head gets nearly even
with low willows do. do. then hold a little open on right
of low willow—run 'em close if you want to, but come
out 100 yards when you get nearly to head of T. H.

It means nothing definite to us—it meant little
enough to him, a day after he had written it.
Yet he had to store that lesson and thousands
more like it safely away in his head and keep
them there. That a man of Mark Twain's tem-
perament and easy-going nature should have
persisted through all the months required to con-
quer that great, mysterious, eternally changing
river is one of the wonders of human achieve-
ment.

The next book bears date of 1860—four years
later, when he had been for more than two years
a full-fledged pilot, with all the intricate knowl-
edge which that fact connotes assembled in ^ or-
derly arrangement in his unaccountable mind.
It is not a lesson that he gives us now, but a
record of fact—the story of a day or a night.
Of a night he writes:

4 to 6 feet bank on point below foot of Buck. Could have
run Buck Island to tow head. Night—didn't.

4 & 5 ft. bank up shore opp. Dark Corner.
Had y^ less 3 in foot of Cat I, tow-head. . , .

Hove lead at head of 55—no bottom—ran no channel in

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