MARK TWAIN

Rouge and were massacred by the Indians, who stained
a mast or stick with their blood and stuck it up as a
warning to other pirates to keep away; hence the name
"Baton Rouge."

The snag boats and beacons are a grand good thing,
but / think (says Pilot) the river commission will fool
away money for nothing, trying to tame and order this
channel.

George Ritchie was blown up on a boat above Mem-
phis—blown into the river from pilot wheel, and dis-
abled—clung to cotton bale in very cold water with his
teeth and floated till rescued, nearly exhausted, by deck
hands on piece of wreck. They tore open the bale and
put him in it and warmed the life back into him and so
got him to Memphis. He will never get entirely over the
effects. Bixby was blown up in Madrid Bend, and his
partner lost.

All the accidents, nearly, happened near Memphis, and
that generous town is heavily taxed.

Prodigious storm of rain and wind opposite Buck
Island, in afternoon of May 9. It seemed the pilot house
was bound to be blown away, so I went down in the
hold to see what time it was. Kept up till midnight.

At the devil's elbow, above Memphis, the river now
runs several miles upstream where it used to run down.
This is at Fogleman's chute which is half mile wide or
more and is the channel, but in my time a fallen tree
would almost bridge it.

At 5 P.M. got to where Hat Island was. It is now
gone, every vestige of it. Goose Island at the graveyard

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