第79章 Sketches by the Way(3)

Well,that is all beautiful;soft and rich and beautiful;and when the sun gets well up,and distributes a pink flush here and a powder of gold yonder and a purple haze where it will yield the best effect,you grant that you have seen something that is worth remembering.

We had the Kentucky Bend country in the early morning--scene of a strange and tragic accident in the old times,Captain Poe had a small stern-wheel boat,for years the home of himself and his wife.One night the boat struck a snag in the head of Kentucky Bend,and sank with astonishing suddenness;water already well above the cabin floor when the captain got aft.

So he cut into his wife's state-room from above with an ax;she was asleep in the upper berth,the roof a flimsier one than was supposed;the first blow crashed down through the rotten boards and clove her skull.

This bend is all filled up now--result of a cut-off;and the same agent has taken the great and once much-frequented Walnut Bend,and set it away back in a solitude far from the accustomed track of passing steamers.

Helena we visited,and also a town I had not heard of before,it being of recent birth--Arkansas City.It was born of a railway;the Little Rock,Mississippi River and Texas Railroad touches the river there.

We asked a passenger who belonged there what sort of a place it was.

'Well,'said he,after considering,and with the air of one who wishes to take time and be accurate,'It's a hell of a place.'

A deion which was photographic for exactness.There were several rows and clusters of shabby frame-houses,and a supply of mud sufficient to insure the town against a famine in that article for a hundred years;for the overflow had but lately subsided.

There were stagnant ponds in the streets,here and there,and a dozen rude scows were scattered about,lying aground wherever they happened to have been when the waters drained off and people could do their visiting and shopping on foot once more.Still,it is a thriving place,with a rich country behind it,an elevator in front of it,and also a fine big mill for the manufacture of cotton-seed oil.

I had never seen this kind of a mill before.

Cotton-seed was comparatively valueless in my time;but it is worth $12or $13a ton now,and none of it is thrown away.

The oil made from it is colorless,tasteless,and almost if not entirely odorless.It is claimed that it can,by proper manipulation,be made to resemble and perform the office of any and all oils,and be produced at a cheaper rate than the cheapest of the originals.

Sagacious people shipped it to Italy,doctored it,labeled it,and brought it back as olive oil.This trade grew to be so formidable that Italy was obliged to put a prohibitory impost upon it to keep it from working serious injury to her oil industry.

Helena occupies one of the prettiest situations on the Mississippi.

Her perch is the last,the southernmost group of hills which one sees on that side of the river.In its normal condition it is a pretty town;but the flood (or possibly the seepage)had lately been ravaging it;whole streets of houses had been invaded by the muddy water,and the outsides of the buildings were still belted with a broad stain extending upwards from the foundations.Stranded and discarded scows lay all about;plank sidewalks on stilts four feet high were still standing;the board sidewalks on the ground level were loose and ruinous,--a couple of men trotting along them could make a blind man think a cavalry charge was coming;everywhere the mud was black and deep,and in many places malarious pools of stagnant water were standing.

A Mississippi inundation is the next most wasting and desolating infliction to a fire.

We had an enjoyable time here,on this sunny Sunday:two full hours'liberty ashore while the boat discharged freight.

In the back streets but few white people were visible,but there were plenty of colored folk--mainly women and girls;and almost without exception upholstered in bright new clothes of swell and elaborate style and cut--a glaring and hilarious contrast to the mournful mud and the pensive puddles.

Helena is the second town in Arkansas,in point of population--which is placed at five thousand.The country about it is exceptionally productive.Helena has a good cotton trade;handles from forty to sixty thousand bales annually;she has a large lumber and grain commerce;has a foundry,oil mills,machine shops and wagon factories--in brief has $1,000,000invested in manufacturing industries.She has two railways,and is the commercial center of a broad and prosperous region.

Her gross receipts of money,annually,from all sources,are placed by the New Orleans 'Times-Democrat'at $4,000,000.