t even remember what part of the river it used to be in, except
that it was between St. Louis and Cairo somewhere. It was a bad region--
all around and about Hat Island, in early days. A farmer who lived on
the Illinois shore there, said that twenty-nine steamboats had left
their bones strung along within sight from his house. Between St. Louis
and Cairo the steamboat wrecks average one to the mile;--two hundred
wrecks, altogether.

I could recognize big changes from Commerce down. Beaver Dam Rock was
out in the middle of the river now, and throwing a prodigious 'break;'
it used to be close to the shore, and boats went down outside of it. A
big island that used to be away out in mid-river, has retired to the
Missouri shore, and boats do not go near it any more. The island called
Jacket Pattern is whittled down to a wedge now, and is booked for early
destruction. Goose Island is all gone but a little dab the size of a
steamboat. The perilous 'Graveyard,' among whose numberless wrecks we
used to pick our way so slowly and gingerly, is far away from the
channel now, and a terror to nobody. One of the islands formerly called
the Two Sisters is gone entirely; the other, which used to lie close to
the Illinois shore, is now on the Missouri side, a mile away; it is
joined solidly to the shore, and it takes a sharp eye to see where the
seam is--but it is Illinois ground yet, and the people who live on it
have to ferry themselves over and work the Illinois roads and pay
Illinois taxes: singular state of things!

Near the mouth of the river several islands were missing--washed away.
Cairo was still there--easily visible across the long, flat point upon
whose further verge it stands; but we had to steam a long way around to
get to it. Night fell as we were going out of the 'Upper River' and
meeting the floods of the Ohio. We dashed along without anxiety; for
the hidden rock which used to lie right in the way has moved up stream a
long distance out of the channel; or rather, about one county has gone
into the river from the Missouri point, and the Cairo point has 'made
down' and added to its long tongue of territory correspondingly. The
Mississippi is a just and equitable river; it never tumbles one man's
farm overboard without building a new farm just like it for that man's
neighbor. This keeps down hard feelings.

Going into Cairo, we came near killing a steamboat which paid no
attention to our whistle and then tried to cr