ever traveled with a gray mare and a preacher. I went
down the river once in such company. We grounded at Bloody Island; we
grounded at Hanging Dog; we grounded just below this same Commerce;
we jolted Beaver Dam Rock; we hit one of the worst breaks in the
'Graveyard' behind Goose Island; we had a roustabout killed in a fight;
we burnt a boiler; broke a shaft; collapsed a flue; and went into Cairo
with nine feet of water in the hold--may have been more, may have been
less. I remember it as if it were yesterday. The men lost their heads
with terror. They painted the mare blue, in sight of town, and threw the
preacher overboard, or we should not have arrived at all. The preacher
was fished out and saved. He acknowledged, himself, that he had been to
blame. I remember it all, as if it were yesterday.'

That this combination--of preacher and gray mare--should breed calamity,
seems strange, and at first glance unbelievable; but the fact is
fortified by so much unassailable proof that to doubt is to dishonor
reason. I myself remember a case where a captain was warned by numerous
friends against taking a gray mare and a preacher with him, but
persisted in his purpose in spite of all that could be said; and the
same day--it may have been the next, and some say it was, though I think
it was the same day--he got drunk and fell down the hatchway, and was
borne to his home a corpse. This is literally true.

No vestige of Hat Island is left now; every shred of it is washed away.
I do not 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 'Graveyar