th of the Obion
River. The spy-glass revealed the fact that she was named for me--or HE
was named for me, whichever you prefer. As this was the first time I had
ever encountered this species of honor, it seems excusable to mention
it, and at the same time call the attention of the authorities to the
tardiness of my recognition of it.

Noted a big change in the river, at Island 21. It was a very large
island, and used to be out toward mid-stream; but it is joined fast to
the main shore now, and has retired from business as an island.

As we approached famous and formidable Plum Point, darkness fell, but
that was nothing to shudder about--in these modern times. For now
the national government has turned the Mississippi into a sort of
two-thousand-mile torchlight procession. In the head of every crossing,
and in the foot of every crossing, the government has set up a
clear-burning lamp. You are never entirely in the dark, now; there is
always a beacon in sight, either before you, or behind you, or abreast.
One might almost say that lamps have been squandered there. Dozens of
crossings are lighted which were not shoal when they were created,
and have never been shoal since; crossings so plain, too, and also so
straight, that a steamboat can take herself through them without any
help, after she has been through once. Lamps in such places are of
course not wasted; it is much more convenient and comfortable for a
pilot to hold on them than on a spread of formless blackness that won't
stay still; and money is saved to the boat, at the same time, for she
can of course make more miles with her rudder amidships than she can
with it squared across her stern and holding her back.

But this thing has knocked the romance out of piloting, to a large
extent. It, and some other things together, have knocked all the romance
out of it. For instance, the peril from snags is not now what it once
was. The government's snag-boats go patrolling up and down, in these
matter-of-fact days, pulling the river's teeth; they have rooted out
all the old clusters which made many localities so formidable; and they
allow no new ones to collect. Formerly, if your boat got away from you,
on a black night, and broke for the woods, it was an anxious time with
you; so was it also, when you were groping your way through solidified
darkness in a narrow chute; but all that is changed now--you flash out
your electric light, transform night into day in the twinkl