The scenery, from St. Louis to Cairo—two
hundred miles—is varied and beautiful.
The hills were clothed in the fresh foliage of spring
now, and were a gracious and worthy setting for the
broad river flowing between. Our trip began auspiciously,
with a perfect day, as to breeze and sunshine, and
our boat threw the miles out behind her with satisfactory
despatch.
We found a railway intruding at Chester, Illinois;
Chester has also a penitentiary now, and is otherwise
marching on. At Grand Tower, too, there was
a railway; and another at Cape Girardeau. The
former town gets its name from a huge, squat pillar
of rock, which stands up out of the water on the Missouri
side of the river—a piece of nature’s
fanciful handiwork—and is one of the most
picturesque features of the scenery of that region.
For nearer or remoter neighbors, the Tower has the
Devil’s Bake Oven—so called, perhaps,
because it does not powerfully resemble anybody else’s
bake oven; and the Devil’s Tea Table—this
latter a great smooth-surfaced mass of rock, with
diminishing wine-glass stem, perched some fifty or
sixty feet above the river, beside a beflowered and
garlanded precipice, and sufficiently like a tea-table
to answer for anybody, Devil or Christian. Away
down the river we have the Devil’s Elbow and
the Devil’s Race-course, and lots of other property
of his which I cannot now call to mind.
The Town of Grand Tower was evidently a busier place
than it had been in old times, but it seemed to need
some repairs here and there, and a new coat of whitewash
all over. Still, it was pleasant to me to see
the old coat once more. ‘Uncle’ Mumford,
our second officer, said the place had been suffering
from high water, and consequently was not looking its
best now. But he said it was not strange that
it didn’t waste white-wash on itself, for more
lime was made there, and of a better quality, than
anywhere in the West; and added—’On
a dairy farm you never can get any milk for your coffee,
nor any sugar for it on a sugar plantation; and it
is against sense to go to a lime town to hunt for white-wash.’
In my own experience I knew the first two items to
be true; and also that people who sell candy don’t
care for candy; therefore there was plausibility in
Uncle Mumford’s final observation that ’people
who make lime run more to religion than whitewash.’
Uncle Mumford said, further, that Grand Tower was
a great coaling center and a prospering place.
Cape Girardeau is situated on a hillside, and makes
a handsome appearance. There is a great Jesuit
school for boys at the foot of the town by the river.
Uncle Mumford said it had as high a reputation for
thoroughness as any similar institution in Missouri!
There was another college higher up on an airy summit—a
bright new edifice, picturesquely and peculiarly towered
and pinnacled—a sort of gigantic casters,
