It was always the custom for the boats to leave
New Orleans between four and five o’clock in
the afternoon. From three o’clock onward
they would be burning rosin and pitch pine (the sign
of preparation), and so one had the picturesque spectacle
of a rank, some two or three miles long, of tall,
ascending columns of coal-black smoke; a colonnade
which supported a sable roof of the same smoke blended
together and spreading abroad over the city.
Every outward-bound boat had its flag flying at the
jack-staff, and sometimes a duplicate on the verge
staff astern. Two or three miles of mates were
commanding and swearing with more than usual emphasis;
countless processions of freight barrels and boxes
were spinning athwart the levee and flying aboard
the stage-planks, belated passengers were dodging
and skipping among these frantic things, hoping to
reach the forecastle companion way alive, but having
their doubts about it; women with reticules and bandboxes
were trying to keep up with husbands freighted with
carpet-sacks and crying babies, and making a failure
of it by losing their heads in the whirl and roar and
general distraction; drays and baggage-vans were clattering
hither and thither in a wild hurry, every now and
then getting blocked and jammed together, and then
during ten seconds one could not see them for the profanity,
except vaguely and dimly; every windlass connected
with every forehatch, from one end of that long array
of steamboats to the other, was keeping up a deafening
whiz and whir, lowering freight into the hold, and
the half-naked crews of perspiring negroes that worked
them were roaring such songs as ‘De Las’
Sack! De Las’ Sack!’—inspired
to unimaginable exaltation by the chaos of turmoil
and racket that was driving everybody else mad.
By this time the hurricane and boiler decks of the
steamers would be packed and black with passengers.
The ‘last bells’ would begin to clang,
all down the line, and then the powwow seemed to double;
in a moment or two the final warning came,—a
simultaneous din of Chinese gongs, with the cry, ‘All
dat ain’t goin’, please to git asho’!’—and
behold, the powwow quadrupled! People came swarming
ashore, overturning excited stragglers that were trying
to swarm aboard. One more moment later a long
array of stage-planks was being hauled in, each with
its customary latest passenger clinging to the end
of it with teeth, nails, and everything else, and
the customary latest procrastinator making a wild
spring shoreward over his head.
Copyrights
Life on the Mississippi from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
