“There was a law in France,” said the captain, “that any citizen absent from the country for thirty-five years lost all claim to property.  My father’s people were pretty well off, so in ’42 he started back, but he was taken ill and died in New Orleans.”

Captain Parisot was born in 1828, and in 1847 began “learning the river.”  In 1854 he became part owner of a boat, and three years later purchased one of his own.

“I bought her in Cincinnati,” he said.  Then, reflectively, he added:  “There was a good deal of drinking in those days.  When I brought her down on her first trip I had 183 tons of freight, and 500 barrels of whisky, from Cincinnati, for one little country store—­Barksdale & McFarland’s, at Yazoo City.”

“There was a good deal of gambling, too, wasn’t there?” one of us suggested.

“There was indeed,” smiled the old captain.  “Every steamboat was a gambling house, and there used to be big games before the war.”

“How big?”

“Well,” he returned, “as Captain Leathers once put it, it used to be ‘nigger ante and plantation limit.’  And that’s no joke about playing for niggers either.  Those old planters would play for anything.  I’ve known people to get on a boat at Yazoo City to come to Vicksburg, and get in a game, and never get off at Vicksburg at all—­just go back to Yazoo; yes, and come down again, to keep the game going.

“There was a saloon called the Exchange near our house in Yazoo, and I remember once my father got into a game, there, with a gambler named Spence Thrift.  That was before the war.  Thrift was a terrible stiff bluffer.  When he got ready to clean up, he’d shove up his whole pile.  Well, he did that to my father.  Thrift’s pile was twenty-two hundred dollars, and all my father had in front of him was eight hundred.  But he owned a young negro named Calvin, so he called Calvin, and told him:  ‘Here, boy!  Jump up on the table.’  That equalled the gambler’s pile; and it finished him—­he threw down his hand, beaten.

“Business in those times was done largely on friendship.  It used to be said that I ‘owned’ the Yazoo River when I was running my line.  I knew everybody up there.  They were my friends, and they gave me their business for that reason, and also because I brought the cotton down here to Vicksburg, and reshipped it from here on, down the river.  It was considered an advantage to reship cotton because moving it from one boat to another knocked the mud off the bales.

“There used to be some enormous cargoes of cotton carried.  The largest boat on the river was the Henry Frank, owned by Frank Hicks of Memphis.  She ran between Memphis and New Orleans, and on one trip carried 9226 bales.  Those were the old-style bales, of course.  They weighed 425 to 450 pounds each, as against 550 to 600 pounds, which is the weight of a bale to-day, now that powerful machinery is used to make them.  The heavy bale came into use partly to beat transportation charges, as rates were not made by weight, but at so much per bale.