The Island Pirate: A Tale of the Mississippi
9781465675644
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Many long years have elapsed since I first set foot in the valley of the Mississippi. I had strayed thither a young and enthusiastic traveler, with scarce any other aim than adventure. I soon discovered that I had got into the very ground where such a taste could be gratified. Amid scenes of softness or sublimity, or tranquil solitude or stirring life—amid varied types of nationality, and strange contrasts of character—scarce a day passed without its incident, nor week wanting in some episode worthy of remembrance. Many of them have at least proved worthy of mine; and I now look back upon them with that romantic interest by which the past often reflects itself in the mirror of memory. That I am about to record is of a mixed character—a drama in which there are scenes of pain as well as pleasure—both of real occurrence. Whether interesting or no, they may be deemed improbable; though not by those who have studied the social characteristics of the Mississippi valley at the period to which they refer—before the "Far West" had commenced receding from the great river, and its settlements had refused to give shelter to those outcasts of society, who own no law but that of the lex talionis, and no lawyer but Lynch. Unlike most travelers through Mississippian territory, I entered it from the south—by the mouth of its main river—making my first station in the city of New Orleans. It was late in the spring when I arrived there. And soon after the red cross, beginning to show itself on the doors of the humbler dwellings that lay "swampward," warned me of the presence of that terrible epidemic, which there annually decimated the ranks of such strangers as were compelled to make their summer sojourn in the place. Taking the hint, I bade a temporary adieu to New Orleans, intending to return to it after the first frost in the "fall." Straying northward, here and there halting as chance or caprice directed, I was at length carried into the Ohio and up the Cumberland river to the capital of Tennessee. By this time the forest foliage had become tinged with red, and the leaf was beginning to fall. My stay, therefore, in the "City of Rocks," though pleasant, was not prolonged; and I made preparations for leaving it: not by a steamboat, as I had come, but on horseback—a mode of traveling I much preferred, as, in fact, the only one by which such a country can be properly seen. With a stout roadster between my thighs, and a valise buckled to the croup behind me, I took the Franklin "pike," leading southward from the city. I contemplated a long ride—so long, that were I to state the distance, it might test the credulity of my reader; as it did that of a traveler, who shortly after overtook me. I had made some three miles along the dusty pike, and was nearly opposite a large pile of building, standing to the right of the road, when the traveler in question came gliding alongside. He was upon a "pacer," and could soon have passed me; but instead of doing so, he checked his steed into a walk, and rode by my side. Glancing toward him, I saw that he was a young man, dressed in white linen coat and trowsers, with well-fitting boots upon his feet, and a Panama hat upon his head.
