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THE
LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF
CAPT. STEPHEN B. HANKS,
COMING DOWN FROM THE PINERIES
July 9, 1921
Our trip had been a long one and the
work hard and exhausting. So I took my time in the city to
rest up and satisfy my boyish curiosity with the various
amusements and sight seeings. I put up at the William Tell
hotel, attended theatre a number of times, which was new to
me, took in Carondelet and Shaw’s garden. It was my first
experience in the city although there is very little
comparison between the St. Louis of that day and the one of
the present and very little escaped me. The levee was a busy
place and a most interesting sight to me. All transportation
at that time was by water and the levee was covered by what
looked like mountains of freight and steamboats lay as closely
as they could be packed. Many of the boats were really
magnificent as the lower river packets were lavishly
ornamented and furnished to attract the attention of the best
people and induce them to travel. The city of that day was a
French town and would look queer to the present generation.
Having seen the city to my satisfaction
I took passage on the Potosi, a new boat making her first trip
for Albany. I had been paid off in what was known as
“Shawneetown” money. It went all right in St. Louis but I
learned to my sorrow that the farther north I got the less it
was worth and on some of it I realized only forty cents on the
dollar. Those were the days of “wild cat” money of which
doubtless few of our readers can remember. First class
passage to St. Paul was ten dollars and I paid seven dollars
to Albany, which place I reached sometime in August, but I
cannot say on what date.
I was very tired from my year’s
experience and decided to settle down in Albany and get
something to do. E. H. Newitt and his mother were
living alone and I made my home with them during the winter,
that of 1842-3. Several of us induced Wm. Ewing to open a
select school and I endeavored to make up somewhat for the
lack of education in my early boyhood. I did not take on any
regular employment during the winter, which was very
pleasantly passed, but by doing odd jobs, working Saturdays
and the like, I more than paid my way and kept myself in
clothes. With the first warm days of spring I began to get
restless and I had an unsatisfied longing for something not to
be found in Albany so when the season of navigation opened my
boyish ambition came fully to life and I was ready for a
vigorous campaign.
I took passage on the Steamer Pavilion
for Galena and there changed to the Rock River which was going
direct to St. Paul t go into the packet trade in the Harris
line. Reaching St. Paul I was a long way from St. Croix
Falls, so I set out on foot across the country. At Carley’s
now Stillwater, I found some of the men from the mill with a
boat and that saved further walking. Reached the mill about
the first of May, I think, and was soon at my old job with
Ryan, dropping cribs of lumber down through the Dalles.
This work continued until the middle or
later part of June when once more we had two rafts ready for
down river and again I shipped as a raft hand with Sandy
McPhail.
The incidents on this trip were much
the same as those of the year before, but we were learning and
many things went smother and we made better progress. I take
credit for the one very great improvement and that is in the
manner of stopping the raft. Under my instructions checking,
or snubbing, work practically as have been on rafts ever
since, were built on these rafts and instead of taking the
entire line ashore we took only the end, which was made fast
to a tree and we did the work of stopping the raft on board.
I got the idea from the landing of steamboats.
On arrival at lower rapids, water was
found too low to for our rafts so they were laid up at
Nashville and the most of us sent back to the mill, a few
being retained pending consideration of the proposition to
lighten by re rafting the lumber, a hard and expensive task.
I do not know when the journey was continued.
The return trip was made on the
Cecelia, Captain Throckmorton, one of the old boats
running on the upper river when I first knew it. She landed
us at the site of Stillwater and I found a Mackinaw boat there
belonging to the mill, in which our journey was finished.
The second pair of rafts not being
ready some twenty of us were sent up to the mouth of Snake
river to assist in getting logs to the mill. The water in the
St. Croix was low, many of the logs were on the banks of the
river, left there by the high water, and others were on dry
bars and in pockets. All had to be rolled into the water
where many of them would float a short distance and stick,
although some of the smaller logs would be good enough to keep
on going. It was midsummer and hot and the mosquitoes swarmed
around us by the million and the nets we worked would not keep
them out. We were wet nearly all the time and when we reached
the mill with the drive, something like a million feet, we
were all worn out and ready for anything new. The mill was
started as soon as the first logs reached it and Ryan and I
took our old job of shooting the cribs through the Dalles.
About the middle of October the two
rafts were completed and although it was late in the season,
it was thought best to pull out and go as far we could. To
facilitate the passage through the lakes Capt. Page, one of
the bosses at the mill had a scheme which we put into effect.
We took a second line and anchor and a team of horses. The
rafts were coupled end to end and a platform built over each
space between the cribs.
When the anchor had been dropped the
horses were hitched to the end of the line and started to the
after end of the raft. The other anchor was laid while the
horse4s were on the return trip.
This proved quite a success as we could
proceed against a little head wind and it was much easier on
the men. They were not obliged to do the pulling as before,
but they were not idle by any means. Those long lines were
very heavy and the men had to drag them back and ease them
along and of course they were wet and the air and water cold.
Boards with a notch cut in them were used as much as possible
for handling the lines to avoid grasping them with the hands.
We had frequent detentions form wind
and bad weather. When we reached Baily Wells place in Lake
Pepin we were detained two days and a night during which time
Well’s entertained us royally feeding us on trout, venison and
beer meat. It was my first taste of the latter and I did not
exactly like it. It resembled pork with a rank oil taste that
seemed to be all through it instead of in the fat layers as In
pork. When we got away from the Well’s we made the balance of
the trip to Read’s Landing in about twenty-four hours. Here
we lay for a couple of days on account of bad weather and
awaiting the arrival of a boat that would take Capt. Page
and the horses back to the mill. |
