To "know the river" fully, the pilot must not only know everything which may be seen by the eye, but he must also feel for a great deal of information of the first importance which is not revealed to the eye alone. Where the water warrants it, he reaches for this information with a lead line; as on the lower river, where the water is deeper, and the draft of boats correspondingly great. On the upper river, a twelve-foot pole answers instead. The performance is always one of great interest to the passengers; the results are often of greater interest to the man at the wheel. The manner in which the reports of the leadsman are received and digested by the pilot, is not usually known to or comprehended by the uninitiated. The proceeding is picturesque, and adds one more "feature" to the novelties of the trip. It is always watched with the greatest interest by the tourist, and is apparently always enjoyed by them, whatever the effect upon the pilot; whether he enjoys it or not depends on the circumstances.

Soundings are not always necessarily for the immediate and present purpose of working the boat over any particular bar, at the particular time at which they are taken, although they may be taken for that purpose and no other. In general, during the season of low water, the leads are kept going in all difficult places as much for the purpose of comparison as for the immediate purpose of feeling one's way over the especial reef or bar where the soundings are taken. If it is suspected that a reef is "making down", the pilot wants to satisfy himself on that point, so that he may readjust his marks to meet the changed outlines. If a reef is "dissolving", he also wants to know that, and readjust his marks accordingly—only in the first place, his marks will be set lower down the river; in case of a dissolving reef, his marks will be set farther upstream, to follow the deep water which is always found close under the reef—that is, on the downstream side. The shallowest water is always on the crest of the reef, and it "tapers" back, upstream, very gradually, for rods—sometimes for half a mile or even more, until another reef is reached, with deep water under it, and another system of shallows above.

This is where the perfection of the pilot's memory machine is demonstrated along another line. He has acquainted himself with every bluff, hill, rock, tree, stump, house, woodpile, and whatever else is to be noted along the banks of the river. He has further added to this fund of information a photographic negative in his mind, showing the shape of all the curves, bends, capes, and points of the river's banks, so that he may shut his eyes, yet see it all, and with such certainty that he can, on a night so perfectly black that the shore line is blotted out, run his boat within fifty feet of the shore and dodge snags, wrecks, overhanging trees, and all other obstacles by running the shape of the river as he knows it to be—not as he can see it. In sounding, he is mentally charting the bottom of the river as he has already charted the surface and its surroundings.

As he approaches the crossing which he wishes to verify, he pulls the rope attached to the tongue of the big bell on the roof, and sounds one stroke, and an instant later two strokes. The captain or mate on watch sings out: "Starboard lead!" "Larboard lead!" and the men detailed for the duty are at their stations in a minute or less after the order is given. Then the cry, first from starboard and then from port, long-drawn and often musical: "No-o-o bottom; no-o-o bottom!" rises from the fo'c'sle, and is repeated by the captain or mate to the pilot. "Mar-r-k twain, mar-r-r-k twain!" indicates soundings the depth of the sounding pole—twelve feet, or two fathoms. This is of no interest to the pilot, for he knew there was "no bottom" and "two fathoms" before the soundings were taken. It is of the highest interest to the passengers, however, to whom the cry of "no bottom" seems a paradox, when the boat has been rubbing the bottom most of the way from Rock Island up. They have not yet been taught that this simply means no bottom with a twelve-foot pole, and does not indicate that the Mississippi is a bottomless stream at this or any other point. On the upper river, the cry of "ten feet, eight and a half", or even "six feet", does not strike any sensitive spot in the pilot's mental machinery, for upper river men are used to running "where there is a heavy dew". On such occasions he might listen to the latest story, detailed by a visiting comrade, and even take part in the conversation, apparently indifferent to the monotonous cries from the lower deck. But all the time his brain is fitting the leadsman's cries to the marks in which the cries have found his boat—not consciously, perhaps, but nevertheless surely. He has not only fitted the cry into the marks, but has mentally compared the present with the depth of water cried at the same spot last trip, and the trip before that, and noted the change, if any has taken place. Say the leadsman has sung "six feet", "six feet", "six feet", "six feet", "six feet", until you would think there was no other depth but six feet in the river; then in the same tone he sings "five-and-a-half", "six feet", "six feet", "six feet". The pilot is still talking with his visitor, watching his marks and turning his wheel; but he has picked out that "five-and-a-half" and stored it away for future reference, together with all the surroundings of his boat at the instant the call reached his ear—the marks ahead, astern, and on either side. The next trip, as the leadsman sings "six feet", "six feet", "six feet", he will be shocked and grievously disappointed if he does not find his "five-and-a-half" at just that point. And he will not be counting the "six feet" cries, nor, possibly, will he be aware that he is looking for the "five-and-a-half". When he drops into the marks where the "five-and-a-half" found him last week, if he hears only the "six feet", he will be in a similar frame of mind to the man who, coming into town, misses a prominent tree or house, and asks: "Where is that big tree that stood on the corner, when I was here last time"?

The pilot does all this without realizing that he is making any mental effort. When he begins this sort of drill as a "cub", he realizes it fully; and if he is half sharp he will open an account with every shoal place between Rock Island and St. Paul, and set down in writing the soundings on the lowest place on each reef, and try to supply the marks in which his steamer lay when the cry was heard. As he grows in his studies he will rely less on his notebook and more upon his memory, until the mental picture of the bottom of the river becomes as vivid as that of the surface. Then, when his chief asks suddenly: "How much water was there on the middle crossing at Beef Slough last trip"? he can answer promptly: "Four feet on starboard, four feet scant on port".

"How much trip before last?"

"Four feet large, both sides."

"Right, my boy; you're doing well."

If that "cub" doesn't grow an inch in a minute, under these circumstances, he isn't the right kind of boy to have around.

Naturally the boys studied the "nightmares", first of all. If they could get over Cassville, Brownsville, Trempealeau, Rolling-stone, Beef Slough, Prescott, Grey Cloud, and Pig's Eye, they could manage all the rest of the river. But the leads were kept going in fifty other places which, while not so bad, had enough possibilities to warrant the closest watching. The chiefs were making mental notes of all these places, and could tell you the soundings on every crossing where a lead had been cast, as readily as the "cubs" could recite the capital letter readings of Beef Slough and Pig's Eye. The miracle of it was, how they could do this without giving any apparent attention to the matter at the time. They struck the bell, the leadsman sang, the mate or captain repeated the cries mechanically, while the pilot appeared to pay little or no attention to the matter. When he had enough of the music he tapped the bell to lay in the leads, and nothing was said as to the results. Yet if asked at St. Paul by a brother pilot how much water he found on any one of a hundred crossings of average depth, he could tell, without hesitation, just where he found the lowest cast of the lead.

In my experience as a printer I have stood at the case and set up an editorial out of my head (how "able" I will not pretend to say), at the same time keeping up a spirited argument on politics or religion with a visitor. The thinking appeared to be all devoted to the argument; it was probably the talking only. To set the type required no thought at all; that was purely mechanical; and to compose the editorial was the unconscious operation of the mind, accustomed to doing just this sort of thing, until the framing of words into sentences became more or less mechanical. Certainly the mental drill of a river pilot along a very few lines, developed a memory for the things pertaining to his profession which was wonderful, when you sit down and attempt to analyze it. To the men themselves it was not a wonder—it was the merest commonplace. It was among the things which you must acquire before you could pilot a steamboat; and for a consideration they would covenant to teach any boy of average mental ability and common sense all these things, provided always that he had the physical ability to handle a wheel, and provided also, that he demonstrated in time of trial that he had the "nerve" necessary for the business. A timid, cowardly, or doubting person had no business in the pilot house. If it were possible for him to acquire all the rest, and he lacked the nerve to steady him in time of danger, he was promptly dropped out of the business.

I saw this illustrated in the case of a rapids pilot between St. Paul and St. Anthony. We always made this trip when a cargo of flour was offered by the one mill which in that early day represented all there was of that great interest which now dominates the business of Minneapolis. While our pilots were both capable of taking the boat to St. Anthony and back, the underwriters required that we should take a special pilot for the trip—one who made a specialty of that run. On the occasion in point we had taken an unusually heavy cargo, as the river was at a good stage. At that time the channel was very crooked, winding about between reefs of solid rock, with an eight to ten mile current. It required skilful manipulation of the wheel to keep the stern of the boat off the rocks. In going downstream it is comparatively easy to get the bow of a steamer around a crooked place; it is not easy to keep the stern from swinging into danger. In this case the stern of the steamer struck a rock reef with such force as to tear one of the wing rudders out by the roots, in doing which enough noise was made to warrant the belief that half the boat was gone. The special pilot was satisfied that such was the case, and exclaimed: "She is gone!" at the same time letting go the wheel and jumping for the pilot house door. She would have been smashed into kindlings in a minute if she had been left to herself, or had the engines been stopped even for an instant. Fortunately the rapids pilot was so scared by the noise of rending timbers and wheel-buckets that he did not have nerve enough left to ring a bell, and the engineer on watch was not going to stop until a bell was rung, as he knew that the drift of a minute in 97 98 that white water, would pile us up on the next reef below. Fortunately for the "Fanny Harris", Tom Cushing was in the pilot house, as well as myself. When the other man dropped the wheel Cushing jumped for it, and fired an order to me to get hold of the other side of the wheel, and for the next six miles he turned and twisted among the reefs, under a full head of steam, which was necessary to give us steerageway in such a current. We never stopped until we reached St. Paul, where we ran over to the west shore, it being shallow, and beached the boat. When she struck land the captain took the special pilot by the collar and kicked him ashore, at the same time giving him the benefit of the strongest language in use on the river at that time. Beyond the loss of a rudder and some buckets from the wheel, the boat was not seriously damaged, and we continued the voyage to Galena as we were. Had Tom Cushing not been in the pilot house at the time, she would have been a wreck in the rapids a mile or so below St. Anthony Falls. The rapids pilot lost his certificate.