Chapter 25 From Cairo to Hickman

The scenery, from St. Louis to Cairo—­two hundred miles—­is varied and beautiful.  The hills were clothed in the fresh foliage of spring now, and were a gracious and worthy setting for the broad river flowing between.  Our trip began auspiciously, with a perfect day, as to breeze and sunshine, and our boat threw the miles out behind her with satisfactory despatch.

We found a railway intruding at Chester, Illinois; Chester has also a penitentiary now, and is otherwise marching on.  At Grand Tower, too, there was a railway; and another at Cape Girardeau.  The former town gets its name from a huge, squat pillar of rock, which stands up out of the water on the Missouri side of the river—­a piece of nature’s fanciful handiwork—­and is one of the most picturesque features of the scenery of that region.  For nearer or remoter neighbors, the Tower has the Devil’s Bake Oven—­so called, perhaps, because it does not powerfully resemble anybody else’s bake oven; and the Devil’s Tea Table—­this latter a great smooth-surfaced mass of rock, with diminishing wine-glass stem, perched some fifty or sixty feet above the river, beside a beflowered and garlanded precipice, and sufficiently like a tea-table to answer for anybody, Devil or Christian.  Away down the river we have the Devil’s Elbow and the Devil’s Race-course, and lots of other property of his which I cannot now call to mind.

The Town of Grand Tower was evidently a busier place than it had been in old times, but it seemed to need some repairs here and there, and a new coat of whitewash all over.  Still, it was pleasant to me to see the old coat once more.  ‘Uncle’ Mumford, our second officer, said the place had been suffering from high water, and consequently was not looking its best now.  But he said it was not strange that it didn’t waste white-wash on itself, for more lime was made there, and of a better quality, than anywhere in the West; and added—­’On a dairy farm you never can get any milk for your coffee, nor any sugar for it on a sugar plantation; and it is against sense to go to a lime town to hunt for white-wash.’  In my own experience I knew the first two items to be true; and also that people who sell candy don’t care for candy; therefore there was plausibility in Uncle Mumford’s final observation that ’people who make lime run more to religion than whitewash.’  Uncle Mumford said, further, that Grand Tower was a great coaling center and a prospering place.

Cape Girardeau is situated on a hillside, and makes a handsome appearance.  There is a great Jesuit school for boys at the foot of the town by the river.  Uncle Mumford said it had as high a reputation for thoroughness as any similar institution in Missouri!  There was another college higher up on an airy summit—­a bright new edifice, picturesquely and peculiarly towered and pinnacled—­a sort of gigantic casters,