"The highest fare ever charged between St. Louis and Keokuk was $4 for the 200 miles. That included a berth, wine, and the finest old Southern cooking a man ever tasted. The best cooks I've ever seen in my life were those old steamboat cooks. And we gave 'em good stuff to cook, too. We bought the best of everything. You ought to see the steaks we had for breakfast! The officers used to sit at the ladies' end of the table and serve out of big chafing dishes. I tell you those were _meals_!
"There was lots going on all the time on the river. I remember one trip I made in '52 in the old 'Di Vernon'--all the boats in the line were named for characters in Scott's novels. We were coming from New Orleans with 350 German immigrants on deck and 100 Californians in the cabin. The Californians were sports and they had a big game going all the time. We had two gamblers on board, too--John McKenzie and his partner, a man named Wilburn. They used to come on to the boats at different places, and make out to be farmers, and not acquainted with each other, and there was always something doing when they got into the game.
"Well, this time cholera broke out among the immigrants on the deck. They began dying on us. But we had a deckload of lumber, so we were well fixed to handle 'em. We took the lumber and built coffins for 'em, and when they'd die we'd put 'em in the coffins and save 'em until we got enough to make it worth stopping to bury 'em. Then we'd tie up by some woodyard and be loading up with wood for the furnaces while the burying was going on. Some twenty-five or thirty of 'em died on that trip, and we planted 'em at various points along the way. And all the while, up there in the cabin, the big game was going on--each fellow trying to cheat the other.
"After we got to St. Louis there was a report that we'd buried a man with $3,500 sewed into his clothes. Of course we didn't know which was which or where we'd buried this man. Well, sir, that started the greatest bunch of mining operations along the river bank between New Orleans and St. Louis that anybody ever saw! Every one was digging for that German. Far as I heard, though, they never found a dollar of him."
Some one in Clarksville (in my notes I neglected to set down the origin of this particular item) told me that the term "stateroom" originated on the Mississippi boats, where the various rooms were named after the States of the Union, a legend which, if true, is worth preserving.