HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS
OF THE
MISSISSIPPI VALLEY

 

WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED BY
CLIFTON JOHNSON

 

 

Published by
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

New York
MCMVI

LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
Copyright, 1906,
by The Macmillan Company.
Set up and electrotyped.
Published October, 1906.


Baiting the Hook

MOST of the chapters in this volume were first published in The Outing Magazine. Other portions have appeared in The Delineator, in Good Housekeeping, and in The New England Magazine.

Electrotyped and Printed at the Norwood Press, Norwood, Mass.

Contents

I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X. XI. XII. XIII. XIV. XV.

The City behind the Levee Mosquitos and Alligators The Land of Rice and Sugar Spring in Mississippi Cotton Patch Life in Tennessee Travelling in Arkansaw Life in the Ozarks At the Meeting of the Waters Mark Twain’s Country The Place of a Vanished City Farm Life in Iowa On the Minnesota Prairies New Times and Old in Wisconsin Houseboat Life The Headwaters of the Great River

Illustrations

Baiting the Hook A Worker One of the Old Narrow Streets Little Italians On the Way to her First Communion “Shooting Craps” The Captive Dragging an Alligator from its Hole A Camp in the Swamps A Shot at a Deer A Cabin Window Hoeing Sugar-cane The Students In the Heat of the Day High Water A Dugout Beside the “Bayou” A Landing at the Levee A Negro Cabin The Sitting Hen’s Prison Coop On the Porch Explaining the Situation Returning to Camp from the Village Work in the Woodland The Fishermen The Weather in the Almanac Browsing in the Woods Going to Market Travellers Beside the Kitchen Fire Making a Hen-coop Prospects of a Blackbird Pie In time of Flood Soft-soap The Stepping-stones at the Ford Mark Twain’s Boyhood Home A Game of Quoits Afternoon Comfort Visiting The Prophet’s Well An Old Mormon Doorway A Garden Bonfire Calking the Boat Making a Willow Whistle Ditching Churning at the Back Door A Notice on the Schoolhouse Door Renewing a Town Walk The Fascination of the Stream A Pitcher of Milk A Pause in the Day’s Labor A Rustic Bridge Upper Mississippi At the Back Door Making Lye for Soft-soap Starting for Work A House-boat Dog The News Fishermen A Bateau The Forest Fire Floating Logs down the Mississippi near its Source The Frame of an Indian Wigwam

Introductory Note

LIKE its predecessors, this volume concerns itself especially with country life. To the traveller, no life is more interesting, and yet there is none with which it is so difficult to get into close and unconventional contact. Ordinarily, we get only casual glimpses. For this reason I have wandered much on country roads and lodged most of the time with the farm families or at the village hotels. In both text and pictures I have tried to show actual life and nature as I saw them in characteristic and interesting sections from one end to the other of the vast valley.

The volumes in this series are often consulted by persons who are planning pleasure tours. To make the books more helpful in this respect, I have appended to each chapter a note containing suggestions for intending travellers. With the aid of these notes, I think one can readily decide what regions one would like particularly to see, and know how to see such regions with the most comfort and facility.