The book begins with a brief history of the river as reported by Europeans and Americans, beginning with the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto in 1542. Louis to New Orleans and then from New Orleans to Saint Paul many years after the war. It is also a travel book, recounting his trips on the Mississippi River from St. Moffett, and rejoined Bixby.Įditorial narrative following 5 August 1856 Dates of the Paul Jones passage discussed in the editorial narrative differ from a more recent evaluation of Sam Clemens' time on the Mississippi River.Life on the Mississippi (1883) is a memoir by Mark Twain of his days as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River before the American Civil War. Clemens borrowed the money instead from his brother-in-law, William A. City-said it makes a man poor! So I didn’t ask him”. Some forty years afterward, in notes for his autobiography, he reminded himself that he went to his cousin James Clemens, Jr., “to borrow the $100 to pay Bixby-before I got to the subject he was wailing about having to pay $25,000 taxes in N.Y. Louis Clemens took steps to secure the $100 that Bixby required as a down payment on his instructional fee. Sam and Horace Bixby departed New Orleans Maon board the Colonel Crossman with Clemens installed as the new cub and arrived in St. It is reasonable to assume that, before agreeing to instruct him, Bixby would have used the entire trip to New Orleans to test his ability at handling the wheel. We made terms and he was with me two years, until he got his license.Īlthough Bixby consistently indicated that he and Clemens came to terms either at their first meeting or quite soon after, Mark Twain three times explicitly designated New Orleans as the place where he approached Bixby about becoming his steersman and where they reached an agreement. I told him that I would instruct him till he became a competent pilot for $500. I told him that I did not want any assistant, as they were generally more in the way than anything else, and that the only way I would accept him would be for a money consideration. I got acquainted with him on the trip and he thought he would like to be a pilot and asked me on what conditions he could become my assistant. He was on his way to Central America for his health. I first met him at Cincinnati in the spring of 1857 as a passenger on the steamer Paul Jones. Bixby (1826–1912), later a noted captain as well as pilot, recalled after Clemens’s death: Bixby, pilot of the Paul Jones, whose sore foot made standing at the wheel painful. During daylight watches he began “doing a lot of steering” for Horace E. Probably the “great idea” of the Amazon journey was still alive in his mind as he later claimed, but within two weeks his old ambition to become a Mississippi pilot was rekindled. On 16 February 1857 Clemens took passage for New Orleans on the packet Paul Jones.
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