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The improvement of the South Pass of the Mississippi River, under James B. Eads and his associates, is progressing favorably. At the present time there is a channel of 20.3 feet in depth between the jetties at the mouth of the pass and 18.5 feet at the head of the pass. Neither channel, however, has the width required before payments can be made by the United States.
James B. Eads did not own a slave, nor did he approve of slavery, but among his friends and associates there were many who did own them, and many secessionists. It is curious to observe how little a difference of opinion on these points, that had become so vital, was able to put personal enmity among men who were true friends.
From this point I took train, over the worst-built and coggliest railroad track I ever travelled on, to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, to see the famous Eads Route, over which he proposed to transport bodily, without breaking cargo, ocean-going sailing ships and steamers from the Gulf to the Pacific Ocean.
"What aire ye goin' ter do with ther blamed thing, now yer got it?" asked Bud, as they sped across the Eads Bridge into St. Louis. "I haven't made up my mind yet. It certainly doesn't belong in this town, and if we use it here we will have to get a local license." "Jumpin' sand hills, yer not goin' ter run it yere?" "Why not?" "Whoever owns it is li'ble ter come erlong some day, an "
Any sort of a check, and back they all comes an' looks at me, wi' their 'eads a one side, and their sterns agoin' like this," he wagged a stubby fore-finger to and fro in so precisely the right rhythm, that, stubby as it was, no magic wand could evolve more instantly the scene to be presented; "an' that's 'ow it'd be, th' old 'ounds workin' 'ard, and the young uns lookin' like they 'as nothin' to do only admire of me!"
While there were so many men's hands against Eads, it is pleasant to record that there were also many for him. It was the "Scientific American" which first suggested his name for the presidency. It advocated him as a fearless, honest, and forceful man; but the peculiar compliment in it was that this was a technical paper that upheld him.
Near Lauderdale Springs, Castwell Eads, a citizen, by his own statement, shot and wounded a colored man for simply refusing to obey his command, halt! while he was running from him after being cruelly whipped. In Smith county, S.S. Catchings, a citizen, followed a colored man, who had left his plantation, overtook him, knocked him down, and beat him brutally.
We could have gone down to the mouth of the river and visited Captain Eads' great work, the 'jetties, where the river has been compressed between walls, and thus deepened to twenty-six feet; but it was voted useless to go, since at this stage of the water everything would be covered up and invisible.
At last Eads and Miss Dillon were married, he being over twenty-five at the time, she nearly twenty-four. Eads then sold out his wrecking business and left the river. He probably made this change because he hoped thereby not only to be more with his wife, but also to support her in the comfort she had been used to, and to show her father that he could do so.
Eads submitted plans for four iron-clads, iron hull propellers, to carry two turrets each of eight inches thickness, four eleven inch guns, and three-quarters inch deck armor, to steam nine nautical miles per hour, to carry three days' coal, and not to exceed a draught of six feet of water. His plans were accepted, and he constructed the "Winnebago," "Kickapoo," "Milwaukee," and "Chickasaw."
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