The Island Pirate, A Tale of the Mississippi

Excerpt: “Many long years have elapsed since I first set foot in the valley of the Mississippi. I had strayed thither a young and enthusiastic traveler, with scarce any other aim than adventure. I soon discovered that I had got into the very ground where such a taste could be gratified. Amid scenes of softness or sublimity, or tranquil solitude or stirring life—amid varied types of nationality, and strange contrasts of character—scarce a day passed without its incident, nor week wanting in some episode worthy of remembrance. Many of them have at least proved worthy of mine; and I now look back upon them with that romantic interest by which the past often reflects itself in the mirror of memory That I am about to record is of a mixed character—a drama in which there are scenes of pain as well as pleasure—both of real occurrence Whether interesting or no, they may be deemed improbable; though not by those who have studied the social characteristics of the Mississippi valley at the period to which they refer—before the "Far West" had commenced receding from the great river, and its settlements had refused to give shelter to those outcasts of society, who own no law but that of the lex talionis, and no lawyer but Lynch Unlike most travelers through Mississippian territory, I entered it from the south—by the mouth of its main river—making my first station in the city of New Orleans It was late in the spring when I arrived there. And soon after the red cross, beginning to show itself on the doors of the humbler dwellings that lay "swampward," warned me of the presence of that terrible epidemic, which there annually decimated the ranks of such strangers as were compelled to make their summer sojourn in the place."