Shanna Twain's Life on the Mississippi

This semester I read an incredible book called Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain. Twain is my favorite author so my opinion might be biased but it's still an amazing book. Twain recounts his boyhood growing up on the Mississippi river, interning for a steamboat pilot, becoming a pilot himself, and finally, taking one last boat ride down the big river to see how it changed, reflect, and write this book. As a boy, interning for steamboat pilots was intimidating and overwhelming at times. He was astounded at the tremendous amount of knowledge steamboat pilots had to store in their minds to chart a safe course down the river. Later on he describes being a steamboat pilot as the freest enterprise in the world, even freer than being a writer. A writer must conform to the editor's pen, revising, and revising. A steamboat pilot however, has the freedom to lay back, put his feet up, and let the crew do all the work. A steamboat pilot is really what we would think of as the captain. The captain is the person who owns the steamboat and he hires a pilot to actually run the boat and haul the shipment. Pilots set their own standards and salaries, and sometimes, when the river froze and they couldn't run the route, the captains would pay them to stay in a hotel near the port and wait until the river thawed. Steamboat pilots created what Twain described as the tightest monopoly the world has ever seen. Their trade was one that took a lifetime to master, and not just anyone could be a pilot. A young person who didn't know the river by heart with all of its bends, depths, and obstacles ran the risk of wrecking the ship and killing everyone on board, which happened often. It was a very risky venture, and the captains wanted experienced pilots who could guarantee the shipment would arrive at its destination. Twain describes the death of the mighty steamboat industry with the invention of trains and the construction of railroads. Steamboats were no longer needed because trains could move more at a faster rate, and for less money. And so the old trade died along with anyone who could navigate the unpredictable river.Throughout the book Twain chases various rabbits, including the story of Murrel's gang. While another popular gang at that time was Jessie James and the Younger gang, it consisted of seven or so members, while Murrel's gang had hundreds. It was a violent gang that would promise slaves money if they ran away from their masters. The gang would resell the slave, give him a cut of the cash, and the slave would do this 3 or 4 times before being sent to the free states with money in his pockets. This was not the outcome for most. The participating slaves would, for the most part, be robbed, murdered, dumped in the big river, and never thought of by Murrel or any of his minions again. I'll stop rambling, but I highly recommend this book. It contains many interesting stories like this one, and recounts the life of, in my opinion, the greatest American author.