The Book of Chicago by Robert Shackleton

Author:Robert Shackleton [Shackleton, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Geschichte
Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
Published: 2017-05-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter XIII - A Modern Corsair

ON a July afternoon a little craft was driving ashore in a heavy storm, a short distance north of the mouth of the Chicago River. It was a terrific struggle. Great waves tossed and swung the little boat and rolled over it in torrents. The beach was white with raging foam. The dragging anchor would not hold. At length the vessel grounded; and when the storm died down, the captain waded ashore and claimed ownership by right of discovery.

This reads as if it happened far back in the days of the earliest explorers, when discovery still gave unquestioned title. But it was really an event of rather recent years; for the claim through discovery was made half a century after Chicago had become an incorporated city; forty-nine years, if one would be exact in regard to so important a matter. It occurred in 1886.

And it was not a fantastic jest but a serious matter and a serious claim, added to by other serious claims as rapidly as legal ingenuity could formulate them, and supported in time by rifles and bullets, by desperate conflicts and desperate bravery.

Nothing so extraordinary, so wild, so bizarre, so outré, ever happened in the history of any other American city. It was the perils of the early explorers, brought to this great modern city in these modern times: it was the Middle Ages; it was knight-errantry. And as Longfellow put it of some New England celebrity, it is the more interesting through its being an American and an American happening than it would be if it were a story of

"Old Sir William, or what not.

Clinking about in foreign lands

With iron gauntlets on his hands

And on his head an iron pot!"

George Wellington Streeter was one of the children of a pioneer of the West. As a young man he served in the Civil War. After that he drifted about, wandered though much of the Western country, became acquainted with buffaloes and Indians, did steamboating on the Cumberland and the Mississippi, and then gravitated to Chicago in the late 80 's.

He had been roaming up and down the land, a knight-errant, ready to fight with pistol or knife or fists with anybody who wanted to fight: like those old-timers who are so admired because they went about with sword and spear looking for trouble. Streeter was always looking for trouble, or at least expecting it! He had fights innumerable.

The summer of 1886 found him operating a little steamer, scarcely larger than a steam launch, with the ends of the deck open and the center enclosed. With this he made trips out from Chicago, as far as Milwaukee and return. It looked as if his life of adventure had become a life of the commonplace. But the greatest adventure of his adventurous life was immediately in front of him.

On July 10 he steamed out of the harbor for one of his trips to Milwaukee. He had a party of passengers aboard, and was to return with them the same day.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.