Note I-13 — Chapter I · ITINERARY: ST. LOUIS TO ST. PAUL, AUGUST 9TH-SEPTEMBER 21ST, 1805.

Cincinnati Landing, Pike Co., Ill., to Hannibal, Marion Co., Mo., 12 m. direct, and not much more by river, as its course is quite straight. The Frenchman's house, 4 m. beyond which Pike went to camp, was a germ of Hannibal, sown under the handsome hill, just above a little run which Nicollet and Owen both map as Bear cr., opposite Hurricane isl. This place is mapped by Pike as Hurricane Settlement; he speaks of it again under date of Apr. 26th, 1806. It is now a notable railroad center; the Wabash R. R. built the bridge in 1871 (Act of Congr., July 25th, 1866). On the Illinois side there was a place called Douglasville, which seems to have been a forerunner of the town or station Shepherd; while Hannibal itself has also the St. L., Keok. and N. W. R. R. skirting the Miss. r., the Hann. and St. Jo., the St. L. and Hann., and the Mo., Kas. and Tex. To reach this then French embryo, Pike proceeded with present Pike Co., Ill., on his right the whole way, but with Ralls Co. on his left, to past Saverton in the latter county, and so on to Marion Co., Mo. He passed the positions of the islands now called Taylor's, Cottel's, King's, and Glasscock's; and after he had interviewed the Frenchman he went on past the present position of the mouth of Bayou St. Charles, off which are Turtle, Glaucus, and other islands, to camp in Marion Co., Mo., about where the present boundary between Pike and Adams cos., Ill., strikes the river—that is to say, opposite Armstrong isl., near the beginning of the Snicarty. The St. Charles or Charles is old in history; I have seen the name ascribed to Hennepin, 1680, but have not myself so found it. Pike's Hurricane isl. is probably not now determinable, if existent, unless he means a large tract of bottom-land opposite Hannibal, isolated by the Snicarty. Glasscock's isl. is now or was lately the only well-founded island on the river near the mouth of Bear cr. It is said in Holcombe's Hist. Marion Co., 1884, p. 902, that an island opposite the mouth of Bear cr. disappeared in 1849. Judge Thos. W. Bacon, who came to Hannibal in 1847, informs me in lit. Mar. 21st, 1894, that he remembers no such island; "there was a sand-bar visible at low water just above the mouth of Bear cr., and it disappeared long ago, but no such fugitive formation could properly be termed an island. Along the N. front of the site of Hannibal was once an incipient island—a sand-bar with growing willows extending from the N. end almost to the mainland. This gradually disappeared except at the lower end, where it prolonged and merged into a granite gravel bed or bar visible at low water, which was dredged away by the government." Pike is probably mistaken in using the name Hurricane in the present connection. There were a Hurricane ldg., isl., and cr. lower down, in Lincoln Co.; but Judge Bacon informs me he never heard the name applied to Hannibal. Nor is it true that this town was ever called Stavely's ldg., except as a piece of fugitive sarcasm in the newspapers of a rival town, arising in the habit of one John W. Stavely, a saddler of Hannibal, who used to haunt the landing when steamers arrived. It could not well have been first known as a "landing," because the first steamer to arrive there, the Gen. Putnam, Moses D. Bates, master, came in 1825, while Hannibal was platted in 1819 by its present name, shortly after Pike Co. was organized (Dec. 14th, 1818). The classical term is said to be traceable to Antoine Soulard, surveyor-general, who is also said to have named Fabius r. for the great Roman cunctator. But this is dubious; old forms Fabas and Fabbas suggest Sp. fabas beans. Bay St. Charles was called Scipio r., as attested by the hamlet of Port Scipio at its mouth.