Whether I have got the details right or wrong, this FACT remains: that here is this big and exceedingly valuable island of four thousand acres, thrust out in the cold, and belonging to neither the one State nor the other; paying taxes to neither, owing allegiance to neither.

One man owns the whole island, and of right is 'the man without a country.' Island 92 belongs to Arkansas.

The river moved it over and joined it to Mississippi.

A chap established a whiskey shop there, without a Mississippi license, and enriched himself upon Mississippi custom under Arkansas protection (where no license was in those days required).
We glided steadily down the river in the usual privacy--steamboat or other moving thing seldom seen.

Scenery as always: stretch upon stretch of almost unbroken forest, on both sides of the river; soundless solitude.