Mississippi River: Steaming along

The American Queen paddle steamer carries guests along the Mississippi in luxury. Photo / Supplied

The Mississippi Delta was shining like a National guitar - Paul Simon, Graceland.

I never understood just what Paul Simon meant - until now. I'm cruising along the Mississippi River on the American Queen paddle steamer and each evening the sky blazes from bright orange to pale pink and the
murky river, carrying tonnes of silt to the Gulf of Mexico, shines as though it's silver-plated.

"I am following the river down the highway through the cradle of the civil war ... "

We start alongside New Orleans' French Quarter, where the river banks have formed a natural levee over thousands of years and were the reason this part of the city escaped damage during Hurricane Katrina.

Across the river, ships are docked, and on the busy waterway barges push up to a hundred carriages laden with coal and crops on the 3700km journey from Minnesota.

This seven-day history tour through the cradle of the Civil War stops at cities and former powerful plantations dotted along the mighty Mississippi. If they could talk they would tell tales of wars, slavery and places of terrible tragedy, where friends fought friends as Confederates and Unionists from 1861 to 1865, and 600,000 American soldiers died.

The steam-powered calliope sounds a circus-like departure tune and the paddle wheel rolls us gently upstream while I sit on my veranda, French doors flung open, sipping a sauvignon blanc, chatting to my neighbours as we watch the sinking sun.

These are more like boutique hotel rooms than cabins, with plush down pillows on scrumptious beds, antique furnishings and a Tiffany lamp harking back to the 1920s, when steam-boating was in its heyday. The addition of flat-screen TVs and DVD players are a nice but unnecessary touch.

The Mississippi river is a law unto itself. It flows as it pleases, carving its own path, cutting off bends and even entire plantations only 100 years ago, leaving landowners waking in the state of Mississippi instead of Louisiana.

A few elegant Gone with the Wind-style homes still exist on former sugar and cotton plantations. Houmas House was the best example I saw, stocked with priceless antiques and a highly acclaimed restaurant.

Delta plains stretch for miles and fields are lined with enormous oaks as we glide easily into Mark Twain country.

The famous writer started out in these waters as a riverboat pilot until the Civil War turned his acerbic wit to cynical observations such as: "It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it".

Samuel Clemens took his pen-name from a river measurement: a mark twain equals two fathoms, or three metres. So with my own copy of Life on the Mississippi (the forerunner to Huckleberry Finn), I try to keep up with his random, wry and often hilarious adventures on these same waters 125 years ago.

Twain lived and breathed the Mississippi, coming to know every nook and cranny of its ever-twisting, hazardous ways to steer a steamer down the inky black in the dead of night, first as a trainee "cub", then as an accomplished pilot.

Pilots of his day had to be able to draw the entire journey from memory, with every landmark and pitfall, to pass the pilot's exam (which he did) and earn the prestige that went with it.

Fortunately, there are no such dangers today as the kilometres disappear gently behind us and we dock in Natchez, the site of one of the most intense Civil War battles, at first light the next day.

This is not stereotypical America. There are no fast-food restaurants or theme parks within view, no shopping malls or high-rise buildings, just small-town heartland reaching down to the silence of the river, which today is running so low its silty banks reveal the concrete retaining mats leaning up the sides.

It hasn't rained in months, so the locals are thrilled the skies have opened today. It's Sunday and eerily quiet, but the First Presbyterian Church is a must-see, with 500 photographs hanging in an upstairs gallery documenting more than 100 years from the Civil War to World War II.

I gaze at snaps of families and friends, formal portraits and the wealthy black families who were slaves before the Civil War and landowners after it.

The next morning in Vicksburg the sky is grey, but one bright spot is the Attic Gallery, bursting with a million pieces of art, jewellery, sculpture and eclectic bits and bobs.

Unfortunately, I fall for a US$3000 ($5678) Kennith Humphrey painting of a black lady with a very large bottom, but after an hour rifling through canvases I come upon a fabulous painting of jazz trumpeter Blue Mitchell painted by David Baum. I can almost hear him playing as I stagger out with a package the size of half a door, trying to figure out how I'll get it home.

The sun is shining by day three and I've fallen in love with this chocolate-brown river that gleams like silver under smouldering sunsets. I love the towns with their antebellum homes and curiosity shops, and noseying through plantation mansions.

The best thing about the industrial city of Baton Rouge is leaving it to take a bayou swamp tour and spot alligators. That proves quite difficult to an untrained city-girl's eye, but here's a tip: look for a handbag among the swampy green foliage and there it is, about a metre long with beady eyes.

Oh, and my painting made it on to my wall thanks to some lovely Air New Zealand crew.