almost as much as good seamanship--aroused
the greatest enthusiasm. The Commodore returned home overland, from
Philadelphia. His progress, slow enough, at best, was checked by ovations,
complimentary addresses, and extemporized banquets. He was _the_ man of
the moment. The poetasters, who were quite as numerous in the early days
of the republic, as the true poets were scarce, signalized his exploit in
verse.

"The Triton crieth,
'Who cometh now from shore?'
Neptune replieth,
''Tis the old Commodore.
Long has it been since I saw him before.
In the year '75 from Columbia he came,
The pride of the Briton, on ocean to tame.

* * * * *

"'But now he comes from western woods,
Descending slow, with gentle floods,
The pioneer of a mighty train,
Which commerce brings to my domain.'"

But Neptune and the Triton had no further occasion to exchange notes of
astonishment upon the appearance of river-built ships on the ocean. The
"St. Clair" was the first and last experiment of the sort. Late in the
nineties, the United States Government tried building a torpedo-boat at
Dubuque for ocean service, but the result was not encouraging.

Year after year the steamboats multiplied, not only on the rivers of the
West, but on those leading from the Atlantic seaboard into the interior.
It may be said justly that the application of steam to purposes of
navigation made the American people face fairly about. Long they had
stood, looking outward, gazing across the sea to Europe, their sole
market, both for buying and for selling. But now the rich lands beyond
the mountains, inviting settlers, and cut up by streams which offered
paths for the most rapid and comfortable method of transportation then
known, commanded their attention. Immigrants no longer stopped in stony
New England, or in Virginia, already dominated by an aristocratic
land-owning class, but pressed on to Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, and
Illinois. As the lands filled up, the little steamers pushed their noses
up new streams, seeking new markets. The Cumberland, and the Tennessee,
the Missouri, the Arkansas, the Red, the Tombigbee, and the Chattahoochee
were stirred by the churning wheels, and over-their forests floated the
mournful sough of the high-pressure exhaust.

In 1840, a count kept at Cairo, showed 4566 vessels had passed that point
during the year. By 1848, a "banner" year, in the history of navigation on
the Mississippi, traffic was recorded thus:

25 vessels plying between Louisville, New Orleans and
Cincinnati 8,484 tons
7 between Nashville and New Orleans 2,585 tons
4 between Florence and New Orleans 1,617 tons
4 in St. Louis local trade 1,001 tons
7 in local cotton trade 2,016 tons
River "tramps" and unclassified 23,206 tons

It may be noted that in all the years of the development of the
Mississippi shipping, there was comparatively little increase in the size
of the individual boats. The "Vesuvius," built in 1814, was 480 tons
burthen, 160 feet long, 28.6 feet beam, and drew from five to six feet.
The biggest boats of later years were but little larger.

[Illustration: THE MISSISSIPPI PILOT]

The aristocrat of the Mississippi River steamboat was the pilot. To him
all men deferred. So far as the river service furnished a parallel to the
autocratic authority of the sea-going captain or master, he was it. All
matters pertaining to the navigation of the boat were in his domain, and
right zealously he guarded his authority and his dignity. The captain
might determine such trivial matters as hiring or discharging men, buying
fuel, or contracting for freight; the clerk might lord it over the
passengers, and the mate domineer over the black roustabouts; but the
pilot moved along in a sort of isolated grandeur, the true monarch of all
he surveyed. If, in his judgment the course of wisdom was to tie up to an
old sycamore tree on the bank and remain motionless all night, the boat
tied up. The grumblings of passengers and the disapproval of the captain
availed naught, nor did the captain often venture upon either criticism or
suggestion to the lordly pilot, who was prone to resent such invasion of
his dignity in ways that made trouble. Indeed, during the flush times on
the Mississippi, the pilots were a body of men possessing painfully
acquired knowledge and skill, and so organized as to protect all the
privileges which their attainments should win for them. The ability to
"run" the great river from St. Louis to New Orleans was not lightly won,
nor, for that matter, easily retained, for the Mississippi is ever a
fickle flood, with changing landmarks and shifting channel. In all the
great volume of literature bearing on the story of the river, the
difficulties of its conquest are nowhere so truly recounted as in Mark
Twain's _Life on the Mississippi_, the humorous quality of which does not
obscure, but rather enhances its value as a picturesque and truthful story
of the old-time pilot's life. The pilot began his work in boyhood as a
"cub" to a licensed pilot. His duties ranged from bringing refreshments up
to the pilot-house, to holding the wheel when some straight stretch or
clear, deep channel offered his master a chance to leave his post for a
few minutes. For strain on the memory, his education is comparable only to
the Chinese system of liberal culture, which comprehends learning by rote
some tens of thousands of verses from the works of Confucius and other
philosophers of the far East. Beginning at New Orleans, he had to commit
to memory the name and appearance of every point of land, inlet, river or
bayou mouth, "cut-off," light, plantation and hamlet on either bank of the
river all the way to St. Louis. Then, he had to learn them all in their
opposite order, quite an independent task, as all of us who learned the
multiplication table backward in the days of our youth, will readily
understand. These landmarks it was needful for him to recognize by day and
by night, through fog or driving rain, when the river was swollen by
spring floods, or shrunk in summer to a yellow ribbon meandering through a
Sahara of sand. He had need to recognize at a glance the ripple on the
water that told of a lurking sand-bar and distinguish it from the almost
identical ripple that a brisk breeze would raise. Most perplexing of the
perils that beset river navigation are the "snags," or sunken logs that
often obstruct the channel. Some towering oak or pine, growing in lusty
strength for its half-century or more by the brink of the upper reaches of
one of the Mississippi system would, in time, be undermined by the flood
and fall into the rushing tide. For weeks it would be rolled along the
shallows; its leaves and twigs rotting off, its smaller branches breaking
short, until at last, hundreds of miles, perhaps, below the scene of its
fall, it would lodge fair in the channel. The gnarled and matted mass of
boughs would ordinarily cling like an anchor to the sandy bottom, while
the buoyant trunk, as though struggling to break away, would strain upward
obliquely to within a few inches of the surface of the muddy water,
which--too thick to drink and too thin to plough, as the old saying
went--gave no hint of this concealed peril; but the boat running fairly
upon it, would have her bows stove in and go quickly to the bottom. After
the United States took control of the river and began spending its
millions annually in improving it for navigation and protecting the
surrounding country against its overflows, "snag-boats" were put on the
river, equipped with special machinery for dragging these fallen forest
giants from the channel, so that of late years accidents from this cause
have been rare. But for many years the riverman's chief reliance was that
curious instinct or second sight which enabled the trained pilot to pick
his way along the most tortuous channel in the densest fog, or to find the
landing of some obscure plantation on a night blacker than the blackest of
the roustabouts, who moved lively to the incessant cursing of the mate.

The Mississippi River steamboat of the golden age on the river--the type,
indeed, which still persists--was a triumph of adaptability to the service
for which she was designed. More than this--she was an egregious
architectural sham. She was a success in her light draught, six to eight
feet, at most, and in her prodigious carrying capacity. It was said of one
of these boats, when skilfully loaded by a gang of practical roustabouts,
under the direction of an experienced mate, that the freight she carried,
if unloaded on the bank, would make a pile bigger than the boat herself.
The hull of the vessel was invariably of wood, broad of beam, light of
draught, built "to run on a heavy dew," and with only the rudiments of a
keel. Some freight was stowed in the hold, but the engines were not placed
there, but on the main deck, built almost flush with the water, and
extending unbroken from stem to stern. Often the engines were in pairs, so
that the great paddle-wheels could be worked independently of each other.
The finest and fastest boats were side-wheelers, but a large wheel at the
stern, or two stern wheels, side by side, capable of independent action,
were common modes of propulsion. The escape-pipes of the engine were
carried high aloft, above the topmost of the tiers of decks, and from each
one alternately, when the boat was under way, would burst a gush of steam,
with a sound like a dull puff, followed by a prolonged sigh, which could
be heard far away beyond the dense forests that bordered the river. A row
of posts, always in appearance, too slender for the load they bore,
supported the saloon deck some fifteen feet above the main deck. When
business was good on the river, the space within was packed tight with
freight, leaving barely room enough for passenger gangways, and for the
men feeding the roaring furnaces with pine slabs. A great steamer coming
down to New Orleans from the cotton country about the Red River, loaded to
the water's edge with cotton bales, so that, from the shore, she looked
herself like a monster cotton bale, surmounted by tiers of snowy cabins
and pouring forth steam and smoke from towering pipes, was a sight long to
be remembered. It is a sight, too, that is still common on the lower
river, where the business of gathering up the planter's crop and getting
it to market has not yet passed wholly into the hands of the railroads.

[Illustration: A DECK LOAD OF COTTON]

Above the cargo and the roaring furnaces rose the cabins, two or three
tiers, one atop the other, the topmost one extending only about one-third
of the length of the boat, and called the "Texas." The main saloon
extending the whole length of the boat, save for a bit of open deck at bow
and stern, was in comparison with the average house of the time, palatial.
On either side it was lined by rows of doors, each opening into a
two-berthed stateroom. The decoration was usually ivory white, and on the
main panel of each door was an oil painting of some romantic landscape.
There Chillon brooded over the placid azure of the lake, there storms
broke with jagged lightning in the Andes, there buxom girls trod out the
purple grapes of some Italian vineyard. The builders of each new steamer
strove to eclipse all earlier ones in the brilliancy of these works of
art, and discussion of the relative merits of the paintings on the
"Natchez" and those on the "Baton Rouge" came to be the chief theme of art
criticism along the river. Bright crimson carpet usually covered the floor
of the long, tunnel-like cabin. Down the center were ranged the tables,
about which, thrice a day, the hungry passengers gathered to be fed, while
from the ceiling depended chandeliers, from which hung prismatic pendants,
tinkling pleasantly as the boat vibrated with the throb of her engines. At
one end of the main saloon was the ladies' cabin, discreetly cut off by
crimson curtains; at the other, the bar, which, in a period when copious
libations of alcoholic drinks were at least as customary for men as the
cigar to-day, was usually a rallying point for the male passengers.

Far up above the yellow river, perched on top of the "Texas," or topmost
tier of cabins, was the pilot-house, that honorable eminence of glass and
painted wood which it was the ambition of every boy along the river some
day to occupy. This was a great square box, walled in mainly with glass.
Square across the front of it rose the huge wheel, eight feet in diameter,
sometimes half-sunken beneath the floor, so that