At the time of our visit there was a large number of Indians encamped on the prairie in front of the fort—estimated at seven or eight hundred by those best versed in their manners and customs. They had come down from the Lower Sioux Agency, sixteen miles farther up the river. They were alive to the situation, and on the alert to learn all they could of the "white man's war", which they had already heard of as being fought in some far-away place, the location of which was not clear to them, and for which they cared nothing so long as it promised to be a contest that was likely to draw away soldiers from the fort, and especially the "big guns", which they feared more than they did the "dough boys". One of the best posted of the frontiersmen, a "squaw man", who had the ear of the tribal council, told our officers that there would be trouble when the battery was withdrawn, for they felt themselves able successfully to fight and exterminate the few companies of infantry left to garrison the fort. How true this prediction was, the uprising of August, 1862, and the Indian war in Minnesota, with its massacre at New Ulm and outlying regions, abundantly verified.

As soon as we were made fast, the work was begun of loading cannon, caissons, battery wagons, ammunition, and stores, as well as horses and men. By the light of torches, lanterns, and huge bonfires built on the bank, the work was rushed all night long, while the engineers labored to put the engines and particularly the wheel, in the best possible condition; and the carpenter, aided by artisans from the fort, put on new guards forward, and strengthened the weak places for the inevitable pounding that we knew must attend the downstream trip. With the raging river pressing on the stern of the boat as she descended, there was ample reason for anticipating much trouble in handling the steamer.

The teamsters, with their six-mule teams, hurried the stores and ammunition down the narrow roadway cut in the side of the bluff, running perhaps half a mile along the side in making the perpendicular descent of two hundred feet. Whatever time we had from our duties on the boat was spent either in the fort, out in the Indian village, or on the side hill watching the teams come down the bluff, one after the other. Not being able to pass on the hill, they went down together, and all went back empty at the same time. The two hind wheels of the big army wagon were chained, so that they slid along the ground, instead of revolving. Then the three riders, one on each "near" mule, started the outfit down the hill, the off mules being next the bluff, while the legs of the drivers hung out over space on the other side. In places the wagons would go so fast, in spite of the drag, that the mules would have to trot to keep out of the way. This was exciting and interesting to the spectators, who were expecting to see a team go over the precipice. The drivers did not seem to care anything about the matter, and were no doubt well pleased to become the centre of attraction.

Those of the spectators who had time and patience to continue the watch were finally rewarded for their persistence, and justified in their predictions by seeing one of these teams, with its load of fixed ammunition, roll for a hundred feet down the bluff—men, mules, and ammunition in one wild mix-up, rolling and racing for the bottom. The fringe of timber alone saved the cortege from plunging into the river. Those who saw the trip made, were betting that neither a man nor a mule would come out alive. They all came out alive. Some of the mules were badly scratched and banged, but not a leg was broken among the six. The men were also badly bruised, but they also brought all their bones out whole. One mule had his neck wound around the wagon-tongue, his own tongue hanging out about the length of that of the wagon, and all hands were certain of one dead mule, at least. But when the troopers ran in and cut away the harness the mule jumped to his feet, took in a few long breaths to make good for the five minutes' strangulation, and then started up the roadway, dodging the down-coming teams by a hair's-breadth, and never stopping until he reached his corral, where he began munching hay as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

The next morning everything was stowed aboard. With a salute from the little howitzers in the fort, and the cheers of the "dough boys", who wanted to go but could not, the "Fanny Harris" backed into the stream, "straightened up", and began her downstream trip. I shall not attempt to follow her down, in all her situations. With the heavy load, and the stream behind her, it was possible to check her speed in a measure at the bends, but totally impossible to stop her and back her up against the current. The result was, that she "flanked" around points that raked her whole length, and then plunged into timber, bows on, on the opposite side of the river, ripping the ginger-bread work, and even the guards, so that it would seem as though the boat were going to destruction. Some of the artillerymen were sure of it, and all of them would sooner have risked a battle than the chance of drowning that at times seemed so imminent. We made good time, however, and ran the three hundred miles in two running days of daylight, laying up nights, and repairing damages as far as possible against the next day's run.

When we rounded to at Fort Snelling landing we had one chimney about ten feet high above deck; the other was three feet—just one joint left above the breeching. Both escape pipes and the jack staff were gone—we lost the latter the first day, going up. The stanchions on both sides of the boiler deck were swept clean away, together with liberal portions of the roof itself. The boat looked like a wreck, but her hull was sound. The officers and crew were game to the last. Many of them had been hurt more or less, and all had been working until they were scarcely able to move. It was war time, however. Fort Sumter had fallen, and the president had called for seventy-five thousand men. We were doing our part with a will, in hastening forward a battery that was to give a good account of itself from Bull Run to Appomattox.

At Fort Snelling we lost two of our firemen and a number of our deck crew, who deserted while we were lying at that place, taking on additional stores and men. We thought it a cowardly thing to do, under the circumstances. A few weeks later, however, we saw the two firemen going to the front with a volunteer company from Prescott, afterwards Company "B", 6th Wisconsin Infantry, in which "Whiskey Jim", the Irishman, and Louis Ludloff, the "Dutchman", distinguished themselves for valor in battle. Richardson gave his life for his country at the Wilderness, while Ludloff fought all the way through, rising from private to corporal, sergeant, and first sergeant, and being wounded at Antietam and the Wilderness.

In talking with Ludloff in later years, I learned that the reason they deserted the steamer, leaving behind their accrued wages and even their clothes, was because they feared that they would not be able to get in among the seventy-five thousand if they lost any time in formalities and details. There were others, higher up in the world than the humble firemen, who also miscalculated the length of the impending war—by four years. Distinguished editors and statesmen, and even soldiers, made this error. And there were a good many who failed to "get in" even then.

We ran to La Crosse with our pieces of chimneys, which the artisans at the Fort had helped our engineers to piece together so that the smoke would clear the pilot house. It did not give the best of draught; but we were going downstream on a flood, and we might have drifted five miles an hour without any steam at all. We delivered the battery at La Crosse, and immediately went into dry dock, where a hundred men made short work of the repairs. The United States paid our owners, the Minnesota Packet Company, eight thousand dollars for the week's work. The officers and crew who earned the money for the company were not invited to assist in its division. It was the hardest week's work that most of us had ever known—certainly the hardest I had ever experienced up to that time. A year or so later I got into work fully as hard, and it lacked the pleasant accessories of good food and a soft bed, that accompanied the strenuous days and nights spent on the Fort Ridgeley excursion.

An incident remotely connected with this trip, offers an excellent opportunity to philosophize on the smallness of the planet we inhabit, and the impossibility of escaping from, or avoiding people whom we may once have met. At a meeting of Congregationalists held in a city far removed from the fort that stood guard on the bluffs overhanging the Minnesota River in 1861, the writer was introduced to Mr. Henry Standing Bear, secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association of Pine Ridge, South Dakota. Standing Bear is a graduate of Carlisle College, an educated and intelligent and a full-blood Sioux Indian. In conversation with him it transpired that he was one of the children who stared open-eyed at the steamboat lying at the landing place below the fort in 1861, and that he was an interested spectator of the embarkation of Sherman's Battery. He there listened to the talk of the braves who were already planning what they would do when the soldiers should all be withdrawn to fight the "white man's war" in the South. Standing Bear's own father took part in the "massacre", as we called it. Standing Bear says they themselves called it a war. Indians may go about their killings with somewhat more of ferocity and cruelty than do we whites, but it is their way of making war. In either case it is "hell", as "Old 217 218 Tecump" said, and the distinctions that we draw after all make little difference in the results. We do not have to seek very far through the pages of history to find instances where white men have massacred helpless Indian women and children.

A talk with Henry Standing Bear, or any other educated Indian born amid surroundings such as his, will throw new light and new coloring upon the Indian situation as it existed in 1861. They saw the whites steadily encroaching upon their hunting grounds, appropriating the best to their own use, ravishing their women, killing their men, and poisoning whole tribes with their "fire-water". Against their wills they were driven from their ancient homes—"removed", was the word—after having been tricked into signing treaties that they did not understand, couched in legal terms that they could not comprehend, receiving in exchange for their lands a lot of worthless bric-a-brac that vanished in a week.[8] If they protested or resisted, they were shot down like so many wolves, and with as little mercy. What man is there among the whites who would not fight under such circumstances? Our forefathers fought under less provocation and their cause has been adjudged a righteous cause.

This is the Indian's view-point as stated by a civilized tribesman. His fathers fought, and are dead. He was adopted by the nation, educated, and started upon a higher plane of living, as he is free to confess; but it is doubtful if he can be started upon a higher plane of thinking than that upon which his blanketed forbears lived, in spite of the cruelties to which they were born and educated. While I am no sentimentalist on the Indian question, when I fall into the hands of a Standing Bear I am almost persuaded that the Indian, within his lights, is as much of a patriot as many of his bleached brethren. As to his manhood there is no question. In the long struggle that has taken place between himself and the white invaders, he has always backed his convictions with his life, if need be; and such men, if white, we call "patriots."

A greater influence than any arguments drawn from commercial necessities was found in the political interest involved. For years, members of congress elected from districts in which there was a harbor or a river which by any fiction might be legislated into a "navigable stream", had been drawing from the federal treasury great sums of money for the improvement of these streams and harbors; yet some of these never floated anything larger than the government yawls in which the engineers who did the work reached the scene of their duties. At the same time, country members from the interior of the great West drew nothing. The rapid settlement of the Northwestern territories, in the year immediately following the close of the Civil War, had an effect that was felt in the enhanced influence exerted by members of congress representing the new commonwealths. It followed that when the biennial distribution of "pork", as it is expressively but inelegantly called nowadays, came up, these members were in a position to demand their share, and get it, or defeat the distribution in toto.

The war was over. The Union soldiers who had fought in it were either dead, or if alive were hustling for a living. Hundreds of thousands of them were found in Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, and Nebraska, opening up farms and developing the country. The contractors who had fattened on their blood were hanging like leeches to every department of the national government, clamoring for more contracts to further inflate their already plethoric bank accounts. The river improvement appealed strongly to this class of men. The influences that they could bring to bear, backed by the legitimate demands of steamboatmen and mill owners, convinced the most conscientious congressmen that their duty lay in getting as large an appropriation as possible for the work of river regeneration. The result was, that the river which had given employment to three or four hundred steamboats, manned by fifteen thousand men, without having a dollar expended in ameliorating its conditions, suddenly became the centre of the greatest concern to congress—and to the contractors—and all for the benefit of a dozen steamboats in regular traffic, and perhaps a hundred boats used in towing the output of a score of mills owned by millionaire operators.

From 1866 to 1876 there was spent on the river between the mouth of the Missouri and St. Paul, a distance of 700 miles, the sum of $5,200,707. That was for the ten years at the rate of $7,429 for each mile of the river improved. It cost at that rate $742.90 per mile per year during the decade quoted. It is doubtful if the few steamboats engaged in traffic during that time were able to show aggregate gross earnings of $742.90 per mile per annum. It seems a pity that the benefit resulting from this expenditure could not have been participated in by the great flotilla that covered the river in the preceding decade, from 1856 to 1866.

In this expenditure we find $59,098 charged to the eleven miles of river between St. Paul and St. Anthony Falls. It is doubtful if a dozen trips a year were made to St. Anthony Falls during the time noted. It was a hard trip to make against the rapid current below the falls, and a dangerous trip to make downstream. It would seem, however, that with the expenditure of $5,909 per year for ten years, over only eleven miles of river, every rock (and it is all rocks) might have been pulled ashore, and a perfect canal built up. Possibly that is the result of all this work; I haven't been over that piece of river since the work was completed—for one reason, among others, that no steamboats ever go to St. Anthony Falls, now that the river is put in order.

From St. Paul to Prescott, thirty-two miles, there was expended $638,498 in ten years. I can readily understand why so much money was planted in that stretch of river. Beginning at Prescott and going toward St. Paul, there were to be found five or six of the worst bars there are anywhere on the river; and between the accentuated bars—bars of sufficient importance to merit names of their own—the rest of the river was bad enough to merit at least some of the language expended upon it by pilots who navigated it before the improvements came. At Prescott, at the head of Puitt's Island (now Prescott Island) or Point Douglass bar, at Nininger, at Boulanger's Island, at Grey Cloud, at Pig's Eye, and at Frenchman's, were bars that were the terror of all pilots and the dread of all owners and stockholders. I will eliminate the "terror" as expressing the feelings of the pilots. "Resignation" would perhaps be the better word. They all knew pretty well where to go to find the best water on any or all of the bars named; but they also knew that when they found the best water it would be too thin to float any boat drawing over three and a half feet. With a four-foot load line it simply meant that the steamboat must be hauled through six inches of sand by main strength and awkwardness, and that meant delay, big wood bills, bigger wage-lists, wear and tear of material, and decreased earnings. A big packet not loaded below the four-foot line, was not laden to the money-making point. After the work of regeneration began, it was a constant fight on the part of the engineers to maintain a four and a half foot channel on either one of the bars named. The expenditure of the great sums of money placed in this district is therefore easily accounted for.

The work of improvement was, and still is carried on under the direction of competent engineers, detailed for the service by the chief of engineers of the United States army. No more highly trained men in their profession can be found in the world than these choice graduates of the most perfect institution of instruction in the world—West Point Military Academy. Their scientific, perhaps academic, knowledge of the laws governing the flow of water and the shifting of sands, the erosion of banks and the silting up into islands and continents, which are among the vagaries of the great river, is supplemented by the practical, if unscientific, knowledge of men who have gained their acquaintance with the river from years of service as pilots or masters of river steamboats. The government is shrewd enough to secure the services of such men to complement the science of its chosen representatives. These two classes, in pairs or by companies, have made an exhaustive study of conditions surrounding each of the more difficult and troublesome bars, as well as all others of lesser note, in order to decide what was needed, what kind of work, and how to be placed to lead, or drive the water into the most favorable channels, and there retain it under varying conditions of flood or drought, ice jams, or any and all the conditions contributing to the changes forever going on in the river.

These points determined, an estimate is made of the cost of the necessary improvements, details of construction are drawn, specifications submitted, and bids on the proposed work invited. There were, and are, plenty of contractors, provided with boats, tackle, stone quarries, and all else required in the prosecution of the work. It would not be safe, however, to assume that the government always reaped the benefit of so much competition as might be assumed from the number of men engaged in the business. It would be unsafe to assume that such competition has always been free from collusion, although possibly it has been. On the other hand, each contractor has his "beat", from which all other bidders have religiously kept off. Not in an ostentatious manner, however, for that might invite suspicion; but in a business-like and gentlemanly manner, by putting in a bid just a few cents per cubic foot higher than the man upon whose territory the work was to be done, and whose figures have been secretly consulted before the bids were submitted. There have been suspicions that such has been the case, more than once, and that the work sometimes cost the government more than a fair estimate had provided for. The contracts have been let, however, and within the thirty years last past there have been built along the river between Prescott and St. Paul two hundred and fifty-one dikes, dams, revetments, and other works for controlling the flow of water within that short stretch of thirty-two miles.

Some of these dams are long, strong, and expensive; others are embryonic, a mere suggestion of a dam or dyke, a few feet in length, for the protection of a particular small portion of the bank, or for the diverting of the current. All these works, great and small, are intended as suggestions to the mighty river that in future it must behave itself in a seemly manner. Generally the river does take the hint, and behaves well in these particular cases. At other times it asserts itself after the old fashion, and wipes out a ten thousand dollar curb in a night, and chooses for itself a new and different channel, just as it did in the days of its savagery, fifty years earlier.

A peculiar feature attending this work for the betterment of the river was, that in its incipient stages it met with little or no encouragement from any of the men personally engaged in navigating steamboats on the river. Some deemed the proposition visionary and impracticable, while others, fearing its success, and magnifying the results to be obtained, threw every obstacle possible in the way of the engineers who had the work in charge. They even went so far as to petition Congress to abandon the work, and recall the engineers who had been detailed to prosecute it. This opposition was particularly true of work on the lower rapids, where the great ship canal now offers a ready and safe passage around rapids always difficult to navigate. Sometimes, when the water had reached an unusually low stage, they were positively impracticable for large boats. Captain Charles J. Allen, Corps of Engineers, U. S. A., who was in charge of the preliminary work on the lower rapids, calls attention, in his report, to this hostility, and incidentally records his opinion of river pilots in general, and rapids pilots in particular, in the following far from flattering terms:

"Most of the river pilots are possessed of but little knowledge beyond that required in turning the wheel; and their obstinacy in refusing to recognize and take advantage of good channels cut for them has been the experience of more than one engineer engaged in improving rivers. The rapids pilots in particular, who may lose employment, seemed to be the most hostile."

The last-named class were certainly sound in their conclusions that the deepening, straightening and lighting of the rapids would take away their business. There is, therefore, little wonder that they were not enthusiastic in their support of the proposed improvements, which were, if successful, to deprive them of the means of livelihood. Perhaps the gentlemen of the engineer corps would not be enthusiastic over a proposition to disband the United States army, and muster out all its officers. The results justified the fears of the rapids pilots. Any pilot could take his boat over, after the improvements were completed, and rapids piloting, as a distinctive business, was very nearly wiped out.

The slur of the West Pointer loses its point, however, with any one who has known many Mississippi River pilots. They knew a great many things besides "turning the wheel." Even had they known only that, they carried around under their hats special knowledge not to be sneezed at, even by a West Pointer. Later, all the men on the river came to recognize the benefits accruing from the work of the Mississippi River Commission, and none more heartily testified to the success of the work than the pilots and masters of the river craft. There were, indeed, none so well qualified to judge of results as they.

The work once begun was prosecuted with vigor. The voice of the great Northwest was potent in Washington, and in the ten years from 1866 to 1876 more than five millions of dollars were expended between Minneapolis and the mouth of the Missouri.[9]

The first thought of the government engineers to whom was entrusted the duty of improving the river, was naturally in the direction of securing and maintaining a greater depth of water. This was to be accomplished by so curbing and controlling the flow that it would follow the channel decided upon, at all times and under all conditions. The dikes and wing dams, which were built by the hundred, served this purpose in a degree, and the flow of water was controlled to a fairly satisfactory extent.

Then the menaces to navigation were considered, and measures taken for their elimination. Of the two hundred and ninety-five recorded steamboat wrecks on the Missouri River between 1842 and 1895, a hundred and ninety-three, or about two-thirds of all, were by snagging. I presume this proportion would be maintained on the upper Mississippi, if a similar compilation were at hand to decide the point. The problem was to get rid of this greatest of all dangers to steamboats. There was but one way, and that was to pull them out and carry them away, or cut them up and so dispose of them that the same snag would not have to be pulled out at each recurring rise of water, from other parts of the river.

Having no steamboats fitted for the business in that early day (1866), the contract system was resorted to. This was found to be costly and unsatisfactory. Contractors agreed to remove snags at so much per snag, within certain lengths and estimated weights, they furnishing the steamboats and machinery necessary for the work. In order to make the business pay, they had to find snags, somewhere. When they were not to be found in or near the channel, they were obtained in any place—chutes, bayous, and sloughs where no steamboat ever ran, or ever would run. After a trip or two up and down the river, there were not enough snags left to make the pulling profitable, and of course the work was given over. But the first rise brought down a new supply of snags to lodge in the channel of the falling river, and pilots set to dodging them, just as they had done before the pulling began. To be of the highest efficiency, the work must be continuous. This was deemed impossible under the contract system, and the engineers in charge recommended the purchase of two suitable steamboats for the upper river, to be fitted with improved machinery for lifting and disposing of the snags fished out of the river. These boats were to be manned and officered by the government, and placed in charge of an engineer detailed by the War Department. They were continuously to patrol the river during the season of navigation, removing every snag as soon as located, assisting steamboats in distress, cutting overhanging trees, placing guide-boards and crossing lights where needed, maintaining the same after being established, and giving their whole time and attention to the work of river improvement. This suggestion was carried into effect, and two steamboats purchased and fitted for the work.

In 1866 Colonel Dodge, of the Corps of Engineers, who had had large experience in the work of river improvement, realizing the necessity for dredging the shoalest places, in addition to directing the water by dikes and dams, invented a dredge to be attached to a steamboat, and operated by steam machinery, for the purpose of plowing out and scraping away the sand as it accumulated on the worst bars and reefs. Two or three experimental machines were built by a St. Paul mechanic upon the order of the United States officials, and under their supervision. These were attached to derricks, placed on the bows of the steamboats secured for the work, suspended by stout chains, and operated by steam. The boat, headed up river, was run to the head of the reef; the dredge was then lowered, and the boat backed downstream in the line of the channel. The dredge, twenty feet wide, stirred up the sand, and the scraper attachment drew it down to the foot of the reef, where the dredge was hoisted up and the current carried away the released sand into deep water. The boat was again run to the head of the reef and the operation repeated, each "scrape" being about the width of the dredge, the pilot so placing his boat each time as exactly to match the last preceding draft, without going over the same ground a second time.

The machine was found to work to perfection, and to be of even greater practical utility in keeping open a navigable channel than the dikes and wing dams, as there is a constant filling in of sand at the foot of every channel artificially formed by contracting the flow of water. The dredge hauls this sand away as it accumulates, and by deepening the water in the channel does much toward attracting the steady flow of water to the particular lines so dredged.

Steamboat owners and captains seem to have had no superstitious objections to thus naming or commanding a successor to the unfortunate one gone before. Before the first was comfortably settled in the mud of the Mississippi, an order had gone on to the shipyard, and in less than a week the keel was on the stocks for its successor. If the first was a "Galena", or a "War Eagle", the second also was a "Galena" or a "War Eagle". This was before the fashion came into vogue of naming boats after persons, instead of impersonal objects. There were not names enough to go around, and thus it came about that the "Warriors", "Post Boys", "Telegraphs", and "War Eagles" were worked overtime, to the great confusion of any one attempting to localize a disaster that had happened to one of that name in times past. It was possible to read to-day of the total loss of the "War Eagle", for instance; yet a month or more hence you might hear of the arrival of the "War Eagle" at St. Paul with a full cargo and passenger list. The boats might go to the bottom, but the names went on forever. "Post Boy" was another favorite name handed down from boat to boat, until seven or eight "Post Boys" had been launched, run their appointed courses, and met their fate, all within the span of less than forty years—an average of about five years to the boat—which was a good average for old-time steamers. On the upper river there were, among others, three "Burlingtons", two "Chippewas", two "Danubes", two "Denmarks", two "Dr. Franklins", three "Dubuques", two "Galenas", three "St. Pauls", three "War Eagles", and many others, doublets and triplets. All of which tends much to confuse one who is attempting to run down and locate the history and final disposition of boats bearing those names.

So far as I can learn, there is no reliable record of all the losses on the upper river, giving the name of the boat, where, when, and how lost. It is possible that the final disposition of boats lost above St. Louis, is as fully covered in the list appended to the end of this book, as anywhere else extant. Such a record has been made for the Missouri River by Captain M. H. Chittenden, of the United States Engineers—a very complete and historically valuable statement of the losses on that stream. Other records are too comprehensive, attempting to give all the losses through the entire length of the river, from New Orleans to St. Paul. While covering so much more, territorially, they lack in the detail that makes the compilation of real worth.

Most writers attach particular stress to boiler explosions, probably from the fact that they are more spectacular, and the consequent loss of life usually greater. When a boat is snagged, it is generally possible to run her ashore in time to save the passengers and crew, although the vessel itself may prove a total loss. When a boiler explodes, the boat becomes immediately helpless, so that it cannot be run ashore, which occasions the considerable loss of life. In cases of explosion, also, the boat almost invariably burns in the middle of the river, and there is little chance for escape; for it is next to impossible to reach the lifeboats carried on the roof, and if reached it is seldom found possible to launch them.

Before considering the reported losses on all the Western waters it will be interesting to locate, as far as possible, the casualties on the Mississippi between St. Louis and St. Paul, the division or section of the river usually denominated as "upper". In my list of upper-river boats,[10] there are noted all losses of which I have found any record. The list comprises about three hundred and sixty steamers that have made one or more trips above Rock Island. The boats plying above St. Louis, but not going above the upper rapids, have not been included in this list, thus excluding all the Alton Line vessels, and the Illinois River craft. Of the three hundred and sixty boats so listed, there are to be found records of seventy-three losses between St. Louis and St. Paul, including the port of St. Louis, which has been a veritable graveyard for steamboats. About a dozen other boats were lost after going into the Missouri River trade, but these are not included in the number stated. The record extends over the period between 1823 and 1863, inclusive. An analysis of the causes of such losses shows that thirty-two boats were snagged and sunk (total losses only are included; those raised, are not counted as losses); sixteen were burned; ten were sunk by ice; five were stove in by hitting rocks, and sank; three sank by striking bridges; three were sunk by Confederate batteries during the war; two were lost from boiler explosions; one was torn to pieces by a tornado, and one struck a wreck of another boat and sank on top of the first wreck.

What became of the other boats included in the list, I am unable to learn. The United States government appears never to have printed a report (or reports) showing the fate of the hundreds of steamboats over which it maintained an official watch-care while they were in active service. It would seem to have paid more attention to boiler explosions than to any other cause of disaster; for the reason, possibly, that it is supposed to have held itself, through its inspectors, more or less responsible for the condition of steam boilers. Still, as it also, through another set of inspectors, looks after the hulls of all steamboats, there would seem to be no reason why the loss of boats by snagging, or other similar causes affecting the hulls, should not also have been reported.

It will be observed that nearly one-half the known losses on the upper river between 1823 and 1863 were the result of snagging. Captain Chittenden, in his report on steamboat losses on the Missouri from 1842 to 1897, gives the snags credit for catching 193 boats out of a total loss of 295, or two-thirds of all known losses. Owing to its alluvial banks, and the consequent eating away of wooded points and islands by the ever changing current of that most erratic of rivers, the bed of the stream was literally sown with snags. The wonder of it is, that a pilot was able ever to take a boat up and back a thousand miles, without hitting a snag and losing his boat. They did it, however, although the record of losses from that cause serves to show how imminent the danger was at all times, and how many came to grief, however sharp the eyes of the pilot, or however skilled in reading the surface of the water and locating the danger.

The upper Mississippi has more miles of rock bluffs—in fact, is lined with such bluffs from Keokuk to St. Paul; thus the wear and tear of its banks is not so great as on the Missouri. Still, the great number of islands, heavily wooded, furnish many sunken trees, and one-half of the steamboat loss on this river is also directly traceable to snags.

Next to the snags, which are forever reaching out their gnarled arms to impale the unfortunate, fire is the greatest enemy of steamboat property on Western waters. Built of the lightest and most combustible pine, soaked with oil paint, the upper works are like tinder when once alight, and danger of this is ever present in a hundred different forms. A little explosion in the furnaces, throwing live coals over the deck; over-heated smokestacks, communicating a blaze to the roof; careless passengers or crew, throwing half-burned matches on deck or into inflammable merchandise in the freight; or the mass of sparks, cinders, and live coals continuously falling from the stacks, especially when burning wood in the furnaces: all these are a constant menace, and with a blaze once started the chances are a hundred to one that the boat is lost. A lighted match thrown into a haymow can scarcely bring quicker results than a little blaze in the upper works of a steamboat. It flashes up in an instant, and the draft generated by the progress of the boat instantly carries it the length of the cabin. In fifteen minutes the upper works are gone. Sixteen Mississippi boats out of seventy were burned; twenty-five of 295, on the Missouri. As in losses from ice, so also by fire, St. Louis has been the storm centre, and for the same reason namely, the great number of boats there, both summer and winter. Several visitations from this most dreaded and dreadful enemy of steamboats are recorded in the history of river navigation, in which two or more boats were lost while at the St. Louis landing. But the one which is known far and wide on Western waters was of such magnitude, and the property loss so great, as to earn for it the title of the "Great Fire".

This, the most disastrous of all calamities which ever occurred in the history of navigation in the West, commenced at about 10 o'clock in the evening of May 17, 1849, and continued until 7 o'clock the next morning. Captain Chittenden, the historian of the Missouri River, says, in describing this catastrophe:

"Fire alarms had been heard several times early in the evening, but nothing had come of them, until about the hour above-mentioned, when it was found that fire had broken out in earnest on the steamer "White Cloud", which lay at the wharf between Wash and Cherry Streets. The "Endors" lay just above her and the "Edward Bates" below. Both caught fire. At this time a well-intended but ill-considered, effort to stop the progress of the fire was made by some parties, who cut the "Edward Bates's" moorings and turned her into the stream. The boat was soon caught by the current and carried down the river; but a strong northeast wind bore it constantly in shore, and every time it touched it ignited another boat. An effort was now made to turn other boats loose before the "Edward Bates" could reach them, but a fatality seemed to attend every effort. The burning boat outsped them all, and by frequent contacts set fire to many more. These in turn ignited the rest, until in a short time the river presented the spectacle of a vast fleet of burning vessels, drifting slowly along the shore. The fire next spread to the buildings, and before it could be arrested had destroyed the main business portion of the city. It was the most appalling calamity that had ever visited St. Louis; and followed as it was by the great cholera scourge of 1849, it was a terrible disaster. At the levee there were destroyed twenty-three steamboats, three barges, and one small boat. The total valuation of boats and cargoes was estimated at about $440,000, and the insurance was but $225,000; but this was not all paid, for the fire broke up several of the insurance companies."

Ice also plays an important part in the game of steamboat killing. The season on the upper river is short at best. An early start in the spring, before the railroads had yet reached St. Paul, brought the greatest financial returns to the daring and successful captains who, bringing their boats through all the dangers, arrived safely in harbor at the head of navigation. Great chances were taken in the fifties, in trying to get through Lake Pepin before it was clear of ice. The river above and below was usually clear two weeks before the ice was out of the lake sufficiently to enable a boat to force its way through. During the last week of such embargo, boats were constantly butting the ice at either end of the lake, trying to get up or down, or were perilously coasting along the shore, where, from the shallowness of the water and the inflow from the banks, the ice had rotted more than in the centre of the lake. A change of wind, or a sudden freshening, catching a boat thus coasting along the shore, would shove her on to the rocks or sand, and crush her hull as though it were an eggshell. The "Falls City" was thus caught and smashed. I myself saw the "Fire Canoe" crushed flat, in the middle of the lake, a little below Wacouta, Minn., she having run down a mile or more in the channel which we had broken with the "Fanny Harris". We had just backed out, for Captain Anderson had seen signs of a rising wind out of the west, that would shut the ice into our track. This result did follow after the other boat had gone in, despite the well-meant warnings of Anderson, who hailed the other boat and warned them of the rising wind and the danger to be apprehended. This caution was ignored by the "Fire Canoe's" captain, who ran his boat down into the channel that we had broken. The ice did move as predicted, slowly, so slowly as to be imperceptible unless you sighted by some stationary object. But it was as irresistible as fate, and it crushed the timbers of the "Fire Canoe" as though they were inch boards instead of five-inch planks. The rending 235 236 of her timbers was plainly heard two miles away. The upper works were left on the ice, and later we ran down and picked the crew and passengers off the wreck. When the wind changed and blew the other way, the cabin was turned over and ground to splinters amid the moving cakes.

In 1857 the "Galena" was the first boat through the lake (April 30th). There were twelve other boats in sight at one time, all butting the ice in the attempt to force a passage and be the first to reach St. Paul. Of the boats lost on the Missouri River between 1842 and 1897, twenty-six were lost from ice; on the upper Mississippi, up to 1863, ten boats succumbed to the same destroyer.

Not only in Lake Pepin, in the early spring, was this danger to be apprehended; but in autumn also, in the closing days of navigation, when the young "anchor ice" was forming, and drifting with the current, before it had become attached to the banks, and formed the winter bridge over the river. This was a most insidious danger. The new ice, just forming under the stress of zero weather, cut like a knife; and while the boat might feel no jar from meeting ice fields and solitary floating cakes, all the time the ice was eating its way through the firm oak planking, and unless closely watched the bow of the boat would be ground down so thin that an extra heavy ice floe, striking fairly on the worn planking, would stave the whole bow in, and the boat would go to the bottom in spite of all attempts to stop the leak. The "Fanny Harris" was thus cut down by floating ice and sank in twenty feet of water, opposite Point Douglass, being a total loss. Ordinarily, boats intending to make a late trip to the north were strengthened by spiking on an extra armor sheathing of four-inch oak plank at the bow, and extending back twenty or thirty feet.

It is a singular fact that the greatest damage from ice was not experienced at the far north of the upper river, but at the southern extremity of the run; although many other boats were lost on the upper reaches, at wide intervals of time and place. St. Louis was a veritable killing place for steamboats, from the ice movements. This may be accounted for from the reason that so many boats wintered at St. Louis. When a break-up of extraordinary magnitude or unseasonableness did occur, it had a large number of boats to work upon. Again, the season of cold, while long and severe on the upper river, was distinctly marked as to duration. There was no thawing and freezing again. When the river closed in November, it stayed closed until the latter end of March, or the early days of April. Then, when the ice went out, that ended the embargo; there was no further danger to be feared. Boats did not usually leave their snug-harbors until the ice had run out; and when they did start, they had only Lake Pepin to battle with. At St. Louis, on the contrary, the most disastrous break-ups came unseasonably and unexpectedly, with the result that the great fleet of boats wintering there were caught unprepared to meet such an emergency, and many were lost.

Two such disastrous movements of the ice were experienced at St. Louis, the first in 1856, the other in 1876. The former "break-up" occurred February 27, and resulted in the destruction of a score of the finest boats in the St. Louis trade, and the partial wrecking of as many more. It put out of commission in a few hours nearly forty boats, a catastrophe unequalled in magnitude, either before or since, in the annals of the river. The disaster was not caused in the usual way, by the thawing of the ice. In that case it would not have been so disastrous, if indeed to be feared at all, that being the usual and normal manner of clearing the river in the spring. The winter had been very cold, the ice was two or three feet thick, and the water very low. In this case the movement of the ice was caused by a sudden rise in the river from above, which caused the ice to move before it was much, if any, disintegrated. It was an appalling and terrible exhibition of the power of the Great River when restrained in its course. The following account is from a St. Louis paper, printed at the time: