It killed the old-fashioned keel-boating, by reducing
the freight-trip to New Orleans to less than a week.
The railroads have killed the steamboat passenger
traffic by doing in two or three days what the steamboats
consumed a week in doing; and the towing-fleets have
killed the through-freight traffic by dragging six
or seven steamer-loads of stuff down the river at
a time, at an expense so trivial that steamboat competition
was out of the question.
Freight and passenger way-traffic remains to the steamers.
This is in the hands—along the two thousand
miles of river between St. Paul and New Orleans—–of
two or three close corporations well fortified with
capital; and by able and thoroughly business-like management
and system, these make a sufficiency of money out
of what is left of the once prodigious steamboating
industry. I suppose that St. Louis and New Orleans
have not suffered materially by the change, but alas
for the wood-yard man!
He used to fringe the river all the way; his close-ranked
merchandise stretched from the one city to the other,
along the banks, and he sold uncountable cords of
it every year for cash on the nail; but all the scattering
boats that are left burn coal now, and the seldomest
spectacle on the Mississippi to-day is a wood-pile.
Where now is the once wood-yard man?
My idea was, to tarry a while in every town between
St. Louis and New Orleans. To do this, it would
be necessary to go from place to place by the short
packet lines. It was an easy plan to make, and
would have been an easy one to follow, twenty years
ago—but not now. There are wide intervals
between boats, these days.
I wanted to begin with the interesting old French
settlements of St. Genevieve and Kaskaskia, sixty
miles below St. Louis. There was only one boat
advertised for that section—a Grand Tower
packet. Still, one boat was enough; so we went
down to look at her. She was a venerable rack-heap,
and a fraud to boot; for she was playing herself for
personal property, whereas the good honest dirt was
so thickly caked all over her that she was righteously
taxable as real estate. There are places in New
England where her hurricane deck would be worth a hundred
and fifty dollars an acre. The soil on her forecastle
was quite good—the new crop of wheat was
already springing from the cracks in protected places.
The companionway was of a dry sandy character, and
would have been well suited for grapes, with a southern
exposure and a little subsoiling. The soil of
the boiler deck was thin and rocky, but good enough
for grazing purposes. A colored boy was on watch
here—nobody else visible. We gathered
from him that this calm craft would go, as advertised,
’if she got her trip;’ if she didn’t
get it, she would wait for it.
‘Has she got any of her trip?’
’Bless you, no, boss. She ain’t
unloadened, yit. She only come in dis mawnin’.’
