During the last quarter of the century in which we write the figures “1” and “8” in every date line, the steam railroad has, to a very large extent, put out of joint the nose of the steamboat, just as, at the present time, we are threatened with so complete a revolution in travel and motive power as to warrant a prediction that, long before another quarter of a century has passed, electricity will take the place of steam almost entirely.  But even if this is so, old acquaintance should not be forgot, and every citizen of the United States should feel that the prosperity of the country is due, in very large measure, to the country’s magnificent waterways, and to the enterprise of the men who equipped river fleets and operated them, with varying degrees of profit.

The true river man is not so conspicuous as he was in the days when St. Louis, Cincinnati, Memphis and other important railroad centers of to-day were exclusively river towns.  The river man was a king in those days.  The captain walked the streets with as much dignity as he walked his own deck, and he was pointed to by landsmen as a person of dignity and repute.  The mate was a great man in the estimation of all who knew him, and of a good many who did not know him.  Ruling his crew with a rod of iron, and accustomed to be obeyed with considerable and commendable promptness, he adopted a tone of voice in general conversation considerably louder than the average, and every one acquired a habit of making way for him.

The levee in a river town, before the railroads came snorting and puffing across country and interfering with the monopoly so long enjoyed by the steamboat, was a scene of continuous turmoil and activity.  Sometimes, now, one sees on a levee a great deal of hurrying and noise.  But the busiest scenes of to-day sink into insignificance compared with those which are rapidly becoming little more than an indistinct memory.  The immense cargoes of freight of every description would be ranged along the river front, and little flags could be seen in every direction.

These flags were not, perhaps, exactly evidence of the activity of the schoolmaster, or of the prevalence of superior education.  They were, rather, reminders of the fact that a great majority of the rank and file of river workers could read little, and write less.  To tell a colored roustabout twenty or thirty years ago to fetch a certain cargo, labeled with the name of a particular boat or consignee, would have been to draw from the individual addressed a genuine old-time plantation grin, with some caustic observation about lack of school facilities in the days when the roustabout ought to have been studying the “three Rs,” but was not.  It was, however, comparatively easy to locate a cargo by means of a flag, and identification seldom failed, as the flags could be varied in color, shape and size, so as to provide distinction as well as difference.

Those who remember the busy levee scene, with the flag adornment referred to, will agree that there was something picturesque as well as noisy about the old river days, and will be inclined to regret, and almost deplore, the fact that things are not, from a river man’s standpoint, what they were.