We ran forward to see the vessel.  It proved to be a steamboat—­for they had begun to run a steamer up the Neckar, for the first time in May.  She was a tug, and one of a very peculiar build and aspect.  I had often watched her from the hotel, and wondered how she propelled herself, for apparently she had no propeller or paddles.  She came churning along, now, making a deal of noise of one kind or another, and aggravating it every now and then by blowing a hoarse whistle.  She had nine keel-boats hitched on behind and following after her in a long, slender rank.  We met her in a narrow place, between dikes, and there was hardly room for us both in the cramped passage.  As she went grinding and groaning by, we perceived the secret of her moving impulse.  She did not drive herself up the river with paddles or propeller, she pulled herself by hauling on a great chain.  This chain is laid in the bed of the river and is only fastened at the two ends.  It is seventy miles long.  It comes in over the boat’s bow, passes around a drum, and is payed out astern.  She pulls on that chain, and so drags herself up the river or down it.  She has neither bow or stern, strictly speaking, for she has a long-bladed rudder on each end and she never turns around.  She uses both rudders all the time, and they are powerful enough to enable her to turn to the right or the left and steer around curves, in spite of the strong resistance of the chain.  I would not have believed that that impossible thing could be done; but I saw it done, and therefore I know that there is one impossible thing which can be done.  What miracle will man attempt next?

We met many big keel-boats on their way up, using sails, mule power, and profanity—­a tedious and laborious business.  A wire rope led from the foretopmast to the file of mules on the tow-path a hundred yards ahead, and by dint of much banging and swearing and urging, the detachment of drivers managed to get a speed of two or three miles an hour out of the mules against the stiff current.  The Neckar has always been used as a canal, and thus has given employment to a great many men and animals; but now that this steamboat is able, with a small crew and a bushel or so of coal, to take nine keel-boats farther up the river in one hour than thirty men and thirty mules can do it in two, it is believed that the old-fashioned towing industry is on its death-bed.  A second steamboat began work in the Neckar three months after the first one was put in service. [Figure 4]

At noon we stepped ashore and bought some bottled beer and got some chickens cooked, while the raft waited; then we immediately put to sea again, and had our dinner while the beer was cold and the chickens hot.  There is no pleasanter place for such a meal than a raft that is gliding down the winding Neckar past green meadows and wooded hills, and slumbering villages, and craggy heights graced with crumbling towers and battlements.