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