No way-freights and no way-passengers were allowed, for the racers would stop only at the largest towns, and then it would be only ’touch and go.’  Coal flats and wood flats were contracted for beforehand, and these were kept ready to hitch on to the flying steamers at a moment’s warning.  Double crews were carried, so that all work could be quickly done.

The chosen date being come, and all things in readiness, the two great steamers back into the stream, and lie there jockeying a moment, and apparently watching each other’s slightest movement, like sentient creatures; flags drooping, the pent steam shrieking through safety-valves, the black smoke rolling and tumbling from the chimneys and darkening all the air.  People, people everywhere; the shores, the house-tops, the steamboats, the ships, are packed with them, and you know that the borders of the broad Mississippi are going to be fringed with humanity thence northward twelve hundred miles, to welcome these racers.

Presently tall columns of steam burst from the ’scape-pipes of both steamers, two guns boom a good-bye, two red-shirted heroes mounted on capstans wave their small flags above the massed crews on the forecastles, two plaintive solos linger on the air a few waiting seconds, two mighty choruses burst forth—­and here they come!  Brass bands bray Hail Columbia, huzza after huzza thunders from the shores, and the stately creatures go whistling by like the wind.

Those boats will never halt a moment between New Orleans and St. Louis, except for a second or two at large towns, or to hitch thirty-cord wood-boats alongside.  You should be on board when they take a couple of those wood-boats in tow and turn a swarm of men into each; by the time you have wiped your glasses and put them on, you will be wondering what has become of that wood.

Two nicely matched steamers will stay in sight of each other day after day.  They might even stay side by side, but for the fact that pilots are not all alike, and the smartest pilots will win the race.  If one of the boats has a ‘lightning’ pilot, whose ‘partner’ is a trifle his inferior, you can tell which one is on watch by noting whether that boat has gained ground or lost some during each four-hour stretch.  The shrewdest pilot can delay a boat if he has not a fine genius for steering.  Steering is a very high art.  One must not keep a rudder dragging across a boat’s stem if he wants to get up the river fast.

There is a great difference in boats, of course.  For a long time I was on a boat that was so slow we used to forget what year it was we left port in.  But of course this was at rare intervals.  Ferryboats used to lose valuable trips because their passengers grew old and died, waiting for us to get by.  This was at still rarer intervals.  I had the documents for these occurrences, but through carelessness they have been mislaid.  This boat, the ‘John J. Roe,’ was so slow that when she finally sunk