in Madrid Bend, it was five years before the owners heard of it.  That was always a confusing fact to me, but it is according to the record, any way.  She was dismally slow; still, we often had pretty exciting times racing with islands, and rafts, and such things.  One trip, however, we did rather well.  We went to St. Louis in sixteen days.  But even at this rattling gait I think we changed watches three times in Fort Adams reach, which is five miles long.  A ‘reach’ is a piece of straight river, and of course the current drives through such a place in a pretty lively way.

That trip we went to Grand Gulf, from New Orleans, in four days (three hundred and forty miles); the ‘Eclipse’ and ‘Shotwell’ did it in one.  We were nine days out, in the chute of 63 (seven hundred miles); the ‘Eclipse’ and ‘Shotwell’ went there in two days.  Something over a generation ago, a boat called the ‘J.  M. White’ went from New Orleans to Cairo in three days, six hours, and forty-four minutes.  In 1853 the ‘Eclipse’ made the same trip in three days, three hours, and twenty minutes.{footnote [Time disputed.  Some authorities add 1 hour and 16 minutes to this.]} In 1870 the ‘R.  E. Lee’ did it in three days and one hour.  This last is called the fastest trip on record.  I will try to show that it was not.  For this reason:  the distance between New Orleans and Cairo, when the ‘J.  M. White’ ran it, was about eleven hundred and six miles; consequently her average speed was a trifle over fourteen miles per hour.  In the ‘Eclipse’s’ day the distance between the two ports had become reduced to one thousand and eighty miles; consequently her average speed was a shade under fourteen and three-eighths miles per hour.  In the ‘R.  E. Lee’s’ time the distance had diminished to about one thousand and thirty miles; consequently her average was about fourteen and one-eighth miles per hour.  Therefore the ‘Eclipse’s’ was conspicuously the fastest time that has ever been made.

Therecord of some famous

Trips

(From Commodore Rollingpin’s Almanack.)

Fast time on the western waters

From new Orleans to Natchez—­268 miles

D.   H.   M.
1814 Orleans      made the run in      6    6   40
1814 Comet          "     "            5   10
1815 Enterprise     "     "            4   11   20
1817 Washington     "     "            4
1817 Shelby         "     "            3   20
1818 Paragon        "     "            3    8
1828 Tecumseh       "     "            3    1   20
1834 Tuscarora      "     "            1   21
1838 Natchez        "     "            1   17
1840 Ed. Shippen    "     "            1    8
1842 Belle of the West    "            1   18
1844 Sultana        "     "                19   45
1851 Magnolia       "     "                19   50
1853 A. L. Shotwell "     "                19   49