“Judge Wead said, while admitting that the floats went straight through, there was a difference between a float and a boat, but I do not remember that he indulged us with an argument in support of this statement.  Is it because there is a difference in size?  Will not a small body and a large one float the same way under the same influence?  True a flatboat will float faster than an egg shell and the egg shell might be blown away by the wind, but if under the same influence they would go the same way.  Logs, floats, boards, various things the witnesses say all show the same current.  Then is not this test reliable?  At all depths too the direction of the current is the same.  A series of these floats would make a line as long as a boat and would show any influence upon any part and all parts of the boat.

“I will now speak of the angular position of the piers.  What is the amount of the angle?  The course of the river is a curve and the pier is straight.  If a line is produced from the upper end of the long pier straight with the pier to a distance of 350 feet, and a line is drawn from a point in the channel opposite this point to the head of the pier, Colonel Nason says they will form an angle of twenty degrees.  But the angle if measured at the pier is seven degrees; that is, we would have to move the pier seven degrees to make it exactly straight with the current.  Would that make the navigation better or worse?  The witnesses of the plaintiff seem to think it was only necessary to say that the pier formed an angle with the current and that settled the matter.  Our more careful and accurate witnesses say that, though they had been accustomed to seeing the piers placed straight with the current, yet they could see that here the current had been made straight by us in having made this slight angle; that the water now runs just right, that it is straight and cannot be improved.  They think that if the pier was changed the eddy would be divided and the navigation improved.

“I am not now going to discuss the question what is a material obstruction.  We do not greatly differ about the law.  The cases produced here are, I suppose, proper to be taken into consideration by the court in instructing a jury.  Some of them I think are not exactly in point, but I am still willing to trust his honor, Judge McLean, and take his instructions as law.  What is reasonable skill and care?  This is a thing of which the jury are to judge.  I differ from the other side when it says that they are bound to exercise no more care than was taken before the building of the bridge.  If we are allowed by the Legislature to build the bridge which will require them to do more than before, when a pilot comes along, it is unreasonable for him to dash on heedless of this structure which has been legally put there.  The Afton came there on the 5th and lay at Rock Island until next morning.  When a boat lies up the pilot has a holiday, and would not any of these jurors have