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Updated: May 22, 2025
Allen stayed on in New Orleans for several days to sell his cargo. It brought a good price. He then sold his flatboat, which would be broken up and used for lumber. Flatboats could not travel upstream. He and Abe would either have to walk back to Indiana, or they could take a steamboat. "We'd better not walk, carrying all this money," said Allen. "Pretty lonely country going home.
The trunks were put on my flatboat, the passengers seated themselves on the trunks, and I sculled them out to the steamer. They got on board, and I lifted up their heavy trunks and put them on the deck. The steamer was about to put on steam again, when I called out to them that they had forgotten to pay me. Each man took from his pocket a silver half-dollar and threw it into the bottom of my boat.
"Now we must find a way to get up on the hill above the high bluff," said he, as he led the way up the river. Beyond the bluff the bank of the river was the same as it had been all the way from the fort, and the flat came to a sudden ending. "Here is a flatboat," said Ben, who was the first to discover it. "Somebody must live near here."
Only one thing we lacked mass and Sunday prayers. But on that day the flatboat remained moored, we put on our Sunday clothes, gathered on deck, and papa read the mass aloud surrounded by our whole party, kneeling; and in the parts where the choir is heard in church, Alix, my sister, and I, seconded by papa and Mario, sang hymns.
And Henry watched him disappear with a choking feeling that thus the nobleman was to outstrip him in life. "See!" said Anna, "you are a lucky girl. You have your choice; you can go through life on the steamboat or on the flatboat. Of course you'll go by steam." "There are explosions on steamboats sometimes," said Priscilla. Then turning, she noticed a singular expression on Anna's face.
Then it grew, became more distinct and, coming out of the foggy curtain which hung over the river, a flatboat, manned by two men, pushed up on the grass. The one who was rowing rose and took a pailful of fish from the bottom of the boat, then he threw the dripping net over his shoulder.
And while we dressed, Pat, always prowling about the cottage, was sent to the flatboat to get his parents and the Carlos, and to M. Gerbeau's to ask my father and M. and Mme. Gerbeau to come at once to the cottage.... No, I cannot tell the cries of joy that greeted us. The children did not know us, and Maggie had to tell Pat over and over that these were Miss Souzie and Miss Francise.
He went down again, pulling the rail after him and letting it slip to the bottom. "Now I'll move you," he said to the flatboat. First he rolled stones away, clearing the path to the water; next he went behind the boat, shoved the rail under and heaved upward. The rail curved under the strain, then the boat slid forward, grinding on the sand. One foot nearer the water.
Far different fellows, these commonplace raftsmen of to-day, from the "lumber boys" of a half-century or more ago, when the river towns were regularly "painted red" by the men who followed the Ohio by raft or flatboat. Life along shore was then more picturesque than comfortable.
Going by water, while cheaper, was inconvenient, for the travellers must use the flatboat, which was clumsy and slow and, worst of all, of little use except when going down stream. The great need both for travel and for trade, then, was a boat which would not be dependent upon wind or current, but could be propelled by steam. Many men had tried to work out such an invention.
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