United States or Cuba ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
When she went to her foul steerage bunk at last, between the clashing engines, it was not to sleep, but only to wait for the morning, and, waiting, grieve. It had been imagined that she "would not know," and would think she was traveling upstream. She! Why, she had been steamboating for years. At dawn she got up and went listlessly and sat down on the cable coil again.
The Captain turned. "Lige, why don't you give up steamboating and come along to Europe? You're not forty yet, and you have a heap of money laid by." The Captain shook his head with the vigor that characterized him. "This ain't no time for me to leave," he said. "Colonel; I tell you there's a storm comin'." The Colonel pulled his goatee uneasily. Here, at last, was a man in whom there was no guile.
"I never did see such a clumsy set of fellows," said the lieutenant, at length, turning to Frank, who stood beside him, making use of his handkerchief to conceal his laughter. "We ought to have been two miles down the river by this time." It was evident that he was fast becoming disgusted with his first attempt at "steamboating," but was too proud to ask advice.
The rise of steamboating on the Western rivers was perhaps all the more rapid because of the daring and reckless spirit of the Western people, who took almost any risk in order to carry a point in their rivalries or to gain an end of their ambition.
The decay of steamboating and the rise of railroading is in itself a romance if it could be rightly seen, and if the facts could be clearly set before us, the story of commercial triumph by a great monopoly would not be less fascinating than that of any war of conquest.
In the palmy days of steamboating, the charges for way-travel were varied according to the locality. Below Memphis it was the rule to take no single fare less than five dollars, even if the passenger were going but a half-dozen miles. Along Red River the steamboat clerks graduated the fare according to the parish where the passenger came on board.
In the heyday of the steamboating prosperity, the river from end to end was flaked with coal-fleets and timber rafts, all managed by hand, and employing hosts of the rough characters whom I have been trying to describe.
"My father was a good Baptist; he wanted to make a minister of me, and I was educated far enough to enter the university; but I concluded that I did not like the business, and took to steamboating." "But aren't the women as religious as the men?" inquired Captain Ringgold. "More so, if anything. But they come down to the river before sunrise and take their swim.
The Captain turned. "Lige, why don't you give up steamboating and come along to Europe? You're not forty yet, and you have a heap of money laid by." The Captain shook his head with the vigor that characterized him. "This ain't no time for me to leave," he said. "Colonel; I tell you there's a storm comin'." The Colonel pulled his goatee uneasily. Here, at last, was a man in whom there was no guile.
He was very simple and very cordial, and I was instantly the more at home with him, because his voice was the soft, rounded, Ohio River accent to which my years were earliest used from my steamboating uncles, my earliest heroes. When I stated my business he merely said, Oh no; that must not be; he would write to Mr.
Word Of The Day