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Updated: June 16, 2025
The troops were embarked upon the gunboats "Sultan," "Sheik," "Fatah," and barges towed by these vessels. Colonel Wingate, Major Lord Edward Cecil, Captain J. K. Watson, A.D.C., and other officers, accompanied the General on the stern-wheel steamer "Dal," which had for armament several Maxims. A Union Jack, as well as an Egyptian flag, was hoisted on the boat.
But in sober fact things were going very much awry. And every day they got worse. Even his original bevy of troops, those he had brought up with him into the country on the stern-wheel launch, seemed to grasp the fact that his star was in the descendant.
One night, anxious to reach New Orleans, I took a stern-wheel boat out of Wichita; and as it was late, the clerk said the only berth he could give me was in a state-room with another man. I crawled into the top berth, and towards morning I was awakened by a noise beneath me. Carefully looking over the berth, I spied the occupant of the lower berth with a long Colt's navy revolver in his hand.
The word ivory would ring in the air for a while and on we went again into the silence, along empty reaches, round the still bends, between the high walls of our winding way, reverberating in hollow claps the ponderous beat of the stern-wheel.
"Oh, you'll freight it for me, all right," the commodore retorted blithely. "Or I'll libel your old stern-wheel packet for you. I've paid the freight in advance an' I got the receipt." Captain Scraggs was on the verge of tears. "But, Gib! My dear boy! This freight'll foul the Victor up for a month o' Fridays an' I just took out a passenger license!" "I'm sorry, Scraggsy, but business is business.
Here is a conversation of that day. A chap out of the Illinois River, with a little stern-wheel tub, accosts a couple of ornate and gilded Missouri River pilots 'Gentlemen, I've got a pretty good trip for the upcountry, and shall want you about a month. How much will it be? 'Eighteen hundred dollars apiece. 'Heavens and earth! You take my boat, let me have your wages, and I'll divide!
"Friend Kettle, you put a steamer on the ground in the lower Congo; you probably had a bad record elsewhere, or you'd never have drifted to the Congo service at all; and now you're up here on the Haut Congo skippering a rubbishy fourpenny stern-wheel launch, which of course is a lot beneath your precious dignity.
It was the stern-wheel steamboat Yuma, and this is the only mention of it I can find. It had supplies for the troops, but what became of it afterward I do not know.
Dawson was more fortunate, and met a man who had spent most of the summer of 1887 prospecting on it. His opinion was that it might be navigable for small stern-wheel steamers for many miles. The valley, as seen from the mouth, is wide, and gives one the impression of being occupied by a much more important stream. Looking up it, in the distance could be seen many high peaks covered with snow.
We had the Kentucky Bend country in the early morning scene of a strange and tragic accident in the old times, Captain Poe had a small stern-wheel boat, for years the home of himself and his wife. One night the boat struck a snag in the head of Kentucky Bend, and sank with astonishing suddenness; water already well above the cabin floor when the captain got aft.
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