Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
And if we add to these the boatmen of the Mississippi, not only those who came down the river in flatboats, but that numerous class, now extinct, of hardy, powerful, reckless, quarrelsome fellows who managed the KEELBOATS, the only craft that could stem the current of the Mississippi before the introduction of steamboat navigation, it will be easily imagined that vice struggled hard to exercise full and uncontrolled dominion over the capital of Louisiana.
Keelboats and barges is clean cut out." To check the deluge of Byle's conversation, the picnickers soon took occasion to shift their ground from the well to the beautiful green plot which had been the carefully kept lawn of the Blennerhassett premises. Raised flowerbeds, of various forms, circular, crescent, and diamond, could still be traced, though overgrown with grass and weeds.
Early in the story of the United States men made commercial journeys from the head of the Ohio to the mouth of the Mississippi by flatboats, and came back by keelboats. The pole, the cordelle, the paddle, and the sail, in turn helped them to navigate the great streams which led out into the West.
There were canoes, pirogues, skiffs, rafts, dugouts, scows, galleys, arks, keelboats, flatboats, barges, "broadhorns," "sneak-boxes," and eventually ocean-going brigs, schooners, and steamboats. The canoe served the early explorer and trader, and even the settler whose possessions had been carried over the Alleghanies on a single packhorse.
Truly, there were snails in those days. The river's earliest commerce was in great barges keelboats, broadhorns. They floated and sailed from the upper rivers to New Orleans, changed cargoes there, and were tediously warped and poled back by hand. A voyage down and back sometimes occupied nine months.
By and by the steamboat intruded. Then for fifteen or twenty years, these men continued to run their keelboats down-stream, and the steamers did all of the upstream business, the keelboatmen selling their boats in New Orleans, and returning home as deck passengers in the steamers.
Truly, there were snails in those days. The river's earliest commerce was in great barges keelboats, broadhorns. They floated and sailed from the upper rivers to New Orleans, changed cargoes there, and were tediously warped and poled back by hand. A voyage down and back sometimes occupied nine months.
By and by the steamboat intruded. Then for fifteen or twenty years, these men continued to run their keelboats down-stream, and the steamers did all of the upstream business, the keelboatmen selling their boats in New Orleans, and returning home as deck passengers in the steamers.
The average monthly rainfall was less than an inch, and steamboat navigation was impossible. Even keelboats found difficulty in ascending the river; sixty days were spent by Lieutenant Reynolds in bringing up a load of supplies. A sand bar at Pine Bend was impassable, so half of the load was taken off and the rest hurried up the river.
To connect this with the steamboats wherever the shoaling water might force them to stop, I recommended the use of batteaux or keelboats, a craft which a natural evolution had brought into use in the changeable mountain rivers. They were a canoe-shaped open boat, sixty feet long by eight wide, and were pushed up the stream by quants or poles.
Word Of The Day