ose of studying
the channel and the current of the rivers, with the view to putting a
steamer on them. Wise men assured him that on the upper river his scheme
was destined to failure. Could a boat laden with a heavy engine be made of
so light a draught as to pass over the shallows of the Ohio? Could it run
the falls at Louisville, or be dragged around them as the flatboats often
were? Clearly not. The only really serviceable type of river craft was the
flatboat, for it would go where there was water enough for a muskrat to
swim in, would glide unscathed over the concealed snag or, thrusting its
corner into the soft mud of some protruding bank, swing around and go on
as well stern first as before. The flatboat was the sum of human ingenuity
applied to river navigation. Even barges were proving failures and
passing into disuse, as the cost of poling them upstream was greater than
any profit to be reaped from the voyage. Could a boat laden with thousands
of pounds of machinery make her way northward against that swift current?
And if not, could steamboat men be continually taking expensive engines
down to New Orleans and abandoning them there, as the old-time river men
did their rafts and scows? Clearly not. So Roosevelt's appearance on the
river did not in any way disquiet the flatboatmen, though it portended
their disappearance as a class. Roosevelt, however, was in no wise
discouraged. Week after week he drifted along the Ohio and Mississippi,
taking detailed soundings, studying the course of the current, noting the
supply of fuel along the banks, observing the course of the rafts and
flatboats as they drifted along at the mercy of the tide. Nothing escaped
his attention, and yet it may well be doubted whether the mass of data he
collected was in fact of any practical value, for the great river is the
least understandable of streams. Its channel is as shifting as the mists
above Niagara. Where yesterday the biggest boat on the river, deep laden
with cotton, might pass with safety, there may be to-day a sand-bar
scarcely hidden beneath the tide. Its banks change over night in form and
in appearance. In time of flood it cuts new channels for itself, leaving
in a few days river towns far in the interior, and suddenly giving a water
frontage to some plantation whose owner had for years mourned over his
distance from the river bank. Capricious and irresistible, working
insidiously night and day, seldom showing the progress of i