ts endeavors
until some huge slice of land, acres in extent, crumbles into the flood,
or some gully or cut-off all at once appears as the main channel, the
Mississippi, even now when the Government is at all times on the alert to
hold it in bounds, is not to be lightly learned nor long trusted. In
Roosevelt's time, before the days of the river commission, it must have
been still more difficult to comprehend. Nevertheless, the information he
collected, satisfied him that the stream was navigable for steamers, and
his report determined his partners to build the pioneer craft at
Pittsburg. She was completed, "built after the fashion of a ship with
portholes in her side," says a writer of the time, dubbed the "Orleans,"
and in 1812 reached the city on the sodden prairies near the mouth of the
Mississippi, whose name we now take as a synonym for quaintness, but which
at that time had seemingly the best chance to become a rival of London and
Liverpool, of any American town. For just then the great possibilities of
the river highway were becoming apparent. The valley was filling up with
farmers, and their produce sought the shortest way to tide-water. The
streets of the city were crowded with flatboatmen, from Indiana, Ohio, and
Kentucky, and with sailors speaking strange tongues, and gathered from all
the ports of the world. At the broad levee floated the ships of all
nations. All manual work was done by the negro slaves, and already the
planters were beginning to show signs of that prodigal prosperity, which,
in the flush times, made New Orleans the gayest city in the United States.
In 1813 Jackson put the final seal on the title-deeds to New Orleans, and
made the Mississippi forever an American river by defeating the British
just outside the city's walls, and then river commerce grew apace. In 1817
fifteen hundred flatboats and five hundred barges tied up to the levee. By
that time the steamboat had proved her case, for the "New Orleans" had run
for years between Natchez and the Louisiana city, charging a fare of
eighteen dollars for the down, and twenty-five dollars for the up trip,
and earning for her owners twenty thousand dollars profits in one year.
She was snagged and lost in 1814, but by that time others were in the
field, first of all the "Comet," a stern-wheeler of twenty-five tons,
built at Pittsburg, and entering the New Orleans-Natchez trade in 1814.
The "Vesuvius," and the "AEtna."--volcanic names which suggested