ere taken, for they could not be relied
upon to "trim ship," but would be sure to crowd to one side or the other
at a critical moment. Only through freight was shipped--and little of
that--for there would be no stops made from starting-point to goal. Of
course, neither boat could carry all the fuel--pine-wood slabs--needed for
a long voyage, but by careful prearrangement, great "flats" loaded with
wood, awaited them at specified points in midstream. The steamers slowed
to half-speed, the flats were made fast alongside by cables, and nimble
negroes transferred the wood, while the race went on. At every riverside
town the wharves and roofs would be black with people, awaiting the two
rivals, whose appearance could be foretold almost as exactly as that of a
railway train running on schedule time. The firing of rifles and cannon,
the blowing of horns, the waving of flags, greeted the racers from the
shores by day, and great bonfires saluted them by night. At some of the
larger towns they would touch for a moment to throw off mail, or to let a
passenger leap ashore. Then every nerve of captain, pilot, and crew was on
edge with the effort to tie up and get away first. Up in the pilot-house
the great man of the wheel took shrewd advantage of every eddy and back
current; out on the guards the humblest roustabout stood ready for a
life-risking leap to get the hawser to the dock at the earliest instant.
All the operations of the boat had been reduced to an exact science, so
that when the crack packets were pitted against each other in a long race,
their maneuvers would be as exactly matched in point of time consumed as
those of two yachts sailing for the "America's" cup. Side by side, they
would steam for hundreds of miles, jockeying all the way for the most
favorable course. It was a fact that often such boats were so evenly
matched that victory would hang almost entirely on the skill of the pilot,
and where of two pilots on one boat one was markedly inferior, his watch
at the wheel could be detected by the way the rival boat forged ahead.
During the golden days on the river, there were many of these races, but
the most famous of them all was that between the "Robert E. Lee" and the
"Natchez," in 1870. These boats, the pride of all who lived along the
river at that time, raced from New Orleans to St. Louis. At Natchez, 268
miles, they were six minutes apart; at Cairo, 1024 miles, the "Lee" was
three hours and thirty-four minutes ah