ead. She came in winner by six hours
and thirty-six minutes, but the officers of the "Natchez" claimed that
this was not a fair test of the relative speed of the boats, as they had
been delayed by fog and for repairs to machinery for about seven hours.

Spectacular and picturesque was the riverside life of the great
Mississippi towns in the steamboat days. Mark Twain has described the
scenes along the levee at New Orleans at "steamboat time" in a bit of
word-painting, which brings all the rush and bustle, the confusion,
turmoil and din, clearly to the eye:

"It was always the custom for boats to leave New Orleans between four and
five o'clock in the afternoon. From three o'clock onward, they would be
burning resin and pitch-pine (the sign of preparation) and so one had the
spectacle of a rank, some two or three miles long, of tall, ascending
columns of coal-black smoke, a colonnade which supported a roof of the
same smoke, blending together and spreading abroad over the city. Every
outward-bound boat had its flag flying at the jack-staff, and sometimes a
duplicate on the verge-staff astern. Two or three miles of mates were
commanding and swearing with more than usual emphasis. Countless
processions of freight, barrels, and boxes, were spinning athwart the
levee, and flying aboard the stage-planks. Belated passengers were dodging
and skipping among these frantic things, hoping to reach the forecastle
companion-way alive, but having their doubts about it. Women with
reticules and bandboxes were trying to keep up with husbands freighted
with carpet sacks and crying babies, and making a failure of it by losing
their heads in the whirl and roar and general distraction. Drays and
baggage-vans were clattering hither and thither in a wild hurry, every now
and then getting blocked and jammed together, and then, during ten
seconds, one could not see them for the profanity, except vaguely and
dimly. Every windlass connected with every forehatch from one end of that
long array of steamboats to the other, was keeping up a deafening whiz and
whir, lowering freight into the hold, and the half-naked crews of
perspiring negroes that worked them were roaring such songs as 'De las'
sack! De las' sack!!' inspired to unimaginable exaltation by the chaos of
turmoil and racket that was driving everybody else mad. By this time the
hurricane and boiler decks of the packets would be packed and black with
passengers, the last bells would begin to