us to ride
would be to establish a precedent, and there weren't going to be any
precedents. And still we went on eating. That was the terrifying
factor in the situation. We were bound for Washington, and Des Moines
would have had to float municipal bonds to pay all our railroad fares,
even at special rates, and if we remained much longer, she'd have to
float bonds anyway to feed us.

Then some local genius solved the problem. We wouldn't walk. Very
good. We should ride. From Des Moines to Keokuk on the Mississippi
flowed the Des Moines River. This particular stretch of river was
three hundred miles long. We could ride on it, said the local genius;
and, once equipped with floating stock, we could ride on down the
Mississippi to the Ohio, and thence up the Ohio, winding up with a
short portage over the mountains to Washington.

Des Moines took up a subscription. Public-spirited citizens
contributed several thousand dollars. Lumber, rope, nails, and cotton
for calking were bought in large quantities, and on the banks of the
Des Moines was inaugurated a tremendous era of shipbuilding. Now the
Des Moines is a picayune stream, unduly dignified by the appellation
of "river." In our spacious western land it would be called a "creek."
The oldest inhabitants shook their heads and said we couldn't make it,
that there wasn't enough water to float us. Des Moines didn't care,
so long as it got rid of us, and we were such well-fed optimists that
we didn't care either.

On Wednesday, May 9, 1894, we got under way and started on our
colossal picnic. Des Moines had got off pretty easily, and she
certainly owes a statue in bronze to the local genius who got her out
of her difficulty. True, Des Moines had to pay for our boats; we had
eaten sixty-six thousand meals at the stove-works; and we took twelve
thousand additional meals along with us in our commissary--as a
precaution against famine in the wilds; but then, think what it would
have meant if we had remained at Des Moines eleven months instead of
eleven days. Also, when we departed, we promised Des Moines we'd come
back if the river failed to float us.

It was all very well having twelve thousand meals in the commissary,
and no doubt the commissary "ducks" enjoyed them; for the commissary
promptly got lost, and my boat, for one, never saw it again. The
company formation was hopelessly broken up during the river-trip. In
any camp of men there will always be found a certain percen