squeness and the romance has departed long since. The great river
no longer bears on its turbid bosom many of the towering castellated
boats built to run, as the saying was, on a heavy dew, but still carrying
their tiers upon tiers of ivory-white cabins high in air. The time is past
when the river was the great passenger thoroughfare from St. Louis to New
Orleans. Some few packets still ply upon its surface, but in the main the
passenger traffic has been diverted to the railroads which closely
parallel its channel on either side. The American travels much, but he
likes to travel fast, and for passenger traffic, except on a few routes
where special conditions obtain, the steamboat has long since been
outclassed by the railroads.

Yet despite the disappearance of its spectacular conditions the water
traffic on the rivers of the Mississippi Valley is greater now than at any
time in its history. Its methods only have changed. Instead of gorgeous
packets crowded with a gay and prodigal throng of travelers for pleasure,
we now find most often one dingy, puffing steamboat, probably with no
passenger accommodations at all, but which pushes before her from
Pittsburg to New Orleans more than a score of flatbottomed, square-nosed
scows, aggregating perhaps more than an acre of surface, and heavy laden
with coal. Such a tow--for "tow" it is in the river vernacular, although
it is pushed--will transport more in one trip than would suffice to load
six heavy freight trains. Not infrequently the barges or scows will number
more than thirty, carrying more than 1000 tons each, or a cargo exceeding
in value $100,000. During the season when navigation is open on the Ohio
and its tributaries, this traffic is pursued without interruption. Through
it and through the local business on the lower Mississippi, and the
streams which flow into it, there is built up a tonnage which shows the
freight movement, at least, on the great rivers, to exceed, even in these
days of railroads, anything recorded in their history.

No physical characteristic of the United States has contributed so greatly
to the nationalization of the country and its people, as the topography of
its rivers. From the very earliest days they have been the pathways along
which proceeded exploration and settlement. Our forefathers, when they
found the narrow strip of land along the Atlantic coast which they had at
first occupied, becoming crowded, according to their ideas at the time