The Wichita daily eagle., 1895-10-29
HARD LOOKING BOATS.
The Steamers OF the Mississippi
River as They Are.
Most of Them Are Cheap and FILTHY Look
ing, FlimsiIy Constructed and Alts-
gether Disappointing to the
Eastern Eye.

The Mississippi steamboat is q
glorious craft in history and fiction
but the reality is rather disappointing
To the eastern eye she looks decidedly
topheavy, extremely cheap and un'
speakably dirty. The average western
river craft looks like a dwelling in
shanty-town at the end of hard win
ter. There is neither grace nor power
in her lines. She is both broken
backed and hump-backed, if those ex.
pressions are allowable without mix
ing metaphors
The hull of the Mississippi boat OF
ordinary size is built very lightly. She
is fiat-bottomed and draws little over
foot of water. Her guards are only
few feet above tho waters edge. Her
upper works consist of two or more
stories, built on the general plan OF
the picnic barge architecture. The
main cabins of the big New Orleans
liners are long and tawdrily decorated
with cheap paint The whole con-
struction is one which would be
knocked into a cooked hat in thirty
minutes If it ventured out to the Sandy
Hook ightship, or if it even tried to
go up Long Island sound on rough
night.
/. The machinery of the western river
craft is especially ungainly to the east.
ern eye. The great majority of boats
have one great paddle-wheel at the
stern, after the manner of the humble
wheel-barrow. Others, principally the
ferry and harbor boats, have one big
wheel mounted in the center of the
boat and housed in. These two con.
structions are both designed to avoid
the enormous logs of floating drift
wood which dot the surface of tho
river after each rise of the water level
Some of the cheaper excursion boats
have paddle-wheels at the sides, but
they frequently have to slow down
when approaching the more than
usually dense section of this inland
Sarsgossa sea, or lose half the buckets
on their psddle-wheels.
When the boats have side paddle
wheeln they are mounted on short
shafts and operated by individual en-
gines. so that when the skipper. in
maneuvering his boat, can back ono
wheel and go ahead with the other,
swinging the craft on its axis. The en-.
gines are high pressure, with long
wooden connecting rods, and curiously
constructed valve gear. Each engine
has its engineer and separate. system
of signal bells. The boilers are on the
main deck, elevated on legs like a
Dutch oven. Soft coal is burned ex-
clusively, and there are lo1}y, narrow
sheetiron smokestacks, with more or
less gaudy decorations, from the top
of which dense volumes of black smoke
are continually rolling. The boats are
slow. One that makes eleven miles an
hour is considered clipper.
The cost of operation is small, as can
be seen from the fact that the trip
from St Louis to New Orleans and re.
turn, occupying nearly two weeks.
costs the traveller only about twenty
dollars for fare, meals and berth. The
run from St. Louis to St. Paul and re-
turn, occupying = week or more, can
be made for twelve dollars. Freight
cars loaded with coal are frequently
run on to floats and towed from Pitts
burgh down the Ohio and up the Mis-. |
sissippi to St Louis for less cost thun |
they could be sent over the rails--N |
Y. Tribune. |