Above the cargo and the roaring furnaces rose the cabins, two or three tiers, one atop the other, the topmost one extending only about one-third of the length of the boat, and called the "Texas." The main saloon extending the whole length of the boat, save for a bit of open deck at bow and stern, was in comparison with the average house of the time, palatial. On either side it was lined by rows of doors, each opening into a two-berthed stateroom. The decoration was usually ivory white, and on the main panel of each door was an oil painting of some romantic landscape. There Chillon brooded over the placid azure of the lake, there storms broke with jagged lightning in the Andes, there buxom girls trod out the purple grapes of some Italian vineyard. The builders of each new steamer strove to eclipse all earlier ones in the brilliancy of these works of art, and discussion of the relative merits of the paintings on the "Natchez" and those on the "Baton Rouge" came to be the chief theme of art criticism along the river. Bright crimson carpet usually covered the floor of the long, tunnel-like cabin. Down the center were ranged the tables, about which, thrice a day, the hungry passengers gathered to be fed, while from the ceiling depended chandeliers, from which hung prismatic pendants, tinkling pleasantly as the boat vibrated with the throb of her engines. At one end of the main saloon was the ladies' cabin, discreetly cut off by crimson curtains; at the other, the bar, which, in a period when copious libations of alcoholic drinks were at least as customary for men as the cigar to-day, was usually a rallying point for the male passengers. Far up above the yellow river, perched on top of the "Texas," or topmost tier of cabins, was the pilot-house, that honorable eminence of glass and painted wood which it was the ambition of every boy along the river some day to occupy. This was a great square box, walled in mainly with glass. Square across the front of it rose the huge wheel, eight feet in diameter, sometimes half-sunken beneath the floor, so that the pilot, in moments of stress, might not only grip it with his hands, but stand on its spokes, as well. Easy chairs and a long bench made up the furniture of this sacred apartment. In front of it rose the two towering iron chimneys, joined, near the top by an iron grating that usually carried some gaudily colored or gilded device indicative of the line to which the boat belonged. Amidships, and aft of the pilot-house, rose the two escape pipes, from which the hoarse, prolonged s-o-o-ugh of the high pressure exhaust burst at half-minute intervals, carrying to listeners miles away, the news that a boat was coming.