the most famous of them all was that between the "Robert E. Lee" and the "Natchez," in 1870. These boats, the pride of all who lived along the river at that time, raced from New Orleans to St. Louis. At Natchez, 268 miles, they were six minutes apart; at Cairo, 1024 miles, the "Lee" was three hours and thirty-four minutes ahead. 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 clang all down the line, and then the pow-wows seemed to double. In a moment or two the final warning came, a simultaneous din of Chinese gongs with the cry, 'All dat aint