[12] The first _Yellowstone_, built in the winter of 1830–31, is a good example of the original river boat. It was 130 feet long, 19 feet beam, 6 feet hold: beautiful model; side wheels; single engine; flywheel; cabin aft of shaft; ladies’ cabin in stern hold; boiler decks open; no hurricane roof; pilot-house elevated; two smokestacks; one rudder; 6-foot wheel bucket; 18-foot wheel; stages aft; draft, light, 4½ feet; loaded to 75 tons, 5½ feet. In the river boats the main or forecastle deck was the first above the water, and the one covering the hold; the boiler deck was the second one, just over the boilers, covered by the hurricane roof; the hurricane deck was the third deck. Upon this were situated the texas and the pilot-house. [13] A noted steamboat that ran on the lower river during a portion of the fifties was the _Felix X. Aubrey_. Between the smokestacks was the figure of a man riding at full speed on horseback. The reference was to a horseback ride, very celebrated in its day, from Santa Fe to Westport, where Kansas City now stands. In the year 1853 Felix X. Aubrey made this ride in five days and thirteen hours. The distance was 775 miles. [14] “Of all the variable things in creation the most uncertain are the action of a jury, the state of woman’s mind, and the condition of the Missouri River.”--_Sioux City Register_, March 28, 1868. [15] As an example of primitive lighthouse or fog-signal work, the story is told of a steamboat captain who always made a certain crossing on the lower river, if at night, by the aid of the bark of a dog belonging to a farmhouse directly in line with the course of the boat. The dog came out on the bank whenever boats were approaching, and saluted them vigorously until they had passed. The captain ran by this bark with the most implicit confidence. But unhappily the dog _did_ change his position--once--and the captain ran by its bark no more, for the next morning his own bark was a hopeless wreck upon a neighboring sandbar. [16] About 1856 this matter was made the subject of military investigation under General Harney. [17] The practicability of commercial steamboating on the Missouri River had begun to be recognized about 1829. In the summer of that year the _W. D. Duncan_ commenced a regular packet trade to Fort Leavenworth. [18] Kenneth McKenzie, the ablest trader the American Fur Company produced, was at this time in charge of Fort Union, at the mouth of the Yellowstone, and of all the company’s operations in the tributary country along the upper rivers. [19] This affords a glimpse at the crafty and oppressive methods of the company, which bore with intolerable hardship upon its employees. To pay wages in merchandise at an advance of three or four hundred per cent. upon their cost was a great saving to the company, but an unqualified fraud upon its servants.