On another of Captain La Barge’s voyages he encountered a storm which carried away the smokestacks. He extemporized some skin chimneys, which enabled him to complete the trip. The Captain was once summoned as an expert witness in a trial which grew out of a similar accident to another steamboat, whose owners had been sued for damages for not delivering freight. The defense was that a storm had so wrecked the boat that she could not proceed. The particular damage alleged was the blowing down of the smokestacks. La Barge explained how he had managed in a similar case, and the court instructed the jury against the defendant. [Sidenote: EXPERT WITNESS.] [Sidenote: ACCIDENT TO BE AVOIDED.] In another case La Barge’s evidence, as an expert steamboat man, was decisive. It was a case of collision in which the pilot of the boat that was lost had not followed strictly the recognized signals and rules in passing the other boat. The owners had sued for damages. The defense was that the defendant’s pilot had followed the strict rules of steamboating, and the other pilot had not. The main question was whether the defendant’s pilot, when he saw the danger, should not have given way if possible, even if the other pilot was violating the rules, whether through willfulness or ignorance. La Barge was asked what course he would have pursued in the premises. He replied that, under any circumstances, it was a pilot’s duty to avoid accident, if possible. The court agreed with this view. The rest of the voyage of the _Nimrod_ passed off without noteworthy incident. The boat reached Fort Union on June 22, started back June 24, and reached St. Louis July 9, after an absence of seventy-one days. CHAPTER XIV. CHANGED CONDITIONS. Down to the date to which our narrative has now arrived, the steamboat business of the Missouri was mainly that of the fur trade. A small traffic was carried on with the settlements along the lower river and with the government establishment at Fort Leavenworth. In 1829 a regular packet was put on between St. Louis and Leavenworth, and this was kept up at intervals during the next fifteen years. But still the main business was the trade with the Indians or with Santa Fe and the parties of white hunters who roved all over the Western country. Its single noteworthy feature, as late as 1845, was the annual voyage of the Fur Company’s boat to the mouth of the Yellowstone. [Sidenote: FROM PILLAR TO POST.]