“To us who knew the facts, this travesty upon justice seemed the crowning outrage of the whole deplorable affair. Here was as deliberate, cold-blooded, and unprovoked a murder as the annals of crime afford, actuated unquestionably by the national hate of the murderer for the country of the victim. The crime was considered by the passengers as meriting the severest penalty of the law. The pretense that the sentinel acted under orders had not the remotest foundation, or if it had, it only made the officer _particeps criminis_. The final outcome was the grossest miscarriage of justice which even frontier annals afford, and it was unquestionably a justifiable ground for reprisal on the part of the British government. Let those who lament British obduracy in the case of Mrs. Maybrick ponder upon this far more lamentable case of the unavenged death of Captain Spear. [Sidenote: PHENOMENAL SUCCESS.] “Upon my return to St. Louis I called upon McCune, who advised me to attend promptly to my obligations for the construction of the boat, which had now about matured. He offered to help me get them renewed. I told him it was unnecessary, as I should take them all up and clear the debt off. He was greatly surprised and delighted at the success of my trip, which was indeed almost phenomenal. I made a clear profit of forty-five thousand dollars between May 7, the date of leaving St. Louis, and the date of my return. Yet it was a hard trip. The responsibility was very great. I was heavily in debt for my boat. I had on board three hundred passengers and three hundred tons of cargo. The difficulties of Missouri River navigation, the dangers from the Indians, and the many other contingencies of such a trip made it wearing in the extreme. Many boats that had set out weeks before us were passed on the way.[72] On the trip I was awake the greater part of the time night and day. I kept up all right and stood the strain so long as the excitement was on, but the moment we landed at Benton and I knew the danger was over, I went to sleep and instructed my wife not to awaken me even for meals. I slept almost continuously for twenty-four hours.” CHAPTER XXXV. THE BATTLE WITH THE RAILROADS. The great enemy of the Missouri River steamboat was the railroad. The impression now exists that the river has ceased to be a navigable stream. It has ceased to be a navigated stream, but it is as navigable as it ever was. Let it be known that all railroads in its valley will cease running for a period of five years and there will be a thousand boats on the river in less than six months. It is not a change in the stream, but in methods of transportation, that has ruined the commerce of the river. [Sidenote: ADVANCE OF THE RAILROADS.]