Saturday night usually brought fresh accessions from the neighboring population, and frequently the brawls would last throughout the night. Broken fingers, noses, well-chewed ears, and dislocated teeth usually made up the casualties of the day. Bunged and beaten as many were, they would resume their usual labor during the next week, while the scenes of the preceding Saturday would be the subject of general comment, and the end of the following week would find them again at the grocery. These groceries, so called, prevailed throughout the South till the opening of the Civil War, during which it is presumed that the belligerently disposed got full gratification on fields of a different type. Among the changes wrought in our social life by the war, this was not among the least. Efforts to revive "the grocery" of the "good old times" after the return of the few from the battlefields of the war, proved abortive, and thus vanished this popular institution in the states of the South. EARLY NAVIGATION The rude crafts that once floated our magnificent rivers were crude and primitive enough, and were but a slight advance on the dugout or canoes of the red men. The heavy, clumsy flatboat, propelled in part by long oars used by the hand, and in part by long poles let down from the edge of the boat and by the pressure of the body urged slowly along, and by the use of grappling hooks to pull the boat upstream, were in use far into the twenties of the nineteenth century. These boats were of limited surface capacity, difficult of management, and exceedingly slow. An indication of their sluggish movement is afforded by the fact that in 1819, when Honorable Henry Goldthwaite was on his way from Mobile to Montgomery, to make the latter town his home, he was just three months on the voyage up the Alabama River. With slow movement and noiselessly, these heavy craft would be propelled up the river, and on approaching a given point the boatmen would signal their approach by firing a small cannon kept on each barge for that purpose. After the invention of the steam whistle, now so common, by Adrian Stephens, of Plymouth, England, whistles came at once into use on all American waters. For ages these great streams had been rolling wanton to the sea, and after the occupation of Alabama by the whites, the natural advantages were readily recognized, but as nothing was then known of the steam engine, of course there was nothing left but to employ the most available craft for transportation. For a long period, only the awkward barges and flatboats were used. It may be readily seen how the introduction of steamers on our rivers would facilitate individual and aggregate prosperity, which had been so long retarded by the slow process of navigation already mentioned.