Their descendants now form what might well be called a race of river-dwellers, and to this day their quaint little arks line the shores of the Mississippi and its tributaries. Some of These House-Boats are as crudely made as the Italian huts we see built along the railroads, but others are neatly painted, and the interiors are like the proverbial New England homes, where everything is spick-and-span. Like the drift-wood, these boats come down the stream with every freshet, and whenever it happens that the waters are particularly high they land at some promising spot and earn a livelihood on the adjacent water, by fishing and working aboard the other river-craft, or they land at some farming district, and as the waters recede they prop up and level their boats, on the bank, with stones or blocks of wood placed under the lower corners of their homes. The muddy waters, as they retire, leave a long stretch of fertile land between the stranded house and the river, and this space is utilized as a farm, where ducks, chickens, goats and pigs are raised, and where garden-truck grows luxuriantly. From a boat their home has been transformed to a farm-house; but sooner or later there will be another big freshet, and when the waters reach the late farm-house, lo! it is a boat again, and goes drifting in its happy-go-lucky way down the current. If it escapes the perils of snags and the monster battering-rams, which the rapid current makes of the drifting trees in the flood, it will land again, somewhere, down-stream. Lately, while on a sketching trip through Kentucky, I was greatly interested in these boats, and on the Ohio River I saw several making good headway against the four-mile-an-hour current. This they did by the aid of Big Square Sails, spread on a mast planted near their bows, thus demonstrating the practicability of the use of sails for house-boats. The house-boats to be described in this article are much better adapted for sailing than any of the craft used by the water-gypsies of the Western rivers. For open and exposed waters, like the large lakes which dot many of our inland States, or the Long Island Sound on our coast, the following plans of the American boy’s house-boat will have to be altered, but the alterations will be all in the hull. If you make the hull three feet deep it will have the effect of lowering the cabin, while the head-room inside will remain the same. Such a craft can carry a good-sized sail, and weather any gale you are liable to encounter, even on the Sound, during the summer months. [Illustration: FIG. 115.] Since the passing away of the glorious old flat-boat days, idle people in England have introduced the House-Boat as a Fashionable Fad, which has spread to this country, and the boys now have a new source of fun, as a result of this English fad.