The boat was a medium-sized Missouri River packet, nearly new, with side wheels and powerful engines. Steamboating on the Missouri had then reached the highest stage of prosperity. A line of splendidly furnished and equipped passenger boats ran from St. Louis to St. Joseph, providing almost every comfort and luxury a traveler could ask. The table was elegant and the cuisine excellent, the cabin and state-rooms sumptuously furnished, and last but not least, there was always a bar where any kind of liquor could be found by those who preferred it to Missouri River water. There were good facilities for card-playing either with or without money, and no restraint in either case. There was usually a piano in the cabin, and frequently a fair band of musicians among the waiters and cabin-boys. These great passenger-boats ran all night, up and down the most treacherous and changeable of all the navigable streams. To be a first-class pilot on the Missouri River was equivalent to earning the highest wages paid in the West at that time. The chief pilot of our boat, R. B--, was of that class. Just before he took service on this boat he had forfeited a contract for the season at $1,000 a month with the “Morning Star,” a large passenger-packet, running from St. Louis to St. Joseph, from the fact that he was on one of his periodical sprees when she was ready to embark from St. Louis. After the boat got under way, I spent a great deal of time in the pilot-house with R. B--, who I found a man of fair education and considerable culture, a devotee of Shakespeare, quoting or reciting page after page of his “Tragedies” without interruption of his duties at the helm of the boat, a position requiring great courage and steady nerves. R. B-- knew every twist and turn of the channel of the Missouri from St. Louis to St. Joseph, knew every bar where the river was either cutting out its bed or filling it up, knew precisely the location of every snag protruding above water, and of many that were invisible except at a low stage of water--in short, knew at all times, night or day, exactly the position of the boat and its bearings.