These early attempts at navigation were soon succeeded by the constant and regular trips of the Barges. Perhaps the most stirring and exciting scenes of western adventure were connected with the voyages of these peculiar craft. The bargemen were a distinct class of people whose fearlessness of character, recklessness of habits and laxity of morals rendered them a marked people. Their history will hereafter form the groundwork of many a heroic romance or epic poem. In the earlier stages of this sort of navigation, their trips were dangerous, not only on account of the Indians whose hunting-grounds bounded their track on either side, but also because the shores of both rivers were infested with organized banditti, who sought every occasion to rob and murder the owners of these boats. Beside all this the Spanish Government had forbidden the navigation of the lower Mississippi by the Americans, and thus, hedged in every way by danger, it became these boatmen to cultivate all the hardihood and wiliness of the Pioneer, while it led them also into the possession of that recklessness and independent freedom of manner, which even after the causes that produced it had ceased, still clung to and formed an integral part of the character of the Western Bargeman. It is a matter of no little surprise that something like an authentic history of these wonderful men has never been written. Certainly it is desirable to preserve such a history, and no book could have been undertaken which would be likely to produce more both of pleasure and profit to the writer and none which would meet with a larger circle of delighted readers. The traditions on the subject are, even at this recent period, so vague and contradictory that it would be difficult to procure anything like reliable or authentic data in regard to them. No story in which the bargemen figure is too improbable to be narrated, nor can one determine what particular person is the hero of an incident which is in turn laid at the door of each distinguished member of the whole fraternity. Some of these incidents however will serve so well to give an idea of the peculiar characteristics of the bargemen, and possess so much merit in themselves, that they cannot be omitted here. Previous to referring to any of these anecdotes, however, it may be interesting to introduce the following excellent description of the manner of navigating the Ohio and Mississippi prior to the introduction of steamboats. It is from the pen of Audubon, the celebrated ornithologist, whose death has been recently announced and has caused a feeling of deep regret in all who know how to admire that union of simple goodness of character with greatness of mind and untiring energy of study, which he, perhaps more than any other American, possessed.