“No; when Vevay was settled, Fulton hadn’t yet built the first steamboat that ever travelled, and when steamboats did appear they were few and small. Flatboats, just like this one, carried most of the produce to New Orleans; but as flatboats couldn’t come back up the river, there were a good many keelboats that brought freight and passengers up as well as down stream.” “What are keelboats?” “Why, they were large barges built with a keel, a sharp bow, and a modelled stern--in short, like a steamboat’s hull. These keelboats floated down the river, and the men then pushed them back up stream with long poles. When the current was too strong for that they got out on the bank and hauled the boat by ropes. That was called ‘cordelling.’ The steamboats grew, however, in number and size when they came, and as long ago as 1835 there were more than three hundred of them on the Mississippi alone. In 1850 there were more than four thousand on these rivers. They drove the keelboats out of business, but the flatboats continued because of their cheapness till after the Civil War, when the great towboats came into use. These, with their acres of barges, could carry freight even cheaper than flatboats could. For a long time the steamboats carried all the passengers, too, and many of them were palaces in magnificence. But the railroads came at last and took the passenger business away, and much of the freight traffic also, because they are faster, and still more because they don’t have to go so far to get anywhere.” “Why, how’s that? I don’t understand,” said Irv. “Yes, you do, if you’ll think a bit,” responded Ed. “Couldn’t _think_ of thinking. I’m too tired or too lazy so tell me,” was Irv’s rejoinder. “Well, you know the river is crooked, and the steamboats must follow all its windings, while the railroads can run nearly straight.” “Yes, I know,” said Irv, “but the crookedness of the river isn’t enough to make any very great difference.” “Isn’t it? Well, down in Chicot County, Arkansas, there is one bend in the river so big that from the upper landing on a plantation to the lower landing on the same plantation, the distance by river is seventeen miles, while you can walk across the neck from one landing to the other in less than a mile and a half!” “Whew!” said Phil. “And are there many such trips round Robin Hood’s barn for us to make on the way down?” “That’s best answered by telling you that from Cairo to New Orleans the distance by river is about one thousand and fifty miles, while by rail it is a little over four hundred miles. But come. It’s getting dark, and I’ve got to bake some corn pones for supper, so I must quit lecturing.” CHAPTER XIII THE TERROR OF THE RIVER For the next few days the voyage was uneventful. There was very little to be done at the sweeps--only now and then a ten minutes’ pull to keep the boat off the banks and in the river. For the water was now so high that there was no such thing as a channel to be followed.