The steamboats, making occasional trips up and down the river, created great excitement along the banks, and at the towns and villages their arrival and landings were great occasions.[262] These boats were a queer style of water craft, as they had not assumed the forms that were afterward found to be suited to the river navigation. Their builders copied the models of ships adapted to deep water, and the boats all drew too much water to be available in the dry season, so that they could not be used on the upper Ohio more than about three months in the year. They looked just like a small ship without masts. Some of them were of peculiar models, and all of them had very little power in comparison with boats built later. The first boats had no more decking than a common sailing vessel. Very few of them could make over 2 or 3 miles against the stream when it was strong.[263] When Fulton commenced steamboat building, be patented the side paddle wheels, and held a monopoly of that form of boat. Niles notes the following incidents arising from this monopoly. "Mr. Livingston of New Orleans under a patent of the State of Louisiana, as the assignee of Fulton and Livingston's exclusive right to navigate the Mississippi and its waters, by steam, so far as respects the navigation from New Orleans to and up the Red River, has prevented the steamboat Despatch, of Pittsburg, from taking a return cargo at New Orleans, though it appears she is worked by machinery quite distinct from that under the aforesaid patent. He has, however, permitted her to go out of the limits of the State without incurring a penalty. The procedure appears likely to create much sensation in the "western world."[264] "The Louisville Correspondent" announces a second attempt of the Livingston steamboat company to interrupt the steam navigation of the Mississippi by boats not under their charter. The procedure excites much sensibility in the western world."[265] "The question of Fulton and Livingston's privilege is again agitated by a suit brought in the federal court of New Orleans, against the steamboat Constitution. We wait with anxiety the result of a question involving the most prominent interests of W. America."[266] The evasion in many of the western boats consisted of placing a wheel on each side of the keel at the stern of the vessel, so that the wheels were out of sight from behind.[267] The General Pike, built at Cincinnati in 1818, and intended to ply as a packet between Maysville, Cincinnati, and Louisville, is said to have been the first steam boat constructed on the western waters for the exclusive convenience of pass engers. The length of her cabin was 40 feet, the breadth 25 feet, in addition to which there were fourteen state rooms.[268]