The larger sort, called Kentucky Arks, and of about 150 tons burthen, were used for purposes of trade. They contained a vast assortment of articles, such as horses, pigs, poultry, apples, flour, corn, peach brandy, cider, whiskey, bar iron and castings, tin, copper wares, glass, cabinet work, chairs, millstones, grindstones, and nails. These boats passed down the Ohio, selling what they could at the river towns.[330] When the crew reached New Orleans they sold the boat, and returned overland or by steamboat.[331] Latrobe describes the ark as "a broad flat-boat with a deck of two or three feet elevation above the water. They have generally a small window fore and aft, and a door in the middle, a peep into which will show you a goodly store of pots, pans, or flour barrels. A narrow ledge runs round them for the convenience of poling. A small chimney rises above; racoon and deer skins, the produce of the hours spent ashore, are nailed on the sides to dry. The larger are propelled by four oars, and I have occasionally seen them surmounted by a crooked mast or top mast. Here you will meet one fitted up as a floating tinshop, gleaning many a bright dollar from the settlers. Others again are of a more simple construction, and have merely a temporary deck supported upon rails, through which the sheep and other live stock may be descried. Hay for their consumption will be piled above, and cabbages stowed away in a compartment behind."[332] The flat-boat belonged to the same class as the ark. Their construction was temporary and they were broken up at New Orleans as not being sufficiently strong to be freighted up the the river.[333] These flat boats or Orleans boats as they were sometimes called, were from twelve to twenty-five feet wide, and from thirty to ninety feet long, and carried about seven hundred barrels of flour.[334] Farmers built these boats and sent their produce to New Orleans in them.[335] Freight on board a flat boat in 1817 was 50 cents per cwt.[336] In 1818, one traveler on a steamboat counted as many as 643 flat boats descending the Ohio and Mississippi.[337] In one month, in the early part of the year 1831, it was estimated that one thousand flat boats entered the Ohio from the Wabash, with cargoes estimated at $2000 each.[338] Five hundred of these boats passed Vincennes.[339] In 1827, Bullock says that there were from 1200 to 1500 flat boats, averaging from 40 to 60 tons, at New Orleans.[340] Basil Hall in 1827-1828 counted about 100 arks at New Orleans.[341] The margin of the shore at New Orleans was lined in the early part of the year 1831, with these flat boats from all parts of the upper country.[342] The descent of a flat boat to New Orleans, if in autumn, usually occupied fifty days.[343]