The river trade reached its zenith between 1840 and 1860, in the two decades previous to the Civil War, that period before the railroads began to parallel the great rivers. It was a time which saw the rise of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, and Arkansas, and which witnessed the spread of the cotton kingdom into the Southwest. The story of King Cotton's conquest of the Mississippi South is best told in statistics. In 1811, the year of the first voyage which the New Orleans made down the Ohio River, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Mississippi exported five million pounds of cotton. In 1834 these same States exported almost two hundred million pounds of cotton. To take care of this crop and to supply the cotton country, which was becoming wealthy, with the necessaries and luxuries of life, more and more steamboats were needed. The great shipyards situated, because of the proximity of suitable timber, at St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Louisville became busy hives, not since paralleled except by such centers of shipbuilding as Hog Island in 1917-18, during the time of the Great War. The steamboat tonnage of the Mississippi Valley (exclusive of New Orleans) in the hustling forties exceeded that of the Atlantic ports (exclusive of New York City) by 15,000 tons. The steamboat tonnage of New Orleans alone in 1843 was more than double that of New York City. Those who, if the old story is true, ran in fear to the hills when the little New Orleans went puffing down the Ohio, in 1811, would have been doubly amazed at the splendid development in the art of boat building, could they have seen the stately Sultana or Southern Belle of the fifties sweep swiftly by. After a period of gaudy ornamentation (1830-40) steamboat architecture settled down, as has that of Pullman cars today, to sane and practical lines, and the boats gained in length and strength, though they contained less weight of timber. The value of one of the greater boats of this era would be about fifty thousand dollars. When Captain Bixby made his celebrated night crossing at Hat Island a quarter of a million dollars in ship and cargo would have been the price of an error in judgment, according to Mark Twain, ¹ a good authority. ¹ Op. cit., p. 101.