It appears then that the steamboat tonnage of the Mississippi Valley (1842) exceeded by forty thousand tons the entire steamboat tonnage of Great Britain (1834). In other words, the steamboat tonnage of Great Britain was only two-thirds that of the Mississippi Valley. The magnitude of this fact will be best appreciated by considering that the entire tonnage of the United States was but two-thirds that of Great Britain, showing that this proportion is exactly reversed in western steamboat trade. The influence of the West in pushing the steamboat to its ultimate use as a common carrier has been most remarkable. CHAPTER V THREE GENERATIONS OF RIVERMEN The history of the Ohio Basin rivermen, from those who paddled a canoe and pushed a keel-boat to those who labor today on our steamboats has never been written. The lights and shades of this life have never been pictured by any novelist and perhaps they never can be. Even the student who gleans imperfect pictures from the miscellanies preserved in local histories, must in the very nature of the case, secure but a poor focus on realities. Study as you will, you will only make yourself ridiculous when you attempt to talk to one of the old-time rivermen. Your use and even pronunciation of words will seem absurd; if the dictionary is on your side, so much the worse for the dictionary. An attempt will create in the enthusiast much the same feeling that will be felt on giving a veteran of Gettysburg a copy of an historical novel describing the battle; it may have thrilled you but your old soldier friend will say "That man never was in battle." The old riverman will, by his smile, make you conscious that you speak in unfamiliar terms, though his manner may be politeness itself. "You have never been in battle" will be the gist of his implications. The first generation of rivermen, excluding, of course the Indians, would cover the year from 1750 to 1780 and would include those whose principal acquaintance with the Ohio and its tributaries was made through the canoe and pirogue. The second generation would stretch from 1780 or 1790 to 1810, and for our purposes will include those who lived in the heyday of the keel- and flat-boat. The third generation would carry us forward from 1810 to about 1850, and in this we would count the thousands who knew these valleys before the railway had robbed the steamboat of so much of its business and pride. This classification is extremely loose; it will help us, however, to place some limits on a subject as boundless as human ambition.