THE MUD QUEEN 105 
twenty-nine feet long and three feet wide. A few feet 
from both bow and stern the side lines begin to come 
together, tapering to a point at both ends of the boat. 
When used as rowboats they are arranged with out- 
riggers for double scull rowing. The boats are flat 
bottomed and draw but little water, but for all their 
narrow draft they are remarkably seaworthy. 
The engine in the Mud Queen was arranged amid- 
ships and was set up in the boat exactly as in the origi- 
nal Ford car. The engineer sat a little forward of the 
center of the boat and started and stopped the engine 
by a hand lever. The power was carried to a paddle- 
wheel on each side of the boat exactly as carried to the 
hind wheels of the Ford car. The paddles were small 
squares of steel, as the toughest wood was not strong 
enough to stand the work. Under full headway in the 
deep water of the river the Mud Queen went about as 
fast as two men rowing. But when the steel paddles 
struck and gripped the soft slick mud in the lake, 
covered by an inch or two of water, the boat raised it- 
self a trifle and sprang forward like a spirited horse 
feeling the spur. A distance that two men rowing 
covered in an hour and a half the Mud Queen made 
easily in twenty-five minutes. 
The boat ran freely on both mud and water but when- 
ever it struck a sandbar and the sand began to grate 
on the bottom of the boat, it came to a full stop. The 
captain and crew on such occasions had to pull up the 
tops of their rubber boots, get overboard, and push 
the boat off. 
There was no rudder. Any rudder that projected 
far enough into the water to steer the boat could never 
stand the hard knocks of running on the sandbars. 
Jimmy steered with an oar, while I sat on a high box 
