EARLY RIVER DAYS 25 



Dubuque, so I will, and get good and drunk and break 

 in some man's window and they'll sind me up for three 

 months. Divil the lick of work will I do till spring." 

 And that is just what he did. 



In 1857, the Illinois Central railroad extended from 

 Cairo, at the extreme southern end of the state, to Ga- 

 lena, in the northwest corner, with a branch from Am- 

 boy to Chicago, and was then the longest railroad in 

 the world. The Galena steamboats connected this great 

 railroad with the entire Northwest and it gave the boats 

 regular and reliable connection with the East and 

 South. These conditions, while they lasted, were mutu- 

 ally advantageous to all concerned, and many snug for- 

 tunes were made by members of the Galena and Min- 

 nesota Company and a few independents. 



The lumber handled by the Galena yards nearly all 

 came from sawmills on the Wisconsin river. It was 

 floated down the Wisconsin and Mississippi and towed 

 up the Fevre river by some of the small boats, or pulled 

 and poled up by hand, when the conditions were favor- 

 able. 



Logs to supply the local sawmill came from the 

 northern pineries in the same way. Considerable Ga- 

 lena capital was invested in lumbering in the Wiscon- 

 sin pineries. Many of the men who worked on the boats 

 as deck-hands in summer went up to the pineries in 

 winter and helped cut and bank the logs and in early 

 spring, to get the logs down to the sawmills. 



Naturally some of these men were engaged to help 

 float the rafts of logs or lumber down the Wisconsin 

 and Mississippi, earning good money while getting 

 back to their summer jobs. In doing this, a few of the 

 more ambitious chaps developed into "raft pilots" who 

 knew the river, and either piloted for so much per 



