546 DANGERS TO STEAMBOATS ON THE MISSISSIPPI. 



Snags sometimes bob or vibrate up and down with 

 the force of the stream, alternately showing* their ends 

 above water and then dipping beneath it again, but 

 most of them remain permanently below the surface, 

 except perhaps at quite low water. 



The presence of a snag however, fortunately gener- 

 ally betrays itself by a peculiar ripple in the water, 

 which to a practised eye serves to mark the danger 

 which lurks beneath. In former days, before the heavy 

 forest was cut down, when snags were much more 

 numerous than they are at present, it was sometimes 

 necessary to lay boats up at night in the worst parts 

 of the river, where these sunken obstacles were known 

 to be numerous, as no amount of watchful care could 

 detect their presence in the darkness, and the terrors 

 of a possible snag, at any moment coming crashing 

 through cabins occupied by sleeping passengers, proved 

 something more than even the nerves of the reckless 

 Yankee could endure. 



Ever since the introduction of steamboats upon the 

 Mississippi, their history has been marked by numerous 

 disasters and incidents, replete with thrilling adventures 

 and hair-breadth escapes, from wrecks, fires, and boiler 

 explosions. The dangerous system of racing between 

 the boats of rival companies accounts for most of the 

 latter class of these so-called accidents, but the flimsy 

 construction of the boats themselves, generally built 

 (at least in former days) entirely of pine, rendered a 

 swiftly moving river-boat about as combustible a col- 

 lection of materials as could well be imagined. These 

 disastrous conflagrations, it is generally supposed, mostly 

 arose from sparks proceeding from the wood fires, falling 

 from the smoke-stacks (as they were termed) among 



