80 PRACTICAL ARBORICULTURE 



and a half acres. It would require twenty-five trains of forty cars each, and 

 twenty-five locomotives to move this load. Pittsburg, Pennsylvania ; Cincinnati, 

 Ohio; Louisville, Kentucky; Memphis, Tennessee; and New Orleans, Louisiana, 

 are thus connected, the steamer towing sixteen empty barges back on the return 

 trip. 



The long lines of barges towed by one steamer on the Hudson river are fa- 

 miliar objects to all who have visited New York. Here the steamer precedes the 

 load, towing the barges with long hawsers of great size, while on the Ohio the 

 steamer, usually a stern wheel boat, pushes the barges ahead of her. On Puget 

 Sound rafts of logs, confined in a "boom," are towed across the sound to the 

 various saw mills, by powerful ocean going tug boats, the rafts following after the 

 steamer. 



Elsewhere is shown one of the noted steamboats which plied the Mississippi 

 river in 1885. This was a very large and popular passenger steamer, as well as a 

 cotton freight boat. In time of cotton picking and marketing, on all Mississippi 

 and tributary streams within the cotton belt, every steamboat carried the bales 

 of cotton, piled about the bow and sides of the vessel like a great fort. 



It was this "hurry up" freight, each bale worth five hundred dollars, that 

 paid the highest freightage, and all were anxious to secure this trade, and every 

 boat coming into New Orleans was loaded to the guards with this product of the 

 great plantations. 



Steamboating at present is not as remunerative as it was a third of a century 

 ago. It is commonly supposed that the construction of so many lines of railway 

 has destroyed the Steamboating industry, but this is by no means the cause ; there 

 are other factors which have made the river transportations unprofitable, and 

 transferred most of the business to the railways. 



River fogs, which at times become so dense that pilots cannot see objects on 

 shore with sufficient clearness to safely navigate the streams, while the mariner's 

 compass is seldom used on inland American streams. Time lost in this way makes 

 navigation uncertain and dilatory. Boats must wait until all freight has been car- 

 ried aboard ; this may be a few minutes, or at times several hours. Hence steam- 

 boats are often many hours behind their schedule time. Railway trains are al- 

 ways on time, or very nearly so, and the promptness induces patronage. 



Then erosion of the soil from farms and hillsides, since the clearing up and 

 cultivation of the lands, has caused such deposits in all streams that bars have 

 been formed and the course of the rivers changed, all streams having become more 

 difficult for navigation, especially in low water. 



With the clearing away of the forests, the rainfall runs off with greater rap- 

 idity than formerly, the variation in depth of water being excessive. The Missis- 

 sippi river at times becomes so low that large steamers cease to ply their trade. 

 Perhaps a month later, with heavy rains and melting snows, the levees may be in 

 danger from destructive floods. 



All these causes operate to make water transportation unreliable upon west- 

 ern waters, while trains are run night and day with greatest exactness. 



In the Ohio Valley the farm lands were formerly new. fresh, fertile, im- 

 mensely productive and they supplied traffic for river boats to their greatest ca- 

 pacity. Now the soil has been eroded, hills have become barren, and the pro- 



