N 



I love the wimmen an I'm chockful d fight! 

 Vm half wild horse and half cock-eyed alli- 

 gator . . .1 can hit like fourth-proof lightnin 

 . . . I can out-run, out-jump, out-shoot, out- 

 brag, out-drink, an out-fight, rough-an- 

 tumble, no holts barred, ary man on both sides 

 of the river ... 7 ain't had a fight for two days 

 an I'm spilein for exercise. 

 They were rough, but Mike Fink was representative 

 of the dependable boatmen who would deliver a cargo 

 where it was supposed to go, and deliver it dry. Tobacco 

 packed in hogsheads or casks were, by regulation, a 

 minimum thousand pounds. It took stout men to handle 

 them. One of Wilkinson's shipments, for instance, in- 

 cluded 120 hogsheads on three boats. On one occasion 

 Wilkinson had the unpleasant duty of informing con- 

 signors that a flatboat with 40 hogsheads of tobacco 

 had sunk but that he hoped to salvage part of the cargo. 

 With the advent of the Mississippi steamboat, after 

 1811, the rowdy boatmen drifted to other occupations. 



ew Orleans Blues 



At the end of 1790 the Spanish authorities announced 

 that thereafter tobacco purchases would not exceed 

 40,000 pounds annually. It was a shock, but less to Ken- 

 tucky tobacco planters, many of whom began to turn to 

 wheat and a larger production of hemp, than it was to 

 farmers to the south. The Spanish had the grace to ex- 

 plain that the Seville warehouses were overstocked with 

 tobacco. At the same time they complained that leaf ex- 

 ported to Spain — not necessarily from Kentucky — was 

 of poor quality and that packers had included trash in 

 hogsheads to meet the weight requirement. 



A contemporary observer reported that in the spring 

 of 1790 hundreds of hogsheads of tobacco were on the 



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