172 DECREASE OF [CHAP. XXX. 



water), it may readily be conceived how much this 

 formidable source of danger has lessened in the last 

 few years. At the season when the river is lowest, 

 grappling irons are firmly fixed to these snags, and 

 the whole force of the engines in the snag-boat is 

 exerted to draw them out of the mud ; they are 

 then cut into several pieces, and left to float down 

 the stream, but part of them being water-logged, sink 

 at once to the bottom. 



Several travellers assure me, that serious accidents 

 are not more common now on the Mississippi and its 

 tributaries, when there are 800 steamers afloat, than 

 twenty years ago, when the number of steamers was 

 less than fifty. The increased security arises, chiefly, 

 from the greater skill and sobriety of the captains and 

 engineers, who rarely run races as formerly, and who 

 usually cast anchor during fogs and in dark nights. 

 Such precautions have, no doubt, become more and 

 more imperative, in proportion as the steamers have 

 multiplied. On the wide Atlantic, the chances of 

 collision in a fog may be slight, but to sail in so 

 narrow a channel as that of a river, at the rate of ten 

 miles an hour, unable to see a ship s length a-head, 

 with the risk of meeting, every moment, other 

 steamers coming down at the rate of fifteen miles 

 an hour, implies such recklessness, that one cannot 

 wonder that navigators on the western waters have 

 earned the character of setting small value on their 

 own and other s lives. Formerly, the most frequent 

 cause of explosions was a deficiency of water in the 

 boiler ; one of the great improvements adopted, within 

 the last five years, for preventing this mischief, is the 



