INLAND BOAT SERVICE. 7 
cargoes for the steamboats. Among other farm products received 
by water at Baltimore are tobacco from Patuxent River landings, 
live stock from the upper Kappahannock, and poultry and eggs from 
practically all the river routes. 
Through service between Baltimore and Norfolk, Baltimore and 
Philadelphia, Norfolk and Washington, and between Norfolk and 
Richmond is maintained throughout the year by regular lines of 
boats. Over each of these routes the trip is made in a single night 
and the schedules are maintained as regularly as on railroads. 
An important feature of Chesapeake Bay trade, as of some other 
waterways, is the large number of small craft, such as sail vessels, 
power boats, and small gasoline launches, which serve as common 
carriers on these waters. Early in July Baltimore Harbor swarms 
with such vessels bringing in the first of the wheat crop from the lower 
bay. They also carry a considerable amount of canned goods, water- 
melons, sweet potatoes, and other agricultural products. Their 
traffic in oysters, fish, lumber, railroad ties, and firewood is important 
also. 
South of Virginia the Atlantic plain becomes wider and the navi- 
gable rivers extend farther inland, thus affording a wider reach from 
the coast for steamboat traffic than is afforded farther north. Steam- 
boat traffic here begins to differ somewhat from the traffic on tidal 
waters and shows some points of resemblance to that of the Mississippi 
Valley. The long route from Baltimore to Fredericksburg, 285 miles, 
is not directly inland, but extends more than halfway parallel to the 
coast, the Rappahannock River itself measuring but 106 miles from 
its mouth to Fredericksburg; but from Savannah to Augusta the 
202-mile route extends inland, as does the 370-mile route from 
Brunswick up the Altamaha and Ocmulgee Rivers to Macon. 
Two isolated routes in the Atlantic coast region are worthy of 
mention. Lakes Champlain and George afford a highway for local 
traffic along part of the borders of Vermont and New York; and at 
the southern part of the Atlantic slope the Kissimmee River, with 
Lakes Kissimmee and Tohopekaliga, afford a steamboat route between 
the town Kissimmee and Fort Bassenger. 
Numerous other routes are followed by steamboats on the inland 
waterways of the Atlantic coasfc and are mostly characterized by 
regularity of service and by lack of hindrances to navigation, except 
on the northern waterways in winter. 
MISSISSIPPI VALLEY, INCLUDING GULF COAST. 
The principal steamboat routes of the Mississippi Valley and Gulf 
coast may be grouped according to some central river port, as Cin- 
cinnati, St. Louis, Memphis, Vicksburg, New Orleans, or Mobile. 
From Cincinnati regular lines of boats extend up the Ohio River as 
