In addition to cordelling, as described above, the long line was also used in warping the boat around difficult places where the men could not follow the bank. This was accomplished by carrying the line out ahead in the skiff as far as possible or convenient, and making it fast to trees or rocks. The men on the boat then hauled on the line, pulling the boat up until it reached the object to which the line was attached. The boat was then moored to the bank, or held with the poles until the line was again carried ahead and made fast, when the process was repeated. In this manner the greatest of up-river steamboatmen, Captain Daniel Smith Harris, prosecuted his first voyage from Cincinnati to Galena, in the year 1823. It probably required no more than four or five days to run down the Ohio, on the spring flood, to Cairo; from Cairo to Galena required two months of cordelling, poling, and warping.
About the time the keel boat "Colonel Bumford" was passing St. Louis, the steamer "Virginia" departed for the upper river with a load of supplies for the United States military post at Fort Snelling. She had among her passengers Major John Biddle and Captain Joseph P. Russell, U. S. A., and Laurence Talliaferro, United States Indian Agent for the Territory of Minnesota. The "Virginia" arrived at Fort Snelling May 10, 1823, the first boat propelled by steam to breast the waters of the upper Mississippi. She was received with a salute of cannon from the fort, and carried fear and consternation to the Indians, who watched the smoke rolling from her chimney, the exhaust steam shooting from her escape pipe with a noise that terrified them. The "Virginia" was scarcely longer than the largest keel boat, being about a hundred and twenty feet long, and twenty-two feet beam. She had no upper cabin, the accommodations for the passengers being in the hold, in the stern of the boat, with the cargo-box covering so common to the keel boats of which she herself was but an evolution.
What did the young steamboatman see on his voyage from Cairo to Galena in 1823? In his later years, in speaking of this trip, he said that where Cairo now stands there was but one log building, a warehouse for the accommodation of keel-boat navigators of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Cape Girardeau, St. Genevieve, and Herculaneum were small settlements averaging a dozen families each. St. Louis, which was built almost entirely of frame buildings, had a population of about five thousand. The levee was a ledge of rocks, with scarcely a fit landing place on the whole frontage. Alton, Clarksville, and Louisiana were minor settlements. What is now Quincy consisted of one log cabin only, which was built and occupied by John Woods, who afterwards became lieutenant-governor of the State of Illinois, and acting governor. This intrepid pioneer was "batching it", being industriously engaged in clearing a piece of land for farming purposes. The only settler at Hannibal was one John S. Miller, a blacksmith, who removed to Galena in the autumn of 1823. In later years, Hannibal was to claim the honor of being the birthplace of "Mark Twain", the historian of the lower Mississippi pilot clans. The last farm house between St. Genevieve and Galena was located at Cottonwood Prairie (now Canton), and was occupied by one Captain White, who was prominently identified with the early development of the Northwest. There was a government garrison at Keokuk, which was then known as Fort Edwards, and another at Fort Armstrong, now Rock Island. The settlement at Galena consisted of about a dozen log cabins, a few frame shanties, and a smelting furnace.
If he were looking only for the evidence of an advancing civilization, the above probably covers about all he saw on his trip. Other things he saw, however. The great river, flowing in its pristine glory, "unvexed to the sea"; islands, set like emeralds in the tawny flood, the trees and bushes taking on their summer dress of green in the warm May sunshine; prairies stretching away in boundless beauty, limited only by his powers of vision. Later, as his craft stemmed the flood and advanced up the river, he saw the hills beginning to encroach upon the valley of the river, narrowing his view; later, the crags and bastions of the bluffs of the upper river, beetling over the very channel itself, and lending an added grandeur to the simple beauty of the banks already passed.
His unaccustomed eyes saw the wickyups and tepees of the Indians scattered among the islands and on the lowlands, the hunters of the tribe exchanging the firelock for the spear and net as they sought to reap the water for its harvest of returning fish. It was all new to the young traveller, who was later to become the best known steamboatman of the upper river, the commander of a greater number of different steamboats than any of his compeers, and who was to know the river, in all its meanderings and in all its moods, better than any other who ever sailed it—Daniel Smith Harris, of Galena, Illinois.
Alton, Illinois. Looking down the river.