The same year and the same month in the year that witnessed the advent of the first steamboat on the Upper Mississippi, likewise witnessed the arrival in Galena of one who was destined to become the best known of all the upper river steamboatmen. In April, 1823, James Harris[7] accompanied by his son, Daniel Smith Harris, a lad of fifteen, left Cincinnati on the keel boat "Colonel Bumford", for the Le Fevre lead mines (now Galena), where they arrived June 20, 1823, after a laborious voyage down the Ohio and up the Mississippi. A word in passing, regarding the keel boat. Few of the men now living know from actual observation what manner of craft is suggested by the mere mention of the name. None of this generation have seen it. A canal boat comes as near it in model and build as any craft now afloat; and yet it was not a canal boat. In its day and generation it was the clipper of the Western river to which it was indigenous. Any sort of craft might go downstream; rafts, arks, broadhorns, and scows were all reliable downstream sailers, dependent only upon the flow of the current, which was eternally setting toward the sea. All of this sort of craft did go down, with every rise in the Ohio, in the early days of the nineteenth century, from every port and landing between Pittsburg and Cairo, to New Orleans. They were laden with adventurers, with pioneers, with settlers, or with produce of the farms already opened along the Ohio and its tributaries; corn, wheat, apples, live-stock—"hoop-poles and punkins", in the slang of the day—in fact anything of value to trade for the merchandise of civilization which found its entrepÔt at New Orleans from Europe or the Indies. The craft carrying this produce was itself a part of the stock in trade, and when unloaded was broken up and sold as lumber for the building of the city, or for export to Cuba or other West Indian ports. The problem was to get back to the Ohio with the cargo of merchandise bought with the produce carried as cargo on the down trip. The broad horns and arks were an impossibility as upstream craft, and thus it came about in the evolution of things required for specific purposes, that the keel boat came into being.

This boat was built to go upstream as well as down. It was a well-modelled craft, sixty to eighty feet long, and fifteen to eighteen feet wide, sharp at both ends, and often with fine lines—clipper-built for passenger traffic. It had usually about four feet depth of hold. Its cargo box, as it was called, was about four feet higher, sometimes covered with a light curved deck; sometimes open, with a "gallows-frame" running the length of the hold, over which tarpaulins were drawn and fastened to the sides of the boat for the protection of the freight and passengers in stormy weather. At either end of the craft was a deck for eight or ten feet, the forward or forecastle deck having a windlass or capstan for pulling the boat off bars, or warping through swift water or over rapids.

Along each side of the cargo box ran a narrow walk, about eighteen inches in width, with cleats nailed to the deck twenty-eight or thirty inches apart, to prevent the feet of the crew from slipping when poling upstream. Of the motive power of these boats, Captain H. M. Chittenden, U. S. A., in a recent work on the navigation of the Missouri River in early days, says:

For poling the men were provided with tough ash poles, eighteen or twenty feet long, with a wooden or iron shoe or socket to rest on the bottom of the river, and a crutch or knob for the shoulder. In propelling the boat, ten or a dozen men on each side thrust the foot of their poles into the bottom of the river, and with the other end against their shoulders, walked toward the stern of the boat, pushing it upstream at the same rate of speed with which they walked toward the stern. As each pair—one on each side of the boat—reached the stern, they quickly recovered their poles, leaped to the roof of the cargo box, and running forward jumped to the deck and replanted their poles for a new turn of duty. By this means an even speed was maintained, as in a crew of twenty there were always sixteen men applying motive power, while four others were returning to the bow for a new start. The writer, in his childhood, has stood for hours on the banks of the St. Joseph River, in Niles, Michigan, watching the crews of keel boats thus laboriously pushing their craft up the river from St. Joseph, on the lake, to Niles, South Bend, and Mishawaka. They were afterward to float back, laden with flour in barrels, potatoes and apples in sacks, and all the miscellaneous merchandise of the farm, destined for Detroit, Buffalo, and the East, by way of the Great Lakes.

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.