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CHAPTER XII.
SOUNDING.
WHEN the river is very low, and one's steamboat is * drawing all the
water' there is in the channel,—or a few inches more, as was often
the case in the old times,—one must be painfully circumspect in his
piloting. "We used to have to ' sound ' a number of particularly bad
places almost every trip when the river was at a very low stage.
Sounding is done in this way. The boat ties up at the shore, just
above the shoal crossing ; the pilot not on watch takes his < cub' or
steersman and a picked crew of men (sometimes an officer also), and
goes out in the yawl—provided the boat has not that rare and sump-
tuous luxury, a regularly-devised * sounding-boat *—and proceeds to
hunt for the best water, the pilot on duty watching his movements
through a spy-glass, meantime, and in some instances assisting by
signals of the boat's whistle, signifying * try higher up J or c try lower
down;' for the surface of the water, like an oil-painting, is more
expressive and intelligible when inspected from a little distance than
very close at hand. The whistle signals are seldom necessary, how-
ever ; never, perhaps, except when the wind confuses the significant
ripples upon the water's surface. When the yawl has reached the
shoal place, the speed is slackened, the pilot begins to sound the depth
with a pole ten or twelve feet long, and the steersman at the tiller
obeys the order to * hold her up to starboard ;' or, ' let her fall off to
larboard;M or * steady—steady as you go.'
When the measurements indicate that the yawl is approaching the
shoalest part of the reef, the command is given to f ease all! * Then
1 The term * larboard * is never used at sea, now, to signify the left hand j
bnt was always nsed on the river in my time.