THE PILOTS' MONOPOLY.

155

and imperfect the next. He has no time or words to waste if he
would keep * posted.'

But the outsiders had a hard time of it. No particular place to
meet and exchange information, no wharf-boat reports, none but

•" ^ chance and
unsatisfactory
ways of get-
ting news. The conse-
quence was that a man
sometimes had to run five
hundred miles of river on
information that was a
week or ten days old. At

a fair stage of the river that might have answered; but when the
dead low water came it was destructive.

Now came another perfectly logical result. The outsiders began
to ground steamboats, sink them, and get into all sorts of trouble,

; POSTING HIS REPORT.'