t'tJi* LIFE OX THE MISSISSIPPI.

what it once was. The government's snag-boats go patrolling up and
down, in these matter-of-fact days, pulling the river's teeth; they
have rooted out all the old clusters which made many localities so
formidable; and they allow no new ones to collect. Formerly, if your
boat got away from you, on a black night, and broke for the woods,
it was an anxious time with you ; so was it also, when you were groping
your way through solidified darkness in a narrow chute; but all that
is changed now—you flash otit your electric light, transform night
into day in the twinkling of an eye, and your perils and anxieties are
at an end. Horace Bixby and George Ritchie have charted the cross-
ings and laid out the courses by compass ; they have invented a lamp
to go with the chart, and have patented the whole. With these helps,

one may run in the fog now, with considerable security,, and with a
confidence unknown in the old days.
With these abundant beacons, the banishment of snags, plenty of
daylight in a box and ready to be turned on whenever needed, and a
dbarfc aad compass to fight the fog with, piloting, at a good stage of
water, is now nearly as safe and simple as driving stage, and is hardly
mca-e titan three times as romantic.
And IK>W in these new days, these days of infinite change, the
Hoe have raised the captain above the pilot by giving him
tke bigger wages of the two. This was going far, but they have not
stopped tfesre. They have decreed that the pilot shall remain at his
peefc* and stand his watdi dear i&iraigh* whether the boat be under