A SWIFT STEAMBOAT.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 157, 4 December 1874, Page 3

A SWIFT STEAMBOAT.

“Speaking about fast-running steamboats,” said Mr Thomas Hartshorn, yesterday, rolling his (pud into his larboard jaw and giving his Tuckapaw trousers a hitch (MrH. served as cook on the ram “Queen of the West),” “ I suppose you never heard of the old Elephant, that used to run between Cincinnati and New Orleans. She was a beauty. I suppose that when she was tied to the bank with a stern-line and towline she was one of the fastest boats on the river. She made one celebrated trip from Orleans, 1 think in 1847. Her time was made a matter of record. It was seven days, six hours, and three weeks. Coinin’ up from Orleans once, the captain was sittin’ at the table, and lie noticed several big hulks of fellows servin’ as cabin boys, He called the steward to him and sezho, ‘ Don’t you think it would look better to have boys waiting on the table? I don’t like to see men fillin’ the place of cabin-boys. Let ’em go and get some young chaps. u Why, d —n it, captain,’ says the steward, ‘them fellows were boys when we left New Orleans.’ The “Elephant,” continued Mr Hartshorn, clinging to his nautical reminiscences, “was pullin’ out from Memphis one day on a down trip, and somehow she got mixed up with a raft of saw logs. >She broke one of the logs loose, and it floated out into the stream. The Elephant headed down the river, and finally got alongside the log. Then commenced one of the

nicest races you over sec. There was a good stage of water, and the log boomed along right lively. For about a week they held together party well, but the Elephant had to land at the mouth of the White River, and the log beat her into New Orleans about twenty minutes. There was something wrong with the Elephant’s boilers, and she couldn’t make steam properly. That’s what the captain said. She was a nice boat to ship green fruit on,” said Mr Hartshorn.