Chapter 15 - Page 2

shoulders of two smaller girls.

Toward noon we heard the inspiring cry:

"Sail ho!"

"Where away?" shouted the captain.

"Three points off the weather bow!"

We ran forward to see the vessel. It proved to be a steamboat--for they
had begun to run a steamer up the Neckar, for the first time in May.
She was a tug, and one of a very peculiar build and aspect. I had often
watched her from the hotel, and wondered how she propelled herself, for
apparently she had no propeller or paddles. She came churning along,
now, making a deal of noise of one kind or another, and aggravating it
every now and then by blowing a hoarse whistle. She had nine keel-boats
hitched on behind and following after her in a long, slender rank. We
met her in a narrow place, between dikes, and there was hardly room for
us both in the cramped passage. As she went grinding and groaning by, we
perceived the secret of her moving impulse. She did not drive herself up
the river with paddles or propeller, she pulled herself by hauling on
a great chain. This chain is laid in the bed of the river and is only
fastened at the two ends. It is seventy miles long. It comes in over the
boat's bow, passes around a drum, and is payed out astern. She pulls
on that chain, and so drags herself up the river or down it. She has
neither bow or stern, strictly speaking, for she has a long-bladed
rudder on each end and she never turns around. She uses both rudders
all the time, and they are powerful enough to enable her to turn to
the right or the left and steer around curves, in spite of the strong
resistance of the chain. I would not have believed that that impossible
thing could be done; but I saw it done, and therefore I know that there
is one impossible thing which CAN be done. What miracle will man attempt
next?

We met many big keel-boats on their way up, using sails, mule power, and
profanity--a tedious and laborious business. A wire rope led from the
foretopmast to the file of mules on the tow-path a hundred yards ahead,
and by dint of much banging and swearing and urging, the detachment of
drivers managed to get a speed of two or three miles an hour out of the
mules against the stiff current. The Neckar has always been used as a
canal, and thus has given employment to a great many men and animals;
but now that this steamboat is able, with a small crew and a bushel or
so of coal, to take nine keel-boats farther up the river in one hour
than thirty men and thirty mules can do it in two, it is believed
that the old-fashioned towing industry is on its death-bed. A second
steamboat began work in the Neckar three months after the first one was
put in service. [Figure 4]

At noon we