Chapter XIX

_Steamboat Racing_ It is popularly supposed that there was a great deal of racing on Western rivers in the olden time--in fact, that it was the main business of steamboat captains and owners, and that the more prosaic object, that of earning dividends, was secondary. There is a deal of error in such a supposition. At the risk of detracting somewhat from the picturesqueness of life on the upper Mississippi as it is sometimes delineated, it must in truth be said that little real racing was indulged in, as compared wi…