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Rh ten. Certainly it is desirable to preserve such a history, and no book could have been undertaken which would be likely to produce more both of pleasure and profit to the writer and none which would meet with a larger circle of delighted readers. The traditions on the subject are, even at this recent period, so vague and contradictory that it would be difficult to procure anything like reliable or authentic data in regard to them. No story in which the bargemen figured is too improbable to be narrated, nor can one determine what particular person is the hero of an incident which is in turn laid at the door of each distinguished member of the whole fraternity."

"The crews were carefully chosen. A 'Kentuck,' or Kentuckian, was considered the best man at a pole, and a 'Canuck,' or French Canadian, at the oar or the 'cordelles,' the rope used to haul a boat upstream. Their talk was of the dangers of the river; of 'planters and sawyers,' meaning tree trunks imbedded more or less firmly in the river; of 'riffles,' meaning