ful tragedies that the history of steamboating presents. In 1852, this popular boat, while making her regular run and crowded with passengers, was discovered to be on fire. She was headed for the shore at Riverdale and ran hard aground near the wharf. But while from the bow of the boat it was only a step to the shore, yet the stern floated in deep water, and the majority of the passengers were imprisoned by the flames in that part of the boat. A wild panic ensued. The helpless people, without means of escape and maddened by the intense heat, leaped into the river and literally fought with each other in their eagerness to reach the shore, pulling each other, in many instances, under the waves, so that the strong went down with the weak. The Digitized by Microsoft® 134 The Hudson River victims were ntirabered by scores, and for days the river shore was thronged by the relatives and friends of missing passengers, trying to identify the bodies that the tide washed ashore. This disaster had a sad pre-eminence and plunged the whole State in gloom. A graphic picture of steamboat travel on the Hudson was presented by the lively pen of N. P. Willis, in 1840. With most persons [he wrote], to mention the PaHsades is only to recall the confusion of a steamer's deck, just off from the wharf, with a freight of seven or eight hundred souls hoping to "take tea" in Albany. The scene is one of inextricable con- fusion, and it is not till the twenty miles of the Palisades are well passed that the bewildered passenger knows rightly whether his wife, child, or baggage, whichever may be his tender care, is not being left behind at the rate of fifteen miles in the hour. I have often flung my valise into the corner, and, sure that the whole of my person and personal effects was under way, watched the maniform embarrassments and troubles that beset the uninitiated voyager upon the Hudson. Fifteen minutes before the starting of the boat, there is not a passenger aboard: "time is money," and the American, counting it as part of the expense, determines to pay only "on demand." He arrives on the narrow pier at the same instant with seven hundred men, ladies, and children, besides lapdogs, crammed baskets, uncut novels, and baggage for the whole. No commissioner in the world would guarantee to get all this freight on board in the given time, and yet it is done, to the daily astonishment of news-' paper hawkers, orange women, and penny-a-liners watching for dreadful accidents. The plank is drawn in, the wheels begin to paw like foaming steeds impatient to be off, the bell rings as if it were letting down the steps of the last hackney-coach, and away darts the boat, like half a town suddenly slipping off and taking a walk on the water. The "hands" (who follow their nomenclature literally, and have neither eyes nor bowels) trip up all the little children and astonished maids in coiling up the hawser: the Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® Fulton and the Hudson River Steamboat 137 black head- waiter rings a hand-bell as if he were crazy, exhorting "Them passengers as has n't settled to step to the Cap'n's office and settle," and angry people who have lost sight of their port- manteaus and selfish people who will not get up to let the young gentleman see if his penny trumpet is under them, play a real- life farce better than Keeley or Liston. A painted notice and a very fat black woman in the doorway inform the gentleman who has not seen his wife since the boat started, and is not at all sure that she is on board, that "No gentleman is permitted to enter the ladies' cabin," and spite of his dreadful uncertainty, he is obliged to trust to the dark Hebe to find her, among three hundred ladies, by description, and amuses all the listeners with his inventory of her dress features and general appearance. The negress disappears, is called twenty ways in twenty seconds, and an hour afterwards the patient husband sees the faithless messenger pass with a glass of lemonade, having utterly forgotten him and the lady in the black bonnet and gray eyes, who may be, for ought he knows to the contrary, wringing her hands at this moment on the wharf at New York. By this time the young ladies are tired of looking at the Pali- sades, and have taken out their novels, the old gentlemen are poring over their damp newspapers, and the captain has received his fourteen hundred or two thousand dollars, locked up his office, and gone to smoke with the