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26 Telescope independently of the other, for they are upon separate shafts with the car tracks intervening. This is very favorable for the short river route of the IANSDOWNE, for if one engine reverses while the other is going forward, the IANSDOWNE can turn about almost within her own length. The few sidewheelers which have had independently-driven paddle wheels included Oliver Newberry's MICHIGAN of 1833 which left behind a reputation for keeping no steady course. But Captain Nicholas Saad and Chief Engineer T. E. Durban of the LANSDOWNE suggest that the revolutions of her two engines may easily be synchronized, or that one may adjust the setting of the rudders to compensate for unequal speeds of the paddle wheels. Perhaps this would be related to the performance of a multiple-screw ship. Rudders fitted at bow and stern give further aid to manoeuvering. In its December issue the Telescope published an outboard profile of the Michigan Central Railroad carferry TRANSFER of 1888 which show her to have been propelled both by a propellor and independently-driven paddle wheels. Mr. Don Williams, a former engineer aboard the TRANSFER, confirms that her paddle wheels were easily synchronized, but that in docking operations the propellor could not easily be synchronized with the paddle wheels so that the latter were generally used alone at these times. Steam is supplied to the LANSDOWNE engines by four-singleended scotch boilers of two burners each, located aft within the hull under the car tracks. New boilers were built in 1904, and these have since been converted to burn oil instead of coal. In normal operation one boiler is kept in reserve. Each boiler has its own funnel, giving the LANSDOWNE four impressive funnels, two upon each side of the car tracks. In recent years these funnels have been painted in Canadian National colors--red funnel with white band and blue top--which add bright color to the black hull and cabins, dull red decks and brown-roofed white pilot house. The jewel of the wood joiner work is the pilot house which in a garden setting could easily pass for a Victorian summer house, having small double-arched windows and a graceful mansard roof with curved surfaces. This square pilot house is perhaps the last echo of the rich octagonal houses that were common upon Great Lakes steamers in the middle nineteenth century. The pilot house stands high upon an iron--strapped wood frame which spans the car tracks. Inside the pilot house is found a rare feature, a steering wheel which contains its small steering engine within its base. Consistently prosperous commerce on the lakes has accumulated a greater abundance of useful older vessels than we are apt to find elsewhere in North America. As in the example of the common ore carrier, the active older vessels are evidence of the evolution of their modern descendents. With the survival of HURON and IANSDOWNE this is particularly true of the river carferries. Although their ages are reversed, HURON represents the modern propellor carferries built as recently as 1946. And, on behalf of the GREAT WESTERN, LANSDOWNE tells how, through the earliest successful experiments, the river carferries as a vessel type came into existence.