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steamboat's design, of those to whom any sort of floating craft which does not exhibit the features of a deep sea vessel, is nothing more than an un- sightly ark or ungraceful barge. The 'appearance of the Pittsburg boat must have rudely disturbed his precon- ceived ideas of a river steamboat for he Says: "in the 'first place, they have no mast, cordage, tackle, rigging or other such boat-like gear; nor have they anything in their shape at all calculated to remind one of a boat's head, stern, sides, or keel. Except that they are in the water, and display a couple of paddle boxes, they might be intended for anything that appears to the contrary, to perform some un- known service, high and dry upon a mountain top. There is no _ visible deck, even; nothing but a long black ugly roof, covered with burnt-out feathery sparks; above which tower two iron chimneys, and a hoarse es- cape-valve, and a glass steerage-house. Then, in Order as. tie eye descends towards the water, are the sides and doors, and windows of the staterooms, jumbled as oddly together as though they formed a small street, built by the varying tastes of a dozen. men; the whole is supported on beams and _ pillars resting on a dirty barge, but a few inches above the water's edge, and in the narrow space between this upper structure and this barge's deck, are the furnace fires and machinery, open at the sides to every wind that blows, and every storm of rain it drives along its oath....-... Within, there is one long, narrow cabin, the whole length of the boat; from which the staterooms open, on both sides. A small portion of it at the stern is partitioned off for the ladies; and the. bar is At the oposite extreme. There is a long table down the center, and at either end a stove. The washing apparatus is forward, on the deck." This is scarcely an attractive pic- ture, but in fundamental details it is essentially correct. It must be re- membered, however, that nothing in America, and. especially in western America, escaped the caustic wit of -England's popular humorist, and it was apparently his purpose to repre- sent conditions beyond the Alleghen- ies in as ridiculous a way as possible. This somewhat vague and incom- ' plete description is given merely to convey a general idea of the steam- boat's appearance and arrangement. It will be desirable to set forth in greater detail their characteristic fea- tures. : The first particular which the ob- server will in all probability notice is TAE Marine. REVIEW the form and construction of the hull, or the barge-like structure which mas- querades under that name. It pos- sesses neither grace. nor symmetry, and has evidently been built from the utilitarian point of view and not from the aesthetic. A full model with a long parallel middle body and blunt ends is an absolute necessity in order~ that stifficient displacement may be obtained. This does not result in any great loss of propulsive efficiency, as the speed of these boats is com- paratively low. The lines of a side wheel boat are not so great a depar- ture from the conventional _ style, since the location of the machinery does not require anything extraordin- ary in this respect, as are those of a stern-wheeler. In this type of boat the bows are particularly bluff, and 27 tively light and are nowhere nearly as heavy as those usually found in the hulls of sea-going vessels. Longi- tudinal strength is the great desider- atum, and consequently as much of the framing is disposed in a fore and aft direction as possible. The method of planking is in accordance with es- tablished practice, but, except at the extreme ends, is usually a very sim- ple operation, as few of the individual planks require shaping of any sort. Water tightness is secured by calk- ing in the ordinary way, but is not as carefully done as in sea-going ves- sels because the decreased water pres- sure resulting from the shallow draught does not require it. To pro- vide against the excoriating effect of ice and running drift the bows are sheathed with sheet iron run in verti- the water lines, instead of converging at the stern, end abruptly on. the transom. The width at the stern is almost as great as amidships. To pre- vent the formation of eddies, and to allow a free flow of water to the rud- ders and wheel, the bottom is raised at the after end so that the stream lines, instead of flowing from either side toward the center, rise in parallel directions from the keel. There is scarcely any dead rise; in fact, some are built with perfectly flat bottoms. The turn of bilge is extremely sharp, merely a slight rounding off of the edge, formed by the juncture of the sides and bottom. Steel as a material for the construc- tion of hulls has not been employed to' any considerable extent on the wes- tern rivers. Wood is almost exclu- sively used for this purpose. The ar- rangement of the material in wooden steamboat hulls is very similar to that ordinarily adopted in the con- struction of barges and floats. The sizes of timber used are compara- HIAWATHA, A STEAMBOAT OF THE EXCURSION TYPE, ' cal strakes and nailed to the wood planking. The location of the permanent weights in these shallow draught ves- sels, subjects their hulls to excessive longitudinal stresses. In a stern-wheel boat the engines are unavoidably lo- cated at the extreme after end which, in order to maintain a proper trim, necessitates placing the boilers con- .siderably forward of amidships. This extreme separation of engines and boilers results in enormous hoggin,, stresses, which are still further accen- tuated by the heavy wheel and pitman at the after end, and the landing stage, capstans and other deck gear on the "head,'. as the forward part of the main deck is called. The shallow hull is manifestly incapable, in itself, of re- sisting such excessive stresses. The necessary supplementary strength 1s furnished by a system of two over- head longitudinal girders extending nearly the entire length of the boat. Their arrangement is very simple, merely consisting of an iron rod of