"
So we started off. Each horse leaned into the collar, and slowly the
hundred tons or so of dead weight started through the water. The team
knew that it was of no use to surge against the load to get it started,
as horses do with a wagon; but they pulled steadily and slowly,
gradually getting the boat under way, and soon it was moving along with
the team at a brisk walk, and with less labor than a hundredth part of
the weight would have called for on land. I have always believed in
inland waterways for carrying the heavy freight of this nation; because
the easiest and cheapest way to transport anything is to put it in the
water and float it. This lesson I learned when Ace whipped up Dolly and
Jack and took our craft off toward Syracuse.
It was a hard day for me. We were passing boats all the time, and we had
to make speed to keep craft which had no right to pass us from getting
by, especially just before reaching a lock. To allow another boat to
steal our lockage from us was a disgrace; and many of the fights between
the driver boys grew out of the rights oL passing by and the struggle to
avoid delays at the locks. Sometimes such affairs were not settled by
the boys on the tow-path--they fought off the skirmishes; the real
battles were between the captains or members of the crews.
If there were rules I don't know now what they were, and nobody paid
much attention to them. Of course we let the passenger boats pass
whenever they overtook us, unless we could beat them into a lock.
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