In 1870 with her whistle tied down and the pilot squirting a steady stream of tobacco juice on the floor of the "Texas" (pilot house), the cotton packet Robert E. Lee chuffed up the 1,154 mi!es of tortuous Mississippi river from New Orleans to St. Louis in 90 hr. 14 min. Behind her, beaten, labored the packet Natchez, burning up "doors, furniture, hundreds of hams and slabs of side meat." The Robert E. Lee's record stood until last week when three exhausted, red-eyed men tottered ashore at St. Louis from the 150 h. p....
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