"Mississippi steamboating," Mark Twain once observed sadly, "was born about 1812; at, the end of 30 years it had grown to mighty proportions; and in less than 30 more it was dead. A strangely short life for so majestic a creature."
Like reports of his own death, Twain's dirge for riverboating turns out to be greatly exaggerated. Today the 29,000 miles of rivers, canals and intracoastal passages that constitute the U.S. Inland Waterways System are churning as never before. While railroads and airlines make more noise fighting one another, the inland waterways' share...
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