From: me@privacy.net   
      
   "William Vetter"  wrote   
      
   >  to remember two things: 1) it is relatively easy to travel down the   
   > Mississippi with the current in rafts and flatboats, but it will take a   
   > grueling year for a crew of human beings to punt upriver to maybe   
   > Vicksburg in a keelboat designed to do that, 2) the smaller tributaries to   
   > the Mississippi weren't navigable more than maybe fifty miles up their   
   > mouths (e.g., the Arkansas R.) by anything larger than a canoe until   
   > modern times, because the US Army Corp of Engineers dredges them   
   > regularly.   
      
   > It was economical to build a crude flatboat, load it up in Wisconsin or   
   > Ohio, float and punt it downriver, then unload in New Orleans, dismantle   
   > the boat and sell the wood.  The flatboatmen would then walk home with   
   > their money.  Cargo upriver was problematic.   
      
   See of course Lois McMaster Bujold's Sharing Knife series.   
      
      
   --   
   Mike D   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)