By dint of much beseeching the government had
been persuaded to allow the association to use this lock. Every
association man carried a key which would open these boxes. That key, or
rather a peculiar way of holding it in the hand when its owner was asked
for river information by a stranger - for the success of the St. Louis
and New Orleans association had now bred tolerably thriving branches in
a dozen neighboring steamboat trades - was the association man's sign and
diploma of membership; and if the stranger did not respond by producing
a similar key and holding it in a certain manner duly prescribed, his
question was politely ignored. From the association's secretary each
member received a package of more or less gorgeous blanks, printed like
a billhead, on handsome paper, properly ruled in columns; a bill-head
worded something like this -
STEAMER GREAT REPUBLIC.
JOHN SMITH MASTER
PILOTS, JOHN JONES AND THOMAS BROWN.
+ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - +
| CROSSINGS. | SOUNDINGS. | MARKS. | REMARKS. |
+ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - +
These blanks were filled up, day by day, as the voyage progressed, and
deposited in the several wharf-boat boxes. For instance, as soon as the
first crossing, out from St. Louis, was completed, the items would be
entered upon the blank, under the appropriate headings, thus -
'St. Louis.
