Great Steamboat Race

[Matt Yaklin]

On Wed, 2 Jun 2010, Thomas Hauber wrote:

> Where on earth did Barks come up with the fact that pitch was used to fire 
> brass boilers of paddle-wheelers?  Is there a reference anywhere in Mark 
> Twain?

Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain makes these mentions:

"From three o'clock onward they wouldbe burning rosin
and patch-pine (the sign of preparation), and so one had
the picturesque spectacle of a rank, some two or three
miles long, of tall, ascending columns of coal-block smoke;"


"great volumes of the blackest smoke are rolling and tumbling out of the 
chimneys-- a husbanded grandeur created with a bit of pitch pine just 
before arriving at a town;"


So i am not sure if they used it consistently for boiler needs but
they did indeed use it.

matt

> It seems now that pitch is an up and coming bio-fuel. Barks, What a guy.
>
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