By 1811, when the first steamboat arrived down river at New Orleans, hundreds of travelers of all sorts had been afloat on the western waters for three decades. There were military men, government appointees (including treaty commissioners, territorial administrators, Federal judges, and explorers), missionaries, various foreigners (including political exiles, generals on secret military reconnaissance, and land inspectors), botanists, fur traders, merchants, adventurers, and settlers. all undertaking the often hazardous venture of river travel. From flatboat and keelboat, travelers observed and recorded a vast detail about people and places, resulting in a voluminous documentation of life along the waterways as seen by all sorts of people from near illiterates to the most sophisticated gentlemen. An examination of some of these voluminous letters and diaries reveals many interesting particulars concerning life on and along the waterways and provides for a reconstruction of the vivid history of the period. Based on printed diaries and manuscript journals; biblio.