In a message dated 4/23/2007 3:23:45 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, [log in to unmask] writes: I don't recall reading of any first hand experience Twain had with raft building or rafting on the MIssissippi. I know he nearly drowned nine times and his mother declared that "a pe4rson born to hang is safe around water." Thanks for any assistance or source material you can point me to. ACR Well, you might check Wecter; I assume that any and all the boys in Hannibal would have had rafting experience; it's simply one thing that boys did on the River. Besides the thousand or so steamboats that docked in Hannibal, there must have been all shapes and sizes of watercraft, even crude rafts of all sorts. So, Sam's "first hand experience" was in growing up on the river. And we all know of his powers of observations. So many details in Sam's fiction were taken from his boyhood, even if seasoned with his imagination, that it's difficult to believe he didn't know a bit about making and using a raft. I'd recommend *Dark Waters* by Powers as well. And there was that rafting episode with Twichell on their "tramp" adventure through the Black Forest. DHF