MARK Twain, the author of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, had a life-long love affair with 'the river' and the 'palaces' or steamboats that once plied its mighty waters.
'When I was a boy,' he wrote, 'there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades in our village. That was to be a steam-boatman.' Today, more and more travellers are choosing to step back in time and rediscover the romance and excitement of traversing the Mississippi basin by paddle-steamer.
The steamboat cruises through history with reminders of piracy, sugar plantations, the Civil War and boot-legging visible at every twist and turn.
The Delta Queen Steamboat Company operates the only two paddle-wheel steamboats in America, the Mississippi Queen and the 70-year-old Delta Queen, which was designated in 1989 as a National Historic Landmark.
Both boats live up to the sumptuous Victorian standards that would have delighted Mark Twain himself. But it is the Delta Queen, with her teak handrails, gleaming brass fittings and stained-glass windows, that most resembles the 19th century steamboats.
The waters they churn today cover a large section of the American mid-west. The Mississippi basin, surpassed in size only by the Nile and the Amazon, stretches from Minneapolis in the northwest and Pittsburgh in the northeast to New Orleans in the south.