That is, I guess we could.

The Rio Grande is shallow, and large boats run only a short distance up the river, but we might make it with a small one." "Let Fremont tell how he built his boat and got his provisions." "Well," Fremont began, "we were standing on the high bridge at Nashville, one day, when Frank Shaw brought out the brilliant thought.
He was doing a thinking part just then, for there was a fine chance of our getting good and hungry before our checks got to us." "Then he was thinking, all right!" a boy laughed.
"Frank explained," George continued, "that the Cumberland river had been placed in the scenery for the sole purpose of providing transportation for us to the Mississippi.

Then he went on and told how we could build a flat-boat with a cabin on it and beat the railroads out of our fare to Cairo.

So we counted our money, right there, on the bridge, and started for a lumber yard." "It was a sporty notion, all right! Just you wait until we get a houseboat into the dirty waters of the Rio Grande!" "When we got the lumber, we all turned to and built the boat.

We didn't know much about boat-building, but we used what few brains we had and got the boards together in pretty good shape, considering.