After spending weeks in Louisville waiting for the river to rise, the Roosevelts and the crew of the steamboat New Orleans finally attempted the Falls of the Ohio, which were then a series of dangerous rapids.  Lydia Roosevelt remembered, years later, how they all silently gripped the railing as the steamboat plunged toward "what at times seemed inevitable destruction."  When they made it through, they felt relief and "profound gratitude to the Almighty," she recalled.